Fast, Very Fast

I have been inspired to try something new. Inspiration has come from several sources.

The streets of New York are home an awesome number of people. My interactions with the homeless in New York has been limited. A. and I encountered a couple gentlemen last month. One of them was drunk and puking, the other was adamant that we should call an ambulance. There was a hospital in eye-sight, maybe two blocks away. A week ago I gave undelivered meals-on-heels food to a man named Kevin. He was sitting on Park Avenue asking for money from passers-by. Then there is the scary looking guy that I frequently pass on Smith Street. He scares me because the color around his eyes implies drug use and he is always angry. It is quite unusual for a homeless person to yell "fuck you, bitch" when refused money.

In three separate contexts, I have had the five pillars of Islam laid out before me. One was in church. The other was in a book. The third was from a taxi driver. Of particular interest to me was number four: fasting during Ramadan.

The final source of inspiration is the Christian lent season.

For those that may not have figured it out yet, I am fasting. I'm not subscribing to any particular fasting protocol. My strategy is to not eat during the day. If the sun is up, I haven't been eating. I do allow myself to drink water. I am currently on day three of my fasting exercise.

There were a couple things I hoped to gain from fasting. I have thought about fasting in the past, but never done it. Like many things in my life until recently, it was something that I thought about, but always mapped the actual doing to other people. A big part of doing this fasting now is that it is something that I am doing which will yield direct experience for me.

Speaking of experience, I went into this having some notion of becoming more able to empathize with the hungry people I see around me everyday. This fasting seems to be having that effect. I spend a non-trivial amount of time everyday thinking about being hungry and how that effects my life. More on that later.

The last motivator was that I wanted to participate in a meaningful way in the lent season. I like the idea of doing activities that help me think about my connection to material things.

So here's the list of observations I have made over the last couple days:

• I do not need very much food to survive
• I need food to get to that level higher than just surviving
• I would like to try eating much less food on a daily basis
• Being hungry adversely affects my ability to think, but it is different than being tired
• Being hungry affects my ability to run, but not as much as I would have thought
• Being hungry does not make me tired, in fact, the opposite is likely the case
• I am very irritable when hungry (but I already knew that)
• Feed hungry people before you want to get anything out of them

All things considered, I am frankly amazed that I was able to compose this post. I haven't eaten in about twenty hours. Not sure how long I will continue fasting. I am strongly motivated to not let my self imposed hunger adversely affect my personal relationships. Unfortunately, it has already been a negative factor in that game. With that said, I'm going to eat something so that I can be social tonight!

Excuse Me While I Have A Life

It has been a while. A long while. Over a month, actually, since I've posted.

In life, we all make choices. Most of the time, most of us make choices without knowing why. More often than not, we avoid conscious analysis of the rationale behind our choices. Consider those Christmas cookies that we have been eating recently. What is the thought process going on there? For me, and I gamble for you also, it goes something like this: "oooh, look! a cookie. yum yum yum" [eat cookie] "yum yum yum". There was no thought into the short, medium, and long term health consequences. No consideration of how friends and family might update their opinions of us upon observing this gluttonous behavior. At best, a moment may be spent to consider the relative tastiness of the red versus the green cookies. But only a moment, because we all know the red wins.

The point here is that none of us go into the holidays with the stated goal eating like crap and suffering the obvious consequences, but most of us do it anyway.

Every once in a while, we make decisions with a purpose behind them. And proportionally more rarely, the cause we set in motion with our choices yields the desired effect. Such was the case with my choice to leave the SLC for the NYC.

Alas, a prime side effect of the bliss that has been my existence in New York has been gross negligence posting to this blog. Know that this is not meant to be a slight to my loyal reader(s). It is just that the opportunity to add to my rather thin mosaic of life experiences has been overwhelmingly compelling. Maybe one day this plethora of experience will allow me to write a half way descent blog post. Until then, this is what I've got.

Some Random Thoughts

First random thought: I am really enjoying New York.

Second random thought: I am not enjoying my money evaporating.

Third random thought: I am getting what I wanted from this big giant move.

Fourth random thought: I am ambivalent about the lack of free time I find myself having/not-having.

Fifth random thought: When I don't think about my friends in Salt Lake, I'm not sad about having ditched them. When I do think about it, I feel guilty and sad.

Sixth random thought: I went running this morning. My it-band hurts because I ran on the sidewalk and the sidewalk is concrete and therefore very hard. The good thing about this run was that I seem to have retained some of my cardiovascular ability thus far. I can tell now that exercise opportunities in this city are going to be more difficult to find than in Salt Lake. Which is to say that I will have to actively seek out physical activity instead of it being built into the cultural lifestyle.

Seventh random thought: I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm losing my passion for things that I used to be passionate about. For example, I have not read tech news in a couple months. I am also less motivated to pursue extra curricular technology related activities. My best analysis at this point is that it is because my passion is being spread across more endeavors whereas previously I laid it thick onto just the job. This balance yields some evenness in my outlook, but I do have some serious reservations about my waning passion for all things technical. Frankly, the reason I can afford to live in this city is because I have had a relatively meteoritic rise in my career. I attribute that ascent to geek glory to really, really enjoying hacking software in favor of almost all other activity -- except being a hermit at home where I could read computer books for fun at nights and on the weekend.

