Entries this day: MissCongeniality SOML Unicycle party

MissCongeniality

12:08am CST Saturday 30 December 2000

Miss Congeniality was really funny. Funny funny funny. I wonder how accurately it portrayed behind the scenes of a pageant... Some of the funny was silly funny. All of it tied together neatly into one little movie. All good stuff.

SOML

8:35am CST Saturday 30 December 2000

(partially transcribed out of my diary)

I cannot believe how long it's been since I've written!!! I'm so totally sorry to have neglected you.

ACTUALLY I'm just kiddin'. I've been writing on my website www.robnugen.com. The truth is that I've basically entirely switched over to writing online instead of physically writing in here.

STATE OF MY LIFE ADDRESS 30 DEC 2000

• I'm not that amazed with the new year. After the zeroes rolled over the yeardometer, nothing can really top that. Maybe 2222 but probably not even that. I will live that long, you know. That's why and because I'm learning new stuff all the time.

• I can ride a unicycle! Basically I learned in one year. Now I can ride up humps and down curbs. I can't go up curbs yet nor jump over anything, but I'll keep practicing. Actually I haven't tried to jump. Maybe I will today.

• I'm at the laundry mat now washing (actually drying (actually watching the dryer spin as it apparently dries)) ANYWAY I'm washing the comforter. It was still relatively covered in cat hair when I got it out of the big washer.

• Wende and I are about to start "marriage" (we're not married yet) counseling. She's been not feeling horny and I've been unable to not feel horny it seems. That's one bottom line dynamic. Also she's been working a ton to keep the house clean while I have not as much even though she is at work more than me (even though I think she doesn't have to be)

• I've written a cool generic model at work - actually 2 different ones.

  1. One is geared toward 360 Feedback surveys: ("I" rate myself and am rated by peers, direct reports, managers. then "I" get a compiled report of ratings, then try to improve on these areas that apparently need improvement. This model requires "me" to request feedback from certain people who may or may not be in our dataset (add them if not) and they get emails sent to them with unique username & password. They log in to our site, have to change their password, and then provide feedback for "me" or others like "me" who have requested their feedback.

     So I've made a generic version of this model that uses

     username dataset:
     userid | name | email | class | etc
     
     ratings dataset:
     userid | may rate userid | responses | etc
     
     question dataset:
     text | anchortype
     
     anchor dataset:
     anchor type | text | value
     
     OH! and class dataset:
     classnum when-to-send-emails | etc
     

     I'm almost to the point where I can specify several variables at the beginning (or have a new DS that defines them... Oh my God I just figured something...

     Overview dataset:

     project name | title | program 1 | program 2 | program 3
     

     and if there had to be something So Different about a project then I could specify different code for that project's program 3, for example. Wow. I may do this.)

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  Back to SOML

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  2. The other generic is an occupational health survey. It uses only 1 program to print all the different pages of the survey and encoded into the question dataset is how to present the questions.

The comforter is dry. I'm going back home and I'll finish this online & paste it in here.

10:19am

As I typed the stuff above, I recognized how much faster I type than I write. Therefore it seems to me that it must be the case that I have far more entries now that I'm writing them online than I would have if I still wrote them on paper.

continuing with SOML Address:

• I have not yet met Jerry, who also rides a unicycle. I have virtually met him online - we have exchanged emails and might go ride later today at Herman Park

• I have just recently signed both Wende and I up to take a quickie free spanish class on 9 January 2001. At that class, I will ask the instructor what level of class I should take next. I'm going to learn spanish this year.

• The Houston Rally is coming soon. I have a concern about the enforcement of our NO WALK-INs policy. It will really suck to have to turn people away if they don't pre-register. But I think that after the craziness at San Antonio (25 walk-ins), and the subsequent meeting with YAC, people won't do it. For those YRUUers reading this who need to register, visit the website website and click on Upcoming Events (or the big link at the top of the page)

  I am officially in charge of this rally, but I have done relatively very little work to make it happen. Delegation and Youth Empowerment have made this easy! Not everything has been exactly as *I* would have done it, but that's to be expected.

  Big jobs that I haven't done:

  1. Registration. Katherine is registrar.
  2. buying the T-shirts. JoAnne did that

  I have a concern that registration and touch groups will be wacky, but I trust that the youth can achieve more amazing things than I could ever do.

  Another big job that hasn't been done yet is ordering food. The youth are doing something new for food stuff this year; we will see how it's working out on 7 January, our next meeting.

• I've been writing relatively lots of letters (snail mail) lately. To receive good snail mail I write good snail mail.

• I haven't shut down the Feel Good Net mailing list, but I also haven't sent a message to it in a long time. I think I'll send a final message and close the list. Maybe today.

