mechanical violet

another change: beekm.wordpress.com

2008-12-20T15:58:24Z

i moved! my blog is now hosted by wordpress. when cousin amy first strongly encouraged me to use wordpress as a content management system for a client site, i was not excited. i traditionally haven't liked to use content management systems in this context, because i feel so restricted with what i can do. i like to write and modify my own code. anyway, once i got into wordpress i found a lot of capability. and i began to like it quite a bit. and the other day i wrote my own wordpress theme for another client, so i'm now converted. and was happy to choose wordpress as the new place for my little blog.

repoint to my new blog:
http://beekm.wordpress.com

on tuesday, i graduated.

2008-12-19T18:55:44Z

i expected to feel lighter as i walked home, like the weight of responsibility was being lifted from my body, unencumbering my mind and adding to my general well-being. but as i left school and called my mother so that she could tell me that she's proud of me, i did not feel the lightening of my burdens. i was happy, to be sure. ecstatic, really. i smiled the entire way home and enjoyed the sense of accomplishment that my mom helped to encourage.

i smiled about graduation again yesterday, when i didn't have to go to class after work. and as i read comments to my "becky just finished her MBA" status on facebook. but i still haven't felt the reality of graduation in the way i was expecting. when i finished my undergrad work i was so burned out and so ready to be done with school that i was overwhelmed with the intensity of relief and jubilation i felt upon finishing and swearing never to seek additional formal education.

these are some reasons why i think my reaction might be different six years later:

1) i am still just as busy with all the projects and tasks that i put off until after graduation. plus i'm "cleaning" and packing in anticipation of moving apartments in just over a week.
2) i didn't get burned out this time around.
3) i'm an adult this time. i react to a lot of things differently than i did when i was in college.
4) it's just not quite real to me yet. maybe it will be when i start my new job or after experiencing more nights of not attending class?

whatever the reason, it's really not important whether or not i feel less burdened. what's important is that i gave up a lot of free time in the past two and a half years and now have an MBA! i enjoyed the majority of my classes and the majority of my classmates. and i can see how much i've grown personally and professionally from the experience. totally worth it!

just a note to my friends and family: thanks for being so accommodating of my schedule. thanks for encouraging me. thanks for writing nice things on my wall or here on my blog. thanks for thinking that i was capable of doing this.

all this positive feedback!

2008-12-15T23:53:00Z

i received the following email today, referencing the haiku (posted in an earlier blog) that i'd written for the enterprise content management haiku contest:

Becky,

I’d give you a call, but I’m under the weather. We really liked your submission, especially the way they all worked together. So, we decided to give you a special award, named the “We REALLY liked this one” Award (unless we can think of something better tomorrow before we send the newsletter.)

We’re going to run it in this week’s newsletter and, if I can convince our print editor, in the print issue of Infonomics in Jan/Feb.

Best and congrats. We really did like it.

editor, Infonomics

i'm so shocked that they liked it. it's cool, definitely. it's just weird to me.

why don't i try something new?

2008-12-11T18:32:17Z

the official announcement was made today during our weekly company meeting: "becky is leaving us." my boss said a lot of nice things about the work i've done over the last almost four years. i really appreciated that.

quitting my job was one of the hardest things i've had to do. it's a small, personal company. i'm very integrated into my branch and its inner-workings. it was much harder than a breakup. i drafted several versions of what i might say when i called my bosses in chicago. i don't remember what actually came out. but they were shocked. but not angry, which my imagination had suggested they might be. one of them managed to sincerely congratulate me.

after the meeting today, several of my co-workers in chicago contacted me to express their congratulations/regrets. that was nice. it's kind of like a funeral, but i'm around to hear all the nice memories people have of me.

i feel like it was a good decision. at my new company i'll have more opportunities and potential to grow. and it just feels like time for a change. i'm really excited for this.

i like to try new things

2008-12-08T14:28:58Z

it's true that it has been precisely one week since i last flirted. i attended four parties/social-functions this weekend, so that is quite an accomplishment. it was a little difficult, but i managed. i plan to go the entire month of december without flirting. an experiment to test a theory.

