The Twilight Report



So forever ago, Smitha wrote in her LJ something about spelling alphabets and never being able to think of countries to associate with certain letters. What do you use for X? Anyway, that got me to think that defunct empires would be a good spelling alphabet to use, not because it would be easy to understand, but because I suspected that I could design it to be pretty hard to decipher. For example, when I got to H I chose “Holy Roman Empire” and for R I chose “Roman Empire.” Although it isn’t ambiguous, unless you were paying attention you might get lost.

So I finally wrote a little web app to give you the spelling alphabet spelling for a number of different alphabets. Some of them (NATO, LAPD) are actually in use. Some of the others (defunct empire, etc) I just made up for fun. I made defunct empire the default because it seemed to be the least useful.

• www.wdlabs.com/twilight/lingua/alphabet

(btw- if you can think of a country that starts with X let me know. I will accept historical, currently nonexistent countries, but not fictional countries, as I am currently using the fictional country Xanth for X because I couldn’t think of anything else. I also need defunct empires for W X and Y; the current X is actually the capitol of an Empire, not the Empire itself)

I also have a new management policy for my website, so make sure you read that and agree to all of the terms before using my website. It is also available in latin if you English isn’t very good.

Well, my little trip down to New Jersey on Sunday was great. I visited my friend, and fellow camera geek e. I showed her all the most important things about PhotoShop that I learned from the Color Digital class that I took this summer. We went pretty fast, but I think she picked up enough for it to be useful for her. At the very end, I watched her work on this photograph:

Photograph By e

She took it while she had been in Israel this year, and I think it's a very good photograph and it gives me a warm fuzzy because she did the color and contrast adjustments using the techniques that I had showed her.

I was going to make a print of this so that I could put it up somewhere, but I asked for her permission first, since I would want anyone to check with me before reproducing one of my photographs or putting them up on the web or anything like that, but she said I could do anything I wanted with it so here it is.

Ever have a whole bunch of things that you need to get done, but you get psychologically road blocked by one of them? The completion of the one does not really bar you from completing the others, but for some reason you can't wrap your mind around the others until you get it taken care of? Well, that is sort of how I felt this morning. No longer!

At lunch today I used the $8 coupon at the cafeteria that The Management gave everyone in our department as a "thanks." I got the most expensive item I could find to make sure that the total was at least $8. Total cost to me: $0.55. Feeling that I have milked The Company for as much as I possibly could: Priceless.

On the way out I snarked a slice of apple pie. They were giving them away to celebrate our strategic alliance with Apple Computers. A friend of mine worked on the resisters in the new G5 computers! This is among the many reasons that I would love to have a G5. Given my current economic realities, that is going to have to wait.

So I have been working in my new department for about nine months or so now. I basically work on two major things. I don't want to get into the details of what I do, because it is pretty boring, but lets just call them Interface and Parallel. Neither have anything to do with each other. I have a partner for Parallel with whom I work with pretty closely. It has to do with the nature of the beast. When I work on the Interface, I am much more subordinate to the owner of the code, and it is therefore not a partnership. One day, when I learn more about how the Interface works it could be, but it is far too early for that.

The guy who owns the Interface code had a family emergency recently and was gone from work for three weeks. When he got back he asked me how much time I had been spending on Interface vs. Parallel. The truth is I have not been working much on the Interface, because Parallel has been soaking up all kinds of time. I find out today that my idiot manager strongly suggested that the Interface owner resign from The Company and everyone understands if he doesn't that they will probably fire him. My manager seems to think that he hasn't been working hard enough, which is bullshit.

It's bad enough that The Company continually shoots itself in the foot by getting rid of good people that they really need, but this seems totally over the top. The guy's son had been in the hospital for three weeks he comes back to work and they kick him while he's down. What makes it worse is that I think the reason they moved me into the Interface when they did because they wanted to get rid of him. They are using me as a tool to get rid of this guy and that makes me hate them.

In the afternoon I was working with my Parallel partner and we came up with an idea which I hope may tie up a whole bunch of loose ends. My Parallel partner has been at The Company for about 20 years, and he was telling me that he felt as though he had done himself a real disservice by staying here for as long as he has, because bam! they get rid of you and the things we work on are so specialized that you really don't know enough about the real world to get a decent job. After 20 years and with a family to support it is real tough to start over. I've been here for four years and I'm thinking it is time to get the hell out. Suggestions anyone? Seriously. Suggestions?

After work I was both pissed off at management, while at the same time excited about our potential Parallel breakthrough. My friend Sarah had asked me to take her portrait for her web site. She is an aspiring wedding photographer and she is going to need to advertise. I was humbled that she asked me, because she knows lots of photographers. I was also super excited to get back into the studio and shoot some pictures. Tonight was the night that we were going to get together for this.

Afterward we ordered a pizza and talked about various things. She's broken up with her sort of boyfriend and she's going to be moving to New Hampshire, probably sometime next year. I'm going to miss having her around. She says that she will be back eventually, but by the time she is, I had better be gone, for my own sake.

Note: I originally wrote this early in the morning on August 4 for another site, but I am particularly pleased with it, so I am reposting it here to get total coverage. I've only made a few additional corrections.

I did this once before, almost ten years ago. Thought it was time once again to write about my old friend RC.

rc3: another day in the life of robert cobbler

3 August 2004 / August 3, 2004

By the time I got into my car to... I would say go to work... but the fact that I am going to work today seems almost incidental... but anyway, by the time I get into my car to go to work I have already been up for almost 3 hours today. I got up extra early to photograph a still life for my second assignment which was really due yesterday, but I had forgotten to take the film out of the fridge last night so I spent an hour going through my writing desk searching for the title to the Toyota so that I can get Green's Auto to haul the thing away so I don't have to spend money on it. Right now that car is costing me money just sitting in my driveway and it has to come to an end. By the time I have confirmed that I really don't have the damn title anymore and that I will have to deal with DMV, the film is ready to shoot, but I still am not. I can't think of what to shoot. The content of my writing desk is scattered across the floor neatly organized into categories. The largest pile is stuff to throw away. The batteries I found stored in the desk are lying about and I imagine the Energizers confronting the Duracells in a medieval conflict. A couple of candles become castle towers in my mind. It seems the dumbest thing I can think of, but I arrange this ten second fantasy into my still life assignment.

I finish photographing the still life on time, and this is when I get into my car to start my day which already seems to be progressing. What I have to accomplish seem to add up to something larger than 24 hours, and even so I manage to forget three somethings in a row, each time having to turn around and drive back home to get it. Each time I seem to get further, which seems like progress, although it is really more work because it's longer to drive back. First I forgot my medication. Then it was my Australian passport application. Then it was the CD I had sold on half.com and had to post today.

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