That's about it for now. Like going running after a long break, one should not push too hard when getting back into writing after a long break.

Back in Action

I just realized that I need to update my blogger profile. This is because I no longer live in Salt Lake City. Ha. Fuck you, Utah, I escaped!

I am writing this from my new God-only-knows how small studio in Brooklyn that costs approximately double what my mortgage cost in Salt Lake City. Fortunately this is temporary housing before I take possession of my more permanent pad which, of course, will cost yet more per month. I also decided to immediately take part in the important New York right of passage: paying out the nose to a broker. Yay! Despite this, I'm feeling very good about the whole situation.

I suppose a recap is in order. When I filed my last report, there was a mention of a certain nauseating anxiety. I'm a little dense, so it took me overnight to figure out what the problem was: living in the home of a middle aged woman on the Upper West Side who changed the rent by fifty percent at the last minute and where I could not really have any friends over was what was causing the tingling palms and overwhelming sense of doom and fear. That and I did not have a job. Well, the next day both of those problems were solved. I stopped payment on the check I wrote to the middle aged temptress, apologized profusely, and cut her a no-hard-feelings check to assuage my guilt at backing out of the deal. That alone made me feel super duper. Then later that day, I got a job offer phone call. This was the company that I did have a full night's sleep prior to my interview. They made me what I consider to be a really good offer. Income: check. That just left me with the small problem that I had sold my home in Salt Lake and taken a job that was to start in three weeks, but did not have a place to land in New York!

As an aside, I realize that this chronicle-style blog is getting used a bit much. I promise to all my loyal reader(s) that I will write posts in alternate styles real soon now.

One thing I learned about getting housing in New York is that it is not worth bothering to find a place until a maximum of forty-eight hours prior to being ready to make a commitment. In other words, trying to find a place in New York from Salt Lake City just doesn't work. You have to be able to show up for an appointment the next day before people will take you seriously. I am actually fascinated by the sheer size of the housing market in New York. Just using craigslist, there are hundreds of housing listings coming and going everyday. The half-life on a listing, at my best guess, appears to be about 36 hours. If the opportunity is any good at all, more like 12 hours. Based on this newfound NYC savvy, I did not even bother to peruse craigslist until the day after I arrived in Ohio. Although I knew that this was the right move, it still yielded much nervousness. I had a truck full of my worldly possessions and a job starting in a week and a half. House or not, I had to go to New York. Long story short: the day I left Ohio I committed on an apartment that I had only seen a couple of pictures of. The next day (yesterday) I drove into the city, parked in front of the place, and signed a check. Sweet.

So here I am in my new apartment. It was rather filthy when I arrived. I used about a half a bottle of Soft Scrub to clean the bathroom and a heavy dose of Mop 'n Glo on the kitchen floor. It's now livable. Evidence for my residence here includes: milk in the refrigerator and everything else I own sitting in boxes in the studio.

Next on the agenda: get a life.

Back in Action

I just realized that I need to update my blogger profile. This is because I no longer live in Salt Lake City. Ha. Fuck you, Utah, I escaped!

I am writing this from my new God-only-knows how small studio in Brooklyn that costs approximately double what my mortgage cost in Salt Lake City. Fortunately this is temporary housing before I take possession of my more permanent pad which, of course, will cost yet more per month. I also decided to immediately take part in the important New York right of passage: paying out the nose to a broker. Yay! Despite this, I'm feeling very good about the whole situation.

I suppose a recap is in order. When I filed my last report, there was a mention of a certain nauseating anxiety. I'm a little dense, so it took me overnight to figure out what the problem was: living in the home of a middle aged woman on the Upper West Side who changed the rent by fifty percent at the last minute and where I could not really have any friends over was what was causing the tingling palms and overwhelming sense of doom and fear. That and I did not have a job. Well, the next day both of those problems were solved. I stopped payment on the check I wrote to the middle aged temptress, apologized profusely, and cut her a no-hard-feelings check to assuage my guilt at backing out of the deal. That alone made me feel super duper. Then later that day, I got a job offer phone call. This was the company that I did have a full night's sleep prior to my interview. They made me what I consider to be a really good offer. Income: check. That just left me with the small problem that I had sold my home in Salt Lake and taken a job that was to start in three weeks, but did not have a place to land in New York!

As an aside, I realize that this chronicle-style blog is getting used a bit much. I promise to all my loyal reader(s) that I will write posts in alternate styles real soon now.

One thing I learned about getting housing in New York is that it is not worth bothering to find a place until a maximum of forty-eight hours prior to being ready to make a commitment. In other words, trying to find a place in New York from Salt Lake City just doesn't work. You have to be able to show up for an appointment the next day before people will take you seriously. I am actually fascinated by the sheer size of the housing market in New York. Just using craigslist, there are hundreds of housing listings coming and going everyday. The half-life on a listing, at my best guess, appears to be about 36 hours. If the opportunity is any good at all, more like 12 hours. Based on this newfound NYC savvy, I did not even bother to peruse craigslist until the day after I arrived in Ohio. Although I knew that this was the right move, it still yielded much nervousness. I had a truck full of my worldly possessions and a job starting in a week and a half. House or not, I had to go to New York. Long story short: the day I left Ohio I committed on an apartment that I had only seen a couple of pictures of. The next day (yesterday) I drove into the city, parked in front of the place, and signed a check. Sweet.

