23 July 1998: North by Northwest

Thursday, 23 July 1998:

North by Northwest

Tonight I met up with Karen to see Hitchcock's North by Northwest. What a terrific movie! The script is delightful, the variety of locales as well as some of the cinematography is neat, and as a story the whole thing holds together remarkably well. I definitely prefer Cary Grant as a leading man over James Stewart, and Eva Marie Saint is definitely a babe. Seeing the extremely young Martin Landau is also a kick.

"What does the 'O' stand for?" "Nothing." Bwah-hah-hah!

Not a lot has really happened otherwise. Work has really dragged this week, as I haven't had a lot of purpose or direction. Some days I just wish they'd hand me a project and say, "Here. Build this." Because that's basically what I want to do in my job. But it seems like there are so many obstacles these days to actually being able to sit down and program: Specifications to be written (even for bug fixes!), specifications to be reviewed and re-written, programmer testing to do, meetings to attend, support to give to the newer programmers, ideas being vetoed, and so forth and so on. What a drag.

I realize that much of this is necessary overhead. For instance, you don't want to dive into a project half-cocked without understanding it. But it seems like it should be possible to streamline things to allow programmers to spend more time programming.

Well, at least it's cooled off considerably, and pretty much all the humidity has cleared out. Should make for a great bike ride tomorrow!

And yesterday was Comic Book Night. The Avengers/Squadron Supreme Annual was quite entertaining, if you enjoy superhero comics. Also out was Dork Tower #1 (yes, "Dork", not "Dark"), by local artist John Kovalic. It's a collection of his gaming strips, and is very witty in some places. It also features his caricatures of a couple of people who work at a local gaming store, which are additionally funny since I know them (and game with one of them on occasion).

Ugh. I really need a weekend right about now. I want to go see Gone With The Wind at the theater, but since I'm going to a team picnic on Saturday, I might put it off 'til next week so I can have Sunday to myself.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)