my first screening at the manhattan stake film festival

2008-12-06T04:56:46Z

may and i just returned from the film festival where we won an award for our little movie! best documentary. it was kind of exhilarating to do something creative and artistic and submit it for judging and end up one of the few movies taking home the box of microwave popcorn.

it did help to hear that people liked it and thought it was funny. i think i was most afraid that people would take it seriously.

this is our film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5dm-a4JOZU

it is about may and me living in this apartment together. we're splitting up at the end of the month - she's going back uptown and i'm moving up four flights - and i like having this memory. thanks for the good times, may.

one might suppose i have some sort of propensity for entering creative competitions. i don't.

2008-12-05T20:07:27Z

i work in the information management sector. documents, records, content...lots of data out there to manage. my industry association is running an "ECM as haiku" contest. specifically: "describe your life in the enterprise content management space..." so i wrote a haiku. and then i wrote five more. and i submitted them all.

i was much more nervous earlier this week when i submitted a short film to a church film festival. may and i created it and star in it. i am not sure that i can attend the festival and see my movie played in front of all those people. perhaps if i hadn't acted in it. but, as i've just been asked to bring a backup copy of the movie tonight on removable media, i will be attending. though i may have to step out of the room at a strategic moment to avoid watching everyone watch it.

i think the nervousness comes from comparing myself to the rest of manhattan. there are so many talented film makers living in the city and submitting films to these types of things and to this particular thing. i feel nervous at the audacity i have to put my film next to theirs, with my amateurish editing skills and attempt at acting. but i have may on my team, and she's quite talented with the camera. so i try to imagine that evens things out.

i'm not as nervous about the haiku. maybe a poetry competition for tech geeks is more in my league. or maybe i should be more nervous. regardless, here is my series of haiku about content management:

it all goes in; a
binary transformation.
nothing's lost for good.

i find comfort in
the knowledge that my knowledge
has a place to rest.

as a child, i shared.
but against my own will. my
small, limited view.

my eyes could not see
the joy, the satisfaction
in the act. but now:

i send my content
into the pool for all to
seek and find and use.

everything there has
a place, a home, a purpose.
safely rest online.

a moment at my desk

2008-12-04T17:41:58Z

so my necklace broke. i'm sitting there at my desk trying to fix it. with a paperclip. and i have a david archuletta song in my head.

i'm thinking about why that embarrasses me. then one of my clients calls. and i keep playing with my necklace while we're talking.

during our conversation i say i will call so-and-so right after we hang up and i'll let him know about whatever. so we hang up. and i continue trying to fix my necklace.

i go get the pliers. and i see that we have some thin wire. i realize the wire will be much more effective than a paperclip. a paperclip is not easy to cut.

so i string the wire and fix my necklace and just as i'm wondering if i should pull out my soldering iron when i get home and fortify the connection, i think: oh, dear. i was supposed to call so-and-so!

and right at that moment i reach for the phone and it rings. and it's so-and-so. and my client has already talked to him. so i fill him in a little bit on whatever. i feel kind of lame.

i choose take this experience as yet ANOTHER example of why i should stop what i'm doing when i'm on the phone, and devote my full attention to the caller.

or it's an example of why i shouldn't buy cheap jewelry.

first class accomodations

2008-12-02T22:05:56Z

i think this was the first time i've ever explained the history of thanksgiving to someone older than five. it sounds silly explaining it to adults, and as i was recalling my first grade history lesson i wondered if anything i was recounting was true. essentially, this was my tale for the brits who asked: "after our ancestors left your country, they had a rough time. the natives helped them out a bit, so they all had a feast together to celebrate the harvest. happy thanksgiving." i really don't think that's historically accurate.

the trip to europe was a lot of fun. for some reason i still feel a little bit broken, even after a pleasantly long night of sleep. maybe it will take another night to recover.

i spent the night before last "sleeping" in the geneva airport. a long story is involved in explaining exactly why. the shorter version of the story is comprised in this word: layover. the airport closed at 12:30 am and carlee and i were locked inside. i was not sleepy and wandered around looking for something else to do, someone to talk to, or at least some place more comfortable to sleep. i made friends with a french policeman. another long story goes here, which involves watching several attempted and one successful illegal border crossing from france. its short version: some entertainment was provided to me that evening. also, it turns out the only carpet in the geneva airport is the british airways first class check-in lane. i slept comparatively happily there for almost an hour. apparently the geneva airport opens at 3:45 am for cleaning.

i wore socks today for the first time this season. and my cell phone is possessed.

