Fuck stuff

Every now and then, the slow but steady "don't burn yourself out" 15 minutes every couple of days of removing useless shit just doesn't work. You've re-reduced again and again and there's that one little thing you just can't do for each space you have.

A pair of ridiculous pants. They still make you smile though.

Craptastic incandescent light bulbs in a box, that you've replaced and never intend to buy the like of again. City of Seattle will take them in the trash, "but they still work!" Who wants to waste their hard-earned money paying for all that extra electricity?

Desk drawers that you had nearly empty last year. But the top of your desk is finally clear, what can you do?

Books you never intend to read, or in some cases never intend to read again. But they're from family and you just know that someone would keep them, because other people have many shelves of books.

Stuffed animals full of memories (and dust. they kind of smell!)

Which ones will end up going?

7.5 Years

This was written in December 2013!

Due to the limits of my lifespan, I've only lived in a couple of places for over 5 years, let alone worked at them. And yet, I find myself having worked at Microsoft for about 7.5 years. This is a lot of time to some people, and very little to company-man careerists who stayed in one company for 25 years.
I am leaving for ArenaNet to try being a technical producer instead of a publishing producer. I'm terrified and hopeful. All normal job stuff.

Things I learned: 

• (large company) Form friendships with people you don't work with directly. If you have to make an effort to see them now, you're more likely to later when you leave.
• No matter what you sign, you have a right to discuss your salary. See "sec. 7".
• (Microsoft specific) Sort your email with rules. And then, once a quarter, sort your sorting. Get off of noisy distribution groups, delete irrelevant email rules, and clean that shit up. It's a mess when you finally leave anyway, but you can mitigate this. So many DGs and SGs. :)
• (Microsoft specific) Read mini-msft but never ever comment. It's frequently cynical, often not applicable to your group, and quite dated.  That said, I've read all of the posts and I started reading them before I worked at Microsoft. I don't find that the blog aligns with my experiences within the company, but I can sometimes tell who does when I meet them and that in itself is valuable. 
• Spend a bit of time with the company review system, whatever it is. At the least it will provoke conversations with your boss about what you can do to progress. 
• Hard work should be rewarded, but hard work and a little visibility is much more likely to be rewarded. If you have a boss who rewards hard work, 
• Love the company. Microsoft, especially, is fucking amazing. Not so hard, see?
• Don't burn bridges. You leaving is about YOU. For example "I would like to try another company, specifically a game dev, as I have never done this thing before. I have also never really worked anywhere but Microsoft." This is my genuine reason for leaving. Anything negative is probably temporary and stupid to mention. Avoiding working at Microsoft ever again? Fine, but you can still be nice.
  If something terrible is part or all of your reason for leaving, then make something boring up, like "I would like to take my career in a new direction." You can silently fill in the "A new direction not full of assholes" if you like. Silently.
  Shh. ;)
• (large company) Get to know some of the majority type at your company (eg. white dudes are the majority type in many software companies in the USA). And don't be disingenuous just to fit in, it doesn't work. Luckily I love beer and pizza. But I never pretend to love sports.
• Try to know more non-majority-types than majority types.
• Nothing is personal at work, even though it feels like it is. If you are taking something too personally and turning red or about to yell, it is ok to work from home because you're not feeling well. Because, hey, you aren't.

The journey ahead will reveal a lot about whether any of this is applicable anywhere else.

Last Night in Montreal: Emily St. John Mandel

About travel, what drives us to travel, and memories.
An ephemeral lover flits across North America and brings her life full circle to where she began.

Told from the sad perspective of a boyfriend.

Quick, a bit thought provoking and a very mild shock at the end. Don't regret checking it out and spending a couple of hours on the read!

Sway: The irresistible pull of irrational behavior, Ori Brafman and Ron Brafman

Another Freakonomics-style book, this one looks at why people do some very silly things. Taking off in a plane in dangerous circumstances, ignoring a concert violinist because he plays on the subway, and a number of other strange things that our brain does to us.
Particularly interesting was the section on how our expectations of someone or something tend to make that person react to our expectations... by meeting them in one way or another.

