I enjoy that they found the most blank-faced looking gentleman for the banner of the email informing me that my federal loans are going into repayment.

I remember going to the polls with my Grandfather as a kid. We’d get in the car, drive down to Halifax  Elementary School, and wait in line. They usually were never very long; Halifax is a town of about 8,000, and not enough people get out and actually do vote. There was only one polling place too — so if you didn’t know what precinct you were in, well, you just picked a precinct and if you were wrong one you got in the other line. Which, wasn’t a big deal, because… well I just said why.

(Later on while I was in college, I’d end up working at Town Hall in Halifax. Marcia Cole, the Town Clerk would always tell me about how she couldn’t believe I was voting, because she remembered me as a little kid. But, this story isn’t about that.)

Anyways, Gramps would fill in the bubbles, put his ballot in that privacy sleeve, and i’d get to put it into the machine. I’d get a lollipop or something, and we’d walk out of the gym and go back home.

I’ll never forget when my curiosity got the better of me, and I asked:

Me: “Who did you vote for, Gramps?”
Gramps: “Well… I don’t tell people who I vote for.”
Me: “Why not”
Gramps: “Because it’s none of their business. And when you grow up and get to vote, you don’t have to tell anyone who you voted for. That’s the best thing about voting.”

I felt dissatisfied, but I don’t remember asking anything else. I imagine he probably followed up with something like “I know it’s hard to understand now, and I know you hate hearing that, but it’ll make sense later in life.” At least, that seems like something gramps would say.

That always stuck with me. I don’t imagine it’ll ever unstick, unless maybe I get Alzheimer’s. Here’s hoping I don’t.

It’s frustrating to me when people ask “Who did you vote for” — generally, I explain to them how I feel about disclosing. Nothing is as agitating as someone following that with “Oh, well you must have voted for <other candidate> if you’re not telling me!” This happened to me in the presidential election, and today I wanted to clock someone for the way they handled it at a lunch discussion.

Your vote is your vote. Disclose if you choose, but in my eyes it’s rude to ask someone else to do so.

Mr. Bucket was a children’s game from my childhood in which the goal was to get all the balls in Mr. Bucket’s top. The commercial goes something like this. During my time as an orientation assistant, we decided to make up radio names that sounded normal, but could have questionable overtones. Mr. Bucket came to mind. I’ve also used it as an online persona as well.

So, when I got this shirt for christmas, I was all kinds of amused.

When I saw that it came with a book I had to share it with the Internet. Merry Christmas!

A lot has happened in what would seem to be 6 months since my last post.

• My cat Mackenzie, ended up living in Halifax permanently with my grandfather.
• Sysadmins tend to get pegged as implementers and not creators. My senior capstone project for my four years at Wentworth was an automated VM provisioning system for private clouds, using the vSphere Perl API. At the time, I couldn’t find a comparable product, but it turns out this product named Eucalyptus does that in a way more stable way than what I wrote
• Oh, which reminds, me: I graduated college. You can read my commencement address, if you like. The Institute also interviewed me. A friend of mine recorded it and I put it on YouTube. I’m a little bit proud of all of this, still.
• I moved to Medford. Medford is good.
• I went to Paris and took a lot of pictures. A Canon 40D with a 16-35 2.8 was my best friend.
• I started full-time at MIT.
• I attended LISA ‘09. It was good. I think one of the more fun aspects of conferences involve matching names to faces.
• I got a cat. Her name is Abby and she rocks.

I’d like to get writing more often, so heres hoping to more posts on this blog thing here.

I’m playing with the idea of writing a commencement speech for my August commencement. And, watching those of people with way more life experience than myself isn’t exactly helping. I know a concept will hit me at the oddest moment; I just need to be paying attention for it. But, this concept needs to hit me soon — the application is due 10 July.

Steve Jobs gave the commencement address at Stanford in 2005 (link). One thing I particularly liked about what he had to say at around 12:31 was the following:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Another one of my favorites, from Wayne Coyne (lead singer of The Flaming Lips) (link, 4:50)

“Learn what is the true essence of what you love about life. And if you can, and you’re able to, do what you love to do. For if through your imagination you can see your life as an epic great adventure, then from each sunrise to each sunset we can be turning another page in the bible of our own lives… telling the greatest story that has ever been told, and living the greatest life that has ever been lived.”

This is exactly what I feel and the message I want to convey. How can it be said any better? What a pickle.