Entries this day: Dream dogAndPonyShow espanol

Dream

4:41am CST Tuesday 27 March 2001

(dream)

In an office, talking to my dad and waiting for him to be done working, I could hear a woman talking in the other room and I was bored so I went outside to go swing on the swing set.

walked out the steel door and was careful to close it behind me so it would be locked.

walked down the outdoor steps and then walked barefoot through the trodden trail in the tallish grass to the back corner of the property of the building where there was a swing on a tree branch.

I tried to swing really high and touch a big branch with my feet, but I never could get high enough to touch it. But I wasn't so high that I got that jerk from the swing being slack and then tight at the top of my swing.

I was talking to a man sitting beside the swing along the back fence and he offered me a ride in his private jet. I was like, sure! and it was actually Meg from KTRU's jet and she was in the pilot seat. I got into the seat behind her, and then noticed there was a passenger seat on the front left hand side, so I asked if I could just get in there.

No problem, so I crawled over the back of the seat and sat in the passenger seat to the left of Meg.

She pulled forward in the jet and taxied around the property, making a U turn around the property back to the back corner of the fence. We were aimed out toward my street, as if on a drive way.

I was seated behind Meg again, and there was some kid beside me. Meg had already said that we didn't have enough fuel to do any fancy dives and stuff, but I certainly wasn't going to complain, but I sure couldn't understand why he was still riding around after he had already gotten to ride. He was just additional weight or our fuel capacity to handle.

Meg asked how far it was to the street, and I told her about 100 yards. I didn't know if it was enough room for the jet to accelerate and take off, plus there was a really small gate that I was impressed the jet could it through. but Meg checked her flight instruction manual to see how to handle this situation and all was okay.

I imagined us being able to barely clear the traffic when we flew over the street, then I realized, "I have to write this down!!" I wanted to capture this wonderfully exciting moment!

I got out my Handspring visor and started typing:

I can't believe I'm in Meg's jet about to fly!
We are sitting here now, but about to take off

We pulled forward much slower than I thought and were no where near takeoff speed when she turned left into the street. We were lucky there was no car right there. A car was further down on the let side coming toward us, but it was far enough down to get out of the way.

Meg accelerated down the street and I was writing in my physical book journal:

We just pulled into the street!
and now we are speeding up

as we were underneath the telephone wires crossing the street, I wondered how she would "squeeze' up between them when we took off.

But we never did take off. There was not enough room and the kid beside me was getting all mad, when it was really his fault that we were too heavy to fly!

Someone was yelling at Meg, and I didn't understand why he was complaining; he had already gotten to ride.

I wasn't sure that I was writing it down in my diary, but I could hear the pen lightly scratching on the paper, so I knew it was being recorded *somewhere* and I could just transcribe it later.

Then I woke up and was all "damn I wasn't writing it down after all."

Note to self: if you're not sure if you're writing something down, you are dreaming!

dogAndPonyShow

10:45pm CST Tuesday 27 March 2001

I don't know who came up with the term "Dog And Pony Show," but that's what I was asked to give our clients regarding the new G3 model of surveys. They called me at 8:30am and I was all "yo" and showed them all the cool things about G3.

They were duly impressed. Some minor changes were requested, and one not so minor request. I finished all the minor requests today and will work on the not so minor request tomorrow. There's also one fix that I know needs to be changed, but they didn't specifically request it.

The coolest change I did today was allow each anchor to have its own value and to possibly be highlighted to draw attention to it. For example, in a list of 6 anchors from Very Satisfied to Very Unsatisfied, we might highlight option Not Applicable.

Tomorrow I need to allow the administrator ability to change the survey type an individual is using, and turn off the "I've-seen-the-instructions" flag if a user is upgraded to a participant, because they haven't seen the participant instructions yet.

espanol

10:52pm CST Tuesday 27 March 2001

I'm really enjoying our spanish class. We reviewed estar and ser and some adjectives for each. We are just now really getting into the conjugation of verbs and forming meaningful sentences. Our homework is to describe as many things as we can about ourselves - anything we can make up or whatever.

Wende and I have the suggested Spanish Verb Tenses books. I'll be going through that a lot.

And, after 30 March, I will begin talking to Travis about how to learn Japanese!

After I learn Japanese, I think I'll learn ASL, American Sign Language.

For many years I have "wanted" to learn other spoken languages, but just never took the time to do it. I know so many computer languages that it's just silly for me to not know some spoken languages. I'm super duper extra glad that I'm correcting this now.

And, even as I'm just now beginning to learn one other language, I am reminded of my (and Maggie's) Physics II instructor, Hamdi (I think that was his name). He said, "if I misspell a word, it is only because I know so many languages and it can be hard to keep track of them."

Back then I was all, "psh - what a braggar and a wuss. waddya mean ya can't keep track of them?" I didn't say that to his face.

Now I have noticed myself have trouble remembering how to spell some words in English. What an interesting lesson in life.