I liked the book, as I like most mass-market science with simple white covers and one-word titles. :) A fun read.

Dust by Elizabeth Bear

Rien is trapped in a medieval world, scrubbing floors and waiting on people in a palace, until the demon/angel arrives. Except she's not trapped in a medieval world.

I'm going to be reading the second book, Chill, as soon as the library can get it to me (and I get through my stack of 12 the rest of the way).

That should be indication enough. Very refreshing sci fi with a fantasy tone throughout, but stays true to the genre (more or less - less AI explanation makes it seem more like magic), and shows what happens to a seed ship gone wrong when a religious cult happens to be on board.

Great use of female and neuter characters in addition to the normal male ones, although the (highly unusual in s/f) negative gender stereotyping of men was very odd to me.

Quick thoughts on "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake" by Aimee Bender

Could have been in the sci fi section. Very readable and weird. I liked it.

The main character, Rose, can taste people's feelings through cake. She has a father who avoids hospitals and a very strange brother. It's a bit hard to follow if you can't suspend your disbelief a bit, probably.

Very nice, very quick. Might read her other book.

Tad Williams "The Dragonbone Chair"

Long.
Epic.

Decent fantasy read for the summer. Working on book 2 now. Some characters are less interesting to me than others. More Simon, less everyone else please :)

Dogs up in my face

Finally this weekend Hana had enough attention, and went and lay in her donut bed. She used to never want to touch us, and she would lie 5-8 feet away at all times on the carpet somewhere, although she'd throw a fit if she couldn't see us.

These past couple of weeks whenever I'm sitting, she tries to jump up and then she sits on me. Or stands on me. Or once, crawls up my shoulder and tries to sit on that (21 pound dog, shoulder does not work). Its very cute, but its been a bit warm out and I'm unhappy with it.

This week she finally had enough. But apparently Kiba has been feeling neglected, because he has been laying next to me on the couch for periods of time greater than 5 seconds (he cannot hold still normally).

I cannot win! Dogs in the face!

Mini Geeky thoughts: Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth

What fun!
Lots of suspense, and the vampires don't want to have sex with the food (refreshing ;) ).

If you are teenage girl who loves vampires, you probably won't like this book, for that reason. Which is a good thing. Vampires have been destroyed these days. Sigh!

Good read, lots of fun and suspense and people dying, and there's even some other undead.

Old Game Review Haiku: Tales of Vesperia

Could not stop cooking.
Had to cheat for recipe tips.
Oh JRPGs.

Seriously though, I thought of it today, played it over a year ago, and miss that shiny pretty animation.

So sweet!

Quick thoughts on a book: The Other Boleyn Girl (Philippa Gregory)

Fun, scandalous. A lot more about Anne Boleyn than I ever needed to think about, and her sister Mary is made much more likeable through this particular historical fiction.

Good summer reading! But a bit scandalous.

Geeky quick review? Robin Hobb's Dragon Keeper

Disgusting dragons? Who'd have thought.
Waiting to see what happens to the humans who have been mutating, and to see if the dragons ever grow enough to do what dragons should do.

Fairly exciting, a little confusing. Fun fantasy read.

The heights... peter hedges

Fun and easy read. Wish I weren't so busy in life that I couldn't say more... the love story is quite touching :).

It's not sci fi, but we can't all be perfect!

Dead until Dark

Ok I gave in. The first book covered pretty much the first season. There was a lot of extra crap, and now I know why the storyline felt a little hollow in places. The book is readable, but it's first person.

I've reserved the next 2 at the library. Definitely a fun read!

Rereading some Jacquiline Carey books

Forgot how much fun the whole Kushiel's series is. I'm out of office because of a cold that mainly manifests itself as me not being able to talk, although today I think I must be getting better, because this morning I coughed up some really awesome goo...

Aside from that, I'm reading... and reading... and reading. Yay!

If you like swords and sorcery, or politics and intrigue, or a bit of naughtiness in your sf/fantasy novels, then probably check these out. In order! I liked them enough to start buying new ones in hardback as they came out... and I'm waiting for another in the 3rd trilogy.

Book: Solar by Ian McEwan

A very unlikeable main character, however, I was able to be happy that the main character was also unliked by the author.

A little slow in parts, where Beard isn't being cheated on, stealing, or killing maybe, and a couple of nice side stories. He bumbles along, trying to do nothing, and bad stuff happens a lot. Through it all life isn't so bad for him, he eats and eats and lazes about, and does very little.

I really wished he would have had one particular success - the novel feels a bit incomplete as is.

Ah well. An entertaining read.

Geeky Review: farenheight 451

Hm wow. What an odd book. So much description, so much caution with words. The character starts out from nothing and becomes something.
Of course everyone is aware of the plot, etc, but looking at the society every few years would prove interesting - what is close to our society, what is not? Where do we seem to be heading in the direction of firemen?

Quickest read ever, and I only read it because I never had before, but now I think I'll take a look at it every 10 years or so. Have you not read this in 10 years? Try it out!

Review: Spooner by Pete Dexter

I took a break from nonfiction since this was on my wait list at the library, and it recently came through.

The thing that stayed in my mind the most was the obvious relationship with dogs.
Spooner isn't smart. He's not even bright in some way. Everything he tries seems to mess up, although more in a sad way than a funny way.
There's a little puppy, who Spooner as a small (between the ages of 4-10) child terrorizes. There's the family dog moving to suburbia. There's Spooner's old dog, and there's Spooner's neighbor's dog. They all sound perfectly doggy. Perhaps its because I'm a dog lover, but Spooner is at his best with dogs. He's more human as a character when with dogs, instead of as a target for author sadism.

Perhaps everything is about the floating dead, and not dogs at all.
Perhaps its about marriage. Or parents. Or about just living.

Comedy and tragedy at every other moment, but no LOLs from me, just some ironic "HA!"s.

Largely I read fiction books as I look at art. At the end, there's a painting, and how do I feel? This one made me feel like my life cannot possibly suck more than this guy's, and it made me hug my dogs.

It's very readable, I'd recommend trying it out. You'll at least make it to the parts about shampoo and shoe-pissing-in with a smile.

Geeky Review: The Good Soldiers, by David Finkel

A disclaimer before I review non-fiction: I am generally biased against non-fiction because I find most of it hard to read, but I like stories.

This book started out telling me about the mid-end of this book. What do you mean, this man can't stop picturing himself shooting people in the head? What do you mean, he's lost all hope? This book was obviously written by someone who knows how to keep his audience wanting to read. I kept waiting and waiting to hear about the dog mentioned on the first page.

Despite reading the beginning, I got attached to the soldiers. Perhaps because the author isn't too cruel, I didn't get too attached to the soldiers that died, but I grew to like Kauzlarich. I nervously read faster and faster ever time bombs started going off. I nodded my head in sympathy at times.

And yet, distance is maintained. I became attached to the characters, but never became the characters. I enjoyed the read a lot, but I didn't become completely absorbed.

Ah, the difficulties of reading non-fiction. Nonetheless I think fiction readers could read this!

Brief Book Review: Elantris

By Brandon Sanderson
Genre Fantasy
600+ pages

Summary:
there is a cool thing that happens to some people to give them magic powers, randomly. They live in a nice city and do things for the populace. A curse strikes it, and the crown prince gets the curse. A religious army from another nation wants to invade. Boy meets politically minded girl, everyone learns some things about themselves, and a fairly happy ending.

Rating on a scale of -10(most nonfiction. Can't make it past page 50.) through +10(books I read in one day regardless of how long they are): 5 - It went down smooth enough but followed 3 characters around, which can be confusing, and there was a character I just couldn't get interested in. I kept wanting to skip sections he was in. The boy and the girl he meets were nicely done, however. I COULD put the book down and wasn't motivated to read till 2am on weeknights, which always makes me a little sad. The author obviously cared a lot about his characters and his world, but I would like to see if the world is expanded upon in another book, because there's more that could be done.