Disclaimer: this is the story as I remember it. very likely to be incomplete and/or incorrect, but a story nonetheless. Leave comments for corrections. oh, and tell me when i should stop.

So, I met JLG in the fall of 1998, my sophomore year. I had just retired from rowing, and for the first time in five years, i didn’t have anything to define me. No more morning and evening work outs. No more racing season. No more team for which to fight. All the things that I loved at that time–the competition, the water, the comraderie–were gone. I was listless to say the least. However, more important that my listlessness was my peasantry. And so, on the advice of a fraternity brother, i walked into the Center for Career Services looking for a job.

If the credits in this story were to roll in order of appearance, Pat Macken’s name would show up first. A cameo in this film, but pivitol nonetheless. She was the one who greeted me at CCS, asked me what i was looking for, and then walked me upstairs to meet Tawana. At the time, i had a familiarity with computers. Back then I could actually navigate my way around a Windows98 box, and what little html i knew i had learned in Gateway. Tawana asked me a few questions which i no longer remember and a few minutes later i was in the employ of CCS.

The job wasn’t that hard. I ran around trouble shooting the staff’s computer troubles, maintaining the public workstations, and kicking the Jake printers every now and then. When i wasn’t running around, I’d be up in the office fixing various web pages across the CCS site.

At the time, the IT office was right outside the CCS Director’s office. In one corner, there was a large desk that took up one quadrant of the room and along the remaining two walls of the office were wall-facing desks with about four workstations all together.

Since Tawana had hired me, i assumed the big desk was hers. But it wasn’t. As it turned out I sat next to her at one of the smaller workstation desks along with the other work study kids, nithia and velma. The big desk belonged to John. I think JLG was a spritely 23 years of age back then. Our introduction was brief. Nothing more than a handshake and a curt hello before he put his headphones on and buried himself behind his monitor–a bit ironic that six years later he’d draw a portrait of me in a similar position. I’d later learn that JLG had confessed his dislike for me. a “yahoo”, he said i was.
As the year progressed, I started growing on hime, or at least i thought. He started me off with some javascript programming and eventually moved me into application development work. The tool of the hour back then was MadSearch2 the sequel to the wildly successful MadSearch. It was actually pretty slick for it’s day. A fully integrated template and datastore development kit. Back then there was no php, and perl or c++ cgi development was a bit of a bear since we worked off of AcIS servers and they didn’t support it. So, MadSearch2 it was. JLG had also given birth to Madness–our in house version of Monster/JobTrak which at the time were still two separate companies each courting us to switch over–which was some combination of MadSearch2, C++ and Paradox macros, i want to say. It was a pretty comprehensive system and coordinated a whole bunch of stuff that i still don’t know about.

Being the young’n, i didn’t get to play with Madness. Instead, i was put on smaller projects like the library resources database (the longest living project in our history!), and what i’d call calendar v0.0.0.0.1 which was more like a cms tool to allow staff members to program events onto the website.

And so for a while, things were good. Building these apps was a lot of fun, the work environment was great, I was learning a lot. But, all good things come to and end and john walked in one day and announced that he was leaving to work for AcIS. Actually, he didn’t tell me directly. I heard it through the grapevine. Which was fine and dandy and all. It wasn’t that consequential for me as I’d only been working there for a couple of months. Besides, as time passed I would come to learn that this wouldn’t be the only time JLG gave me the ditch.

So, we had a party for John. People were crying. I was eating cake. And, after a few weeks, things had calmed down. At least until Tawana announced that she was leaving. Now, this announcement had some repercussions for me. All of a sudden I found myself alone at the top of the CCS IT mountain. Well, actually, at this point, it wasn’t exactly a mountain. It was just me, and if you ever get a copy of my old resume, you’ll see the description of this time as follows:

During critical period, assumed the responsibilities of Director of Information Technology, Center for Career Services.

There it was. The peak of my career.

Granted, it’s nice to have on a resume and it was also nice to get the big desk in the room. But, i was only a sophomore in college and pretty much in over my head. My daily tasks began to center exclusively on fixing boxen and assuring people that you can’t replace the lightbulb in a computer monitor.

Luckily, after a few months, John saw the error in his move to AcIS and returned to reclaim his throne. In the end, i guess i have to thank him for his brief absence, since, during his time away, CCS was desperate to keep me onboard. And so, with desperation and one of James Mbote’s uncanny typos, i happily acquiesced the IT throne in return for a $12 and hour summer internship with paid housing.

I’ve offically hit a new peak in daily traffic on the old attack-gecko.net, far surpassing the previous one day high.  I’d reveal the numbers, but, that would be all to embarrassing. anyway, considering the huge interest in the subject of C, C, I and T, what say you all to an entry in Wikipedia?

