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[...] My friends are all either married, boring, and depressed; single, bored, and depressed; or moved out of town to avoid boredom and depression. And some of them have bought houses, which has to be kiss of death, personality wise. When someone tells you they've just bought a house, they might as well tell you they no longer have a personality. You can immediately assume so many things: that they're locked into jobs they hate; that they're broke; that they spend every night watching videos; that they're fifteen pounds overweight; that they no longer listen to new ideas. It's profoundly depressing. And the worst part of it is that people in their houses don't even like where they're living. What few happy moments they possess are those gleaned from dreams of upgrading.
It is a feeling that our emotions, while wonderful, are transpiring in a vacuum, and I think it boils down to the fact that we're middle class.
You see, when you're middle class, you have to live with the fact that history will ignore you. You have to live with the fact that history can never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you. It is the price that is paid for day-to-day comfort and silence. And because of this price, all happinesses are sterile; all sadnesses go unpitied.
And any small moments of intense, flaring beauty such as this morning's will be utterly forgotten, dissolved by time like a super-8 film left out in the rain, without sound, and quickly replaced by thousands of silently growing trees.
"Just don't leave me behind. That's all. I know — it looks as if I enjoy what's going on with my life and everything, but listen, my heart's only half in it. You give my friends and me a bum rap, but I'd give all of this up in a flash if someone had an even remotely plausible alternative."
"Tyler, stop."
"I just get so sick of being jealous of everything, Andy—" There's no stopping the boy. "—And it scares me that I don't see a future. And I don't understand this reflex of mine to be such a smartass about everything. It really scares me. I may not look like I'm paying any attention to anything, Andy, but I am. But I can't allow myself to show it. And I don't know why."
Andy talking with his younger brother, whom he thinks of as a carefree yuppie-in-training
Virgin Runway: A travel destination chosen in the hopes that no one else has chosen it.
Native Aping: Pretending to be a native when visiting a foreign destination.
Expatriate Solipsism: When arriving in a foreign travel destination one had hoped was undiscovered, only to find many people just like oneself: the peeved refusal to talk to said people because they have ruined one's elitist travel fantasy.
Finally, at about 2:30A.M., Todd and I got concerned about Michael’s not eating, so we drove to the 24-hour Safeway in Redmond. We went shopping for “flat” foods to slip underneath Michael’s door.
[...]
Michael’s office lights were on, but once again, when we knocked, he wouldn’t answer his door. We heard his keyboard chatter, so we figured he was still alive. The situation really begged a discussion of Turing logic—could we have discerned that the entity behind the door was indeed even human? We slid Kraft singles, Premium Plus crackers, Pop-Tarts, grape leather, and Freezie-Pops in to him.
this kills me
Susan’s stock vests later this week, and she’s going to have a vesting party. And then she’s going to quit. Larger social forces are at work, threatening to dissolve our group house.
i guess it's a real thing lol
Susan taped laser-printed notes on all of our bedroom doors reminding us about the vesting party this Thursday (“Vest Fest ‘93”), which was a subliminal hint to us to clean up the place. Most of us work in Building Seven; shipping hell has brought a severe breakdown in cleanup codes.
Abe is sort of like the household Monopoly-game banker. He collects our monthly checks for the landlord, $235 apiece. The man has millions and he rents! He’s been at the group house since 1984, when he was hired fresh out of MIT. (The rest of us have been here, on average about eight months apiece.) After ten years of writing code, Abe so far shows no signs of getting a life. He seems happy to be reaching the age of 30 in just four months with nothing to his name but a variety of neat-o consumer electronics and boxes of Costco products purchased in rash moments of Costco-scale madness (“Ten thousand straws! Just think of it—only $10 and I’ll never need to buy straws ever again!”) These products line the walls of his room, giving it the feel of an air-raid shelter.
Bonus detail: There are dried-out patches of sneeze spray all over Abe’s monitors. You’d think he could afford 24 bottles of Windex.
lol
Todd works as a tester with me. He’s really young—22—the way Microsoft employees all used to be. His interest is entirely in girls, bug testing, his Supra, and his body, which he buffs religiously at the Pro Club gym and feeds with peanut butter quesadillas, bananas, and protein drinks.
Todd is historically empty. He neither knows nor cares about the past. He reads Car and Driver and fields three phone calls a week from his parents who believe that computers are “the Devil’s voice box,” and who try to persuade him to return home to Port Angeles and speak with the youth pastor.
'historically empty' - not the most potent phrasing but i am intrigued by what it's gesturing towards
They’re also the first generation of Microsoft employees faced with reduced stock options and, for that matter, plateauing stock prices. I guess that makes them mere employees, just like at any other company. Bug Barbecue and I were wondering last week what’s going to happen when this new crop of workers reaches its inevitable Seven-Year Programmer’s Burnout. At the end of it they won’t have two million dollars to move to Hilo and start up a bait shop with, the way the Microsoft old-timers did. Not everyone can move into management.
good remidner to think about employees in terms of generations