Workmares

Have you ever had a workmare?  I used to get them all the time.  Mostly while I was still in school.  Nowadays, not so much.  I think it's because when you're a student, you spend all day in school, and then all evening you do homework, so it stands to reason that you go to sleep and dream about school all night.

My recurring school-based workmare was that I was registered in a class that I didn't attend all year, and then I found out that the final exam was the next day.  Usually, the class was held in some strange location, like an empty swimming pool.  I've spoken with Matthew and he's had similar dreams - must have something to do with either A) being in Engineering or B) being spectacularly smart.

Funny aside - my workmare came true once.  In second or third year, I was in this ridiculous class - CMPUT 114 - Algorithms.  Wow, it was terrible.  The CS faculty decided that Modula-2 would be the language to use in the class.  P.S.  Modula-2?  That was written in 1977.  Most of the class was devoted to sorting algorithms.  That's why I like writing in a third-generation language.  I can say ArrayList.Sort() and it does a quicksort for me.  I don't have to first write it myself.  But I digress.  I happened to be on campus during exam week and thought that I would double-check my exams on those big green pieces of paper that they used to hang all over campus (do they still do that?  Probably not - it's not 1977 anymore).  Turns out that my exam for CMPUT 114 started in 10 minutes.  On the other side of campus.

So, I ran to the car, peeled out, drove around to the other side of campus, parked at Humanities and tore in to the building.  I borrowed a pen using the most panicky sentence ever uttered by man and made it in to the exam room shortly before the door-closing deadline.  Let me tell you, I tore through that exam.  (and P.S., what's worse than a programming exam where you have to write code.  And by write, I mean ACTUALLY write, longhand).  I was the last to arrive and the first to leave.  Awesome.  I managed to get a 4 in that class, totally based on my exam mark, since I didn't do so well on the assignments (see Modula-2).

But I bring up workmares because I had one the other night.  I haven't had one in a long time.  This is because when I leave from work, I spend the bus ride home thinking about work, then push it all out of my head until the next morning.  Work is work.  Home is home.  Which reminds me - I often hear people say how they want to be students again.  NO WAY.  Do you remember how time-consuming it is?  I like to be done my day at 5 (well, maybe 3 some days) and then not have to spend the evening doing more work.  Of course, I can't really say to my clients "well, I got most of the project working, I'll just take 80% instead of 100% on this one).

Back to the workmare - in this one, I was growing tulips.  How does this relate to my job?  Well, my tulip garden was planted according to customer specifications.  There was a review done to ensure that the tulips were growing at exactly the right rate as specified in the user stories.  Yes sir, this tulip is supposed to be exactly 1 inch tall at this time.  I think this one came after a day of sprint planning (read: soul-sucking) meetings.

I'd much rather spend my time dreaming of new musicals...

Gossip, the musical

Last night I had a crazy dream.  This in itself is not a strange occurrence - I usually have a crazy dream every night - maybe I'll write about lucid dreaming sometime in the future.

This dream was crazier than most though.  In my dream, I was composing a musical.  Here's the general plot line.  If Andrew Lloyd Webber is reading this, feel free to use my idea, as long as the royalty cheques start flooding in.

The musical starts with a group of students at an arts school.  Everyone has big Hollywood dreams.  Cue a big musical number (in which I was designing sets, writing lyrics, choreographing dances, etc).  All of the students but one realize that they aren't going to make it big, and decide to go to journalism school instead.  (That's a logic progression, right?  Stupid subconscious).

Anyway, in my brain, this was an awesome musical number... but then I remember thinking to myself (my conscious speaking to my subconscious) that the staging was less Jubilee and more Jubilations - whatever - those shows still make money for the author.

Our protagonist, Jack Bramble, becomes a gossip columnist, mostly because he was smitten with a former classmate and now Hollywood ingénue, who shall remain nameless because I didn't dream up a good name.  The story was filled with unrequited love and jealousy on the part of Jack, who used his gossip column to denigrate would-be suitors of the young starlet.  There may have been paparazzi-induced murders as well.  (Think Sweeny Todd).

Anyway, the second act of the play turns things on its head, as Jack becomes an advice columnist, like Dear Abby.  The young starlet, becoming jaded with the Hollywood lifestyle, writes for advice on how to deal with the hollowness of Hollywood relationships.  Jack responds, drawing from his own hollow experience, without realizing that he's writing to the source of his sorrow.

Unfortunately, I woke up before the ending, so I didn't get to find out if this was a tragic love story like Romeo and Juliet, or more of a comedy, like Clueless.

Maybe tonight, I'll get the rest of the story.  I'll be sure to take my blank music sheets with me to bed.