despair.com

despair.com


"It hurts to admit when you've made mistakes, but when they're big enough, the pain only lasts a second."

About the previous note...
After a little thought, I come to a conclusion that as much as teenagers might know what is wrong, or right, there is still something missing, the strength to overcome a peer pressure.
I knew at that age that drinking hard liquor and smoking was wrong, in fact I knew it very well because I managed to conceal it from critical eyes of adults.
They were not the movies, or pop-culture, that influenced me. I think it was the immediate environment.

If the parents/guardians represent the essence of hypocrisy, if they give the child bad example, or no example, then the teenager will probably rebel against those hippocratic values.

There is nothing we can do to prevent child�s access to alcohol, smokes and drugs, there is nothing we can do about their sexuality, in fact, (in case the reader was raised under the rock, or forgot it already) sex is all the kids talk about from age of about 11-12 until end of high school. Analyzing that exposure bestowed on me, and my friends, some of us came thru the teenage years better than others, I remember couple of my (good looking) girl friends that went to the parties and managed to relatively stay sober and keep their virginity throughout the high school, the rest of us did not fare as well. The only differentiator was the value systems carried out of the childhood homes. For some it was just good parents, others were the mix of religious beliefs and a good example at home.

When we are young we have a very little appreciation for life and extremely shaky self-esteem, if we run low on it, whether it is good, or bad, we try we try to build it thru acceptance of peers, which prompts us to behave cool, and that usually is not equivalent to social norms of good behavior. The self-esteem, and strength to overcome the peer pressure, can be built by loving parents that adhere to the same principles, but really, who has got time for that nowadays?

sxyme4utosee

I've read an article in Newsweek during the lunch:

A girl has a web site titled "sxyme4utosee", meets several men for sex, online and off. On her Web site she uses a vulgar, sex and racial remarks and slang as well as provocative images. Then when she gets killed while fucking a guy she arranged to see on the back-lot of McDonald's, some idiot entitles her picture "Lost Innocence". The article title is "A Chat-Room Encounter's Tragic End".

- Hello?!? How are we supposed to react? To wonder about this cruel world and the innocent girl (age 13) in it? Did she not know exactly that what she was doing was wrong, did she not say it openly that she is living a double life? I think the America's public should grasp a reality...

"Another whore bites the dust"

FotoArtLib.com

I shot a lot of pictures by the Chicago River during the lunch today. I hope that at least one will be a "keeper". The Web site is comming around, it is becoming a nice stop on the Internet. I would like to add at least average of one good photo per day, but I don't want to use any of a mediocre quality. It takes more than 20 shots on the same subject to get one right. FotoArtLib.com

I have an idea for a new photo set, say, "Chicago wrapped in Nature". Cheesy? Nevertheless, I want to mix shots of nature within big city. We don't have Central Park, but Chicago has it's green spots.

Today, for a change, I feel somewhat elation. I did not feel that way for such a long time that I would say it is a new feeling, or maybe it feels anew every time you feel it.
I noticed that my work situation greatly influences my spirits. Recently, I was allowed to do my job again, I remember I used to love my work when I was really running technology departament. Also, taking and processing pictures gives me a great pleasure and a good hobby to take my mind off the thought how low indeed we live our lives.

I am happy that some of my friends on moving on with their lives and doing what they want, where they want it, may it be NY, or Arizona. Everyone is so different, yet beautiful.

paddling a canoe... with a tennis racket

Programming Web with ASP/VBS is like paddling a canoe... with a tennis racket.

I am so frustrated. (explanation for all of you geeks out there) I have been programming ASP pages and discovered that a certain instance of a variant (root of all evil) in VBS can be:
- neither an object, Null, nothing, zip, nada
- nor have any length, not nothing, not zero, not a Null length.
I cannot detect it with any comparison, as if somebody erased all reference of it from the memory.
I call it varBlackHole.

Recipe for this varBlackHole?

Pull a Null from MS SQL, stuff it into an Scripting.Dictionary Object (e.g. objDict("myDBNull") ), pass that reference to a function as regular variant (e.g. funFunCheckValue( objDict("myDBNull") ) ).

