One workmate has already called dibs on any t-shirts I get, since they’ll all be L/XL and therefore wouldn’t show off my excellent rack at all (that’s not why he wants them; it’s just that free t-shirts from IT companies are all he wears). The only time I got a tech swag t-shirt that fit me was from Youtube. Because presumably Youtube cares about racks.

One thing I’m realizing is that this time, as opposed to 3 years ago, I feel I know nothing about MySQL and database administration. In 2007 I’d been working as a DBA for over a year and had my 4.1 certifications and therefore thought I was an expert. Several jobs and lots of databases later, I just keep finding out new stuff I don’t know and it really kicks me in the softest part of my ego. The other thing is that I seem incapable of retaining any new information, possibly due to brain damage from repeatedly hitting the keyboard with my forehead. Perhaps my brain has a limit and I’ve wasted too much of it on Monty Python trivia. Or I’m just dumb. Don’t tell anyone though.

This test was about “Communication Styles”, with the four possible styles being Analytical, Driver, Amiable and Expressive. Or, as I see it, Spock, Kirk, Uhura and Scotty, but you can read up the style descriptions here if you hate Star Trek and don’t mind character encoding errors on your web pages.

Because I’m the fucking sweetest nicest piece of ass this side of the Thompson, I’m Amiable. It sounds like such a cop-out category, as if this were a beauty contest and the best that could be said of me is that I have a good personality. If my most important characteristic is that I’m nice, I’m leaving.

People who have an Amiable style are [...] more likely to express emotion. Amiables are very loyal and tend to be excellent team players.

Fine, I’m emotional. I blame it on the ovaries and because life is crap sometimes. And I’m a team player because once in a while they give me rides home from work.

People and relationships are what are most important to an Amiable. [...] They tend to be very warm people.

Wha? I live alone with a cat. What’s most important to me is avoiding people and relationships, but I don’t think that’s what they meant. Plus this sort of reads like a horoscope, what with all the relationship talk. Your lucky numbers are…

In any case, it’s bollocks. It’s too extreme. I did a bunch of these personality tests back in high school, but longer ones, and the results tended to put me right on the border between sensitive and practical, because I am both of those. I have a music degree and a computer science degree, and I got the same grades in both of them (though it could also mean the grading system was rigged). That doesn’t mean everything but it doesn’t exclude anything either. And in this test I would’ve thought I’d be as likely to be written up as Analytical instead:

People who have an Analytical style are very thorough and detail oriented. They don’t mind working alone and will often go above and beyond for the task at hand. [... But] their focus on perfection can mean that those around them perceive Analyticals as not being as fast with their work.

That’s me to a T. That’s me most of the time on the job, doing extra work, focusing on the details, wasting time by failing at perfectionism. Not giving people hugs and reacharounds like your mom. But nooooooooo I can’t be Analytical because I answered that I leaned in when I talked to people. Even though it could just mean I’m deaf.

The reason that all this bugs me is that I’ve had to deal with people in my life who have questioned my career choices and used such test results as proof that I’m in the wrong job (thankfully not this time, but it’s grating). As if I’m somehow going against what’s natural in my daily life, and progressing in a career despite my temperament, not because of it. And let’s not get started on the hauntings of affirmative action.

It’s otherwise not that bad being a chick doing a guy’s work, because people in IT are generally nice and not likely to judge you on your lack of penis so long as you’re still able to operate a computer without one. But people outside of IT, well-meaning family members, conservative types, men who feel threatened by my ability to operate a computer without their penis, they think I’m supposed to find some nice 40-hour-a-week stress-free job because women aren’t supposed to work like this. Some of them think that would make me happier, but maybe I don’t want to be that happy. Or that sort of happy.

Of course I’m blowing this out of proportion (because I’m so emotional) as this test was about learning to communicate with others based on personality traits, and not about career path at all. But I don’t need to tally-up questionnaire answers to know I enjoy whining and complaining, so here came this rant. All I’m really trying to say is that I’m glad I didn’t listen to those people who wanted me to embrace my sensitive side and pick a typically feminine lifestyle over this one; and I hope others don’t put so much weight on these tests in deciding their lives. We are the sum of our choices as much as our character, and just like in elementary school, I’d rather go play with the boys.

