Miss Piggy Lunchbox

Old numbers:
p/r/f
.754/.442/.558
.902/.529/.667

Today’s numbers:
p/r/f
.688/.635/.660
.802/.740/.770

An improvement of over .100 in f-score.  Suck it, Science, I’m kicking your ass.

Right now I’ve got a foot in three jobs.  The job I have, natch.  Plus putting the finishing touches on an academic career with a conference coming up on Saturday as well as looking for a new job, which includes attending talks, making phone calls, submitting resumes, taking a day off for interviews (Thursday) and on and on.

Oh, and I have a two-month old kid and we’re trying to move this summer (though so far that last thing is completely owned by My Baby, which is freaking amazing considering she’s carrying the bulk of that kid thing, too).

By now you recognize this as one of those all-too-frequent I’m-going-away-for-a-while posts.  I hate these.  It’s like admitting failure.  But hopefully when you hear from me next I’ll be done with my academic career, have my feet under me on my current job, and have a new job lined up.  Because I still have three J-mez CD’s to get through along with about 12 of my own.  Plus Mike Patton put out an album a few weeks ago and Melvins’ new one is out tomorrow.  So you know I’ll be back.

Guy In Office: [something about his kid]
Me: How old is your kid?
Guy: Eight months
Me: Oh, mine’s eight days.
Guy: Wow, congratulations.  I can’t believe you’re back at work already.  [short pause] Actually, no, I totally get it.

I signed a contract that will keep me working at least through March and seems likely to be extended until July.

I don’t know if I’m mature enough to make it work, though.  I may end up sucking my thumb curled up in the bouncy, animal-covered chair waiting for somebody else downstairs.

Probably just typical new-job jitters.  Man there has been/is a lot of change going on around here.  Still, I have a blessed life.

As I was emotionally medicating with a bag of plain M&M’s yesterday afternoon (my brand new machine blue screened five times in 70 minutes, I’m being “asked” to write a paper I don’t want or need to write but mostly the computer crashing thing, and this health care debacle…good f’ing god), I remembered that at one point it time I felt very strongly against adding any colors at the time that M&M’s was adding the blue M.

I am now apathetic about the colors of M&M’s.

Either way, it’s your fault.

With 23% of registered voters’ votes counted, write-in has 1% of the Seattle mayoral vote.  Congratulations to whichever horrible candidate ends up winning.

I guess I will go to that job interview then.  Flood the universe with thoughts about how awesome I am.

MPL: Hey, KEN

KEN: Hey

MPL: So what gives? A while ago you take some time off completely to concentrate on your studies…that was explained…but after you came back there were hardly any album reviews…and suddenly the album reviews are flowing out of you again. Why is that?

KEN: I stopped watching baseball.

MPL: What?

KEN: I came back to writing this blog during baseball season. Having baseball on while I work doesn’t leave much time for listening to new music. Now that I’m not watching baseball I have more time to listen to music.

MPL: So you just stopped watching baseball recently?

KEN: Yep.

MPL: Why?

KEN: I don’t know. I just wanted not to watch it.

MPL: Are you going to start watching it again?

KEN: I don’t know.

MPL: …

KEN: I don’t know. The fact that the Twins are underperforming their talent level had something to do with it. Other factors were missing music; the Seattle Mariners’ announcers are the second-worst team in the game (Chicago White Sox), making every game seem like drudgery; a general long-term lessening of interest in sports as I age; a feeling that baseball was a to-do and not a relaxing way to pass time; a long-term desire to push aside things in my life that I don’t see as core to who I want to be, like video games and baseball, and to increase the amount of time I spend on things like my studies, my work, music, playing piano, and family and friends, all things I’ve neglected in the past because advertising has made me feel like I can’t possibly miss the next baseball or video game…just realizing that that’s a fake community foisted on me at the expense of a real community. And finally, a general trying to make space in my life…

MPL: Make space for what?

KEN: Life, I guess

MPL: You’re making space in your life for life?

KEN: Yeah, living…you know.

MPL: Okay, well, the album reviews that came out earlier in the summer were pretty bad, but you seem to be getting your stride back. Why is that?

KEN: I stopped watching baseball and stopped cluttering my life so much. See above.

MPL: Interesting. How is the not watching baseball going for you?

KEN: So far, so good.

MPL: Miss it?

KEN: A little.

MPL: Is this a permanent thing?