So here I am in my new apartment. It was rather filthy when I arrived. I used about a half a bottle of Soft Scrub to clean the bathroom and a heavy dose of Mop 'n Glo on the kitchen floor. It's now livable. Evidence for my residence here includes: milk in the refrigerator and everything else I own sitting in boxes in the studio.

Next on the agenda: get a life.

Scared (and not 'cause of Halloween)

Here I am in JFK. In a few minutes I'll be getting on a plane destined for Salt Lake City. I just spent the past four days on a whirlwind adventure. I had two goals for this trip: get a job and get a place to live. Well, I've got a place to live. My aching checkbook will vouch for that. As for the job, that's a little more interesting.

On Wednesday morning, I woke up at approximately my normal waking time. At 11:15 MST, I boarded my flight to New York. At 5:15 EST, the flight arrived at JFK. At 7:30, I was in the East Village dropping off my bag at the room I secured for the weekend. At 11:00 I was checking out my first housing opportunity. When 1:00 came around, I had both been awake for thirty straight hours and I was getting started on a marathon four-hour job interview.

Here's a good rule of thumb for all my loyal readers: do not, let me repeat for clarity, DO NOT show up to an interview for a job you care about in a strange city after taking a red-eye and being awake for thirty plus hours straight. As it turns out, there's a reasonable chance you will not give your best performance! Fuck me. So, no job offer from that company. I even sent them a follow up to their denial email commending them for making the right choice. I mean, if I were hiring for my small company and some joker showed up looking half dead, I wouldn't hire that person. On the other hand, these fuckers sent me an email to tell me I wasn't getting the job; I'm not sure I deserved that little respect.

Coupling that with the job denial that I got earlier in the week, I was rearing to go for my second in-person interview on Friday. It's amazing what some sleep can do for you. Interview #2 went just about as well as I might have hoped. I'm still feeling pessimistic for unknown reasons. I do not expect to get this job either. Too bad, because it's the one that I've wanted all along. I got the feeling that my salary requirement might have been too high. Dammit. Stay tuned for the dramatic conclusion to this one.

I did sign a check for a room. I will be living on the Upper West Side with an Armenian jazz pianist who takes photos for the trapeze school during the day and a recently empty nested woman who appears to be about the same age as my mom.

I am now officially scared. My wrists are tingling from the sick to the stomach, ill feeling that has pervaded me since I wrote the check for my room. The finality of all these decisions and actions I've been making over the past several weeks is hitting home. My home for the last five years is going to sell. My cat is living in Ohio. I just paid for two months rent of a room what was buying me three months of mortgage. Holy fucking shit, lord almighty, damn damn damn -- I am now past the point of no return. And I am viscerally scared. I have no real friends in New York. I've only got a couple of acquaintances. To boot, I've been guilty of dicking around several people on my quest to find a place to live. That's what is scaring me the most. There is now evidence on the table that me being in New York might make me a worse person. Or maybe it amplifies the bad person I already am.

I think I'm going to go yack and then curl up in the fetal position on the bathroom floor. Yeah, that seems like the best plan at this point.

My Dad

I booked a flight for my dad to come out to Utah in a couple weeks. He's going to arrive a couple days before I take off for New York. He's going to ride with me in the truck back to Ohio. He has never been to Utah and wants to see it before I leave. He also just wants to see me. It has been a long time. In fact, I actually do not recall the last time I saw my dad. I think it might have been Christmas of 2004. Hmmm, nope, can't think of any time after that.

So now we dig deep into the black trunk. The reason I booked the flight for my dad is twofold. One is that he does not have any money. Secondly he does not have any credit and thus does have a credit card necessary to book a flight. And a third reason is that he does not have a computer. Dad just got out of prison a couple months ago. Let's not get into that at the moment though.

When I was a young lad, my dad was responsible for putting my head into the windshield of his car. He also taught me how to cut my fingernails and wipe my butt. In college, I had an epiphany moment; my dad wasn't really rolling his own cigarettes as he told me, he was rolling joints! There were plenty of other childhood experiences with my dad that I considered normal/okay/reasonable that now make me cringe. With my dad, everything got sprinkled with a healthy dose of crazy.

But what do you expect from a man who is clinically bi-polar and a prototypical narcissist?

I've been talking to my dad a lot lately. It's been nice since he seems to have his head right at the moment. Who knows how long that will last, but right now he seems to be off the bad drugs and hopefully on the good ones.

I don't know what it's going to be like hangin' with pops for a week straight. I think it will be good having company for the drive. He can't help drive, of course, since the state of Ohio is unwilling to issue him a driver's license. But if I can keep the conversation away from crazy deals he's brewing and money in general, it might be okay.

Did I mention that he has stolen money from me in the past. Twice. Ouch. The second time was officially a defaulted loan that was written off when he declared bankruptcy, but the fact that he put the money into a Cadillac and crack, I still consider it stealing. The other time was when I was much younger. He had co-signed on my savings account. This was the little-kid first savings account for depositing Christmas money from Grandma and so forth. Ostensibly he needed to pay the rent, so he cleaned out my account. In retrospect, it seems pretty likely that that money went towards crack also. Fuck crack.