If my cat hadn’t been fed, I’d have wondered if Mom had misheard me when I handed her my spare keys. This is because her full service included

1. Giving me $100.
2. Driving me to, and picking me up from, the airport.
3. Mopping my kitchen floor.
4. Replacing my microwave with one built more recently than 1987.
5. Putting dinner in my fridge.

And the cat’s alive, so, bonus.

In other news, it turns out visiting friends and family in Vancouver does not constitute a vacation. Luckily it was 1/20th the cost of what Maui was going to be, so I can’t complain there.

(I blogged about their first video to the song two weeks ago).

Between this sort of stuff and Mythbusters I keep wishing I’d become an engineer instead of a computer scientist. Not that I’d be good at it, I come from a long line of crap engineers (so a great-uncle once told me).

I like, and agree with one of the comments on this video posted at BoingBoing: “shit like this restores my faith in humanity.”

And I’m shaped weird, with thighs bigger than my hips. Honestly, it doesn’t look that bad, and no guy has ever commented on my thighs being large or anything, so I’m still coming out ahead. I have the hip measurement of a supermodel, but otherwise the body of a person who eats regularly. If I was okay wearing skirts all the time, it wouldn’t matter, but t-shirt plus jeans is my life uniform.

I don’t know if my thighs have gotten bigger (a possibility; I haven’t been keeping track) or if it’s the fashion industry, but I have a hell of a time finding jeans that fit both my hips and my thighs. “Too tight” is the norm. If I can pull them up, there’s tons of room in the waist to let the rainwater in. If I find ones that fit my hips, I can’t get them up without acrobatic skills and a shoehorn.

The other day when I was doing laundry, I saw holes in the back of a pair of jeans, on the corners of the pockets. I didn’t realize it until now, but I wear jeans until they fall apart, and they always fall apart in the embarrassing areas, as I’ve mentioned before. I probably haven’t shopped for jeans in two years, but now was obviously the time, since it’s best to retire this pair before they give my workmates a show.

So I went around the mall. Kelowna has a pretty big mall, with most of the stores you’d find in the malls in Vancouver, so I was pretty confident I’d find something. I avoided all the juniors stores since young women have twigs for legs and skinny jeans are the status quo, but it still left a lot, and I went into all the stores I could find. And nothing. No luck, everything’s too tight, I’m losing feeling in my toes…

I ended up finding mom jeans at Reitman’s. Ugh. That was the only place in the entire mall that had wide-leg jeans, but of course the waist is up at my belly-button. But that’s not all I found: I tried on a bunch of other styles at that store, and got the shock of my shopping life when I tried on a pair of their “comfort jeans”: there’s no fly. No fly!!! They pull up like sweatpants, except they’re not, they’re jeans. It’s freaky. Please, God, please, let me never be forced to wear jeans like that; I need easy access to my genitals. You never know when I might need them, and can’t afford the extra milliseconds of yanking the pants down against the pull of the elastic waistband.

I’m not really sure why those jeans scared me so much, but when I put them on I felt like I was disowning my privates. There’s no door to the unknown, it’s just a wall. Nothing here, it suggests. Nothing you’d find interesting. It’d be like giving up. Besides, they were too tight.

I ended up finding some non-mom jeans that fit at Plum today, strangely enough, thanks to a sales clerk who was wayyyyy too loud and cheerful and blasting Abba in the store’s PA. But I was so happy, because I’d been feeling like the clothing manufacturers had all decided that I no longer qualify as a jeans wearer. I can’t wait until wide-leg or loose jeans come back into fashion, but it could be a while. Hopefully before I develop crotch holes in these ones.

OK Go – This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

If you can recall, these guys got internet famous in 2006 with music videos of them dancing in a backyard, and again on treadmills. Their new album, entitled “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky”, is out now (for once I mention an album that’s already released). I’m really digging the lo-fi videos from the indie music scene, another one being the semi-deconstructed Cousins by Vampire Weekend.

Many of you don’t know this, but I got into music via marching band. My first instrument was the glockenspiel. Believe me, it’s hard to aim for the right key when you’re stomping around. Also when you have bad aim to begin with. The clarinet was easier, it stayed still.

