First, when you sign up, you get to go to a training course a month or two before the election. There you get a crash course in being an official. It’s a lot of information coming at you. In the end, I took away two things. First, a packet of information I read a few times before the big day, and second, “When in doubt, ask the Chief.” The latter dictum ended up being the credo for Election Day.

Speaking of, soon enough comes Election Day.  In Fairfax County, the polls are open from 6 am to 7 pm.  Since we have to set up the machines and get ready, you report to the polling place at 5 am. Which means waking up around 3:30, 4…early even for this early bird. Also, once you are at the polling place and sworn in, you cannot leave. Period. So that means you bring food and have a long day ahead of you.

So, on Tuesday, I got to the middle school I’d be working at at 4:45 am and met our Chief. The Chief, in what I’m sure will amaze the no one reading this, is the head official and the “boss” for all intents and purposes. After a few minutes, the custodian lets us into the building and we get to work. Like in many polling places at schools, we are in the library and when we get there, I find that the room has already been rearranged by the Chief and Assistant Chief. Nice, no table hauling.

But once in the room, the day begins. First, the oath, before we can touch any election machines or ballots or anything, we are sworn in as election officers. We also get a sweet button! (Sadly, it’s returned at the end of the day…dang it.) After being sworn in, I learn I’m helping the Asst Chief with setting up and opening the WinVote touchscreen machines.  This involved a long procedure/checklist. Everything was sealed up and all seals were accounted for and recorded. Then after doing the origami-like manipulations to set them up, we then had to make sure all the machines started at zero.  This involved each machine (there were three) printing out a long tape that assures that every ballot issue and race has zero votes before the day begins.

Soon poll opening time approached.  In the elections there are essentially three jobs to do. The first I’d be doing is working with the WinVote machine. I was one of the people directing voters to either the machines or to the booths where they could fill out a paper ballot (both are options in Fairfax). If they choose electronic–something about 90% of voters did–then I was one of two people who would take a smartcard and activate the machine.

Once activated, most people have used the touchscreen machines before and power through the ballot (though not always quickly…some read the issues carefully for the first time there). A good portion though aren’t quite comfortable with the tech yet, and it was also my job to help where I could. Usually the Asst Chief who was helping did that and did it well. I helped a few times and was…less good at it.  The main problem is that, technically, I have to help the people without actually looking at their ballot; it is a secret ballot after all.

It was also at this point in the day that I was most frustrated. I worked the WinVote machines for about the first five hours.  There was a bit of a rush of voters when the polls opened, but since there were two of us working the machines then, it was manageable. Soon, though, the Asst Chief had to be called away. Usually this was when someone who couldn’t come in needed to vote which meant one of the machines had to go out to them in the car. (By the way, never knew this was possible…and it happened 4 or 5 times!) When this happened, or the AC was needed by others because the Chief was busy, well, it is not easy for one person to manage the voting of 90% of everyone coming in.

Gah.

But, I made it. Sure, I cursed my fellow officials at times for not leaping to help as fast as they could, but, eh. Besides, working the machines meant I got to experience the best part of voting from the other side: I gave out The Stickers!  Woo!

After 5 or so hours of this, the Chief decided it was a good time to switch up jobs. My next post was working the pollbooks. I was then one of the people that greets you and looks you up in the book to make sure you can vote. It turns out that the pollbooks are probably the most important part of the election. Why? Well, they are the record that shows how many voters came in to vote. When someone comes in, I’d say this person is voter 210 (in A-K) and then cross an X through the number.

At the end of the day, this must match the number of ballots cast. About once an hour (or more if more voters came) the Chief would come to the books to make sure that the count we had matched the ballot count on the machines and the ballot scanner. If they didn’t, his hair got a little whiter. Unfortunately, every so often it wouldn’t match. It took a while each time, but usually we’d track it down to either assigning a duplicate number or skipping one in the book that was X’d out. (Note: I must admit that during my 4 hours on the books, I didn’t mess up. Woo! I mainly thank the Official who showed me the technique she was using.)