Note to self: keep wallet in pocket at all times.

The reason I am letting him come out here is because for strange, unknown reasons, I still love the man. And he has never expressed anything but love for me. And I'm probably retarded in my judgement of human character. Maybe it's time to invest in one of those wallet chains.

Three Pronged Attack

So Pete, what's the matter? Got writer's block or what? I mean, it's been a hellofa long time since you've posted. Did life get boring, dude? You suck.

Oh contraire. Life for me lately most resembles an avalanche. Inertia builds as I snip away at my ties to Utah.

I spent Monday morning bawling on the phone to my brother because I had actually gone through with putting Mr Orange on an airplane bound for Detroit. I felt better later that day when my bro picked up the O-man safely, but saying goodbye to what at times felt like my only friend was ... incomprehensible. I miss my kitty; he's a good buddy. I got my daily updates from both the brother and the sister-in-law today. Apparently Mr Orange has already found himself a nighttime spot on the bed. It makes it a lot easier on me if I know he's happy, of course.

Tuesday I hunkered down in the war room with my real estate agent and good friend, R. We played a high stakes game of offer-counteroffer with my house on the line. Fortune smiled on me that day. With two offers, both over my asking price, it was more stressful than you might imagine. When two people are jonesing after your apartment with this much fervor, you can't help but feel bad when you put the big REJECTED stamp on one of them. Sorry baby, your sugar just wasn't sweet enough. Bottom line here: I sold my house. Yay!

Selling the house was one of three events that was to force my hand into moving. The other two were finding a place to live in New York and securing a job. Those other two are in progress. The job hunt is in full swing. Actually, it's past the hunt stage and well into courtship. You know, they are infatuated and I'm getting the sweet goodnight kisses. Unlike with the ladies, I can keep my cool with potential employers, so all indicators are that I will get an offer or two in a week or so.

As for the finding a place to live problem, that's a different story. The reason I haven't been writing here lately is because I've been spending seemingly every last minute doing two things: searching craigslist for housing opportunities and crafting careful emails to potential roommates trying to convince them that at the same time I am interesting/cool/etc. and also that I'm not a serial killer despite the fact that I'm moving to NYC out of the blue. I've got a pretty good formula for it now, but it still takes me about an hour to come up with the proper strategy for one of these cold emails. I'm getting nervous about this one. I've got four days on my upcoming pre-move trip to New York to nail down a place. It's not at all clear to me that I'll be able to pull it off. Oh well, what's the worst that could happen? I might drive into New York with a truck full of shit and nowhere to live. I wouldn't be the first homeless person in New York, right?

So my brilliant three pronged attack game plan seems to be holding up as I enter the final stretch. I've got about two weeks left in SLC, minus the four days I'm in New York. On the agenda for tonight: figure out the guest list for the "Don't let the door hit you in the ass" party being thrown in my honor.

TTFN.

First of Many Lasts

It is getting down to where I am considering whether or not particular activities here in Salt Lake City might be my last. My friend S. came into some tickets to tonight's Real Salt Lake game, so we turned it into a little date and had some sushi before riding the train up to the game. As it turned out, this was S.'s first soccer game ever. She was a fabulous sport and took great interest in learning the game. There were a couple of goals and the weather held up nicely. S. claimed adamantly that she really, really liked the soccer game and I tend to believe her. So, very likely this was my last RSL game for probably ever.

Don't it always seem to go
that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone

Sorry, Joni, but no, not really. The O-man leaves for the motherland on Monday. I know what that's going to be like and I already have pity for the person who questions the lack of composure I am sure to have on that day. Furthermore, working with my friends on a daily basis, having a ton of space to myself, having a car, and having mature friendships are all things that I got. I hereby state for the record that they are incredibly valuable to me and before I loose these things, I already know that a large amount of pain will stem from my intentional abandonment of these things. So I do know what I've got before it's gone. S. reminded me tonight what a fabulous set of friends I've gotten mixed up with.

I'm likely to have numerous complaints in the upcoming months about the difficulties and disappointments of living in New York City. I just don't want anyone to try to make a claim that I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I do know. It will suck. I'm gambling for deferred rewards and personal growth. To hell with easy and comfortable.

On Chocolate Cake and the Wrong Kind of Popularity

The blog has officially seen more traffic in the last two days than it has ever. Welcome new visitors!

Now get the fuck out. For real, I'm not digging the attention.

Apparently a certain post containing a link to a certain fall-themed website describing the antics of several of people, including a former principle in fly-by-night, has caught the attention of some other people who are concerned with another Utah company that is clearly evil as to not really compare to the generally laughable behavior of fly-by-night. This has sucked in a bunch of new visitors. I feel embarrassed, but not for myself. No, I am embarrassed for them. For god's sake, I literally bear my laundry on this site. For people to come here seeking actual information, that is absurd to the extreme.