Function funFunCheckValue( varBlackHole )
   ' Hello World! I am a varBlackHole variant and I am absolutely useless!
   funFunCheckValue = varBlackHole
End Function

Yesterday, on Sunday, Ji and I made a trip to Lincoln Park Conservatory. See pictures we took on www.FotoArtLib.com.

Heartburn; it is not an illness, but it can really mess up your day. I cannot finish the lunch my wife made for me, I took 2 tables of the medicine, but it does not feel like a solution. I cannot drink beer, champagne, even juices, I guess the doctor visit is nearing up.

My wife is creating a new Web site FotoArtLib.com. I am looking forward to own FujiFilm FinePix 4900Z digital camera. Go figure. Details later.
Yesterday Ji's mother came in from Korea, a lot of nice stuff....

Here is our company's Organizational Chart. I cannot claim that I created the image, but to reflect our company I definitelly had to add a lot of the dead birds and the fat one flying away with a lot of undeserved money.

Spending my time at work reading CIDX (Chemical eStandards) 1363 pages of it. I believe in practical solutions, I am not sure if this (1363 pages) can be practical, who will have nerves to go thru it and adhere to the standards? I like one particular quote "It has been determined that ChemXML 2.0 will not be backward compatible... As of Q400, ChemXML 1.0 was not in production use by any chemical company." This tells it all.

Last night I watched "Don't say a word" with Michael Douglas -- mediocre movie, not much a psychological pursuits, not a really good action (full of mistakes), not scary, not anything really. Michael Dougles (one of my favorites) had better times.

Wisdom of Rahul's CS professor:
"The most important thing in life is to watch out when you cross the street so the truck won't hit you; everything else is secondary."

The verdict is still out on what is the most important thing in life, but I will surely consider. The satement above definitely brings you to reality; those things that we consider so important just weren't.

Reclaiming Myself

Sometimes, I feel insignificant, as if I’ve become a shadow of who I once was. This moment, writing these words, is proof.

Where did that fire go?
The drive, the passion that once made me feel alive?
I look back and wonder—have I spent my days chasing someone else’s definition of success?
Trying to impress, conform, keep up—instead of just being myself?

I won’t find happiness in the expectations of others. That much is clear.

Resolution:

I want to escape the noise, reclaim the stillness, and remember what makes me me.

Marriage jokes and aphorisims

You have two choices in life: you can stay single
and be miserable, or get married and wish you were dead."

At the cocktail party, one woman said to another,
"Aren't you wearing your wedding ring on the wrong finger?"
The other women replied, "Yes I am, I married the wrong man."

A lady inserted an 'ad' in the classifieds: "Husband wanted".
Next day she received a hundred letters. They all said the
same thing: "You can have mine."

When a woman steals your husband, there is no better revenge
than to let her keep him.

Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The
rest cheat in Europe.

A woman is incomplete until she is married. Then she
is finished.

A little boy asked his father, "Daddy, how much does
it cost to get married?" And the father replied, "I don't
know son, I'm still paying."

Young son: Is it true Dad, that some parts of Africa
a man doesn't know his wife until he marries her? Dad: That
happens in every country, son.

Then there was a woman who said, "I never knew what
real happiness was until I got married; and by then it was
too late."

Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to
every word you say, talk in your sleep.

Just think, if it weren't for marriage, men would go through
life thinking they had no faults at all.

You know the honeymoon is pretty much over when you start to
go out with the boys on Wednesday nights, and so does she.

First guy: "My wife's an angel!" Second guy: "You're lucky,
mine's still alive."

Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the
street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they
are attractive to the opposite sex.

programming, managing and sales

Coding is a commodity; not unlike clueless managers, the only differences are that we have more of later around here, also, you cannot outsource wish writing to India.
Good programming, on the other hand, is a rarity, but our managers would not know this make-it-or-break-it difference. With the Internet-tech company where boss thinks the salesperson is an idol and programmer is an idiot, maybe in the near future the skills most in demand will be resume writing and interviewing, but isn't that sales after all?