I had my exit interview this afternoon and am no longer employed by or affiliated with Ask.com.

I felt like I wanted to cry when I left the office, but I had to go have blood drawn so I decided to put a hold on my emotions and, for once, I managed. I did cry during the interview, though, and that seemed to really catch the HR lady off guard.

"Most people are pretty happy during the exit interview," she said, "because we go through all of these forms." Or something.

For the most part, I was overwhelmed, and her keeping me waiting for twenty minutes didn't exactly put me in the jolliest of moods. Plus I'm very stressed out about everything that I need to do in the next seven days, before I fly to Prague, and I have mixed emotions about leaving my job. On the one hand, I loved Ask and was proud to be involved with them. On the other hand, I clearly wasn't happy there if it was the first thing I decided to leave behind when I decided to give life a second chance.

But it's over and done with now. For better or worse, I'm finished. And with a few hours between me and the interview, I feel much better, like a bird that has been freed from its cage.

In fact, I wore a pin with a Kurt Vonnegut drawing on it today. The illustration is this:

Yesterday at work, I tested the relevance of our search engine (as I sometimes do), and one of the queries that I tested was "quizzes from Cosmo magazine." Having all of those quizzes with their little radio buttons in front of me, I was naturally inclined to try a few. You know, for research purposes. And I think I can safely say that the Ask.com user experience will be just a little bit better now that we all know my "Sex and the City" personality most resembles Carrie.

One of the other quizzes I took was something or other about imagination versus reality, where it sorted the quiz takers into one of three categories: the extremes of crazy daydreamer and boring realist or safely in the middle as someone who occasionally daydreams but doesn't get carried away.

Put me down for crazy daydreamer.

So the little blurb characterized me as someone who doesn't deal well with reality and who daydreams to avoid problems in my life. And since I know it's just Cosmo (and an intarweb quiz to boot), I obviously don't feel the need to put much stock into the whole "not dealing well with reality" part. But I am curious why being a daydreamer is considered a bad thing.

More to the point, I am of the opinion that people should live out their dreams whenever possible, but some (like the editors of Cosmo) would say this is fanciful and unrealistic.

Take my coworker Barry, for example. He is in love with Paris and has talked about wanting to move there. As far as I can tell, he's looked into jobs and flats and some of the details of moving. And so I tell him, if he's that into it, he should do it. Move to Paris! He doesn't have a mortgage or kids or a serious girlfriend keeping him tied here. And, much as he is damn good at his job, he longs to be in web design.

So, move, I say. He laughs at me like this is crazy--how could a single guy in his late twenties without a lot of responsibility just up and move some place else? I figure it makes as much sense as staying here and daydreaming.

He tells me that it's just a pipe dream and maybe it is, but I think it's worth pursuing. True, there's something to be said for always having a somewhat unattainable goal--always having something to lust after, for, if we had everything we desired, how could we possibly be happy?

But I don't think this is at all the same thing as moving to Paris (once in Paris, he'll have aspirations for a better job, better home, better car, etc). What it is is an attainable dream and I think it's silly to let it sit on a shelf. If this means I have my head in the clouds, then, so be it.

But if and when I want to move to Europe (or buy a new car or have a baby), then I'm going to do it. Because (hypocrisy noted) I think it's pointless to know what you want in life and then do nothing to achieve it.

In a world where spammers seem to be squatting on nearly every decent website domain name, it warms my heart to see that ThirdReichDepot.com is an honest-to-God, fully functioning online store. (Okay, so it's just memorabilia, but still! What a name!)

In other news, I think that what I've been missing in my life as of late is the kind of friend who would unironically display something like this Ocean of Love figurine in their home:



And I actually mean that (somewhat) sincerely: if you can appreciate a sculpture of mermice without the need to refer to it as kitschy or tacky, you are probably a (relatively) simple person and your mere existence would uncomplicate mine.

I probably just offended the three people on my friends list who actually list "mermice" as an interest.

Also, today Grammy-award-winning songstress Toni Braxton decided to send me an email about "hairy pussies."



I haven't quite figured out what she's trying to tell me with this, but I bet it's big. And hairy.

I'm taking these three seemingly insignificant things as signs that March is going to be a super fantastic month for me. I mean, why not? Yay, optimism!

Remember in December how a news crew was in my office filming a segment on us? And they were interviewing the Ask.com CEO near my desk?

Well, the segment finally aired on last night's news, and I'm in it but if you blink, you'll miss me. If you can call my arm and half my torso "me."

So, when Jim Lanzone is standing by a street sign, look to the left of the screen and you'll see someone in the background wearing a red shirt. That's me. On the right-hand side, you see Barry. This moment occurs around 1:31 in.

And if you aren't so interested in seeing my arm, it's still a good video about our search engine and lets you know a little more about where I spend my days (because it's always about me).

As Leon already posted, we experienced an earthquake last night. It was only a 3.7 but definitely the biggest (and closest) one I've felt.

I was in the bathroom, washing BART grime off of my hands before dinner, and Leon came in to tell me about his exciting day of watching old Chip 'n Dale cartoons on YouTube.

All of a sudden, we heard a loud noise that sounded like an explosion, and felt the building shake a little. Both of us thought at first that someone had driven a truck into our apartment complex, if that helps you understand any better how it was.

Anyway, Leon was so excited that he could talk and think of nothing else for the next half an hour, but I recognized it for what it was: not that big of a deal. But the holiday season is slow, so this is all I have to talk about. Cut me some slack.

Oh, I also discovered that my beloved Ask.com has a cool earthquake page located here. It maps recent earthquake activity. Last night's is already on page 2 in case you're wondering.

Squee!

If you live in the San Francisco area or get San Francisco stations on your satellite, watch their ABC local news tonight, because I should be on it. Our CEO just stood right in front of my desk and answered some questions for the news reporter. I look like shit, because I've been sick, wiped off all my makeup because of blowing my nose, getting rained on, whatever, AND it totally wasn't being filmed from my good side.

But! I'm gonna be on TEE VEE!

Edit at 2:41 PM: In case you don't know what I look like, I'm wearing red and my hair is pulled up into some kind of bun. They also filmed the street sign that Barry made with our names on it, and all of the Barbie dolls, GI Joes, and other toys that sit in the middle of our work area, so even if I'm not on TV, those might be.

I took the last two days off from work for what my PTO request will describe as "cold/flu/plague." I hope my boss finds that as amusing as I do.

I've done little more than sleep yesterday and today, and when I finish writing this, I'll probably do some more of that.

I lost two pounds this week and probably 99% of it was snot, but I'm not complaining. Well, maybe I'll complain a little because I missed Free Bagel Breakfast day at work yesterday and the Ask.com Christmas party tonight. Plus there were supposed to be camera crews at work today, presumably taping a story on the coolness of Ask.com and our new Ask City, and now I don't get to be on the news in one of those wide shots where they pan over a cube farm and talk about all of our hard work or something like that.

No bagels, no Christmas party, no TV time. Wah.

Leon is in a terrific mood, though. He has finished another fine semester at UC Berkeley, and he's kicking the cold/flu/plague bug that he so kindly gave to me.

The first of his Christmas/Hanukkah presents arrived today, and I went ahead and gave it to him, because it can't really sit in its USPS box for the next week and a half (although, isn't tomorrow the first night of Hanukkah? I guess I could've waited). Anyway, it's a venus fly trap. Leon was mesmerized by the one that our neighbors had sitting on the balcony railing outside their apartment, so I thought he might like one for himself. And did he? Currently, all signs point to yes.

But now, my Tussin and Snapple cocktail is making it incredibly difficult to form coherent sentences, so I will stop. I'll be spreading cold/flu/plague at the Ask.com offices tomorrow so maybe I'll make it on the news after all.

My dad sent me the following email just now:

I went on google yesterday and did a search for Ilasco. I went into a Hannibal Public Library site and the picture on the home page was very intriguing to me. If you get a chance, check it out. And tell me who the man is in the front row, third from the right. The photo was taken in 1920.
DAD

The photo that he's referring to is this:



The man who is third from the right is my great grandfather, Charles Rache. And this photo would've been taken less than ten years after he immigrated from Hungary. It's quite a find, as I don't think I've seen any photos of my grandfather at this age, maybe one.

But, of course, my email to my dad was this:

Why are you using Google?

K, I'm currently looking at session searches from our search engine, which means that if you searched for "what happens if I ingest mold" and then "Mrs. Freshley's donuts," I see that the same person made these searches and wonder if they are in any way related.

In the example above, you know that the answer is yes. But someone doing my job probably couldn't make that connection.

Anyway, I found the following example of one session of user queries amusing:

1. vladimir daemonicus
2. mariemaia khushrenada
3. vladimir
4. ass cream

How does one go from Vladimir Daemonicus to ass cream? I can't say that I know, but it makes me very, very curious.

Well, slap me with a large trout.

I just looked at Ask.com's search results for the random user query "fish reproduction," and I must've stared at a page about breeding and animal mating for a full two minutes thinking, "What does that have to do with fish reproduction?" Because all I could think of were miniature fish sculptures--not fertilized eggs, little fish babies, and underwater intercourse.

And then I felt really dense, because who doesn't think of the most perverse and sexual interpretation of words before thinking of anything else? Yes, I assume everyone else in the world is a twelve-year-old boy; is this not so? I am an idiot.

On the plus side, if you decide to punish me for my idiocy all old-school-IRC-like, might I suggest a fiberglass rainbow trout for doing the job?

This is an interesting article explaining how expensive housing in San Francisco is driving families out of the city and into the East Bay. (And Leon and I think the East Bay is expensive!)

The article features my coworker Marcos, who is an illustrator in marketing (he designed Jeeves). Anyway, it's worth a read for those of us in the Bay Area or who are thinking of buying a house.

To quote one of my coworkers, I am just about porned out. I really need a few minutes here to look at something that doesn't have nipples. Easier said than done, I think.

My team is working with the image search and our adult content filter, and I have scrutinized the picture results for such queries as "cum shot," "cum shots," "cumshot," and, last but not least, "cumshots." Not to mention every kind of "pussy" imaginable.

Oh, and for no particular reason, "high school musicals." I think we were boob free on that one.

Anyway, this could be seen as one of the perks of my job. I've been looking at porn the last two days and will probably be doing it tomorrow as well. The things we do for money, eh?

My favorite user query from today: "fun facts about aids"

I don't even know what answers we're returning for that search, since it isn't related to what I'm working on today. Still, I wish Jeeves would pop up and say, "There's nothing 'fun' about AIDS, you sick bastard." Alas, he's too polite for that. And with his foot halfway out the door, he'd be smart not to ruffle any feathers.

Barry Diller sacks the butler.

We're losing our mascot! I am so upset about this. I love Jeeves.

Holy crap, I have never been at work this early before! There is no one here except Jacquie (Jaquie?), because she's going to write the Canada Day entry on our blog. She has a Canadian hockey jersey hanging over the picture on her wall.

Anyway, I'm here early so I can leave early so I can catch my plane--early. I am super excited to fly home for the weekend. My only reservation is that so much of our time will be focused on wedding planning and not enough of it will be focused on having fun. Goddamn wedding.

Caroline e-mailed me to let me know that she finally broke down and cried over Philip's death and that it makes her miss everyone from the States. She said she wishes she didn't have to wait until the wedding to see me (and our friends)--that it seems so far away. I wish! We're down to three months, so it's time to set things in stone.

Oh my God, I just made the largest lip-smacking sound with this piece of low-fat (ha ha, I know) coffee cake from Starbucks. Sorry, Jacquie! Perhaps today's blog entry will be "Gross Sounds in Jeeves Office on Canada Day." Whatever.

I have to work, so I can justify leaving at 3:00, and even then it'll be awkward as hell.

I got my job offer yesterday afternoon. My new title is Web Producer 2, which totally rocks. I've been so excited that it's been hard to sit still these past few days.

My raise is more than 50% of my contractor salary. It kicks in on Monday. I nearly fainted when Neeraj told me. When I called my mom, she thought that I was kidding or that Neeraj had lied to me. But I had it in writing.