I have now had two solicitations to reveal corporate secrets. To all other parties interested in my vast war chest of insider secrets about fly-by-night (because really, as lowly engineer #17 I am privy to all the dirt), please send your inquiries to /dev/null. And for the record, let me state a couple of things:

1. Any and all information contained within this blog should be deemed totally and unequivocally unreliable. Otherwise put, I write with much hyperbole and I generally write when I am too tired to do anything actually productive. Plus it's fun to outright lie sometimes. Example: "I care about you and your concerns about fly-by-night." See, that was funny because, ironically, I could actually not care less about your concerns.
2. I do have a vested interest in fly-by-night's success. Although the ranks have thinned out, those remaining are the best of the best and are also my friends. Fly-by-night is surviving, and will likely rise like the phoenix. So although I do not care one iota about your concerns, I do care about my friends and therefore you should remember: hyperbole is spoken here.
3. Mike Anderer very often has messy hair. Yup, you heard it here first. I'm sure some deep meaning may be derived from that information. Please speculate ad nauseum about that info, it is really important.

Now that that is out of the way, let's get on to the chocolate cake issue. Because of my pending move, I am trying to thin out the pantry. Of the items I have on hand, the Duncan Hines chocolate cake mix with accompanying Duncan Hines chocolate frosting with chocolate chips was the most tempting. Last night, upon checking my refrigerator, I discovered that I had the requisite three eggs required to compose the cake.

Long story short, last night I ate cake and drank red wine with pals; this morning I picked at cake in lieu of eating breakfast; for lunch I packed cake; in the afternoon an unexpected birthday cake found its way to the office -- and I ate it. The unexpected consequence of making so much cake and eating it too is that I really don't feel well at the moment. It's as if my brain is saying "since you have deprived me of every nutrient I need besides short chain carbohydrates, I am going to be weird until you feed me pickles and/or baked beans." Stupid brain, I fed it those baked beans tonight, but thus far the response has fallen short of promise. It is now telling me that getting more than five hours of sleep might be a good idea too. I'm going to try that ... now.

My Bathrooms Are Clean

That's right, the bathrooms are sparkling clean. As is my kitchen. And my dryer. My house went on the market today. This marks a very tangible step in the getting-the-rock-out-of-Utah process. I have unloaded immense amounts of crapola from my little apartment. Note to self: stop accumulating crap; it's crap. It's really amazing how much stuff we allow ourselves to accumulate out of the fear that we won't have that one scrap of paper or nick-knack when we need it most ten years from now. I already miss my boxes of receipts. The IRS will surely audit me this year. Oh, and when I have a burning desire for a delicious but healthy hamburger, I'm going to be kicking myself that I just gave away my Geoge Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Machine.

Other tangible progress in the major life transition is that I have officially informed my current employer of my intentions. I was a bit surprised that the boss-man did not even blink when I presented him with this information. Seeing how he's also a reluctant Utahan, a former Buckeye, and a past resident of New York, I guess it makes some sense that his reaction was "Cool." He asked my where I was going to live in New York. I realized after the fact that I told him the wrong thing. Where I said "I don't know yet", I should have said "it's none of your fucking business". Stupid. Not that I wanted to be rude, I like the boss-man after all, but I really need to get in New York mode. I wonder if Utah has made me too milquetoast to survive in New York?

If you happen to be looking for an affordable, luxury (see photo) apartment in the downtown Salt Lake City area, please call my real estate agent.

Bags of Rags

What you see here is five (5) bags of clothes and linens. These bags are full to the brim. I know what you are thinking: "wow, Pete, why did you put your whole wardrobe into garbage bags?" Ah, but you see, that is not my whole wardrobe. These five bags account for the subset of my clothing collection that I donated to Crossroads today.

In addition to this load of stuff, I also donated one full carload of miscellaneous foo to the DI. This included my squeaky Huffy, the basketball that won't deflate, and the old Christmas tree stand that hasn't been used since '01 when I went Grinch due to the ornament theft fiasco. By the way, in case you are ever thinking about donating anything to the DI, expect to have a full-on zombie help unload your donated items. Apparently the LDS church uses the DI as an employment center for people with small enough intellect that they (a) belong to the church and (b) cannot form words. Then again, maybe these people only speak in tongues.

Anyway the purge is pretty much complete now. I like the idea of not owning a lot of things. Unfortunately, I only have less things, not no things. I'm not quite ready to go completely vagabond.

Binge and Purge

Due to my upcoming move, I am forced to dramatically scale back my possessions. I am smack in the middle of this process right now.

Let's talk about craigslist. Who buys other people's junk? For real, who are these people? I say this expecting full well that this will be me once I arrive in NYC. Also, I know the answer: a dude named Mark who works for ClearChannel (a.k.a. the devil), a mormon financial planner who modifies Toyota Supras in his spare time, a dude who has his secretary handle the transaction, a chiropracter (also named Mark), and my friend Cat. With this limited sample, I conclude that the average craigslist buyer is male, professional, and named Mark.

Thanks to craigslist, I am minus three sets of speakers, a stereo, a cordless drill, and a set of golf clubs. Next on the hitlist is the guitar.

I am preparing approximately three hundred pounds of books for their exit from my apartment. If you happen to have any old textbooks lying around, I would recommend blue rectangle. They are going to take half a dozen textbooks off my hands and give me approximately five dollars per. I find that remarkable considering they pay for shipping and each of these books is at least six years old. The remainder of my collection, with very few exceptions, will be dropped off at the public library.