Strangely I am okay with this; the truth is, in my line of work (sole DBA in a big organization) there’s no point being on break when some of the databases have the same idea as you; it is better to go away at a time when it’s unlikely you’ll be called on your vacation, and when it’s as unlikely you’re going to have a massive mess to clean up (more than usual, anyways) due to your being away a week. There’s never a perfect time to go, but this weekend turned out to be the worst possible time EVAH. Except maybe for last weekend. No, this weekend for sure.

I realize this won’t make sense to many of you, and some will think I’m a crazy workaholic who’s gonna die of a heart attack at 40 (that still gives me just under 8 years!). And that I don’t know how to say no, and I don’t know how to have fun, and whatever else. And that’s fine, because you don’t get me. I chose to stay, nobody made me. And I’m okay with that, because there will be a better time to party in the near future, and in the meantime I like my work.

Of course, the last-minute decision to cancel the vacation led some relatives of mine to worry that oh noes, Gillian must be depressed. Because depression makes you cancel a vacation to Hawaii that you already paid for, the night before (I’m sure it’s possible, but I don’t think I’ve ever been that depressed). I would like to remind them that just because I have a history of depression, it doesn’t mean that I’m on the brink of suicide whenever life throws me a curve ball. And that even though they don’t see me very much, it doesn’t mean that I spend my entire time away from them in despair. Maybe I’ve had a stressful few weeks, and maybe it’s been hard, but stress is not depression for fuck’s sake, it’s stress. And the cuts on my wrist are from my cat not wanting to go to the vet today.

I’ll be taking a break for sure, just a smaller one, probably in a month. Maybe just to Vancouver, where my peeps are at, because in the end I really wanted to see my peeps more than anything.

Can someone remind me what a day off feels like? Also sex?

I did manage to guilt someone into a ride home, though. Score.

I leave for a short vacation to Maui a week tomorrow. I think I’m supposed to be excited, but I’m not. Last week’s 70 hours of work* ruined all remaining enthusiasm for anything, ever again. I got a facial and a pedicure at the spa on Saturday in hopes of recovering some mental stability, but no. I don’t even want to go, now.

I looked into cancelling my trip. The insurance does say I can get my money back if I’m fired from a job where I’ve worked for at least 6 months. So I’ve got that out. Less dangerous than an “unforeseen illness”, though I could do with a coma.

Oh, I’m going on the trip, unless some database-related disaster happens chez Employer, which seems unlikely. But people have been asking me today if I’m excited and I’m disappointed to say I’m not.

I did have a dream about the trip the other day. In it there was a big tsunami and I needed to quickly get away from the beach but I ran back into my hotel room, putting my life at risk, to get a camera because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to document the experience. Stress gives me weird dreams. Though I’m still unsure what cameras to bring.

*Normally, I do 40, like most people, though some of that time is spent playing pingpong.

Disregarding eating, going to the bathroom, and commuting, I was working 23 out of 24 hours. Someone should give me a medal. And a pillow.

Back in high school, when I first did all-nighters (unlike many people, my later high school courses were university-level, except I had to take 7 academic classes at a time instead of university’s 5, which was fine since I wasn’t having any sex yet anyways) I would spend the day in a daze, drinking herbal tea. Don’t know why; that barely has any caffeine. But somehow I managed it.

In university, specifically near the end when I was finishing my computer science degree, I started having strange sleep-deprivation-induced hallucinations. These were often spiders or insects (either one large one, or a flying swarm of something) but strangely also severed heads. I don’t know about the severed heads, but the insect stuff is supposedly documented as being common. It’s trippy once you realize you’re just imagining it.

Last night’s work resulted in my afternoon nap including a really detailed lesbian dream. So now sleep deprivation is making me gay, great. The other chick in the dream was really hot, but I didn’t really know what to do, since she didn’t have a penis. It was a real cock-tease of a dream, especially since it didn’t contain any cock whatsoever.

The local radio station that wakes me up every morning (well, except this morning when I was just putting my head down when it went off) seems to be playing a lot of my Grade 5 soundtrack this week, to remind me of a time when I got my 8-9 hours every night:

(Interesting to Dad, the guy above is from Sheffield.)

(Songs about Americans always seem to be written or sung by Canadians.)