Sunday, February 25, 2007

Hindsight

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Last week I did the volunteer thing again. For inquiring minds, this was basically helping serve food to people.

The last time I did this I was a bit dismayed by my lack of feeling while doing this. This time…I also did not feel a whole lot while working there. That was mostly because I was very busy the whole time trying to put green beans onto a try. It turns out that I'm not very good at doing that.

A friend I was there with remarked that it felt better than the last time: the last time he was basically ensuring that people came in a little at a time instead of all at once. He was right in that it certainly felt like I had done more: we were working behind the counter, putting food on trays. It was hot and I was rushed the whole time because it seemed like they were constantly waiting for me. I think this was mostly because I was so damn slow with the green beans.

While I definitely felt like I had done some work, in some ways it was worse than before: I was so busy putting food on trays that I could not look up at the people we were serving. This time, I only knew about them when someone would ask for vegetables only. Fortunately, the supply of green beans held out for the night.

The next day, however, I realized that everyone who had been there had helped so that we could serve more people. Without someone to limit the number of people coming in, we would have been thronged and nobody would have been able to sit down to eat. With someone to hand out trays, we were able to get more people through. And with someone putting green beans on a try, you could get more trays of food to people.

Yes, I was very replaceable in the whole thing: just about anyone can put food on a tray. But I was there and other people were not. If I had not been there, they would have served fewer people.

I remember seeing a video about the marines where the soldiers had been encouraged to relinquish a part of their identity by referring to themselves as "this marine" or "this soldier." At the time I had found the notion a bit disturbing. It sounded a bit too mindless for people who might have to make difficult moral decisions in very unforgiving situations.

The person who had suggested that people perform community service talked about it as "the giving of self." I had thought of this more as me giving time to help out. Giving time is like giving a part of your life. I had not thought of it as giving a part of my identity, but while I was working there, I was pretty much a mindless, green bean serving machine. I later realized that is was more of giving up myself to help with the work, if only for a little while.

Like the people in the video I had seen, to help, I really had to submerge my ego for a time and become part of a whole. I'm not sure if that's what the person who had suggested this meant, but afterwards I felt like I had been part of a community.

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Sunday, February 18, 2007

Vitamin I

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For those that don't hike, "Vitamin I" is an alias for Ibuprofen: an aspirin substitute. It is especially good at dealing with pain. At the moment I have been immobilized by a nasty, pain inducing cold style of thing. Hence this is a very short, past-due posting. Argh. Tags: , , .

Sunday, February 11, 2007

BYBS: those that Sacrifice

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Soldiers, police, fire fighters, coast guard, etc. These people do jobs that I cannot or will not do; and part of those jobs involves risking their lives. That's an unbelievable gift for one person to give to another. Then consider that these people may not know or even like the people they are protecting and it becomes even more mind-boggling.

Such people are paid for their work, but it seems to me that whatever compensation they receive for their work, it is not equivalent to the risks they take. Furthermore, I don't always agree to the uses that they are put to: Iraq is a prime example of this for me. Never the less, and especially in the case of soldiers, they are not afforded the luxury of choice. They sacrifice part of their freedom when they choose to serve.

Like any group of human beings, there are some who work against their society. Police scandals, the abuses at Abu Grave, etc. all show that this is not only possible, but happening. It is my belief (nothing on hand to back this up) that these are the minority.

My thanks go out to those that risk their lives on behalf of others: I regard it as a blessing.

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Saturday, February 03, 2007

BYBS: Programming

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I have a love/hate relationship with my job because I work with computers. Specifically I create software – for those of you who aren't familiar with terms like programmer, software development, etc. take a closer look at your web browser. Now imagine something a lot less interesting. That's what I do.

The hate aspect of the relationship is very easy to see: I tend to pull my hair, I run around looking tense, etc. When deadlines roll around I am usually stressed. And when I am tracking down a particularly difficult problem (a "bug" in computerease), I can get downright unsociable, morose and depressed.

But the love aspect is there too. Working in this field often has little rewards that appear as you make progress. Days where you have little victories like that are always very nice. Then there are the times when you do something downright clever. Alright, this doesn't happen very often with me, but every once in a while when it does, it can make your week.

Software is also in a class of activities where the end product is, well, ephemeral. A computer program is like music in this way. You can burn the paper that the music or the program is written on, but that will not destroy the program itself. As one might see similar themes and harmonies in music, there are similar organizations for programs.

Getting even more metaphysical, a program can be said to exist outside time and space: a program is independent of the medium used to display it. If you completely destroy a CD that it lives on, for example, you can get another copy and it will behave more or less the same way.

As a person who tends to be introverted, a sort of ephemeral construct that exists outside of time and space is appealing. I mean…it sounds cool :-)

The icing on the cake has been the berserk, out of control rate that computers and software have been developing for the last 50 years or so. Mind-boggling advances have followed, one after another, to the point where computer animated movies are not only viable, but quite popular. Computers that were once room sized are out-performed by systems that can fit in the palm of your hand.

What this all boils down to is a nice profession that has kept me out of trouble as well as interested for my entire career. The break-neck pace of development has sometimes even made me somewhat well-off, or at least in demand.

If I were a baseball player I might say: "Computers have been vaary, vaary good to me."

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