Lorem Ipsum

Been reading lots of submissions, of course (we got over 90 last week, and nearly as many this week), and doing various editing-related stuff. And hanging out with Kam, and looking at all the cool new toys released by Apple on Tuesday, and thinking about buying all sorts of gadgets (Tungsten T3 or Treo 650?), and writing email to an old friend I've been mostly out of touch with for a while, and continuing a very nice but very distracting series of email exchanges with a certain distracting other old friend who shall for the time being remain nameless here (hi!). Oh, and received an invitation to a writing workshop; not sure yet whether I want to spend a week of vacation time on it, but I was delighted to be asked and may well attend.

Have also been reading published books, but see next entry for that. And watching the first two episodes of this season of Alias, which were rather disappointing imo—the writers clearly decided it was time to go back to the way things were in season 1, so they tried to recreate it, but they seem to have fallen somewhat further into formula than they already had. But the show's had two- to three-episode weak periods before, so I'll give it another couple episodes before giving up on it. And I was very pleased to see Angela Bassett guest-starring in the two-hour season opener.

This week at work hasn't been so good; mostly nothing bad, just having a hard time focusing. And had a long and frustrating talk with my manager on Thursday, in which his advice in the end pretty much boiled down to "You'll be happier if you can just get over it and not think about the things that are bothering you." (I'm not really being fair; it was more nuanced than that, and it may even have been good advice under the circumstances. But it was still frustrating.)

Immediately after that, in a bad mood, I went to lunch in the near-deserted cafeteria and sat down to eat and read at a table by myself. About 30 seconds later, a guy I'd never seen before came up and said, "Mind if I join you?" I wasn't really paying attention, so I half-assumed that he couldn't find any other open seats to sit in, so I said, "Sure, go ahead." And then he sat down and started eating and then I realized that there were hundreds of open seats and that he had chosen my table because he wanted to socialize. And socializing with a random stranger—never one of my favorite activities—was just about at the very bottom of my list of things I wanted to do right then. So I'm afraid I was rude to him. I just sat and kept reading. He asked if I had an ebook reader on my Palm, and I said yes, and he asked what I was reading and I said it was a science fiction magazine, and he asked what? and I repeated it, and that was that. I went back to reading, he sat there uncomfortably. A minute or so later he started turning toward the lively conversation at the next table, and eventually he got up and went over and joined them, and after another minute or two of not being able to focus on the story I was reading because I was kicking myself for handling things badly, I got up and fled with the rest of my lunch.

I told an extrovert co-worker about that on Friday, and she said that after I figured out what was going on, I should've said something like (paraphrasing), "I'm sorry, I just realized you were looking for company; I'm afraid I'm in a bad mood and just wanting to sit here and read, so you're welcome to stay but I won't be very good company." She was right; it would've been awkward and embarrassing, but less awkward and embarrassing than what I actually did, and a lot less rude. Oh, well.

She also said, "Maybe he thought you were cute." I allowed as how I didn't think that was what was going on, but noted that if I'd thought he was cuter I might've been more social. But that's probably not true; I'd probably have been even more tongue-tied.

(I should note that other aspects of the week at work were much better. I went to a meeting run by a project manager who, despite having started at the company more recently than I, is thoroughly organized and on top of things and keeps everything running smoothly; that was really nice. One of the few times I've felt a sense of relief on arriving at a meeting. And I keep meeting other random employees who are friendly and interesting and cute and helpful and just generally nice, which always makes me happy even if their extroversion is occasionally a little intimidating. So there are definitely plenty of good things.)

. . . I keep wanting to write about work here, but keep reminding myself that when you work for one of the highest-profile companies in the world, it's probably a good idea to be as circumspect as possible in making public comments about it. Suffice it to say that I'm not as enamored of the company as pretty much everyone else who works there is, but I'm gonna stick around a while longer and see whether things grow to be more to my liking, and/or whether I become happier with things as they are.

(I think part of the problem for me is that most of the people I encounter there are extroverts; it's probably the highest concentration of extrovert geeks I've ever seen. I wish I could point some of them to "Caring for Your Introvert." (Thanks, Jason!) An excellent article, though the "introverts are better than extroverts" stuff made me roll my eyes a little.)

Oh, here's one thing I can say about the company: it's remarkably racially/culturally diverse, at least for a computer company in my experience. I was at a meeting a few weeks back in which, in a room of about 10 people, there were only two white men (including me), and the other one had a thick enough accent to make me think he was probably an immigrant. Cool, and unusual in my experience. Of course, I've also been at meetings that were almost entirely white American males. And the tech writers are almost all white and native English speakers, as is usual at computer companies. But I see a much wider array of skin colors in the hallways than I'm used to.