It was also while working the polls that I put to use the credo “When in doubt, ask the Chief.” When someone’s name wasn’t in the book, I asked the Chief. When their address didn’t match their ID, I asked the Chief. When someone said they needed to help their relative translate the ballot, I asked the Chief. When a voter didn’t want to present ID, I asked the Chief.

As the day wore on, I moved to the final job, working the paper ballots and the optical scan machine. This was the least stressful job, mainly because there were fewer people choosing paper ballots. It was cool watching that scanner take the ballots. Shooop! And I got to give out The Stickers again!

Finally, 6:45 came around and the Chief announced “The polls will close in 15 minutes” and then at 7:00, boom!, polls closed. Everyone still in line at that point could vote, and so they did. When all the voters were done, the doors were locked and we then entered the counting phase. As I helped open the WinVote machines, I also helped close them. This involved printing out the results (multiple times) and extracting the wee USB drive with a backup record of the votes. These results were then combined with the paper ballots and the pollbooks consulted to make sure the number of voters equaled the number of ballots. And they did! When all was done, I had the fun job of calling in our precinct’s results to the County Election Board. So, if you saw the results for Fairfax County, my voice reported some of those.

After a bit more time rearranging the tables so the library was returned to library spec, we were able to leave…at 8:50 pm. That is indeed a 16-hour day. A long exhausting 16-hour day. But it was worth it because it was for voting!

Really, don’t read further if you value, uh, not being bored out of your skull, I guess.

Okay. Anyone still here needs a cure for insomnia, and I aim to please! Frankly, I just wanted to write. Write about myself, I guess, because sometimes I feel the need to do that. To vent. About the good and the bad and the middling in my life.

First off, it’s been about a year since I started my new job with SAIC at NASA Goddard. Much like all things in life, it’s been a combination of good and bad. Now, if I went off the last few weeks, it’d probably seem quite bad. My guess is is that at higher levels, things are getting near end dates or something, because the pressure on Matt? It has been being applied.

Hmm. I’m not too sure about that last verb tense, but it’s the combination that seems to work in my head. But maybe I’ve just watched too much Futurama with time travel and all. But I digress…

I’ve been working my…rear end off the last few weeks. Some days, the pressure gets to me, I admit it. I don’t think I’ve felt this pressured, this driven to complete work since the bad days of grad school.  I work 10-, 12-hour days, slump on home, and then can barely function and remember what I’ve done until I hit the bed and wake up the next day. I know, I know. I’m not the only person ever who has long, hard days at work. But it’s just been a bit constant for a while now.

Plus, I often feel afraid that I’m not doing well enough at my job. That the successes I feel I’ve achieved don’t live up to what expectations the bosses have for me. I report what I think is a stellar result, and I sometimes get this “yeah, yeah, now what” feeling back. Of course, that sort of is the purpose of a boss. They expect results because I’m paid for results and results are expected by higher-ups of them.

I…I just hope I am doing well. I make mistakes. Made a doozie this week. Handed off some code I thought was good, but in the end turns out I was breaking the Fortran standard. Well, maybe not the standard, but I was assuming something that a conservative reading of the standard would not. One compiler allowed for the lazy thinking I was doing, but another didn’t. Weirdly, the latter compiler sometimes worked, sometimes didn’t. I imagine the optimizer sometimes managed to code around the bug or something.

Wow. I am boring.

I know, I know. Complain complain complain. But you know what? On the whole, though, my job isn’t bad. I like the co-workers I’ve gotten to know. I find my work interesting. I’m learning new things about a subject, meteorology and modeling it,  I know little about. And even the things I know a little about, I’m challenging myself every day. While that’s often frustrating, if I’m able to fix something, learn something…I like that.

Now for the more maudlin portion of our evening: Matt’s personal life! And, BONUS!, this section will probably be shorter that the above. Why? Because my personal life is, well, nigh-non-existent.

First and foremost, I’m alone. No, not alone, I guess. I’m lonely. I have friends, dear friends, on the internet, but it seems as if I’m destined to lose the ones I form here in DC, in real life. I find some, but they seem to drift away. Perhaps I’m too invested in the friendship and thus too “into” it. Or maybe not enough and they think I think they’re not worth my time. I don’t know.  I try and be a good friend, a good person. I can only be me. I still go to bed every night alone, wake up alone, go through the day alone. Gets to you, you know?