2008-11-19T01:21:41Z

i had a salmon burger today for lunch, which was excellent. i hadn't ever tried such a thing.

the friend who i met for lunch started off our conversation by telling me that he thinks he might be an alcoholic. then he talked about how religion fills a void in my life and gives me happiness and he thinks alcohol does the same thing for him. i hadn't heard that perspective before. we had quite a compelling lunch conversation.

these socks are great! they go all the way up to my knees and they stay there. and they keep me so warm! and they are kind of pretty.

i am going to continue wearing socks. and my friend is going to give up hard liquor.

same workspace, different world

2008-11-17T21:21:22Z

one of today's mundane tasks at work is quality control. this particular aspect involves scrolling through images and checking various things for accuracy. in my continuing effort to make these tasks more challenging/interesting, i have decided to use this as an opportunity to work on my ambidexterity. this is going to be quite a challenge for me - i considered it an accomplishment when i learned to wear my purse on my left shoulder.

i moved the mouse to the left side of my desk and switched the button configuration. the first thing i struggled with was moving the mouse. it took longer than usual for me to get it in position before i could click on things. it was a bit like using a wii for the first time, but combined with that uneasy feeling i get when i have to use a mac. i felt impaired.

some unexpected annoyances:
1. shift + click and drag. wow, that was painful.
2. i find it incredibly inconvenient that the "enter" key is now so far away from the mouse. i didn't anticipate weirdness caused by the keyboard being in exactly the same configuration while only the mouse changed.
3. some of my more intense database work is surprisingly very difficult with my mouse on the wrong side. probably because so much is being required of my brain at one time.

i did start enjoying this after awhile, once i got over the realization that i am uncoordinated. it's different. and i got better at it. i think ambidexterity is a lofty goal, but i do enjoying trying to make my brain work a little bit harder at such simple things.

one side-effect of laying off employees is that you have to do their jobs, in addition to your own.

2008-11-14T17:12:55Z

all week, and most of last, i've been involved in some extremely boring work. but it has to be done. so while i sit here working on tasks such as data entry, i've decided to try and make them a bit less mindless and use the opportunity to learn something. today, i decided to try and improve my typing skills by finally learning to type numbers on the basic keypad rather than switching to the 10-key. this is a skill that i should have acquired during my high school typing class. maybe i did learn it, but it didn't stick. i'm typing a lot of dates today, so i'll at least get a good chance to practice.

i looked up the proper fingering for the number keys. i didn't like it at first so i tried doing it my own way. but after repeatedly hitting the wrong numbers, my fingers seemed to want to do it the "acceptable" way. it's apparent that this is not the first time my fingers have learned to do this. i succumbed, since the goal is for the whole typing thing to become second nature.

once my fingers and i both agreed on the logistics, i was surprised at how incredibly slowly i typed the numbers. i had to think hard about each one. and, to make this more fun, i wouldn't let myself look at the keyboard. fortunately, i had to type the date 5/16/95 about 50 times, so i got those numbers down pretty well. but throw me an "8" and i'm back to square one. i was so tempted to switch to the 10-key pad. rationalizing thoughts invaded my mind: "i don't need to learn the numbered keys; it's not going to get me anywhere in life." or "i deserve a break - look at the pretty 10-key!" somehow, i stayed true.

after the first laborious and slow hour, i finally started to notice speed and accuracy improvement! that's my favorite part of any goal - seeing the first results come in. that's when i know that whatever it is i've been doing is actually going to help me accomplish my goal. so at this point, it's a matter of persistence and endurance. and opportunity to practice, which i seem to have plenty of.

feeling displeased with yesterday's expression of negativity

2008-11-12T15:56:55Z

for balance, the positive energy is taking its turn. things that i'm enjoying today:

1. the hot water tap on the water cooler in my office.

