Ryan's Journal

"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" — David Mitchell

Month: August 2007

Daisy Loved the Hell Out of Me

Posted from Culver City, California at 12:00 am, August 26th, 2007

A quick summary of where life stands right now:

I’ve been working at DirecTV for ten months now, after previously managing to mostly avoid work for two years. Life has become a seven day routine of work-work-work-work-work-sleep-sleep, repeat. Not ideal, but I definitely can’t complain. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to keep it up for a couple of years, after which some new adventures may definitely be in order.

My second job is also going well, despite the fact that instead of 40-60 hours a week I now only have 10-20 hours a week to devote to JAMWiki development. Conservatively I’d estimate that after less than 15 months of existence JAMWiki is one of the three best Java-based wikis available, and probably among the ten best overall. There have been at least thirty or so people who have contributed code and translations, and probably double that number who have provided bug reports and feature requests. Total downloads are at 7,600, which is pretty cool. Translations include everything from French to Chinese to Croatian, with sixteen different languages available. A number of different companies are now using the software, including DirecTV, which is also gratifying. I’m not sure I really care whether or not this project ever turns into a way to support myself financially, but just as JB spent years tinkering with electric cars for the fun of it before becoming CTO of Tesla Motors, I suspect that there is a chance that the project could eventually lead to some interesting opportunities.

In other news there isn’t much to report. Aaron and I continue to have our weekly Funday, and the folks at work were kind enough to teach me how to play Texas Hold ‘Em the other night. The game seems to be 30% about calculating odds, 30% about reading people, and the rest luck. Oddly, for once in my life luck was with me, so I managed to walk away from my first game in the black, but I suspect that future games won’t be as lucrative. The planned trip with my dad to Iceland is a distant 290 days away (not that anyone is counting), and next month I’ll be taking my first vacation day since starting work at DirecTV for a trip to Las Vegas with Aaron. Although not exciting, life is still very good.

Girls in Cowboy Hats

Posted from Culver City, California at 9:15 pm, August 14th, 2007

Friday (or lately Saturday or Sunday) has been dubbed Funday. Aaron and I get together and go mini-golfing, play baseball, watch a video, or head to a random Brazilian restaurant and eat until we want to die. Good stuff. Last week Funday went to another level when Aaron decided we should go see Tim McGraw and Faith Hill in Anaheim. More good stuff. As usual our concert experience began with an odyssey as I cruised down I-5 looking for a place I could drop my car before eventually finding an Applebee’s and meeting the Goob a short time later. From there it was a short jaunt to Anaheim, and the festivities began.

We started by roaming the lot around Arrowhead Pond searching for scalpers – there are a surprising number of sketchy folks that hang around arenas, but in this case none passed the scalper test (scalper test = make eye contact in a non-creepy way). During this treasure hunt we were also trying to remember if a cop had to admit his profession if you asked – “Do you have tickets, and are you a cop?” seemed like a good defense against any illegal ticket purchases. And most importantly, as we carried out our ticket search we made sure to keep in constant contact with the predominantly female concertgoers. Life was good and about to get better.

After nearly circling the arena we finally ended up at the box office, and having been unsuccessful in our attempts to navigate the black market underground of concert tickets we asked at the window about availability and were rewarded with (expensive) seats that were less than thirty feet from the stage. Life continued to improve. Entering the arena we found ourselves in a sea of girls, cowboy hats, and the smell of Christmas. After a brief opening act Tim and Faith came onstage and entertained for four hours, by far the longest I’ve ever seen two people play for. During that time they managed to interact with hundreds of people sitting around the stage, including four girls that Faith brought up on stage. We ended up returning home after 2:00 AM, but it was another concert odyssey to remember.