This exercise of purging my worldly possessions is ... pleasant. I think that's the best word to describe it, pleasant with a twinge of je ne sais pas. When you live somewhere for five years, intertia is inevidable. For me, I have even been in the same apartment for five years. Making the mental decision to leave Salt Lake City was the necessary first step. Parting with the possessions seems to be an excellent second step. Intertia being a function of mass, reducing stuff equals reducing mass yielding less intertia. In other words, all I have to do is haul off my three hundred pounds of books and in return I feel a marvelous sense of freedom. First tangible step to New York: done.

So much to do

Since I've told both of my potential readers this information personally, I am now going to spell it out for the rest of you: I have decided to pick up shop and move to New York City. My friend E. has already posted a foreboding beware of new york piece about my apparently ill-conceived plans.

At the risk of repeating what I have now told about thirty friends, I will delve into the details of this one hundred eighty degree life turn.

I have been in Utah for over five years now. My first year in Utah was quite notable. Let's go straight to the list:

• Box containing family heirloom Christmas ornaments stolen from my doorstep.
• Credit card number stolen plus subsequent fraudulent use of said number.
• The division of the company I moved here to work for was decimated.
• Two further sets of layoffs at work sent twelve months worth of friends packing.
• Carjacked at gunpoint.
• Subsequent insurance squabble caused temporary, but ugly rift in relationship with stepdad.
• Failed relationship with girl who never considered herself in a relationship with me.

One might say that from the beginning, there were some difficulties that may have affected my attitude towards Utah. But for five plus years I have stuck with it. When I chose to move to Utah, not in my wildest dreams did I imagine being here for over five years. I thought it would be a two years and out kind of situation. And the only reason I thought I would stay that long was to break even on the condo I bought!

So five years later, I have made friends. I have learned to drink socially. I play frisbee; competitively even. I am working for company number two. I have a cat. I have bought furniture. I have traveled around the mountain west. The thing about it is that I have, by many measures, succeeded. BUT, I'm still single. I'm still young. And I still do not consider myself a Utahan. So I have realized that if I do not leave Utah, I will always be here.

The thought process leading to this decision has been greased substantially by the continuing antics at fly-by-night co. I have become open to other possibilities. My recent trip to New York provided me with an excellent alternative to Salt Lake City. It was a place that clicked with me. I have not yet put my finger on the one thing that makes New York click. I believe there is one thing though. According to E., it might be the 3.2 to 1 F/M ratio. That may be it. Don't know. More on that later, I suppose. The point is that I found a reasonable alternative to Salt Lake City.

I turned down two jobs yesterday. I did this without hesitation and without regret. I did not like having to let my friend C. down because I was the guy he needed, but nonetheless, it was clearly the right thing to do. From a personal economic perspective, totally bogus. From a "wow I really do want to get the fuck out of here" perspective though, oh yeah, it was good.

What lies in front of me right now is a list of tasks that just keeps getting longer. I have about seven thousand one-hour tasks to take care of before I get on my way to NYC. My goal is to be out of Salt Lake by the end of October. I should be reading the real estate contract I have to sign or thinning out my wardrobe, but instead I'm writing this. I know what you are thinking: if he's so gung-ho about moving, why is he wasting his time blogging about it? To preserve my sanity, of course. Today I got an inkling such that I now understand what an anxiety attack is. I think I'm going to be able to manage all the excitement, but there was a moment today where I got a taste of crushing, overwhelming stress. At the time, I was looking into options for transporting Mr Orange to Ohio.

Okay, back to the grind for me. No rest for the wicked (or something like that).

Narrow Escape

Holy crap. Today it happened. A full nine weeks into the fiasco, the money is flowing again. The president of fly-by-night, acting nearly single-handedly with unfettered stubbornness and irrefutable savvy, was able to convince some poor saps that this flaming zeppelin could be saved if only doused with dollar bills -- millions and millions of dollar bills. Today I got a paycheck. Not the whole shebang, just one hand-signed note. I'm not sure whether to deposit it or frame it for posterity. Okay, I'm probably going to cash it, but still... I mean, this is unprecedented. It is almost as if the company making that god-awful movie yielded some positive karma that is now enabling this climatic Hollywood-style cliffhanger to have this positive conclusion.

Of course, in the movies, after the emotional release following the life or death moment, there is often a following ill-event that comes swiftly and without notice. I have learned a new bit of business jargon recently: cramdown. This is when the creditors or investors have loose their shirts because the value of the company is arbitrarily reduced, or crammed down. Apparently this technique was used to push early investors out of their previous equity positions to allow new investors to gain the lion-share of the company's equity. So, in this post life or death moment, the hammer may drop in the form of some seriously pissed-off investors filing lawsuits against the company. Either that, or the blow will come when one day in the very near future a certain engineer who was one of the remaining four drops the bombshell that he is moving on to another venue.

The New York Post

I'm back. My first trip to New York City is now over. The withdrawal symptoms have already kicked-in.

I loved New York. As promised, it was dirty, smelly, crowded, hot, and loud. But it was none of those things to the degree I anticipated, nor to a degree that I could not tolerate. In fact, the grungy reality of New York brought a welcome contrast to the vanilla perfection that abounds in Salt Lake City. I found myself feeling more at home in New York than I ever have in Utah.

It was not just the environment of the city though, the people were different. That is really the understatement of the year. In Utah, there are two kinds of people: Mormons and non-Mormons. Everyone fits into one of these groupings. In New York, it seems, there are as many kinds of people as there are people. Maybe it is just because I want it to be this way, but it appeared that everyone in New York had an actual personality of their own. Would it be too much to say that there were real people in New York? Hmmm, that makes a strong implication against a certain demographic of Utah.