2. wearing red, white, and blue to celebrate may's presque citizenship.

3. the space heater that i turn on under my desk at work to keep my toes warm so i don't have to wear shoes.

4. the property manager dropping the price on the apartment i want to rent.

5. recovering quickly from one of my websites getting hacked. it was kind of cool because that's never happened to me and now i know how to plan for it in the future. i probably should not be as happy about this as i am.

this is a post containing all of my harbored negative energy over the past several weeks. sorry.

2008-11-11T16:28:08Z

some of my least favorite things:

1. when my co-worker says you know after every other word. i catch myself doing this sometimes, too, which REALLY bugs me. worse, though, is when people (usually southerners) say whenever instead of saying when. "whenever i was 15, i stole a pickup truck..." that drives me crazy and i can never listen to the rest of what is being said because i'm too annoyed by the whenever.

2. looking for an apartment. ugh. it would be fine if i could afford a studio in my building and didn't have to worry about finding random people to be my roommates. someday, i suppose, i will be able to live alone. but as my favorite CCR song points out, "someday never comes."

3. people who stop suddenly while walking down the sidewalk so that i run into them. for whatever reason, my frustration appears to be inversely proportional to the height of the person who cuts me off.

4. my boss stealing one of my clients because they need work done in hawaii. thanks for that.

5. men who don't get my phone number when they obviously should. is it really that scary?

flirting

2008-11-05T15:43:09Z

all i can think to do with this topic about which i agreed to write is to divulge my flirting habits here in my blog. i wonder if i'll ever regret this entry?

when i'm really in the mood to flirt, i'll end up talking to random, male passers-by as i walk down the streets. i never directly initiate these conversations. it's all through the eyes and the smile. and then they want to buy me a drink or get my number or find out if i speak spanish. and i laugh and keep walking. their response has little to do with the way i look, and everything to do with the eyes. so it isn't particularly flattering, rather just for fun.

i like to flirt with the sandwich counter guys at my lunch places, too. i like to be friendly and it keeps things interesting. and sometimes i get free things. but sometimes when i'm not in the mood to flirt, i find a new place for lunch.

i never flirt with cab drivers.

several women have expressed to me how difficult they find it to flirt with someone who they actually like. i understand that. it's easy to flirt superficially, but when you might actually be interested it's hard to be so flippant and casual. and men can get scared when they hear the lightness gone from your voice. so i usually don't let myself become interested. men do make things hard for us.

lipstick

2008-11-03T16:57:53Z

i like to wear lipstick. it was the first type of makeup i ever really wore. (that's discounting the one time i tried to wear eye shadow in high school and my friend asked if i had a black eye.)

i think it was freshman year of college, or maybe senior year of high school, when i started wearing lipstick. i was SO shy back then and very focused on school; i didn't care much about men or makeup or that type of thing. but someone told me that i had nice lips and that i should try wearing lipstick. i didn't know i had nice lips. so i tried it. and i liked it. so i started to wear lipstick.

i had always been scared of wearing makeup. when i was about 14, my oldest sister was in beauty school and had me come in one afternoon for a makeover. she covered my face in layers of makeup. i felt like i was wearing a mask. i didn't know myself. i hated it. my sister drove me straight to a young women's activity afterwards, and everyone told me how pretty i looked. i was devastated that they thought i was pretty while wearing all this makeup. a mask. these people had never told me i was pretty before. i learned what happens to makeup when you cry.

wearing lipstick was a big deal for me. so was my freshman year of college. i got a job my second semester to put myself through school, and i had to interact with a lot of people. each day i could feel myself becoming more confident and less shy. by the start of my sophomore year, i had been unleashed. i became overly social and friendly and flirty. it was as if i were trying to make up for all my years of being paralytically shy. which i think i did.

the end of sophomore year, someone told me that i had nice eyes and i should wear mascara. i didn't know i had nice eyes. so i tried it. and i liked it. so i started to wear mascara, too. and become even more obnoxiously outgoing.

