2001-06-15 - 8:18 p.m.

Homes and Random Walks

Last night when I got home I just tinkered around my apartment and decided to do some on-line searches for some of my favorite industrial groups. So many of the articles I was reading were in German ... hmmm, perhaps I'm living in the wrong country.

Around 10 PM I was bored and noticed that Bronco and Cloud's lights were on, so I put my walking boots on and walked across the way to see if they wanted to go for a midnight walk. Cloud answered the door and when I asked him if he could use a walk (which is a dirty word in their house, because Merlin, their oldest cat speaks some English), Cloud responded, "Yes, I really could use one now." He looked exhausted and stressed. It took me another 30 seconds to find out that they bought just bought a $300,000+ house here in Davis!

Whoop! :) I've known them for years and they treat me like a kid brother, but this is wonderful news! OK, Bronco was bouncing around their apartment and doing her Happy Dance (the girl is energy bound into human form), but Cloud was just stressed realizing he is going to be working on a house and making house payments for the next 30 years. Well, shorter than that, they are DINKs ... Dual Income No Kids. *clap* I'm not down on parents, but it is nice when your SO can help you out.

They drove me to their new house: 1339 (a GAF number: 13+3*13 hehehe) and it looks brand new. The subdivision felt a bit squeezed, but it looked about a week old. In reality the homes are just that well kept! They are all 7 years old.

Now it seems that in August I'll be spending a lot of time helping them move and I'll miss them a lot. For two years our kitchen windows have looking into each other and they've always been here for me. ::sigh::

Random Walks

Cloud is the engineer I learned everything from. He is one of the few engineers who would first think that random walk means people just walking around. In engineering talk a random walk is kinda like gambling. Imagine you are playing craps. The random walk would be writting down the results of throwing the dice down 10 times and keeping these results in order, and then repeating the experiment again but starting from zero again. If you added the 10 dice throws up, each time you'd get something a wee bit different, but it should have an expected value of around 70. Sometimes it would be higher, sometimes lower.

Hmmm, I need to have Redwood take me gambling and soon! :) He just called and we talked for over an hour, yes, I want to go gambling with him. It might be expensive, but I'll learn a lot and have a blast.

Anyway, last night I went on a random human walk with Bronco and Cloud again. I certainly like walking around Davis with them, but they don't travel as far. Boo-Hoo.

For some strange reason the nights have been wonderful out here and I've been walking around a lot. Tonight is a Deathrock night at the local SACTO goth club. I actually don't care for Deathrock, so instead of hanging with Redwood (whom scored the Star Wars DVDs ... read his story about that) I'm going to get clothes on and head out in about an hour for a nice quiet walk around here. I don't know why, but I just have been feeling more and more like a loner lately.

Darth

The word is out in my office, I'm bailing on everybody. It isn't official, but Stompy told everybody not to count on me for the long term. In fact she said that she can't call me smurf anymore because my hair isn't blue. But she said that she has been thinking of me as "Darth Vader", because I started as an innocence little engineer kid and now I'm "turning" to the Dark Side to be an engineer for a water district that has a reputation of hunting down and destorying government engineers in a professional sense. Actually that is a compliament, she and other senior engineers are afraid that I know enough to pose a threat or be a real opponent should I end up on the other side of the fence.

The fact is it is good for my career to leave. And better for my life. I don't want to leave Redwood, Cloud, Bronco, Stompy, or Particle, but after that I have no real loyalities out here. And I have tons of friends who want me in the Bay Area.

Today around 4 PM I got a call from the water district. My future boss wanted to quell any rumours about his boss's boss (the general manager for the district) and tell me that they have one position and it is down to me and one other person. And then he added that they may have another position after that! :) Translation: they want me and want me bad.

It is strange, the state suddenly wants me, with one exception: my ex-boss. OK, I hated him. He was a dickhead, because he would yell at people and call them idiots in front of other people, and he tells people I'm a faker. That is total bullshit, and in a way he'll find out just how much fucking work I've been doing when I leave. Traditionally when an engineer leaves they have a lunch party thing. If I have one, I don't want him there. It is not good to burn bridges, so I won't tell anybody, but I know that my goodbye speech is going to focus on how wonderful a boss Stompy has been and how much she taught me. I'm considering adding in a remark about how great she is for taking an engineer who was about to be kicked out of state service and turning him into one of the top numerical modelers for the group. The irony is under anybody but my ex-boss I would have been getting excellent marks, but the guy just hates people who aren't programmers first.

He has forgotten what engineering is about. Really and truely. Our work has been to help other people and move as much water to cities without hurting the environment. It is not about doing private studies.

He told Redwood that I'm a faker, but something I can't remember if I told Redwood is the problem is this guy. When I was new he gave me a probation report and slammed me. He had me in tears and had marked me as needing improvement in lots of areas. He then forced me to sign the review and agree to his comments. It was the worst day of my professional life, honestly.

Anyway, when the typed version of the form came into my hands somebody changed all the needs improvements into satisfactory remarks and all of his hateful comments were gone. The originals were in pencil and I was given a typed copy!

Either he or a secretary there must have changed his comments. I can't guess who it was, because if he did it, he was a liar. You can't make somebody feel like shit in a formal review process and then to not look like an asshole change your comments. And the secretary was nice to me (freaks always score points with cool secretaries). :) But I don't think she'd change it. I'm guessing he did or maybe his own boss told him to.

I just don't know. It doesn't matter. The result of that meeting when I was in tears was I talked to my HR rep and apparently he had some other problems going on. He was about to leave our group and they begged me to stay.

While I don't want to burn bridges, that man has no right to come anywhere near me, especially if I'm leaving. He plays head games with people and has too much pride to ever admit he is wrong. In a way, I have problems with anybody who always (or even most of the time) talks about how right they are. It just bugs me and the more I hear it and deal with pushy people, the more it just forces me away from them.

-=-

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