In no particular order or priority:
- No drama. I’m not sure why some people in this world feel the need to stir things up and play games in non-game settings when all I want to do is go about my business and be left alone. I’m being purposefully vague here, but it’s general enough: I have no energy for people who suck away at my soul like that. The problem with drama is that it’s catching and hard to eradicate once it’s been introduced, and I have only so much soul left.
- Sleep. For various reasons I’ve been up a few times most nights in the last few weeks due to my blackberry going off about some database-er-other, and sometimes wasn’t able to get back to sleep for hours, and if you thought I was moody in the mornings before, stand back.
- To remember what vacation is like. Note I’m not asking for a vacation, that would be silly. I just wish it were something I’d done more recently than 2006 so that when my friends go off on trips to Spain or New Orleans or whatever, the first thing that pops into my mind isn’t curiosity over what it feels like to be a normal person who takes time off work and goes places.
- A nerdy tattoo. I can’t think of what; the symbol for a database is essentially a tin can and I am not permanently drawing a tin can on my ass (or wherever I’d put it, probably not my ass). Also you never know, I may give up database work someday if I ever learn about vacations.
- Laser eye surgery. I want a nerdy tattoo in some place you wouldn’t see unless I showed you, but I don’t want to look nerdy to everyone. Also it is rare for me to feel as stupid as I do when I’m feeling my way around my apartment trying to find my glasses which I can’t see because I don’t have my glasses on.
- For oil to not be spilling into the Gulf of Mexico at an alarming rate and killing all the plants and fish and birds. I have to not think about that because when I do I start to cry. Of course, as a database admin I have to wonder at companies which don’t set up proper disaster recovery procedures. Not to mention test them out. That’s DBA 101.
- Someone to have brunch with me in Kelowna. Nobody does brunch here. Or if they do it’s like this rare-rare occurrence that’s precipitated by some sort of event worthy of celebration. As opposed to Vancouver where people go for brunch because it’s the weekend. I miss that so hard.
- To be locked in a room full of kittens. Bonus points if I’m able to rub catnip all over myself first.
- Sleep. Oh right I already put that in.
- My favourite song. There’s always a next one, but I never know what it’s going to be. This one was close, but not quite:
- For people to not feel I’m someone they have to “figure out”. It’s a special kind of discomfort to be so weird to the people around you, and I’m weird for Kelowna. It’s too bad, because I refuse to change.
- World peace. Would we even recognize it if it bit us in the ass, I wonder.
- To feel appreciated. When the default is being taken for granted, and your personal misfortunes are considered jokes to people, and because you don’t complain it’s assumed it’s okay to treat you in such a way. It’s time to start complaining.
You should totally get laser eye surgery. And all that other stuff, but mostly laser eye surgery. I’d almost forgotten about feeling my way around my apartment trying to find my glasses which I can’t see because I don’t have my glasses on. zomg, I hated that.
Just do what I do — designated glasses stations with my old glasses. I’ve got one on each floor that I can blindly grope for when there are glasses-related emergencies. Yes, I am a giant nerd.
On the tattoo front, how about a cloud? Has the nerd in-joke of cloud-based storage, and can be explained away as something else should you ever abandon the nerdy lifestyle.
I was close to getting eye surgery, & then noticed i was developing presbyopia on top of my myopia, so in a couple of years i would need glasses again anyway. I’ve been thinking for years about a tattoo, but like you, have not settled on a design. I am trying really hard to not think about what the BP spill is doing to the Gulf coast. I wish i could extract my own drama from my mind and leave it in a trashcan someplace. Brunch rocks. Occationally some friends of mine foster a litter of kittens to socialize them for adoption, and visiting them when they do that is the awesome.
And being appreciated, … yeah.
Lasik == awesome.
I had a -7.0 prescription, and over Christmas had the PRK procedure. Now i’m happy and glasses/contact free. If you can scrounge up enough chickens to afford it – i very recommend it.
It seems like databases are usually represented by a cylinder. I know that a cylinder may not be all that cool as a tattoo, but maybe with a little shading and a some query language that has some particular meaning to you it might liven it up a little bit.
Maybe a table in bash style of people in your life that are important to you or words that represent you?
Also, you may want to look into St. Isidore of Seville. He’s been credited as the creator of the first database. His Etymologiae might have some interesting illustrations you could use.
that is an incredibly good song.
Problem is while it may seem nerdy-cool to have a coffee can tatooed on you today, it may not mean anything in 50 years.
Just wanted to say thanks for introducing me to ‘Mimicking Birds’ – Nate Lacy is 100% awesomeness. I think that may be the best album I’ve come across since Sgt Pepper.
This is exactly why I read random strangers blogs – who knows when or if I ever would have heard this music if I didn’t occasionally want to look at pictures of Shebang or read about your adventures with MySQL? Similarly, it’s unlikely I would ever have learned how to make Ceviche if I wasn’t occasionally curious what this nutter in England was up to (http://huntergathercook.typepad.com/)…actually that’s less awesome, since I can’t eat fish. But still, it’s always fun to poke your nose into someone else’s life – provided a) they’re not boring couch potatoes and b) their writing has some semblance of style.
Blogging may not (often) be literature or journalism, but I can’t help but think it’s doing its part to make the world a smaller place.