once i finished college, i was able to tone down my craziness a bit, find a happy medium between my pre-college and college selves, and become a well-adjusted adult. mostly. i should probably tone down the flirting a bit, but i'll save that conversation for the next blog in this series.

it's tough being awesome

2008-10-31T21:14:50Z

one of my employees just told me that he has 100 GB of music on his mac. all mp3s. assuming the standard average for 128 kbps sampling is that 1 minute of music takes up 1 MB of space, he has (100 * 2^10) / 60 = 1707 hours of music. that is 71 days. 10 weeks. almost 20% of a year. i just recently maxed out my 4 GB ipod, after three years. and it's probably safe to assume that 0% of his music is soft rock, classical, or general conference talks. i love those moments when i realize just how uncool i am. though in this case i'm not quite sure if it's because i listen to uncool music, because i think 100 GB is a lot of music, or because i calculated how many days of music is in my employee's itunes.

spy

2008-10-29T15:56:19Z

when i was around 10 or 11, i invented a game called "russian spy" that i played with my friends and siblings. pretty much the coolest game ever. it required one key piece of equipment: the animator.

in case you don't recall from the late 80s, the animator is similar to an etch-a-sketch, but with a dot matrix display. you save your sketches (up to 12 screens!), then hit the "animate" button and it cycles through all the screens you've drawn. pretty amazing, right? even more incredible than animating your own pixelated drawings was the sound effects which occurred while you moved the knobs to draw or, my favorite, when you hit the "animate" button. the animate sound is still my favorite noise to make when someone says the phrase, "high tech". (a picture of the animator.)

back to the game. setup: you take the animator and draw a map. then you save it and recall it on the next screen until you have the same map on all twelve screens. next, draw a little stick figure. draw the figure in a different position on each screen so that when you hit "animate", it will look like a little man moving through your map. you are now ready to play.

the actual game consists of running around the neighborhood and hiding from the unseen enemy (the russian, of course; we weren't so ignorant of the cold war), whose progress we would check on the animator. that was my favorite part. "let me check his position!" i'd pull it out, hit my favorite button and, doo, doo, duh, dah, the russian was still following us. hours of entertainment.

when my older brother played, he would doubt the animator's real-time tracking abilities for some reason. probably because i wouldn't let him use it to check on the spy. "that thing can't really tell where the russian is!"

what? really? my response: "you don't even know! it uses a russian satellite!"

"that doesn't even make any sense."

whatever. it made perfect sense.

when i got a little older, the spy game became more proactive and naturally left the animator behind. we would get our toy spy kits (plastic guns, sunglasses, walkie-talkies, and grenades) and sneak around the neighborhood choosing unsuspecting neighbors as our bad-guys. no more russian stick figures chasing us. we were successful if the neighbors had no idea we were there. but as cool as we thought we were for running around wearing sunglasses at night, to me it never got any better than "russian spy" with the animator.

munching

2008-10-29T13:08:39Z

i did word association and this is where it took me:

munching. tiny cucumber sandwiches. tea. book club.

i need to start up my book club again. we had such a lovely time discussing eat, pray, love earlier this year. maybe we'll try again next year. january?

does it count as procrastinating if you're putting something off because you're doing too much at the moment and don't have time for one more thing? my grandma used to have this phrase cross-stitched and hanging in her downstairs guest bathroom, along with other equally catching and guilt-inducing cliches:

don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today.

the proverb doesn't give advice for the case where i can't actually do it today. it's an incomplete conditional command. so to rephrase in terms of computer logic,

if you can do it today, don't put it off until tomorrow.
else, put it off until tomorrow.

january it is.

skyscraper

2008-10-28T17:18:53Z

my life in new york is very different from how i've lived it in other places, though some things are inherently the same.

i don't have a car, and i don't drive very often. but i still deal with traffic - in the form of hundreds of people or tourists on the sidewalks.

i don't spend much time waiting at red lights since i walk (and jaywalk) almost everywhere. but i make up for that by waiting on subway platforms or for elevators.

in fact, the subjective part of my commute to work each morning is elevator waiting time. the rate at which i walk to work is fairly consistent each day (unless i'm wearing that one pair of shoes...), and i've been able to determine the precise speed to walk such that i don't have to wait at any traffic lights. and, since i'm going cross-town, the people traffic is only a factor at intersections. but how long i'll have to wait for the elevator in my building, then again once i get to my office building, then again once i get inside the elevator, is a complete unknown. and i've decided that i like having some things in my life that i can't predict or control.

i like living among the skyscrapers.

a well-expressed observation

2008-10-27T16:12:32Z

cousin amy recently posted something she observed while repeatedly listening to the les miserables soundtrack. she mentions the ideas she's been taught to believe about men. i've learned the same things through literature, other women, male friends, and some of the men i've dated. i don't think i am ready to abandon that notion of how men work and say that love must "withstand mutual adoration", but i'm fascinated by that idea. as brave and daring as i think i am, amy is always a step ahead.

you can read it here.

exotic

2008-10-22T15:37:09Z

there's this store on west 37th which i walk past most days. it sells thrones, crowns, sceptres, golden naked angel babies, and anything else that you can imagine could be gilded. and i always think, "who, exactly, is the target market?" who needs a throne. i imagine that actual royalty have a classier source, even if they do get to new york and realize they left their sceptre at home.

since this place has been in business for at least the last three years, i concede that maybe there are people in the market for such things. but, really, west 37th street? if fifth avenue is creme brulee, the fashion district is your grandma's favorite jello recipe - it's comfortable, it fulfills a need, but it's not exactly fancy. though maybe it is exotic in its own way.

five words from alicia

2008-10-22T02:19:56Z

i wanted to blog yesterday but couldn't think of anything to write about. so i thought that alicia should give me a list of topics. she wouldn't go as far as to give me five topics since she claims to have trouble coming up with her own, so we agreed to exchange five words. thus, by alicia's whim, these words will inspire my next five blogs:

1. exotic
2. skyscraper
3. munching
4. spy
5. lipstick (i'm not allowed to reference pitbulls or hockey moms in this post)

and may added a bonus sixth word that both alicia and i will blog about:
6. flirting

seven random things is not much of a stretch for me

2008-10-15T18:33:51Z

i haven't ever been blog-tagged before. i'm supposed to write seven random facts about myself, then tag seven other people so that they can do the same. seven other people don't read my blog, so i'll just do the first part so i can be a good sport.

1. i am twenty-nine years old, but people typically mistake me for about ten years younger. that is annoying to me. people say that i should be flattered. but really i just want to look my age. i've lived twenty-nine years; that's nothing to be sad about.

2. when i retire, i want to be a lunch lady in an elementary school cafeteria.

3. i am about two months away from finishing my graduate degree. i had never planned to go back to school, as my first degree sucked away my will to study. but i've really enjoyed it and, it turns out, i do like to learn.

4. i am a music and art appreciator. i don't sing or play the piano well. and i can't paint or draw. but something about music and art flicks awake an artistic sensibility that usually lies smothered by my analytical self.

5. when i was a teenager, i had a tic-tac container collection. i kept my collection in shoeboxes. my three prize containers were from europe and had various languages on the labels. these i kept on top of the shoeboxes. i don't know how many i collected - more than a hundred. i don't know why i collected them. they aren't exactly pretty or unique or interesting in any obvious way.

6. i enjoy flirting with men. i've told my friends that i can't ever marry for this reason. i have not told this to my mother.

7. i fell out of a plane once. i was strapped to a guy with a parachute, so it turned out alright. i think it was the perfect way to celebrate turning 21.

thank you, pillow, for last night.

2008-10-10T19:00:59Z

i got a new pillow yesterday - one of those memory foam pillows. i slept better than ever and woke up without the usual shoulder and neck pain. when i got up this morning, while still lost somewhere between asleep and awake, i remember having this extremely pleasant thought: "now i can quit my job and work on websites and sell these pillows." i was happy for several minutes until i fully woke up and realized that i don't want to sell pillows for a living. then i became alarmed that subconsciously i want to be an entrepreneur. then i thought about that great pillow again and was happy once more.