T w e n t y S i d e d

It’s 1993, and I’m working at Taco Bell. Working here is miserable, but very instructive as a low-level view of corporate dysfunction.

I’m 22 now. My life isn’t irrevocably ruined by this fast-food detour, but I can feel the clock ticking. The longer I’m stuck in this rut, the harder it will be to break out. I need to find some kind of technology job soon. This is hampered somewhat by the fact that I’m afraid to look for work. I like thinking that I’ll be able to get some kind of job doing what I love. The only thing that can kill that dream is to attempt to do so and fail. I’m not really aware of this dysfunction right now; it’s just a little neurosis that eats away at me from time to time and perpetuates foolish behavior.

My friend David is going to school at Nyack. Patrick has graduated high school and gone off to the Navy. I’ve made new friends at Taco Bell but we’re all friends of proximity, not common interests. I’m feeling a little isolated these days.

Heather is now in her second year of college. She’s double-majoring in elementary and special education, with an art minor. In those rare moments away from school, she’s working as a nanny. It’s keeping her busy. We’re still dating, but our relationship is an on-again, off-again thing. Taking the long view, this is probably for the best. I’m not a very nice person to be around these days, and our distance saves her from the brunt of my bitterness, self-absorption, and jackassery. The friends around me are not so lucky, and I end up treating a lot of people very poorly.

I’ve been made a shift manager. I’m allowed to be in charge of the store and I’m privy to the inner workings of the business in a way that wasn’t possible as a lowly mook at McDonald’s. I find I’m very interested in the problem of how the weekly work schedule is made.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Autoblography Part 34: The Systems Analyst”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Heather picks me up in her parent’s car. This is our first date.

I’ve never seen her wearing anything besides her McDonald’s uniform. She shows up wearing an ankle-length skirt with a flower print and a jean jacket. I have this strange moment where I realize we are the products of two entirely different teenage cultures. If we’d gone to school together, we might never have associated with each other. By meeting in a work environment where we wore uniforms, we didn’t drag all of our high school ideas about identity into our relationship. Until now.

“That’s an… interesting outfit,” I blurt out. I know this this incredibly wrong the moment the words escape my mouth, and none of my hastily appended comments do anything to blunt the fact that I was just a jerk to her. This is on top of the fact that I was already kind of a jerk when she asked me to prom. She’s an exceptionally good sport about it.

We go see Medicine Man, starring Sean Connery. This is a movie with A Message, and the message gets in the way of the storytelling. I really like the characters, but the ham-fisted plot repeatedly tests my patience. As it grinds through the sad parts of the movie, I look over to see if Heather is as annoyed as I am. She is not. In fact, she is a little teary-eyed.

This date could be going better, but it could also be going worse. In fact, it’s about to.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Autoblography Part 33: Meet Cute”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I have a lot of time on my hands these days. I’m still teaching myself C. It’s hard because I don’t have anything but the reference books. This would be a lot easier if I had some way of looking at some example programs. The library doesn’t have any books to help me. I don’t know if the book store has any books that might help, because I don’t think to check.

Still, I’m making progress on my own and figuring out this 3D rendering business. I’ve written a program that is pretty much identical to the “3D Flower Box” screensaver that Microsoft will give away with Windows 98, six years from now. The only real difference is that my program draws the stuff in wireframe, because otherwise it would be too slow on this 7Mhz machine.

It’s Sunday, and I’m enjoying a rare weekend off. Patrick and I are really into this game called Starflight 2. The game is simply gigantic. It fills up two 360k floppy disks. I’ve encountered two-disk games before, but most of those were titles that were just a little too big for one disk. Starflight 2 completely fills both disks. To start a new game, you make a complete copy of both disks. This copy is your entire save game. Amazing. If this trend continues, then someday we’ll end up with videogames that take up a whole megabyte.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Autoblography Part 32: Flipping Burgers”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.