There's a 401k, medical benefits, and stock options. And I'll finally be able to accumulate paid time off. Memorial day, for instance? My first paid holiday!

God, I feel like a freaking grownup.

Everything is wonderful here. I feel close with my friends and family. Caroline sent me a shitload of Swiss chocolates from (where else?) Switzerland, and the package made me feel all special. I saw Revenge of the Sith with my coworkers and had a fucking blast. And I'm losing weight on a diet that doesn't feel like a diet.

Someone, pinch me! On second thought, don't. This can't be my life; let me enjoy it as long as I can.

I have actually been receiving work-related, non-spam e-mails with the terms "scat," "bukaki," and "sexual water sports" in them. These are the joys of working for a search engine.

Sadly (or maybe not so sadly), I had to look up all three of those terms in the urban dictionary. Before yesterday, I thought that scat was a type of jazz singing, bukaki was a sushi dish, and sexual water sports involved getting it on while riding a jetski. I am much too innocent for this job.

Damn you, Google! You sure make it hard on the rest of us!

This morning, I spent some time helping to remove porn from our search engine. It's fairly interesting to see what gets categorized as porn. Not surprisingly, articles on sexual health or pages devoted to lesbians send up red flags. But then there are the completely absurd things that somewhere, somehow got categorized as porn, like pages dedicated to Thomas Paine, to Shakespeare, or to organic gardening. Go figure.

I'm becoming pretty desensitized by porn but there was one page that made me gasp and hide my eyes. I'm not going to link to it, but I will say that "pink eye" has acquired a meaning I never would've imagined.

Anyway, I'm posting because this "Catholic Education" page (click the link) was flagged as potential porn. It is not. It is, however, a weak-ass attempt by some "doctor" to classify gay sex as a health risk. This is a joke, because all sex includes health risks, whether it's something as terrifying as AIDS or something as small as a urinary tract infection.

He uses arguments like gays are more promiscuous, which is laughable. But my absolute favorite part of his article is when he tries to say that lesbians are at a greater risk of developing health complications. (Actually, hasn't it pretty much been concluded that lesbian sex is about as safe as it gets? And that lesbians are less promiscuous than any other grouping of people by sexual identity?)

He footnotes an article from the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association to back up this claim. And while this footnoted article is now a 404, we can see from the title of it just how much he has skewed its information. The title is "Ten Things Lesbians Should Discuss with Their Health Care Providers" and includes such topics as alcohol, tobacco, and fitness. Gee, I fail to see how having sex with another woman would turn me into a smoker and a coach potato.

I actually didn't read the whole thing because it's so infuriating. How can people take stuff like this seriously?

One of my tasks at work today is to create a blog and post in it. Have I mentioned before how cool my job is? I may post a link to it but for now it's just utter crap. What makes this any better, you ask. Good question.

Leon made me smile with this post. I know a lot of people are pretty sensitive about the death of Christopher Reeve and I also admit to being pretty shocked about the discovery myself, but there are no sacred cows here.

(You know, it just took me several minutes to come up with the phrase "sacred cows." Sometimes I think I have a tumor or some other malady that's playing tricks with my memory and my ability to pull words out of my vocabulary. Maybe it's just aging. My, how disappointing to feel mortal.)

I went to the grocery store yesterday after work and had the assiest shopping cart ever. It was little better than the one I passed up before selecting the one I used (and I say "select" as though it wasn't the only other cart available) and that one had some sort of grocery-store-issued, parking-violation boot. Anyway, the one I used didn't have two working front wheels and it just dragged one along with it. Turning the thing was pure hell, and that was when mommy and her three little snot-nosed brats would actually get the heck out of the way. I nearly took down a display rack.

And then I had to go back in when I discovered that Safeway had overcharged me on Life cereal. I later realized that I had picked up the 21 ounce box and not the 13 but not after working myself up over Safeway's supposed audacity for charging me more than 5 bucks a box. Seriously, who pays that much for cereal? It better have one damn good prize in the bottom.

Okay, now I'll go post in my fake blog for work.