There’s this guy in the sky and he makes you want to
Want to make you sigh, like the time
When you felt like you’re feeling all the time

(lyrics: They Might Be Giants)
Randall is my poet hero.

In actual news, Ray’s here for the week, I got me another job interview, and I learned how to use GeSHi for syntax highlighting (it is blissfully easy). Tomorrow I’ll see about integrating it with documentation, and making the colors not suck.

There’ve been some faint rumblings recently from JavaScript Kids. You might ask, “Why?” Go on, ask. Okay don’t ask, I’ll tell you anyway.

I take some pride in my ability to handle the frustration of my ambitions, but rejections begin to grow tiresome when you realize how much power upper-level executives have to negate the hard-won rapport and confidence of the interview team, just by nitpicking. Often these nits that are being picked seem to have something to do with any of a familiar set of acronyms, the utterance of which will sound like the name of some next-door neighbor who is a lovely person but has funky body odor. XML was one of these acronyms for me, until I learned my way around it and began using XSLT for skinning at work. Ditto for AJAX. The current problem neighbor seems to be SQL however, and I’ll be honest, it’s taken me some time to come up with the excuse (and the cajones) to ring the doorbell and get friendly with it.

Nothin’ wrong with SQL. It’s an elegant solution to an inelegant problem, even if the convention to put keywords in allcaps makes it grate on the ears of the uninitiated. It’s just that… it lives way the hell back there in the ghetto of Implementation where us designer types usually don’t venture at night. If you’re buyin’ what he’s selling–and if you’re into blogging and serialized content, you are–you don’t have much of a choice. I wrote a couple tables in PHPMyAdmin in anticipation of adding RSS content to JavaScript Kids, and a deserializer containing literally two lines of SQL code (and it works!); I’m really kind of excited about the possibilities. As Nikki said, learning the language is going to be no big deal, so when someone implies otherwise, I take it as a challenge. And as an excuse to get off my butt.

In non-coding news, I’m a bit more moved in now, I bought a vacuum cleaner so I can neaten this place up from all the rice that’s been recently spilled; while I was out, I came dangerously close to buying a new 802.11N router (fsck, they’re cheap!), and admired Rock Band and Bioshock from afar. Before he left, Yongmin explained to me how to make bulgogi, which I totally botched on my first attempt–please note that, unlike with okonomiyaki, it matters a lot what kind of meat you use–his was good enough that I’m willing to give it a second try sometime, if anybody wants a piece of that. If you don’t trust me we could just go to Le’s for Vietnamese–Ginneh took us there Wednesday and it was amazing. Yummy.

So that’s all I got for now. I think. I’ve been having a lot of trouble recently with lists of things–i.e., I have been to the hardware store three times this week, and the grocery store four times, because I didn’t think of everything I needed. Let me know if you’re interested in:

• Dragging me out of the house to something diverting this weekend
• Seeing the house / lending a hand with setup / eating my food and drinking my booze
• Forming a band the likes of which has never been seen before
• Brainstorming names for the house
• <item missing>
• Pony
• Some linguistic tomfoolery involving subsets of the SQL grammar
• Helping me obtain a TV with which to resume my FPS habit

Greetings from sunny (and rather chilly) Medford, MA. I’ve been operating out of here since Saturday, and steadily moving things in for the past week; but it really wasn’t home until the basic amenities (bed, dish drainer, toiletries, Internet) were secured. So I breathed a sigh of relief tonight at 9 when Jeff (the landlord, who lives in the flat above ours) was able to remember his password and let us onto the Wi-Fi.

I’ve been a rather shocking 2-1/2 days without e-mail. This sort of thing has been known to drive my kind to desperation, as when I altered my plans last night to include dinner at Maker House, so I could write down directions to today’s interviews (if I get either of those jobs I owe you big time, Mel ). Fortunately, I don’t think my performance was too badly hurt by the fact that I was running blind, and being in the middle of a move is, if nothing else, a good conversation starter with managers. I apologize if my sudden absence caused all y’all any concern (when I’m offline that long it’s probably time to call search and rescue). For me, the ordeal was only marginally less consequential than that of securing toiletries.

As for the current state of things–Ginneh and I are now both moved “in”, in that our boxes are in our respective rooms, and the kitchenware and non-perishables have been haphazardly installed in the kitchen. Ginneh is spending tonight and tomorrow with her folks at some middle-of-nowhere resort in NH, which is just as well because she still needs a bed. In the meantime, Ginneh’s classmate Yong-min and I are holding down the fort and setting up shop at 133 Brooks St; fortifying the limited set of perishable foodstuffs and cooking something edible; and if there’s time, coming up with a catchy name for the place.

Branding is crucial, I think. If you can just remember “Pika”, or “Maker House”, or “Beef & Beer”, odds are good somebody is going to know the address and so forth. I’m thinking something music related, given that our equipment dominates the living room at present.

Location-wise, having driven around the area for a few days now, I’m confident that our choice was a sound one, although Medford-Somerville has a painful learning curve. Today’s interviews were respectively about 30 and 45 minutes’ drive, and I’m sure the latter can be cut with a better route. Porter Square and downtown Everett are both 10-15 minutes (I sense lots of noodles in my future). In the broader sense, this also means we’re within poking range of something like 10% of all Olin graduates, which is pretty wonderful.