Erik’s Blog

My first ever roller derby, and I must say it rawked… I tried to take a picture with my phone but it didn’t turn out well. Maybe I’ll post it anyway. Dunno.

And after my inner 1950s male relaxed, I discovered that roller derby actually is a sport and the ladies that participated actually did play to win. Who knew? I’m sure I’ll go back for more some day, maybe after my ears stop ringing.

There are so many people that need to watch this, I can’t begin to list them.

I learned not long after I moved to Portland that a few celebs call the place home. Of course, reader that I am, I immediately thought of Chuck Palahniuk (who may actually live in Seattle by now, what do I know). Little did I know, Portland is fast becoming a mecca for indie musicians. Modest Mouse, The Shins, The Decemberists, Death Cab for Cutie, and a slew of others either have a member or two living in-town or are fully based in Portland. And more are on their way. Qwazy, I tell you.

I wouldn’t know most of these people if I ran into them on the street, but that’s what makes this place so cool: folks can just kinda be here and not make a big deal out of it.

What a cool place to live…

Can I hear a collective “EWWWWWW!!!!”

Twice today–TWICE–I got an unexpected and unappreciated neighbor when visiting the men’s room. TWICE. Nobody else in the room, stalls aplenty open and available for use…but no, NOT TODAY, these guys have to sit right next to me when they do their business.

Programmers, help me out here: Is this a software developer thing (my floor is dominated by developers)? Something about maintaining stacks, or linear thinking, or serialization? I can’t think of a single logical reason for a guy to choose stall #2 when stall #1 is occupied and stalls #3 and #4 are available.

Actually I can think of a reason, but I’d like to think positively about my co-workers.

EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!

I recently read a post on Signal vs. Noise that discussed top-replying to emails (i.e. when you respond to an email, you type your response above a full, un-edited copy of the email to which you’re responding).

Techies tend to mix their responses with the quoted copy of the email instead of typing a chunk of text on top and calling it done. They also tend to get nasty when they receive emails that have not followed this procedure. Non-techies tend to top-reply.

Like many of the folks who commented to the SvN post I’m finding it difficult to continue with the cumbersome process of the mix-responses-in-quoted-emails approach. I’m also finding it more difficult to justify doing so. Top-replying communicates your thoughts more quickly than the hunt and peck method favored by techies. It’s also the response method used by the majority of the folks I encounter.

I think I may need to switch gears. Effective today, I’m doing top-replies.

And to all my techie friends who object… You’ll be alright.

Larry Miller @ the U of U, originally uploaded by erat.

As promised, a picture of Larry Miller entertaining lots of folks wearing cowboy hats.

(Update: Kinda sucks that I can’t get Flickr to set the width of the photo correctly, huh? I’ll hack this out some time after this semester is over. Grrrr…)