As for the more-than-friends part of life. Think, hmm, Washington Generals. I’ve had a few dates in the last few months and each was a disaster on a bad-Hollywood-sitcom level. One I got stood up. One, I’m pretty sure, just used me for the dinner. Another, I think she was visibly disgusted by me. Or something…I dunno.

I know those reactions are my fault. I’m not that attractive, I’m not all that fun and interesting. And, I suppose, I should just give up. But, well, they thought at least enough of me to want to meet in person. I guess I suppose at least virtually, I’m not a bad guy.

And I like me, ya know?  And I know from past experience that at least one woman seemed to like me too, maybe even love me. Sure, I managed to screw everything up with Jay somehow, yeah, but, you know what, for a while there, things were good and I guess that glimpse of something better, that feeling of belonging to something greater than me, of things being just right, it hooked me. I was genuinely happy in those days. I want that back again.

So I soldier on. I get insta-rejected on OKCupid now and then and now and then (a lot, okay?), rejected in real life. But I try, try again thinking someone out there might see more of me than the surface.

What’s that adage about insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Guess I’m a bit insane when it comes to relationships, eh?

Ah well, I suppose that’s enough rambling for now. Guess I had to get some stuff off of my mind.

Onward and upward. Tomorrow’s another day. And all that jazz.

So, I said yes and was seated next to the apheresis machine and, after much whining and cowardice on the author’s part, I am now two red blood cell units down. Eep. All in all, not a bad experience for two reasons. One, I decided to use my right arm this time. Sure, it’s my dominant arm, so it’s annoying to be bandaged up right now, but it also has a beautiful vein.  The second reason was the amazing Ama (perhaps Amma?). She was my vampire today and she was patient with scaredy-cat Matt and just great all around. And, I got a cool sticker:

After that, did some errands, hit the library, and got some Ethiopian. Figured some lentils and collard greens would help restore some lost iron (which I need to do).

Of course, it didn’t help last time that I had a blood taker that was, well, not quite as good as one would hope. (I’m being *very* diplomatic.) That was also my first time doing double red blood cells. Not sure I’ll do that again.

Well, maybe if blood taker lady isn’t there.

No matter what, though, GIVE BLOOD EVERYONE!

I hope everyone likes them…because they are staying! (Read, pricey.)

For many moons, I’ve been a member of both the ACS (American Chemical Society) and APS (American Physical Society), the former for ten or more, the latter for a few.  As a theoretical chemist, having a membership to these societies was quite useful. You get a subscription to a very good “popular” magazine, Chemical and Engineering News and Physics Today, discounted registration at conferences, and, perhaps most importantly, access to the respective job banks.

All this, though, comes at a cost. When you are a grad student and recent postdoc, the membership cost isn’t too expensive and the benefits well outweigh the costs.  But once you are a “professional member” the costs double–I think–at least to $140 and $118 per annum.

Okay, that’s not bad, not great, but not horrible. *But*, I am no longer a practicing chemist/physicist. I’m a code monkey. A membership to IEEE or ACM would make more sense, really. Heck, I’m kind of attending SC09, the supercomputing conference, next weekend.

But, but, but. I am a chemist. I am a physicist (according to Feynman, no less). I still think of myself as such and I suppose a part of me thinks one day I might be a practicing chemist/physicist again.

I’m not sure what to do.

Okay, that’s redundant.

Sometimes, when I’m in my apartment…

…

…

…I make car noises as I walk around.

Vroooooom! as I move forward.

Vreeeewww! as I turn a corner.

Skreeeeee! as I stop.

Sometimes I sound like an F1 car, sometimes a Cup car, sometimes a World Rally Car.

Yup.

See what you are missing, ladies?!

Yours in you know you do it too,

Matt

Last night after getting home from seeing Zombieland with a friend (so fun, go see it now!), I check my email and see a message from someone I never expected to hear from again. Why? Well, she was the most recent of women from whom I received The Look. Thus, getting that message was surprising.