KEN: I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure I’ll watch baseball again. It’s not like I’m punishing myself or anything. I just took it off my to-do list.  In fact, just last night I saw that the Mariners were tied in the bottom of the ninth, so I turned that on and loved Ichiro’s game-winning hit.  And I’m still following the construction of the Twins’ ballpark and checking scores from time-to-time.

MPL: But do you think at some point you’ll come back to full-scale baseball intake again?

KEN: I don’t know. I guess I’d put the chances at 50/50. The odds of me watching the playoffs sit at about 99/1.

MPL: Many of your friends and acquaintances only know how to talk to you about baseball. Are you worried about losing them as friends?

KEN: A little, but I hope they can take the opportunity to learn something else about me. Maybe we could talk about music, go to a concert together, make mix CDs for each other, or just sit around and make music the event together. I always wanted to start a listening club, like a book club, only we’d pick a CD or make a mix CD for each other and get together, listen, and talk about what we liked and didn’t like.

MPL: That sounds awesome!

KEN: Yeah.

MPL: You should do it.

KEN: I don’t know. It sounds kind of lame to bring up.

MPL: I’d do it.

KEN: You would.

MPL: So fess up, you just chose this format for this post because it’s super easy to write about a big change in your life, without having to come up with a lot of prose, an intro, a middle, etc., right?

KEN: Hey, whatever works.

MPL: Right? Anyway, thanks for this exclusive interview.

KEN: You’re welcome, but it really wasn’t that exclusive. If anybody else wants to interview me I’d probably grant it.

Probably the busiest week of the quarter this week, exacerbated by the fact that I actually tried to enjoy myself over the holiday weekend instead of “getting things done.”  I went to the Melvins/Green River show and then My Baby and I went to the surprisingly sunny Oregon coast and took a cruise in Oregon’s fourth largest estuary.

I did want to update you that my “internship problem” has been solved.  I’ll be working for one of the faculty members over the summer as an RA.  So it’s not really an internship per se, but it can count as one.  In addition, I’m planning to start work on a thesis this summer that I hope I can wrap up in the fall with my final class and get my degree in December.

That’s the rough plan.  We’ll see.

Astute readers might have noted that last Sunday, with its traditional Opening Night game, came and went without me posting my predictions of the final standings, something I’ve done since 2006.

I’ve kind of burned out on baseball. I still like it, and I had the game on that night, I’ve already sworn loudly at a Twins game this season, and I’ll watch more than my share this season. But out of necessity I dove into school, work, and finding a job this offseason and didn’t have time to follow it. Not surprisingly, the offseason went by much less painfully than it usually does. In addition, my RSS reader blew up on me some time back and I never added back my baseball feeds…I never really got an inkling to, either.

Ironically, the same thing that drew me in strongly to baseball in the early part of this decade, the analytical writing in the baseball blogosphere, is exactly what tended to suck the excitement out of the game for me. First, there’s just too much content out there. Even if you just narrow it down to my two fave Mariners and two fave Twins bloggers…man, I have other stuff to do. Secondly, it’s all so negative (and I realize I am totally the pot calling the kettle black here), getting way too worked up over this move or that decision…gnashing teeth over such little consequence. Third, it’s too analytical. Whatever, I respect the work they’re doing, but we blew past the 80/20 rule six years ago, and we’re just niggling at the edges now. If you have to do linear regression in order to come up with a number that measures a player’s worth, then by definition that measure is too unintuitive to me for it to add to my enjoyment of the game. I’ll be here with my broad strokes, thank you very much, enjoying the game in my way.

There’s more to this, like the fact that baseball season, in the past, upset me more than the offseason because, despite being able to watch some baseball, I was almost constantly distressed that there was baseball on and my schedule wasn’t allowing me to watch it. I could go on and on, but I don’t really care to analyze it too deeply and I doubt you want to hear about it that much. I’m just saying, me and baseball, we’re still f**king, but we’re seeing other people.

Okay guys, this is your chance.  I need you.  I need you to want something.

Here’s the deal: I need more project coding experience as I apply for internships and full-time jobs.  The competition is fierce and jobs are few and far between, and I need more non-school coding experience, especially on webby technologies.

So, what do you want to see?  What would make MPL better for you?

How about an online database of my CD collection?  That would give me experience in mySQL, and I would probably code it up in Ruby to get experience in that, too.  Or, here’s an API for a Computational Linguistically-focused Seattle company; what could I do with that?

Anything, guys, I just need some ideas of what to work on.  I broke up with my job this morning.  Long story, but it’s all on good terms, or at least as good as it can be given the loss of income.

So let me know in the comments.