Category: grindstone

All about breadwinning.

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the ghost of blogging future

Hehe.
After dinner tonight (Manwiches™, which were freakin’ awesome), I feel asleep hard on the couch. I mean, I fell out. Woke up to my cellphone ringing, but didn’t feel like answering it when the caller ID said it was work. I dunno… lately… there’ve been things going on that I haven’t really been writing about, for one reason or another I just haven’t. Soon though, I can talk about some stuff that’s been going on – work-related and not, and maybe that’ll shake the doldrums of recent entries. I want to write about stuff, but better judgment tells me to keep things under wraps until I feel a little more comfortable. Don’t worry, nothing too earth-shattering… I’ll still be writing for the foreseeable future. Because, I know someone somewhere was worried about that… yeah.

I wanted to try and get to bed early tonight, break the chain of too-late nights and reluctant getting-out-of-beds in the morning. But it’s nearing 11pm now and I still have to logon and send a few last minute mails for early meetings in non-US timezones. Sharaun’s monopolizing the laptop watching the downloaded season one of Lost, so I have to wait until she’s done with the current episode. I haven’t been fixating much on it, but I’m booking my next round of travel tomorrow. Shanghai in two weeks, Taiwan in September. It will be my first time in Shanghai, so I’m excited about that. I try to rattle off the “plus” side of the pro/con worksheet: skymiles, career-beneficial, travel, company-funded, etc… but I still find myself alternating between reluctance and reservation… neither of which is really that desirable. Whatever, at least it’ll give me something to write about – instead of the same old: “I’m traveling again, kinda want to, kinda don’t,” crap.

Dudes… I am just one referral away from a free iPod, so if someone’s feeling charitable – click here, sign up for one of the crazy offers (I chose the ancestry.com one, but now they’ve got a subscription to Maxim one), let the free period almost expire, then call to cancel. If you find it in your heart to do this, I get a free iPod. Not the 200GB one which I need and Apple doesn’t make yet, but at least a stop-gap for the time being. C’mon, help a brother out – it’s legit.

And, I guess it’s been done to death now, but Arturo’s got his pictures up from our Point Reyes hike as well.

Goodnight.

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on my own

Home of bottom dwellers.
The wireless connection in my hotel room is the most frustrating thing ever. What’s worse, it’s my only option. It’s off and on, dropping me all the time, and only giving me sucky connections when it feels like it. There’s one “hot” spot in the corner of the room, which I found by wandering around with my laptop out in front of me – but we’re talking a one foot square area of space about 4ft off the ground in the middle of nowhere. What the heck Hilton, you got nothing?! I tell you what, I wouldn’t recommend this ~$400/night place to anyone. Stay away folks – the hotel blows, the service is lukewarm, and the internet is non-existant. You hear me Connie? Your hotel blows, I don’t care if the legacy of your loins did offer forth Paris unto the world, you are not fogiven.

Today (Monday) was great. As I mentioned yesterday, I wasn’t really sure what this conference had in store for me. Turns out I was done “prepping” at around 9am this morning – and effectively had the rest of the day to do with as I pleased. As I triumphantly packed up my bag and sauntered away from the area where myself and my colleagues were located, I mentioned I was going to get some breakfast and would probably be back down to “check on things” in an hour or so. Even as I was saying the words, I knew them for a blatant lie. I had no intention whatsoever of returning to the conference floor today. I mean, why would I? I was completely setup, and I don’t have to be back until noon Tuesday. I did mention to a fellow employee (whom I’ve never met) that I might be able to offer some assistance with his “prep” later on, and left my cellphone number for him to get in touch with me. Again – knowing full well I would not be answering his calls.

Is this wrong? I don’t know. In some ways, when I do things like this, I do feel slight pangs of guilt. But for the most part, I feel liberated. I get this rebel thing in my head and just ignore phone calls. As soon as I saw the conference area this morning, I made a for-me-only decision: I was going to half-ass this thing. Sound bad? I don’t think so, here’s why: I’ve been working hard; I deserve a little break. So, I’m going to go in there with my dress pants on, stand up in front of people, and absolutely wing it.

