This entry was added on the 12th. But I wrote it on the correct date. I just didn’t post it until I had all the previous entries in.
Finally done. At 5:00 today we finished testing and sent the project off to whatever circle of hell it is destined for. I feel less tired, and definitely less stressed.
There was a free lunch at work today because there was a webcast from the head office in Costa Mesa. The announcement was that they were trying to lower R&D costs to be more in-line with the rest of the industry. They were going to do that by moving some operations offshore. The entire time they were saying they didn’t want to, but all the other companies were. (Do we want to be like to cool companies.) They have reiterated that they consider Edmonton offshore. Apparently this city doesn’t pay their programmers much.
I went to improv class today. Everyone was a little mellow, so we weren’t doing zany antics. Instead we were doing characters. First they had everyone tell a story about themselves, interesting or not. Then everyone else analyzed how the person told the story. Then the story was told again, but with suggestions as to how to make it look like a different person had told it.
For my turn, I told them what my Sunday mornings are usually like. They pointed out that I talked with a higher pitched voice when I was telling it. And that I was very “architecturally strict” in my posture. So the next time I had to lower my voice and be in a far more relaxed position. It ended up looking like I actually had just done a run. I was complemented on the severity of the change. I wish I could take credit for it all, but the long breath I took that they liked was actually just me trying to remember what came next in the story.
For the second part of the class, we had to come up with a character and be interviewed as them. I made a character I thought would be very different from me; someone with confidence. Curtis was a bartender at a top 40 bar. I had a few affectations that were good (checking myself in the mirror, being friendly with the girls), but I could have done the posture better. And my hands were doing their own thing. But that is why I’m taking the course, to learn how to be better.
Jenny, another student, said she could use more confidence too. This was odd because she always seemed like a confident person to me. I’d like to get to know her better, but as we have covered, I don’t have the confidence.
One girl, Alice, had a very good character. A teenager who was dating an older boy. What was interesting was that she was chipper with most of the questions. But when she got one that was too probing she suddenly became more intense, ready to snap. Then just as quickly, she went back to cheerful.