The Dollar is Trying to Tell Me Something

I overheard this choice quotation while reading a paper tonight. As it happens, this juicy line is uttered by none other than Nick Cage in National Treasure. This only makes me want to see the movie more.

Tonight's post will be a potpouri.

First things first -- grass roots mobilization is a great way to make the man change. Having said that, when you know the "man", there's no need to be antagonistic.

Have you ever really hated someone and yet been odly in awe of them at the same time? That's the way I remember a former boss. When I was between High School and College, I worked as a Perl programmer for the summer. I worked for a company called Peet Consulting. The owner, and my boss, was Kelly Peet. This was during the .com heyday and we were employed by Thinkronize.com. The money was fat. However, I wasn't seeing any of it. In any case, I was being given crappy assignments and I got fed up. I emailed him and told him that I could be making more money working at McDonald's and that I didn't need this any more. So, with that triumphant email, I quit. He didn't protest -- his opinion of me was obviously quite low. Anyways, to this day, I oddly admire his skills as a technology consultant and Perl programmer. (Please, no cracks about Perl -- this was 6 years ago!). A few years later I was in a situation where I had to recall some esoteric piece of mod_perl knowledge that he taught me. So, I emailed him to say thanks -- it really saved me. I get an email back and the only text was: "I bet you couldn't have learned that at McDonald's." And I was trying to be nice!

Random side note: I used to have a section of my website called "Email Loser". This was a place where I posted break up emails. Surprisingly, I have received quite a few of these. Anyways, one of my professors happened on to my website. While I was in his office one day for help he informed me that he loved the "Email Loser" section. He claimed that if email had been around when he was my age, he certainly would have had such a section.

Back to the present day. I was watching the Seinfeld pilot episode tonight. In the first few episodes, George and Jerry had a very different relationship with the coffee shop staff than they do in later episodes. For instance, the waitress knew both their names and was able to joke with them. I thought that "professional waitress" character would have been interesting later in the series. I wonder why they didn't pursue that further. George is also a very different character during the early episodes. Later in the series, George became quite a loser and pretty one dimensional (although still very funny!). In the first few episodes, George was actually intelligent (claiming valid, expert knowledge on the signals of women) and showed compassion and courage during one episode. Quite different from the character who pushed down a grandma to flee a barely burning stove. I guess that his character changed because it wasn't different enough from Jerry. Which did you like better? Early characterizations or later?

This wouldn't be a blog if I didn't post on today's events. Today was the final day of classes for this academic year. Things had just settled down into a nice routine. I do love a good routine. However, having class for three hours a day was getting quite old. I will enjoy the additional free time. There are so many things that I want to do -- scat (that is pronounced ess-cat), to name but one. Oddly enough the conclusion to the first year of graduate school was almost as uneventful as the first day of graduate school. I guess that as I get older, the various milestones are going to seem more and more "every day". Its not that I mind. I enjoy things that aren't surprising. I really like to know what is going to happen -- determinism is the name of the game. Would you agree with this? Do you think that milestones get less and less eventful as we endure them more and more? Do you enjoy surprises or do you like to know what's going to happen?

Sorry for the rambling. If I knew what self indulgent means, I would probably describe this post as such. Please, no links to dictionary.com in the comments -- I know how to use the .com! ;-)