Let me take a seemingly unrelated segue here, the reason for which will become apparent towards the end. Sharaun used to tell me to “stop!” doing embarrassing things or acting silly in places like restaurants, amusement parks, grocery stores, etc. – any public place really. My reply to her was always, “Why? We don’t know these people, it’s very likely we’ll never run into a single one of these people again in out entire lives. Who cares if they think I’m an idiot?” So, while not as extreme (I don’t quite want people thinking I’m an idiot), I’m sorta taking that position with this conference.

Anyway, having decided I wasn’t going to make any big investment in the work-bit of this trip, I decided to strike out on my own one-man tour of the city. Yeah sure, one of my new acquaintances from the conference had offered to tag along – but I declined, thinking that a solo adventure might be more interesting, and would certainly be paced more to my liking.

I did it all. I walked to Times Square (took a picture of the MTV building for my forever-teenybopper wife), then over to the Empire State Building (didn’t go up, the wait was two hours and I wanted to make sure I took in as many sights as I could). I caught the subway to Ground Zero, which, not having ever seen the two buildings while they still stood, was not quite as impactful as I’d thought it might be – although surely still a solemn attraction. Then, the guilt started getting to me. I decided maybe I should head back and return to the conference floor, where the multitudes were still milling about and setting up. I bought a return ticket on the subway, and sped back in the direction of the hotel. It was nearly 1pm as I climbed the stairs from the subway up to street-level, which meant my no-breakfast-having stomach was beginning to think about lunch. And what do you know, I emerged from the underground a mere block from the world-famous Carnegie Deli. Seeing that the line waiting to get in was relatively short, I decided to again forsake my conference brethren and instead go for a corned beef sandwich.

The first phone call came as I was waiting in line, a number I didn’t recognize. I didn’t answer; they left no voicemail After my sandwich, I did decide to return to my room and change into pants, since some clouds had rolled in and the city had cooled down a bit. I was only there for 15min before I decided that, since today was really my only “free” day, I’d better take full advantage of it. I made up my mind and decided to make for Battery Park and the statue of liberty. As I took the elevator to the lobby, I found myself hoping that I didn’t bump into any of my colleagues on the way out. I walked through the lobby, and paused at the escalators that would put me back on the conference floor. “I should just run down for a few minutes,” I thought, “Make and effort, make a show of being there, maybe help someone out…” I hesitated, and then turned and strolled out towards the subway.

The second phone call came while I was walking through Battery Park, the same unrecognized number. This time, a voicemail: “Hey Dave, just wondering if you were going to make it back today, I was going to call someone to ask them some questions about setting up my stuff – but figured you may know. Anyway, give me a call at this number or stop by if you’re around. Hope to see you soon.” Ugh, guilt. The voicemail is harder to ignore than a missed call, but I managed to press ‘3’ for delete and force myself to go on with my self-indulgence. I snapped some pictures of the Statue of Liberty (again, opting out of the harbor tour in the interest of time), and got back on the subway intending to make my way towards Central Park. I got of a little early, so I could walk down Broadway and check it out, and eventually made it to the park. I bought a bottled water and one of those strawberry shortcake ice cream popsicle things I used to love so much in middle school, and started on my leisurely trek, pointed loosely towards Strawberry Fields.

I stopped to watch the crowd on Sheep Meadow, took in what looked to be some rec baseball at some fields near there, and finally found a nice bench to plunk down on in front of the Imagine memorial in the Strawberry Fields section. While I was sitting there, people-watching and enjoying some busker’s rendition of “No Reply,” my cellphone rang – the third call. This time it was a different number. I silenced it. Buzz-buzz, a voicemail. I listened, “Hey Dave, this is so-and-so what’s-her-face from the show. Boy, your ‘about one hour’ kinda turned into ‘all day,’ huh? Well, anyway, I’m calling to see if you wanted me to do anything with your stuff. If not, no need to return the call. Hope to see you tomorrow, thanks.” Great; more guilt. But you know, if I had wanted to do something with my stuff, I would’ve gone and done it or let someone know. I was done, and I was not going back. It didn’t matter though, because the sun was setting and a beautiful little girl was dancing around the Imagine memorial, picking up the fresh flowers and twirling around with them. The temperature was perfect, and I felt so relaxed and self-sufficient having ferried myself about town all day. I had about twenty blocks to walk back to the hotel, but it was worth it.

