Odds and Ends

We're moved in, we've pretty much got the kids back to a regular sleeping routine, we've finished watching Heroes Season Two on DVD (including all the extras), and I'm mostly recovered from the delirium-inducing flu I had the beginning of this week, so I just might post here more often now. Probably not, though. I'm not particularly inspired to blog lately, which is probably the subject of another post. But I did want to mention a couple things:

1. A couple people have asked what exactly my job is all about. So here it is, in a nutshell. I work for a company that shall be known henceforth as The Company (remember, I just watched eleven episodes of Heroes in four nights). The Company has a contract with a search engine provider that shall be known henceforth as Mr. Searcho (I am contractually obligated to keep Mr. Searcho's true identity a secret; I am not contractually obligated to keep The Company's true identity a secret, but I don't feel like having web searches for my employer's name leading to my blog).

So anyway, my job title is either Annotator or Judge, depending on who you ask. What that means is that every day Mr. Searcho feeds me a bunch of queries that have been entered into his search engine (i.e. "pariss hilton" or "utube" or "free movie download" or "who is samantha stevens bestest friend ever"), along with a bunch of web pages that their search engine has provided as possible results for those queries, and I look at each web page and decide, in 30 seconds or less, whether that page is an exact match, a strong match, a weak match, or a super crappy match for what I think the person who typed that query into the search engine was looking for. The ultimate goal here, I believe, is to "teach" the search engine to improve its accuracy. Or something like that. A side effect, though, is that I see a lot of stuff--random trivia, four-year-old news articles about people in Alaska, blogs, website subpages that were never meant to be seen, movie and product reviews, message board arguments, and parts of women (and some men) I'd really rather not ever see (and some parts I don't mind seeing). After seeing 500-600 web pages a day for nearly four months now, I've concluded that at least 50% of the internet is spam.

2. The halfbike. I cleaned it up and put it back together last Friday. An important connecting bolt/clamp thing was broken, but I managed to improvise with a quick trip to Ace Hardware. And here's a picture of S-Boogie's new school transportation:


I love love love it. She gets to ride a bike to school, but we can go at my speed instead of hers and thus get there in seven minutes instead of twenty. And we produce no smog with our daily commute--only smug.

Feedback Loop

The following post is a brag only thinly disguised as introspection. If that bothers you, you're welcome to leave now.

Oh, and you're not my friend anymore.



I'm not ashamed to admit that the reason I've kept a blog going for more than three years now and I've never kept a journal for more than three weeks is that I like the feedback. The positive feedback, that is. People who think I'm stupid can go kick a goat. But the good stuff--man, I'm a compliment junkie.

With this in mind, the job I've had now since May is ideal for me. If I'm a feedback whore then this is the best pimp I've ever had. Once a day they send me a report saying how many hours I've worked, how fast I'm working, and how accurately I'm doing my job compared to my coworkers. A similar report is sent out on a weekly basis and another one on a monthly basis. Also, several times a week I get back audited reports telling me whether I was right or wrong on specific ratings I've made. And on top of all that, there's another weekly report that tells me what percentage of the time I'm agreeing with the consensus ratings of my coworkers, and if I'm in the top ten percent of everyone for this report then they give me an Amazon.com gift certificate. Do you know how much I love Amazon.com gift certificates? More than I love my mom. (Sorry, Mom, don't take it personally.)

As I'm sure you can imagine, if all these reports were telling me that I'm doing a crappy job, this would be devastating. I wouldn't be writing this post because I'd be busy crying under my desk. But let's face it; I'm good at what I do. So good, in fact, that a couple weeks ago I got the best feedback of all--they offered me a supervisory position which means (a) more money, (b) more feedback, (c) I've finally broken through that stupid paradox of never being able to get a supervisory position because I don't have supervisory experience, and (d) more money. The more money thing is especially good because after moving and spending a month on vacation, we have none.

This also means that now I give other people that oh-so-vital feedback. Sadly, sometimes I have to give the devastating kind. But I try to do it in a kind and gentle way. And it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that when I get to give positive feedback, I'm making someone's day. Finally, I get to be the pimp. (Or am I the trick? I'm going to have to go think about this metaphor for a while.)

The Super Awesome Bicycling Family

Two years ago when we moved to Seattle, my sister gave us her bicycle trailer/jogging stroller. We were excited because we had moved to Seattle and we were going to be a Super Awesome Bicycling Family. I had just bought a bike and planned to ride it to school and work every day. After a couple months commuting by bike turned into commuting by foot turned into commuting by bus, and a year later we had not yet attempted to attach the bike trailer to a bike. We used it as a jogging stroller pretty frequently--it's the kind that seats two kids, which happens to be the number of kids we have--but my bike had remained chained up and unused for several months by now. FoxyJ's bike, meanwhile, was getting thrown into windows. At any rate, one day about a year ago I tried to hook up the bike trailer to my stagnating bike and discovered that we were missing an important piece--the one that actually attaches the trailer to the bike.

So now, a year and three trips to Utah later, I finally remembered to get that piece off of my sister's bike. This morning after a bit of searching through all our unpacked stuff we found that piece, fastened it onto my bike, and attached the trailer. I towed the kids to the library, the farmers' market, and the bank, then home again. Then, still on the high of Now We Live In Davis And Are A Super Awesome Bicycling Family, I fixed the wheel and chain on Foxy's bike, cleaned it up, and got it ready to go for the first time in seven years. We tested out our awesomeness tonight by taking a family ride around Davis. It was spiffy cool.

And then, to top it all off, when we got home we realized that among the old bicycle junk left on our front porch by the previous residents is one of those half bicycles for kids that you attach onto the back of an adult bike, which is exactly what we had decided we'd like to get for taking S-Boogie to school and back. So tomorrow I'll clean that up and see if it works, and next Wednesday S-Boogie will start kindergarten and we'll ride bikes there and back every day and next month Foxy will start school and every day she'll ride her bike and we will truly be a Super Awesome Bicycling Family forever and ever. Because we never let lifestyle changes like this just peter out and slip back into laziness.

1. The Measure of Friendship 2. Drivin' Movie 3. Anticipation

1. Today we drove through Tehachapi, the town where my friend Th. is from, and then we drove through Fresno, the town where my friend Green Mormon Architect is from. Tehachapi is a pretty little town, picturesque hills with trees sprinkled about; Fresno is not so pretty, dirty highways with homeless people sprinkled about. But Fresno did have a yummy Inn-N-Out, right at dinner time. So now I'm not sure which of my friends is better.

2. Please don't tell my mother-in-law that we let our children watch two movies on our ten-hour drive today, rather than insist they enjoy the world around them. Or that we didn't stop to look at the world's tallest thermometer or the groovy cheese factory or any of the other random roadside attractions that she would have stopped at, despite her children's protests.

3. Tonight we are sleeping in a motel in Sacramento before we go check into our apartment in Davis tomorrow. I feel like the children of Israel, waiting to enter the Promised Land. Or Abraham, camped at the base of Mount Moriah, waiting to offer up the contents of his checking account to his new landlord.

If you doubt that a month of wandering the desert with two small children will drive a person insane...

...just take a look at my new profile picture.

Meme-ories

Copying Edgy and Samantha...

How to Play

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember.
   
2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. If you leave a memory about me, I'll check your blog to see if you are playing, too. If you are I'll come to your blog and leave one about you.

Don't have any memories with me? Come make some tonight at our blog party at Kiwanis Park in Provo at 5:30. Bring food--all the best memories involve food.

A Brief Lesson on Internet Etiquette (LOL)

Good idea:

Lolling at someone else's funny.

Joe: Your mom went to college.

Jane: LOL!

Bad idea:

Lolling at your own funny.

Joe. Your mom went to college. LOL!

You may well be lolling at your own lame joke, but telling us so only makes you seem like a self-absorbed nitwit.