So, I start reading it and it’s like I’m in the middle of a conversation. Eventually, I realize that I wasn’t the “Matt” she’d meant to write. How did I realize that? Well, she talked about a “fat bore” she went out with a while back and how “at least I got a free meal out of it. ha ha.”

A-Yup. That’s me!

I sent her a note saying she had the wrong Matt (and how!). My only guess as to why she’d sent this to me-Matt and not real-recipient-Matt is that she’s using Gmail and so she started typing in “Matt” in the To: field and the autocomplete picked me first due to our previously having emailed each other. I know I’ve done that (though the message was a “Look at this link” sort of email).

You know, it kinda hurt last night getting that. Hearing someone’s unvarnished truth about yourself usually does. But, this morning, I’m more laughing about it. If nothing else, I can hope she’s learned the lesson of making sure autocomplete is giving you what you want. Hee.

ETA: In case you’re thinking it, it really is me she was talking about. She mentioned both the restaurant for the “free dinner” and the general date of the date as well. I’m pretty damn certain it’s me she is referring to.

This weekend is SPX, the famed Small Press Expo, where independent comic artists (and a few super-famous webcomickers) gather to show their wares.  As an admirer and consumer such art, I say: “Woo hoo!”

I am a bit concerned, though, about what Saturday morning will be like when I get there. No advanced tickets sales…eek.  I know from previous visits that SPX is not unpopular so my mind is filled with images of terror. Plus, I think a one-day is ten bucks, so I hope they bring a *lot* of tens because they’ll end the day will many, many twenties.

I’m also debating in my head on the best way to get there: Metro or car. By car, the trip is, oh, 30-40 minutes if there isn’t a big traffic incident. Plus, if I buy a lot of swag, I’ll be able to bring it home rather easily. Cons: parking, though I think I know a way to beat that, and, well, it is the Beltway. Traffic will happen as will asses in BMWs (always Beamers, always) weaving in and out of traffic that is already moving about 15 MPH over the speed limit.

Metro isn’t a bad choice either, though. SPX is held at the Marriott pretty much adjacent to the White Flint Metro station. Traveling by Metro isn’t as stressful as by car either, so, nice. But, but, but: the trip from my place in Alexandria to White Flint? Try, oh, 75 minutes. Yup. One end of the system to the other with a transfer in the middle.

I can’t quite decide yet which to do. The Metro option depends on where WMATA is doing their track work this weekend. If it’s on my route, that can add a good 30-40 minutes on that time, so that’ll dissuade me.

And now for the ennui portion of our post. I know what you are thinking, it’s a freaking trip to White Flint for a comic expo…ennui? Well, you see, I haven’t been up White Flint/Rockville way for many months. Part of that is because there hasn’t been a great need, but I’ll admit there is another reason. The fact is, the last time I headed up toward Rockville was during my happy days. Before the break-up.

See, back then, a trip up to Rockville was one where each mile traveled made me that much happier. I was either driving up to see her or drop her off which meant it was one extra mile sitting beside her. I never knew before then the joy that a bit of a drive could be. I miss that, you know. Miss her, miss those feelings, miss being happy like that.

After the end, I suppose I just didn’t have much motivation to make that trip again, by car or Metro. And, I suppose now I’m afraid that by either mode I’ll spend my time getting more and more depressing because, well, I am me.

I guess it is a good thing, though, to go to SPX. If nothing else, I’ll break that rather-ridiculous psychological barrier that, yeah, I know, shouldn’t be there.

Still, I hope that no matter what happens, I have and *you* have a great weekend.

Yes, this morning, as I was shaving with my (admittedly old) Braun shaver, that weird cutter bar thing in the middle of the foils decided that the best course of action was to grab onto some beard hairs. Too many hairs. At once.

This was…painful, shall we say. Apparently, when pain is greater than a stubbed toe, but less than a kidney stone, I swear. A lot. Voluminously.

After swearing and blinking away the tears the pain brought to my eyes, I groped around and finally groped for and found some scissors, I was able to extricate shaver from beard. At this point my beard was suddenly and severely lop-sided, so, after clearing out the shaver, the rest went away as well.

Au revoir, mon barbe!

ETA: As asked, a pic of the shavéd Matt: