Engineer’s Attempt at Writing

Spring and summer is here and it is time to hike and explore more of Portland’s beautiful hiking trails. This Saturday, my coworkers and I went to cape horn trail. Cape horn is on the Washington side of the Columbia Gorge. The trail is a 6.8 mile loop with about 1600 feet of elevation change. The hike is not too difficult but it was not a stroll in the park either. You can read more about Cape Horn here: http://www.portlandhikersfieldguide.org/wiki/Cape_Horn_Loop_Hike and you can also check out some pictures I took at www.bluemuffins.com/pics

The hike was a little boring in the beginning but it was getting better as we got near the cape horn fall (I think that is what it is called). The fall was nothing special but the sun was out and it made a little rainbow where the water was hitting the ground. My coworker and I stopped to take a few pictures. Everything was going well and as we were leaving the fall, I decided that it would be fun to stick my hand out and catch some of the water from the waterfall. Unfortunately for me, there were algae on the rocks where the waterfall was landing. I stepped on some of the algae and fell. I got back up and felt super stupid.

People feel that I am inconsiderate sometimes. I guess I give people the feeling that I don’t care – sometime I tell them I don’t care on purpose but a lot of time I just seem like I don’t care. One of my very good friend said that it really pisses him off sometimes when he needs to talk to me and ask me for advice and all I can tell him is do what he thinks it is best. He said “if he knew what was the best, he would not need to ask me.” But, I always thought that telling someone to do what he think is the best is really the best advice I can give. Maybe that makes me appear like I don’t care? I am not sure because I don’t want to give bad advice and a lot of the time I really don’t know what to say.

Another thing that I do that makes me inconsiderate is that I am quite straight forward when I need help or want something. I always thought that it is better to be direct and just ask someone for something but apparently there is a whole set of protocols people go through when asking for favors. I need to learn this set of protocols and hopefully become “nicer” and more considerate.

I slept late last night and to make things worse I did not sleep well. Normally, I can function with 6 hours of sleep and plenty of coffee. However, today the computers at work were not functioning properly. It would take about 3x the usual amount of time to do the same operations when the computers are functioning. I am also the type of person who wants instant gratification and like to see things go to completion. I had to sit there and wait and wait for the computer to complete the task. This happened pretty much through out the day – from morning to the afternoon. After lunch, things became really bad. I think I was super tired and the annoying wait started to make me cranky. I am not sure but I must have yelled at the computer a couple of times and people sitting next to my cubicle must wonder if I had gone mad. When I don’t get enough sleep, minor things can annoy the heck out of me and make me super cranky and super stress.

This was how I felt today.