Thank You for Spreading Your Disease
Hamid goes to pick up his wife, who is returning from a trip to Sweden, at the airport. She is sick. High fever, muscle aches, weakness, loss of appetite. He is happy she is home but worried about taking care of her and their two small children. Two days later, Hamid reports that he is sick. I insist he go home to rest and fight the bug. He flat out refuses. He tells me in no small terms that he fights sickness and doesn’t give in. I tell him he’s being stupid. Go home, rest, get better faster and, most importantly to me, don’t get anybody else sick! He doesn’t listen. The next day he makes it through his lunch shift but absolutely can’t make it through dinner. Faisal fills in for him. I’m relieved. He can’t get me sick when his germs aren’t floating around the restaurant. But the next night he and his armada of bacteria are back for another round of germ spreading. His bravado now gone, his face gaunt, his temperature too high, he tries to trudge through his job. Now it’s ridiculous. Would you want this walking germ factory handling your food? I go to the owner/manager/chef. Insist he go home. He can barely walk and you want him around your customers? Finally, a tiny beam of sunshine. He gets sent home.
Next night, he’s back again. Perhaps slightly less sick or trying to hide it? Later that night, Cesar, the dishwasher, goes home with a high fever and muscle aches. Victim number 1.
Finally, the next day is Sunday, the restaurant is closed. My strict hand washing regiment is so far working, it seems. I am still well. Monday arrives and Hamid returns. He looks better, but now his hacking cough follows him around. I stay as far away as possible, washing my hands often. Closing time. Count my checks. Go to find owner/chef/manager. He’s gone. Gone where? Gone home early, with a high fever and muscle aches. Victim number 2.
Skip to tonight, wed. Chef/owner/manager is back, still unwell. Making the food for the customers, small units of nasty sickness not doubt oozing from him. I try to stay away. Wash my hands. Deliver food. Wash my hands. Clear the table. Deliver more food. Wash my hands. Come home, feel a tingle in my throat. Start coughing. Fuck! Take a dose of Tylenol cough syrup. Pray I can fight it off early. And wonder:
Why do you come to work sick? Why don’t you see the easier path for everyone? Stay home, stay in bed and fight your war on your own. My white blood cells don’t want to meet your virus. And neither do Ceasar’s. Or chef/owner/manager. Or the rest of the kitchen staff. Or the wait staff. Or anyone else. It’s not weak to stay home. It does everyone, you most of all, a favor. You stay home, 1 person is out of work a few days. You come in, 4 people are in and out of work. Worse for everyone, worse for you since you took longer to get well! Simple message that nobody follows.
I’ve stopped coughing. Winning the war already? Or temporary relief thanks to the acetaminophen potion?
One thing’s for sure. If I get sick, I’m staying home.
Starting a Programming Project
After surviving a semester of C212 and java, I decided to embark on my own software project this summer. Mainly a learning project, I’m doing it in Java because it’s either that or Scheme (which I learned in my first semester, C212). It’s aim is to solve a personal itch for something I want my computer to automate for me.
I have a large classical music collection that used to sit mostly on my shelves. It now sits in my closet and gets its use in digital format on my computer. The only problem I have with my digital classical music collection is the irregularity in the metadata. Since I have been ripping/collecting these files for quite a number of years, I have music that spans mp3s, ogg, and my newer rips are all now flac. I realized recently that I have failed to have any consitent use of tags when naming files, and especially I have overlooked an extremely valuable tag for classical music: the composer tag. Typical digital files have the artist, track, album tags, but these are too limited with you have something like a Mahler symphony, for example. Who is the artist? The composer? The conductor? The orchestra? Using more tags allows a better description of the file. The artist could be Solti, a performer tag could be set to the Chicago Symphony and the composer tag to Mahler. And it’s here that my little project springs to life.
I will write a program that will set the composer tag based on the information already contained within the filename itself, and the other tags within the file. This way, I can traverse my entire music collection and (hopefully) set the correct composer tag without having to do it all by hand. I will scan through the filename and metadata and look for a composer match in a composer database that I will build. If I scan a file called ‘Mahler – Symphony No.2 – I.mp3′ for example, my program would be able to match the ‘Mahler’ to ‘Mahler, Gustav’ in my database and then set the composer tag accordingly. This will allow me to set the composer tag for a large number of files and also prevent minor misspelling that might have occured if I set them by hand. It will be consistent, in other words. I won’t have ‘Bach, J.S’ in one file and ‘Bach, Johann Sebastian’, in another.
As for the difficulty of this project, it seems doable with my so far limited skill and knowledge in programming. I think what will be the most challenging is putting the whole package together. In my java class last semester, putting the large scale project together was done by the professor and assistants. We focused on purely coding, not putting together the pieces to create the whole. Figuring it all out on my own will be a challenge, but I hope I’m up to it.
And I really hope I follow through and finish it! There’s nothing quite like an unfinished project, be it a composition or piece of software.
Fanfare Deluxe
With the touch of a finger. . .
05.2.09No Google, That’s Not What I Meant