Go forth and contribute!

So, in honor of John’s departure, i’ve been typing up the story of ccit and me as a little stroll down memory lane type of thing. since i am an audience whore, i’ll leave it to y’all if you want me to put it up here. it’ll probably be over many long installments.

leave a comment with a yay or nay.

And so a decade long era has come to an end–spiritually as of now, technically in a few weeks. The Captain has called it quits.

I have to say I’m really happy for him. Deep down, i’d always thought he’d leave before me. The plan was to stick around for a year after his departure, wrap things up and transition to a new regime. It was to echo the story of my life. But, plans change, and I’m glad my abandonment didn’t last too long.

I hope he finds in his new work what had been swallowed up by those rendered inordinately obstinate by indulgence.

Not like you haven’t heard it before, but Good luck and Godspeed, JLG.

. . . .

family member to me: I don’t want to have to think when i talk to you.

I guess i should give a little back-fill. Since the beginning of time as i know it, the ol’ family has never been able to accept a single decision i’ve made. examples:

what time do you want to leave tomorrow?
how about 6?
are you sure? why not 8?

what would you like for breakfast?
a bagel.
are you sure you don’t want eggs?

I got a job at Yahoo! I’m moving back to california.
Why? You’re so close to finishing your masters.

I think my favorite of all time is my mom:
would you like some tea?
no, I’m fine, thanks.
by fine you mean yes?
I mean no.
ok, fine, means no. Do you want a snack?
ok
by ok you mean no?
by ok I mean yes.
ok, ok means yes. Would you like X?
No, I’m fine.
fine means yes?
I mean no.
ok, fine means no.
now, once in a while, no problem. every single freaking day of my life? problem. So, in an effort to resolve this, i’ve tried to be more transparent. They say you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. i disagree. You just have to make sure it’s thirsty first. In non-allegory speak, it’s called buy-in.

aside: y’know, i don’t know why i’m writting this right now. perhaps because it is late, i am tired, and most probably lack good judgement. anyhow, this kind of feels like revealing trade secrets.

anyway, buy-in. so, lately, instead of yes or no answers, i’ve given my current state of mind. the train of thought being if i walk these people through my thought process, they will come to the same conclusions as i do. examples:

Can you go skiing with us this weekend?
I have a lot of work to do.

Can you drive me downtown?
I just got back from the eye-doctor’s and my eyes are dialated.

and, hence, we get the comment that started this whole post . . . *sigh* time to find a dryer desert to drag this horse through.

to get the hell out of dodge.

A post about one man’s disillusionment of the mozilla corp/org/whatever it is these days.
I had a whole tirade written up, but decided to scrap it. i’ll just say, as an organization, i’ve been really disappointed by the mozilla entity.  they seem to run more as a corporation than a community.

Oly! Oly! The olympics are here!

So, after many and hour, she’s live. be sure to check out all that is wonderous about oly, m, and pics.

So, I get to my car this morning to find a note on my windshield. It was written on a yellow piece of binder paper folded into thirds lengthwise bearing letters crafted with a red sharpie. it read:

Please avoid a ticket. Stay clear of the red zone.

I quickly get over my disappointment of it not being a friendly note, take it off my windshield, head over to the curb and examine the situation. I notice a couple things:

1) there’s ample room for a compact car to fit in that curb space.
2) there’s a fresh coat of municipal red paint that cuts off 12-18 inches off each side of the curb.
And then I get upset.

I get upset for a couple of reasons. first, i don’t appreciate subterfuge. especially when so poorly contrived. whoever had that curb painted and is handing out these notes to whoever parks there, essentially created themselves a private parking space on a public street using public funds.
and then there’s the letter. Please avoid a ticket? is that your pansy ass way of saying “don’t make me call the police?” Stay clear of the red zone? It’s only there because you put it there, you assclown!

then there’s the red sharpie ink. cute. real, fucking cute. how long were you waiting to spring that on someone? bastard.
finally, there are two parts to the law, the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. the former was invented to circumvent the latter. I did nothing to contradict the spirit of the law, so don’t go reprimanding me with your righteousness.

and, now, since I’ve obviously gotten past this, anytime a see a car parked in that spot, i’m fucking calling the cops to get it towed.  yeah, that’s right.  we’ll see how you like going to the pound.  Please avoid a ticket? Stay out of the red zone? How about Please don’t waste my tax dollars to create an extra parking spot for your broke ass kia.

girl (to me): don’t mess with me. you see these? these are my ten fingers of death!

ten.
minutes.
later.
same girl (to me): if you were five years older, i’d ravage you.