Another property of the city that I found fantastic was the smallness of it. The subways really are magic. Swipe card, enter train, get jostled for a few minutes, and shazam, you are in a totally different place. I found the whole process of going underground, shielded from a number of normal sensory cues, and then returning to the surface amongst new surroundings wonderful. It is probably pretty lame for me, as a tourist, to write about the subway at all, but dammit, I just can't get over the magic of it. This is the number one advantage of high population density, in my opinion; the opportunity for effective public transportation.

My friend, E., acted as a fabulous host for the whole weekend. Despite her lingering illness, she showed me places and introduced me to people that other outsiders would never get to see. That generosity was critical to my favorable opinion of New York. Had E. not put me on the inside track, I might have thought New York a place full of Asian tourists wearing Ohio State and Yankee hats and taking enough photos to meet and then exceed any existing stereotypes. Instead I met a Pulitzer winner, a world class chef, a journalists, Ph.D.s, and even a couple other computer geeks. This insider tour made New York a real place for me, not just a big place with a lot of action like Las Vegas or Los Angeles.

I mentioned withdrawal symptoms. New York has been on my mind pretty constantly since I returned two days ago. I am trying to flush my mind by writing so that I can concentrate on the job interview I have later today. Hopefully it works, otherwise I might not be able to dance for them. Other symptoms of New York withdrawal include not sweating prufusely and restlessness.

New York is the first city outside of Ohio where I felt like I could be at home. Let's enumerate places I've been that I've considered living: San Francisco, L.A., San Diego, Sacramento, Phoenix, Tuscon, Las Vegas, Ann Arbor, Madison, Tampa, Miami, and Boston. Even Salt Lake City has never fallen into the "places I feel at home" category. That, of course, is part of the reason I chose to live here, but it is also the reason that Salt Lake is wearing thin on me. A city like New York appeals to the aspiring cosmopolitan in me. Where better might I fit than a place where nobody is a perfect fit. Plus E. tells me that single, straight men are in short supply; that appeals to the economist in me. Who am I to deny the demand of my supply?

Did I mention the food? Even the cheap, non-exciting food was fabulous. I'm running out of steam, so let me just mention my favorite delicacy. Tomatoes. Specifically, heirloom tomatoes garnished with, I believe, just some basil and oil. Simple but fantastic. Who knew that would be it? Other top contenders include the cheese and egg sandwich which apparently is a New York staple and a delicious shepherd's pie.

That's all I have to say about New York right now.

Desensitol

This has been a long time coming. I have been suffering from a condition that severely impacts my ability to meet and initiate romantic relationships with women. A recent "date" that was effectively over five seconds into it has acutely reminded me that I have a serious problem. Recently, I realized that there may be a medical answer to this problem. Let us review this open letter to the pharmaceutical companies of the world...

Dear pharmaceutical companies,

Please develop an anti-infatuation drug. There is an ever growing group of men such as myself who share a similar disorder: inability to control the hormonal imbalance that is infatuation. This lack of hormonal control yields a crippling inability to begin a relationship with someone that we actually like. Upon meeting a potential romantic interest, those with my condition feel obliged to smile a lot, gush, want to hold hands, and, worst of all, want to tell this other person our feelings about them. These behaviours, especially the last, are well known to destroy relationships before they start.

Empirical evidence shows that men who consistently have a suave sense of disinterest toward women, or at least are able to put up such a front, are far more likely to actually get women. A drug that mitigated the extreme hormonal imbalance that characterizes my initial interactions with women would enable well-meaning men such as myself to put up that front of not caring which is so obviously attractive.

Men such as myself are desperate for an answer. We are unwilling to actually dislike women. Additionally, our moral dignity does not allow us to employ some apparently necessary tactics of "the game" including not returning phone calls, being aloof, and generally poking at foundations of a woman's self-esteem. We have tried reading books. We have tried practicing the tactics in front of the bathroom mirror. Futile efforts for sure. The only avenue left is chemical. There must be an answer. Men such as myself all over the world beseech you, find the answer and you will be rewarded.

The drug should be called desensitol and should be made available in an over-the-counter form. If one pill twice a day could help men such as myself to not foolishly show our hands, no price would be too high. Whomever makes it to market first will make billions.

Sincerely,
Emotions On Sleeve

[Updated 9/19 with wording that is less likely to be interpreted as derisive to women. Ironically, caring enough to make this change is, of course, the problem.]

New Clarity

Tomorrow I depart for New York City. I am traveling there to visit my friend E. and generally to experience the city since I've never been before. The game plan for the trip is loose, but there will undoubtedly be some sight seeing and patronizing local eating and drinking establishments.

Here's the jag. My friend L. lives a short train ride away in New Jersey. I have an ex gf M. who at last check lives in Brooklyn. E. also lives in Brooklyn. I found out recently from my college friend R. that she is going to be in New York this weekend. Well that's all fine and good, except that the other day I was speaking to A., who lives in California, and she too is going to be in New York this weekend. For those keeping score, that's two exes and three friends; all female.

