olutfey – Page 19 – Lutfey.com

Welcome to yet another Christmas letter. Having been writing these annual summaries of my life since 1995, one might develop the notion that I somehow know what I’m doing. Over the years I have noticed that other people notice when I spell words wrong or put completely incorrect words where they just don’t belong. While I see this as “cute” and “charming”, the rest of the world generally does not. For example, the words “assess” and “asses” contain almost the same letters, but their meaning is quite different. If any of these types of mistakes have been made in the following letter, please rest assured that it is the work of the Evil Alien Overlord who controls all my outgoing communications. Having said that, please enjoy the rest of this letter.

After reading through my past Christmas letters, I’ve noticed a rather disturbing trend. Much like the Academy Awards, events that occurred in the first few months of the year are underrepresented in the end of the year production. While I don’t consciously omit stories from the beginning of the year, it just seems to happen. To correct for this grievous injustice, I have made the proactive decision to document events which occured in January. Let me think (envision me sitting at my desk scratching my head as I thoughtfully stare up at the ceiling)—I remember it was cold, and it snowed a little bit in Boulder. Hmm… that’s not really witty or insightful. OK, next year I will take better notes throughout the year so I can present a balanced portrayal of my life. I promise.

The most significant event of my life this year involved me getting the thought into my head that I should become a writer. The idea of finding another computer programming job just was about as appealing as a “Three’s Company” television reunion special (likely plot line: Chrissy isn’t pregnant—she’s menopausal.). While I’m generally not good at things like “making plans” or “developing strategies”, I did manage to come up with a vague notion of writing a weekly story for a web site I run. Since the beginning of February I have written about random thoughts and ideas that happen to be running around my head when I sit down at my computer. Notable topics include a squishy ball, playing laser tag, and dreams of becoming a lounge singer. And just in case I haven’t plugged my web site enough this year, all my stories can be found on the Internet at www.newfunny.com.

While I consider my weekly writing efforts to be a noble cause, it does make writing my Christmas letter this year is a bit more challenging than usual. For example, I could write extensively about my trip to Germany in August, but I’ve already composed three separate stories on my web site. For everyone who has not read about my adventures in Europe the first time around, here is the abbreviated version: I flew to Germany, experienced numerous amusing encounters with the local population, developed several insightful observations, and then got home safely.

While my efforts to establish myself in the writing world kept me in front of my computer for extended periods of time, I have managed to continue volunteering at Habitat For Humanity. As all men know, the call of the compressed air nail gun can not be left for the answering machine. In addition to helping out at the construction site, I have built a web site for the Boulder Valley Habitat affiliate. When my otherwise hectic schedule permits, I go and take pictures of people as they work on the houses. While making no admission of guilt, there seems to be a strange correlation between those who are not nice to me at the construction site and unflattering photographs of people picking their nose and scratching themselves inappropriately.

After spending last Christmas in Minnesota at my sister’s apartment where the temperature varied from a low of negative 20 to a high of zero, my mom and I declared that the location of the next family get together was to be held below the Tropic of Cancer. Hawaii was discussed, but in the end we decided to make my sister fly back to Denver. For the duration of her stay the temperature in Denver was actually lower than in Minneapolis. This helped Karen appreciate our jokes about Minnesota being a frozen wasteland just that much more.

Despite my general inability to buy interesting and unique presents for my family and friends during the holidays, I did have one flash of brilliance when it came to my cousin Ted. After seeing how much his daughters loved singing along with the karaoke machine, I went out and found a Britney Spears karaoke CD. Now I just want to return to Pennsylvania for the sole purpose of getting the girls all wound up singing “Hit me baby one more time” and then taking off after I grow tired of the experience.

Unfortunately, the rest of my Christmas shopping experience was not nearly as productive.

A week before Christmas I drove to Target to try and find two presents for my sister and cousin. I walked around aimlessly trying to visualize what two twenty something women might like to have under the tree this year. Somehow I ended up looking at new Playstation video games. While I did not seem to remember either of them owning a Playstation console, I could not dismiss the possibility they both secretly play video games whenever I leave the room. If this hypothesis was true, I would really have no other choice but to buy each of them a new Playstation game. If I happened to be wrong all they would have to do is send the stuff back to me and I would, uhhh, return the games and find them an alternate gift. Unless of course the plastic packaging was opened, in which case I would be unable to return the games to the store.

Fortunately, a nearby female shopper was reading my thoughts as if they were popping up above my head in cartoon caption bubbles. She grabbed the games out of my hands and told me that in no uncertain terms was I to buy anything from the electronics department.

As I continued my search, I experienced a moment of insight and clarity where I saw the light. To clarify: this was not a metaphorical light, but rather a light bulb for sale. While I’m usually not the type of person who gets excited about this kind of thing, this bulb was like no other I’ve ever seen. It was a green 40 watt bulb that looked as though it had lost a battle with a glue gun. I was totally mesmerized. I grabbed one and headed immediately to the checkout lane—figuring that Karen and Robin would be happy receiving my unconditional love and admiration this holiday season. Again.

That closes the books on another year for me. I have learned quite a bit in 2001. Like how my mom gets unreasonably upset when I make a “dead hooker in the trunk” joke in front of my Grandmother. Which I find strange since she finds them quite entertaining when its just the two of us. My mom and I, that is. As tradition dictates, I’m ending with some useful and inspirational advice from one of my favorite movies. As Vizzini from “The Princess Bride” once said: You fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.”