• I have offered up the Ringmaster position of The Webring For People Named Rob, and one Rob said he was interested, and I told him what he needed to do, but he hasn't done it.

• My dad has ordered a new 45Gig hard drive and is therefore giving me his old 13Gig hard drive as a gift! I remember when Tammy and I spent $300 on a 143Meg hard drive. This 13Gig hard drive is essentially 13 thousand Megs, almost 100 times the capacity of the $300 drive back in 1992 or so. Amazing.

• I'm considering thoroughly updating the code that displays my journal entries. I want to rewrite it so that the prev : next links work over the month and year boundaries. Also so that one can select prev or next month from the index on the left. That will be cool.

  I might also write a shockwave version.

  I'm imagining the link on the front of my site linking to a page that offers HTML Version or Shockwave version, and a checkbox that says "Remember this choice" which will write a cookie to the user's machine so that they just go to the correct version next time. That will be way cool.

• Tomorrow night I will join the youth group in staffing a concession stand at a fireworks extravaganza in The Woodlands. The group will be paid $36 per hour. We hope to have more than 6 people there so we can share the work and play and have a grand ol' time.

• emacs is working on removing the nineteenth ring (again). This is where I accidentally stopped it last time.



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Unicycle

4:01pm CST Saturday 30 December 2000

My legs have that wonderfully exercised tired feeling. In the past 3 hours I watched a couple episodes of Futurama (on tape) while rotating the wheels on my skates. Then I tried to print my journal.cgi file so I can tweak it, but then remembered our printer needs a new ink cartridge. Since I had newly rotated skates, I decided to skate down to Office Max and get a new cartridge. I had $7 cash. Certainly that would be enough.

Push push push skate skate skate, feeling that speedy gliding feeling over street and curb, easing through stop signed intersection, cautiously approaching then sprinting across 4 lane street, down another street into the parking lot, weaving around cars and people and easing into Office Max.

The printer cartridge was $7.99 plus tax.

Back across the parking lot, down the street, across the other street, down the street, into the garage, thumpy thumpy up the stairs, grab some coins out of my 5 gallon glass coin jar, thumpy thumpy down the stairs, down the street, etc, etc and bought the cartridge and etc etc back to the house.

I printed journal.cgi and it was 2:40pm. I had a tentative meeting plan with Jerry at 3pm at Herman Park. He had suggested the idea, and I agreed, but he never wrote back. So I told him I'd just be there at 3pm and he can come uni if he wanted.

3pm at Herman Park on my (borrowed) unicycle. I never found Jerry, but I had a few great successes:

• I unied along a thin section of sidewalk (about 7 inches wide) for about 20 feet

• I unied up both side of the paved sidewalk of the hill at Miller Outdoor Ampitheater

• I unied down the back (bumpy, grassy) side of the hill at Miller Outdoor Ampitheater

• I unied half way up the bumpy grassy side of the hill about 5 times

• I unied three-quarters of the way up the bumpy grassy side of the hill once.

And at the end of all that, I determined that the bearings on the wheel are almost shot, cause they squeak when they turn, and they don't turn perfectly easily.

The uni is about 35 or 40 years old; I know it's a Schwinn, but I don't know if I'll be able to find parts for it. But I do know one way to find out.



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party

11:58pm CST Saturday 30 December 2000

Tonight we hosted Darby and Rob's baby shower here at our house. It was pretty much our first "party" type thing that we've had here. I'm glad Wende was able to relax enough to allow it to happen.

Party was fine - lots of peeps from Wende's work, fun and lots of laughter. Spot and Peter got out of the garage when someone peeked in while exploring the house. I sat by Darby for a while talking to her, and then by Athena, girlfriend of Ben who works at Wende's work. She was pretty quiet; it was her first time to meet this group. She has a very cute nose and face.

People brought all kinds of food and cake and Melissa brought tamales from San Antonio that were quite a hit.

At the end of the evening, I showed Rob the ceiling fan game called "stay lined up with one blade of the ceiling fan (as it turns)." We didn't play that much, but we did play a significant amount of "bounce the ball out from the bottom of the stairwell." That game is great fun.

It was great for me to meet Wende's peeps away from work; I enjoyed seeing them in a non-work atmosphere.

I think I'll have a crush on Melissa for a while.

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12:18AM Sunday 31 December 2000

Dammit!!

I just checked me email and they played Ultimate tonight at UH. The reason I'm upset is that I said I would play, and only 7 people confirmed, so they just barely had enough people to play. I really hope they got to play and didn't miss me.

I forgot all about it as we hosted the party. DOH!!



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