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recent
I was attempting a self-portrait last night as I watched survivor videos. It turned into a portrait of Tom Kriewall though... don't you think? (at least that's how I remember him)
I went out tonight with a friend from the hash whom I haven't seen in a long time. It's always good talking to her because she, as a small business owner, and mother of a newly-wed daughter (congrats Oo-la-la! --yes, her daughter's name is Oo-la-la) almost the same age as me has a perspective that I can appreciate... because it is totally different from mine, and Tomoe's, and most of the other people I hang out with. I always learn a lot about myself when talking to her.
For example:
Tonight's conversation, like many conversations regardless of who it is with, somehow turned toward the topic of money. Talking to Cherry (yes, her name is Cherry) I finally figured out why other people have noted that I often say "It's too expensive for me". It's not that I'm poor. I have never not had enough money to buy whatever I want since I started working, it's that I am miss-expressing my thoughts. I really mean "I can't justify the limited value that comes from purchasing that product and the minimal benefit I will gain from it with the expenditure of funds that can be used to purchase products and services that have more value and meaning to me." It's just easier to say "It's too expensive for me."
But I already knew that. What I realized tonight, is that the reason I can never justify the expense of most things, is that I am cursed with a tendency to over analyze it. No mom, I am not just cheap like you, although you started me on the road to developing my curse. I have this terrible tendency to look at not only what it costs, and if it will make me feel happy at the moment or not, but also why I feel that it will make me happy. And then to take it a step further, what influenced me to define the effect I gain as "happy". In most cases, I can't find anything that justifies the feeling of satisfaction. Usually I come down to the realization that it is just generally considered by society at large as "a good thing" and I witlessly accepted it as so.
Sometimes I really wish I could stop that. But in my own defense, I am not a hopeless cheapskate. For example, tonight, in the attempt not to bring up this topic, I ordered a draft beer instead of a bottled beer. Both taste the same. Any difference is psychological, and for people who haven't realized that yet I don't want to ruing their placebo pleasure, but a draft beer usually costs a dollar or two more, and has 1/3 less beer in it. See? I saw two dollars worth of value in not bringing up the topic. It came up anyway.
I also like talking to Cherry about Tomoe. It's a lot of fun to hear her take on Oo-la-la's relationship with her (now) husband. She probably wont like me to say so, and Tomoe wont eaither, but I often wish Cherry was Tomoe's mom. Not that I don't like Tomoe's mom, but in the past Tomoe's mom has not been so crazy about me. Of course Cherry wouldn't be so crazy about me if I was dating Oo-la-la either.
I used to talk to Cherry a lot about work and business topics, because she is someone I can look up to in that she runs her own small business with her husband. Since the last time I saw her (a year ago?) though, my entire outlook has changed. I have become much more like (but not "like") the people I used to complain to her about... the employee who doesn't care about their job, and doesn't "live for it" in a sense. Although I still care about my job, I have since grown older and wiser and realized that I was thinking and acting as though I was the business owner, even though I had none of the potential benefits (or risks) of the business owner. I used to devote way more time to thinking about and worrying about the company I work for than I am receiving compensation for. Now I am much closet to a "salary man" in that I am going in 9:30 to 6:00 and leaving it at the door (as much as I can) when I leave the office. Now actually the other people I work with are much more dedicated to the company than I am. The difference of course is that I generally get much more done in 8 hours than they do in 12. I also am probably not as reliant on the company as they are, since I would have no problems if my position no longer existed tomorrow.
Still it's interesting to me to see how much my ideas about work and career have changed in just one year.
Of course there is much more I could mention, but I can't fit three hours of cnoveration into twenty minutes of writing.
I'm sure no one went out and downloaded the program I talked about last time, but I still feel that after inadvertently promoting that program, I should also promote the better program that I found the next day, also on sourceforge. It's still in it's development stage, and I have spent a couple hours fixing bugs, but it is much more intuitive in the interface and flow for non-programmer types. And even for me.
When looking at it as a programmer, I am partly blinded by my own role in creating similar applications. I look at the major value as "something cool and fun to make and play with". I often forget that many companies pays thousands and tens of thousands of dollars for similar systems. There must be value somewhere. Of course I do also see the business-value. After all, there are enough things for me to play with without fixing the bugs in this, but I downloaded it because it is something we desperately need in the office.
(note: While searching for the link to dotproject, I stumbled across a couple more systems that have features that I also want, so may be even better. It's difficult to decide which is best, so maybe I should just take the functions I want from each of them, and make my own all-cool system!)
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