Well folks, it’s that time of year again– the days are getting shorter, annoying Christmas music is playing at the mall, the political forces that run our nation are gearing up for the next presidential election, and, of course, it’s time to publish my third annual Christmas letter. This brings up the question of whether I should even try to construct a letter that surpasses the high standard that I set for myself when writing the first two Christmas letters. Consider the world of movies for a moment. By the time they get to making a third movie in a series it pretty much just sucks. I am sure they meant well when they made “Superman 3”, but putting Christopher Reeves, Richard Prior, and a wacky evil computer together isn’t something to be proud of. Even “Return of the Jedi” wasn’t as good as its predecessors. Oh no, they built ANOTHER Death Star for the good guys to blow up at the very end. On the other hand, I listened to the School House Rock CD (which I own, of course) and learned that three is a magic number. I don’t think they would have made a number magical if there was an inherent problem with it. In conclusion (of the introduction), I know the risks but I am none the less going to give it a shot. If you are not completely satisfied with this product, just send any unused portion to the address provided for a full refund.

In case you didn’t already know, I left my job at Saxe, Inc. Among other things, the thought of developing software to help companies send out more junk mail slowly wore down my will to live. After a while I would wake up in the morning and stare at the ceiling thinking the world would be a better place if I just called in sick for the day. Even the lure of the cappuccino machine and the ping pong table (see last year’s Christmas letter) wasn’t enough to convince me to stay. My departure was civil and professional, considering the fact that several of the upper level managers were (and to the best of my knowledge still are) minions of Satan.

One of the last things I did before leaving Saxe was use up all of my vacation time on a road trip to see the Indianapolis 500. My friend Tina and I drove a total of 2,048 miles to watch thirty-three men drive around a big loop 200 times. Of course not all of them made it all the way through to finish the race. I don’t have exact numbers, but quite a few of the racers stopped themselves by smashing into the outside walls, a few just ran into each other, and then there was one guy who was driving along minding his own business when his car just caught on fire. I felt bad for the guy, but then a bunch of people came along and extinguished him.

The sheer magnitude of the Indianapolis 500 is impressive. Hundreds of thousands of people converge to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway one day a year to see the big race. The planning required to pull something like this off is extensive– roads are blocked off, businesses are closed down, and special busses are brought in to move the masses more efficiently. Every effort is made to ensure the audience enjoys the race. Having taken all of this into consideration, I don’t understand why they built one of the world’s largest racing facilities in a climate that on average receives more precipitation during the last weekend in May than the entire Amazon Basin gets all year. I guess I am still a little bitter about the fact that we were forced to go to the race track three different days before the race track was dry enough to get the race finished.

I really should have had a new job lined up BEFORE I left my old job at Saxe, but then it would have been a lot harder to take the entire summer off. After a few weeks of doing no productive work, I realized my summer needed a little more structure. Applying the theory that there cannot be light without darkness, good without evil, and “tastes great” without “less filling” to my otherwise unproductive summer free time, I decided to go back to school to start working toward my Masters Degree. After a rather flimsy search, I decided to take a graduate level mathematics class at the University of Colorado at Denver. It was rough, but twice a week all summer I got up, shaved, showered, and made my way to downtown Denver in time for my 4 PM class– even if it was raining. A lesser person might have just stayed home and watched that old episode of “The A Team” where George Peppard and company save the defenseless workers from the evil bad guy while narrowly eluding the military forces that are relentlessly pursuing them for the crime they didn’t commit. You know the one. Anyway, I got through summer school with only minor bruises and am planning on receiving my Masters degree sometime in the next 8 to 10 years.

All good things must come to an end, and my “summer of unemployment” was no exception. After evaluating my bank account, I begrudgingly realized that an “autumn of unemployment” was not a financial option. I started sending my resume out to companies and eventually was hired at company called Rogue Wave Software. Rogue Wave’s current focus involves brokering brides of the Philippines to wealthy but socially underdeveloped gentlemen. Of course it’s all a front to hide the fact they are really developing, marketing, and supporting digital dynamic reusable hierarchical multi-platform modularized procedural language libraries.

I am currently working in the Technical Support division of Rogue Wave Software. We have constructed an international array of computers connected through a highly evolved network of PPP, ISDN, and T1 telecommunication lines that allow for the fast, efficient, and reliable movement of information allowing us to seamlessly communicate in our ever increasing global community. Does this investment in time and money improve our relationship with our customers? I don’t know, but it runs Quake really well.

One of the more interesting aspects of this job, besides, of course, playing Quake, involves the notion that part of our responsibility involves helping the customers so they don’t have to call us in the first place. To achieve this goal we are constantly reporting bugs in our software, finding problems with our documentation, and publishing helpful hints on the Internet. The more successful we become at this venture the more people get fired due to a decrease in the number of customer calls. But, since most of us in technical support were just recently hired, we are only performing our jobs at a level where our wages are garnished.

With the possible exception of leaving a bunch of store bought tortillas in my refrigerator for an entire year just to see what would happen (they shattered when I tried to move them), I believe that my crowning accomplishment of the year would have to be the day that I completed all the levels on the “Duke Nukem 3D” CD that I bought for my computer in January. Anyone can get through a few levels and then give up, but I had what it takes to get through all 30 levels (and one of the secret levels that I am not allowed to talk about) without getting burned out. Sure, I could have stopped half way through and gone outside or read a book, but that would have been a cop out. I stuck by my guns– knowing that I made it down a path where so few see any value whatsoever.

I am sending this letter by E-mail as much as possible in an effort to promote living environmentally friendly lifestyles. Remember to recycle folks, because if you don’t all of us will have to live with the garbage until the sun runs out of fuel and collapses on itself with the resulting explosion enveloping the planet Earth as we know it– instantaneously converting countless generations of accomplishments back into the basic building blocks of matter from which we were created. And that’s a long time.

That about wraps things up here. If you ever question how to live your life, just remember what everyone tells John Cusack in the movie “Better Off Dead”– “Go that way really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.”

Author: olutfey