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Adventures with Gravity

September 28, 2004 - 12am

I’m lucky not to be dead or hospitalized tonight.

I was on a ladder in the stockroom, trying to get a case of shoes from a shelf fifteen feet off the ground. The ladder was positioned in a tight spot: to one side was the shelving, and to the other was the inclined dock where trucks back in to be unloaded. There’s a metal fence between the side of the dock and the walkway. There were only inches to spare on either side of the ladder.

As I turned to walk down the ladder, carrying the large box, the ladder shifted underneath me and I fell headfirst into the dock. As I fell, I managed to grab ahold of the fence. My body weight ripped my fingers from the fencing, but the momentary anchor flipped me head-up again. I landed flat on my ass on a roll of carpeting. Stunned, I looked up the ten feet to where I had been standing seconds ago.

Surveying my injuries, I found that my only wounds were a sore shoulder, a large hard bruise on my left pinky, an abrasion to the back of my right hand, and rug burn on my back where I had slid off the roll of carpeting.

I can’t really claim that grabbing the fence was intentional. I think that primal behavior took over as I fell. The only thing I really remember about the fall is the topsy-turvy feeling you get when you flip head over heels and pain from my hand as it was ripped from the fence.

It could be have been far, far worse. If any number of things had been different, I’d be in a lot of pain right now. If I hadn’t grabbed the fence, I would have landed head or face first. If the carpeting hadn’t been there, I could have broken my tailbone. There were rolling garment racks within two feet on either side of where I landed: if I had fallen on those, I’m sure I’d be in exquisite pain right now. If the ladder had fallen on me, it probably would have cracked my head open.

I count myself extraordinarily lucky. To get up and walk away from a ten-foot headfirst fall onto concrete is a feat most people can’t claim.

A New Low

September 27, 2004 - 12am

Well, today was a new personal low for me.

The day started as usual: lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, dreading the interminable day of work that awaited me. With a heavy sigh, I crawled out of bed and took my morning shower. As I started my car to go to work, things were actually looking up. My car, which had been lurching and jerking like a Parkinson’s victim, started and ran without a hitch.

Yeah, things weren’t so bad until I got to work. Unfortunately, around 10:30, I got a call from the asset protection woman. She had been sitting in the camera room, watching the solitary customer in the store when she noticed that he had an erection and was playing with himself through his shorts. Wait: it gets better. He was in the little girls clothing section.

Well, that’s just great. And you want me to what about this, exactly? Wander by so he knows there are employees around? Yeah, thanks for calling me. Great. No, I’ll do it. Yeah, I see him. Hang on. I’ll call you back.

By the time I got off the phone, he had wandered into shoes and his erection had subsided. I’m fairly sure he heard me say “I see him,” and was less than conversational. He left, and I went back to stocking shoes.

Later that day, as I was still stocking shoes, I heard a familiar voice. “Marc?” I turned to look, and there was Errin Schlapbach, a girl I’d known from the time I was five until I was eighteen. The first girl I ever kissed on the cheek, and “married” on the playground when we were in first grade. We went all the way through school together and had no desire to stay in contact with each other in the following years.

Fuck. I knew that eventually this would happen. Someone that I knew from high school would walk into Gordman’s, and I’d have to admit that I’m working a menial, stupid job after earning a bachelor’s degree. I was hoping that at least I’d be carrying a clipboard and looking important when it happened.

We had a brief, awkward conversation, and then she walked off. I’m pretty sure that she didn’t believe me when I said that I’m starting a web design business. I’m not sure that I would have believed me. Maybe I’ll see her in another five years. I hope not. This encounter was humiliating enough. I think I’d have been less humiliated if I somehow hadn’t been wearing pants.

Just before I left for the day, I heard another interesting tidbit from the asset protection woman… the sick fuck from earlier that day had actually picked up a job application.

On the short ride home, I took off from a stoplight and heard a BOOM! followed by the sound of something metal grinding against concrete. Realistically, I knew damn well that it was my car, yet I looked around for a likely scapegoat. With a shitty looking Mazda next to me, I assumed that it had backfired while accelerating, and didn’t give it another thought. When the Mazda turned off and a carload of people passing me appeared to be laughing and staring, I accepted that the noise was coming from my car. Fine. Screw it. I’m just going to finish the drive home and deal with it then.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get that far. Thanks to a sudden bump, my car was now one muffler lighter. I looked back in time to see cars swerving to avoid hitting it. I kept right on driving.

Once I got home, I called my dad. How much for a new muffler, Dad? Oh, I don’t know. Probably about fifty bucks for a crappy one. Why a crappy one? Because a quality one would outlast the rest of the car. Great. Thanks.

A few minutes later, Pedro asked me plaintively, “Do you have any food? I don’t have any, and I don’t have any money.” Yes, fine. We’ll figure something out. Dinner eventually consisted of Stovetop stuffing mixed with corn and hot dog chunks, all prepared in the microwave. The stove has been broken for a week, and the maintenance guy seems unconcerned about fixing it. I doused the hot dog chunks with habanero sauce in an attempt to make them more palatable. It worked, to an extent. The stuffing wasn’t bad.

As we “cooked,” Jason had turned to me and said, “No one must know of the hot dog/corn/stuffing experiment. I don’t want people to know that I’m this poor.”

Yeah, well, we are that poor. And I have no problems with burdening others with that knowledge.

And now, as I sit here slowly drinking a beer because there’s nothing else to drink in the place, I heave another deep sigh. Because tomorrow I have to get up and do it all over again.

I Hate Javascript So Much

September 5, 2004 - 12am

I’m getting very frustrated and angry.

For those of you who don’t know, JavaScript is a programming language used in web pages. It can do little things like move the cursor to the next text field after you type in your credit card number, or it can do things like open new windows based on a user’s input.

Or it can be a miserable pain in the ass that won’t work no matter what you try to do.

For some reason, no one can agree on how to implement JavaScript in their browsers. Things that work fine in Internet Explorer won’t work at all in Navigator, and vice versa.

Most of the time, the browser will give me a message to the effect of: “Something is sorta wrong here, but I won’t tell you what it is. Have fun spending the next half hour searching for a missing comma, sucker.” The really fun ones don’t have messages. The browser just sits there, doing nothing and explaining nothing.

I’ve run into two of these so far today while trying to finish up my cousin’s website, and I have no idea what to do about them. A lot of the times, there isn’t anything wrong with my code! The browsers themselves are the problem! I don’t know that there is any other way to go about what I’m doing.

At this point, all I can do is stare at the damn screen, wonder what the hell is wrong, and attempt to squelch the urge to chug a bottle of whiskey.

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