reboot

this afternoon, i spent a ridiculous amount of time writing a program to backup my hard disk to my usb drive. on one hand, i'm too cheap to pay for backup software and on the other, i couldn't find what i wanted for free. so, i thought it'd be a good exercise to have a go at it.

several hours later, i finished it and it seems to work okay. i'm also reminded of why i don't want to work on computers anymore. i still haven't found a peaceful way to work on them. something trivial doesn't work the way it should or something crashes or some other tedious thing which has me cursing under my breath at the screen and pounding at the keyboard. add three cups of coffee daily to the mix and i'm not a pleasant person to be around. and it's not just me... one of my nicer colleagues would yell "you stupid tool!" at his monitor three times a week. another colleague would see his cursor freeze, pound the ctrl-alt-delete combo three or four times, slam the mouse onto the desk, yell "i hate this f*ing place!" (imagine something like al pacino in "heat" here), and walk out to have a cigarette.

i had a recruiter call me about a job yesterday. the position was doing the same sort of work i was doing at my first job. i was inclined to call back about it, but after today's exercise, my will to stay out of engineering for now is renewed.

on a lighter note, i was talking with my friend the other day and the topic of the moon landings came up. i told her the main problem i think might cast some doubt on it would be the guidance computer. i just spent a bunch of time looking up some stuff trying to debunk the moon landing hoax theories. a lot of the hoax theories had pretty reasonable explanations. still, what do i know? and besides, what does it matter?

just don't tell me a computer will be steering my car for me. seeing "microsoft" on the stereo in a rental car is enough to make me nervous.