Last night my belief in the goodness of mankind was castrated by the discovery of my bike no longer being where I last put it. I am really upset at this. People seem to understand being upset about one’s bike being stolen but when I tell them that I’d had the bike since 1999 they then don’t get the big deal. It’s an old bike, good riddance, you get to buy a new high tech one now, hurray! No.

It was my bike. It saw me through my first apartment, 5 other homes, 2 cats, 2 university degrees, 6 jobs and a partridge in a pear tree. It was a glorious green and blue 28-gear mountain bike with front suspension which I’d pimped up in 2007 with road tires and one of those saddles with the hole down the middle for the avoidance of clitoral numbness while cycling. I named it Owen, after Michael Owen who was the Rooney of 10 years ago but also cute (yay World Cup year etc.). My bike and I, we had a history and that history was fantastic, because life sucks sometimes, but my bike brought much happiness and never let me down.

I had bought Owen over 10 years ago with insurance money after my previous bike had been stolen out of my apartment’s bike room (guess how this bike was stolen? “The Circle of Life…”). It was really fancy and over $1000 and for the next 9.5 years I carried it up and down apartment stairs as necessary to keep it in my living quarters so it wouldn’t be stolen. I did this at four apartments, but then I moved here.

The building manager convinced me that this bike room was extra-secure because not everyone in the building had a key to it. Oh, right, but I forgot, there’s a drug dealer in the building and I live in the ghetto, so I’m an idiot. The building rules state that you can’t have your bike in your apartment, but when I get a new one I’m keeping it up here, which may result in me being forced to move but someplace where I could properly store a bicycle would be really fucking nice right about now.

I seem to go through decade-long cycles (*cough*) of having a bike stolen. 1990, 1999, 2010. I haven’t given away or sold a bike that I didn’t outgrow first. I bought good quality bikes that could last a decade of use, and in the case of this one would’ve lasted another decade because it still looked and performed like awesomesauce. I made sure of that because I repaired and upgraded it as needed. I just want it back, but I’m never going to see it again.

The weather was gorgeous today, warm and sunny, and it would’ve been the perfect day to go cycling.

I know I’m a week and a half late on mentioning it, but it’s been giving me multiple nerdgasms and it took this long to calm down enough to type. I saw this trailer in Imax 3D when I went to see Alice in Wonderland Friday before last, and honestly don’t remember much about the movie but damn, that trailer was AWESOME.

I came so hard

Tron happens to be my favourite Disney movie ever and one of the most awe-inspiring from my childhood. Youtube isn’t helping me but my memory has it that the Wonderful World of Disney TV show’s intro had a clip from Tron in it at some point in the 80s, so every Sunday night I would be reminded of its utter coolness and be saddened when instead I’d be watching some educational film about bears or something.

I loved the computer graphics and the humans-as-programs-in-glowing-outfits, and thought that Bruce Boxleitner was hotter than Jeff Bridges because I didn’t have hormones yet. The Recognizer vehicles were scary and ominous, the way they’d hover in the air and wait for the chance to stomp on you. God, I love what the new Recognizers look like (the monstrous glowing horseshoe in the image above). Nice to see they added a bit of detail to the original wire frame version.

When I first heard about this movie I thought, “damn you, Disney, for fucking with my childhood!” but I’m okay with it now, because it looks so sweet and it’s got Jeff Bridges AND a computer-generated young Jeff Bridges (as Clu, who I thought was “killed” in the original movie, but Spock was reincarnated so let’s not judge). Plus, it comes out on the day after my birthday, so I consider it a gift to me from the universe (or perhaps from the MCP?). I may even take the day off and fly into Vancouver (where it was filmed!) to get to see it all Imax’d and 3D’d because Kelowna’s movie theatres are from the stone age and are therefore NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

I already posted this on Facebook, but here’s perhaps the best piece of trivia from the original movie, via IMDB:

Jeff Bridges produced too much of a bulge in the crotch area in his computer outfit, so he was forced to wear a dance belt to conceal it.

See, it made him horny too!

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?