Several inferences may be drawn from this information:

1) My exes are equally drawn to New York as they are to Maine.

2) I am an idiot for living in Salt Lake City because in New York I can get a 5/1 female to male ratio without even trying.

3) There is a divine plan to wreck my weekend by having unexpected encounters with exes at inopportune times.

4) I'm a lucky guy because I get to see my friends E., L., and maybe R.

To preserve my sanity, I choose number four. I did have a choice, right?

The circumstances leading up to this trip have been ... strange. And I have been on a personal roller coaster of sorts along the way also. I am realizing just how much growing up I've had to do in the last month and a half. It hurts a little bit. It has stung at times. There is even an uneasiness that is most similar to the way I feel after having been on a boat for several hours. But through the veil of all these ill feelings, I am beginning to see some light. I'm more of a man today than yesterday -- more of a participant in the world. And I have more clarity in my outlook on life. This has been a long time coming and I'm glad it's here. It may be one of those Chopra books kicking in.

Note to self: stretch and grow more often; it feels good.

WTF am I doing?

Well I'm in a bit of a stupor. As of late, my days have been filled with activities which I normally do not participate. The infamous employer has still not delivered any of the increasingly massive amount of back pay owed. Because of this situation, I was led to do my first foreign activity: writing my resume.

When I was courted by Fly-by-night, Inc., no resume was ever requested. "Courting" gives the process too much credit. What really happened was that J. invited me to come along with him to meet some people at this company because the needle of his bullshit-o-meter was buried and he wanted some validation from a trusted third-party (me). So I arrived, I met some people, and before I knew it I found myself in the middle of a token interview followed shortly by a job offer from one of the execs where the exec told me that he didn't negotiate salary and that I should just tell him my price. Did I mention they are out of money?

The point here is that I was not even looking for a job; the last time I composed a resume was in the college era. So last week I found myself piecing together the two page description of my professional value that is my resume. I dreaded beginning this process. However, once I got started, I found it fairly easy to put the resume together. A big part of this is that I have to be much less creative with the resume than when I was in college. Back then I was still including the driveway sealing job and probably the dishwasher job. These days, I have more material than I can fit on a couple sheets of eight and a half by eleven. But the real grease for the process was my sheer apathy. At this point in my life, I am so not excited about working for the man again that, frankly, I just did not give a shit about what was on my resume. Ironically, this resume born of apathy is a succinct, valid, and generally good representation of my professional self. Go figure.

Activity number two that I have been participating in is driving around on the highway in the middle of the day. I have been coming and going from the office when I damn well please for my entire career, but what is different now is that I do not care to stay in the office very long. This has put me on I-15 before four o'clock a number of times. So, yeah, it's still just the highway, but I have this lovely feeling like I'm playing hooky and that's kinda neat.

I have also been working from home. Previously, as a general rule, I did not work from home. I did not like working from home and I did not like mixing at-work time with not-at-work time. Because of my new venture, I cannot avoid working from home. I am finding that I was right all along and that I do not prefer working from home. I am also reminded at how annoyingly loving my cat can be. At nearly all times while in my home office, the O-man is pestering me in one way or another. The cat is cuter than sin, but I find myself tossing him on a regular basis when he walks in front of my monitor. What would PETA say?

I am actively reinforcing the professional network. I have been in touch with just about everyone that I used to work with around the valley. I find myself asking everyone I know if they know about any jobs or preferably contract work. The last two nights I've had dinner with two different buddies and former coworkers. I have had the good word put in for me at a couple of places and I've already netted an interview because of this. One might think this networking activity to be soul-sucking or otherwise distasteful. On the contrary, everyone I talk to is either in the same boat or has been in the same boat. We are all seasoned veterans of the computer industry. Because of this shared experience, there seems to be a strong sense of camaraderie that I did not exactly expect. Maybe if the job market was not so plentiful the attitude would be more cutthroat, but at this moment it's one big happy circle-jerk.

Conclusions from all of this? I have yet to get into a groove with managing all this unaccounted time. I have a dozen different possible activities at all times and I find myself switching between each of them quite rapidly. I am a poor multitasker, so I am feeling horribly unproductive. Today as I was trying to remember who I was supposed to meet for dinner and where, I felt for the first time that I understood why someone would want to carry around a goofy-ass PDA.

Oh, and the stupor comes into play because I find myself constantly having to think about what I should be doing at any given moment. This constant questioning of my direction, both in the immediate-term and the long-term, leaves me in a confused, pensive state. I'm sure if I looked in a mirror I would have a WTF look on my face. WTF am I doing?

Who are those kids?

Today I got an email from the bro with a couple random pictures from our childhood. I am posting them here for posterity. I'm not going to say exactly which one I am, but I will say that I'm the one who doesn't look like a girl.

I wish I had more context for these photos. It looks like me and the bro are probably two and three, respectively. That puts the photo being taken circa 1981. We are, of course, in Ohio. Almost certainly in Fremont. And it would not suprise me if they were taken on my mom's family property.

Another thing to note about these pictures is that I look happy in both of them. This is interesting because as a general rule, I was not happy as a child. These photos were taken before I was self-aware (which happened at about 3 years old). I must have been blissful in my ignorance of my surroundings; or maybe this was before my parents got divorced. I'm glad I was happy, but I'm more glad that I don't have to go back there.