And that’s how I managed to spend a whole day shirking responsibility and still feel good about myself. Tomorrow, I’ll go down there, make up some excuse for being MIA all day, and then get down to business. I’ll do what I do, do it well, and then get out of this place on Thursday. I’m not excited, and I’m hating all the “real work” I’m missing by being here, but I’ll stick it out as always. OK, enough of that.

One thing I will say about New York, it’s extremely easy to get around. I actually expected the opposite, a huge, maze-like city of tall buildings and numbered streets. Turns out upper Manhattan, at least, is no problem. And the subway is great. I can get to pretty much anywhere for $2. One other thing I’ll say about New York, the people here make me feel sorely lacking for not having an iPod. Honestly, they must give them out with the drivers’ licenses or something. You walk down the street and every third person has those distinctive white earbuds stuck in their ears. If I lived here, I’d surely cave to the peer pressure.

Oh… and now I’m pissed. I was on the season finale of Lost (yeah, I watched a whole season in a week or so, so what?), and the dang file is cut off – ends about 20min short! What’s worse, the little download meter tells me I’m looking at more than a day of download time on this hobo wireless connection to get a complete version. Now I have to wait until I get home to watch those final 20mins. I’m mad, yes, mad.

I wrote a lot today, first time in a long time. Felt good.

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where’s paris?

Greetings from early America.
The Big Apple; I knew I’d arrived when it cost me $45 and took an entire episode of Lost to get from JFK to Manhattan. Getting in under cover of dark last night, I got a decent view of Manhattan skyline while crossing the bridge – but I’m so unfamiliar with the layout of this city that I didn’t know where to look for anything. The hotel, like many hotels it seems, is insanely posh on the outside – the lobby lush with giltwork and marble, brass fixtures and fountains, etc. But the insides are likely the same insides that were built on day-one – chinked and dirty baseboards, funny-smelling behemoths of air conditioning units, and worst of all no in-room broadband aside from the citywide pay-as-you-go access I can pickup in the room (thankfully). In this day and age I don’t understand how a hotel that caters to a business crowd gets away without having high-speed access, it seems unthinkable… Maybe I’m spoiled by the Sherwood, the measuring stick to which I hold all hotels to.

Getting up at 6am here is hard for my I-know-it’s-really-3am sleeping habits, and I found myself snoozing the alarm for forty some-odd minutes, all the while telling myself I’d padded the wake-up time anyway. One interesting thing about this trip – I probably have less of an idea what I’m actually going to be doing here than any other trip I’ve been on in recent times. I mean, I know I’m presenting at some point – but I just received the material last night; and I know I’m standing on the conference floor flogging product. It’s the logistics of it all that’s got me wondering. I don’t know when the thing starts (I did read that 8am today is when we can 1st access the conference area to setup), what the running times are, when I’m presenting, etc. Heck, they didn’t even have my reservation in the system when I arrived last night – I’m lucky I even got a room here. But… in the end, things worked out. I flopped into this ratty old office chair around 11pm last night and promptly ordered a sammich from room service while firing up the wireless radio in search of a signal. Watched a couple more downloaded episodes of Lost (yes, I am hopelessly addicted), and called it a night.

Oh, and I was totally pumped to learn that the San Francisco to JFK United flights have AC outlets in all their seats, even economy. I plugged in mid-flight and was able to run the laptop the entire time (of course, continuing to tear through season one of that damn addictive show). Seeing how impressed I was by the power, the attendant told me that all their planes had also been wired for wireless access – and we’re simply awaiting the FAA’s nod of approval to “flip the switch” and turn it on. How cool is that? I really don’t think it will be long before the internet is as ubiquitous as radio is today, and you’re able to pick up a signal just about anywhere and get online. My kids will laugh when I tell them that we used to have to plug our computers into the wall to get online – how antiquated – like having to get up and “flip” a record or tape to listen to “Side B.”

It’s 8am here now, which is when I wanted to be walking downstairs. I wanted to give myself as much time as possible to set up, in case the show happens to start at 10am or something. I think, I think I remember hearing somewhere along the lines that this thing doesn’t officially “kick off” until tomorrow – and operating under that very sketchy info I opted not to shave this morning, figuring it for a preparation day only. I truly hope this is so. I would like nothing more than to be able to head downstairs now, be setup and configured in a couple hours, and then have the rest of the day to tour the city. Otherwise, I’ll be headed back up to the room for a shave and change of clothes before being thrown into the fire.

And well, now it’s time to head out. Glad I could manage an entry today, the outlook was grim around 1am last night when I was too tired to write. See ya.

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threat level blue

Get it?
I think they heard my sigh of relief back in California this morning. It’s done. The presentation I spent weeks slaving over, sweating and raking fingers through my hair over, is, itself, over. And people, let me tell you that I feel great. My cramming paid off, my practice showed, and I came away from both sessions feeling great. And despite my good intentions last night, the beers I couldn’t seem to avoid didn’t seem to bother me at all. I am so glad it’s over – I’ve never been as wrung out over just a simple presentation… and I’ve done more than my share in the past. It’s just that I had precious little time to prepare, and knew it would effect my performance if I didn’t invest the proper amount. Luckily, I pulled it off. And now, with a great sense of relief – I’m done writing about it. In fact, I’m trying to be done with my writing-about-work streak… this should be it for a while. I want to get back to the regular stuff, the mundane stuff. Like…

What is it about dress slacks that makes them seemingly more prone to ass-smell? I mean, I’ll accept it as a given that any pair of pants, regardless of dressiness, will eventually inherit some ass-smell with repeated wearings. It’s a fact, something that is in that close a proximity to ass for an extended amount of time will of course begin to smell like ass. But, with dresspants, at least for me, the time it takes for the ass-smell to migrate from in-my-ass to in-the-fabric-of-my-pants is really reduced over “normal” type pants. Like this morning, I got dressed in my freshly laundered khaki slacks and headed down to my classroom to present bright and early at 8am. I presented until around 10:45pm, and then headed out to help a friend setup some equipment. As I was lifting heavy boxes and stuff, I got a whiff of something that smelled like ass. But, how could this be? I’ve only had the pants on for a mere four hours! How in the world can the ass smell be here already? But, it was. The ass smell was definitely there. I dunno, it must be something with the fabric. Or my ass. Or something. I really hope other people (dudes, I’m suspecting) experience pants-ass-smell, and that it’s not unique to me. I didn’t really think about that before writing this…

Now I’m sitting in my mile + 12 stories high hotel room, getting ready to take a nap.

Awesome.

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even my balls are tired

Shiiiiiiiiiiit...
Mmmm…. glurp… ssshhlppp… ulmg…

Delirious. 12:30am and working again. Finished #1 of two presentations which must go out tonight. So far this week, haven’t had time to work much on the materials for my big conference. I present next week, but I have no time during the days to get it done. So it festers, unfinished. Tomorrow has to be the day… I have to destroy it. I shouldn’t say that I’m not working on it, I’ve had meetings every day this week with key contributors – going over speaking points, getting source material from which to draw, and trying to educate myself. But it’s not 100%, and that’s what I’d like being this close to presentation-day (Tuesday, if you’re curious, 8am sharp). On top of it all, my laptop problems from last night got worse today – and around 4pm the thing just gave up. So, I’m laptop-less. Luckily, I got worried and did a last-minute backup of my critical files to a portable hard drive I keep at work. So tonight, I’m working off that. Only problem, my PC is now entirely open-source and OpenOffice.org’s PowerPoint editing is all different from MS’ – and I have no time to learn it. So, I’m using the real-deal MSOffice on Sharaun’s PC.

So, why am I writing, you ask? I need a break. Be it just 15min, whatever it takes to write a short entry. I need a break from thinking about crap. I’m tired, and I’m hot, and I’m once again frustrated. I’ve been trying to cheer myself up by listening to new music – hoping there’s an inspirational ray of light in there. I’ve been sticking mostly to some deep-catalog classic rock albums I’ve got over the past few months, trying to get better associated with some of the b-side gems that I’ve never heard before. Good stuff, but my ears aren’t really in prime listening mode. Now it’s my music? What else will be blurred into work? Can’t I have anything to myself anymore? The other night, while masturbating, I happened to look over and was shocked to see my left hand typing out e-mails… I know, I was as surprised as you likely are! Who even knew left hands were good for stuff?

Today it rained. I thought we were through with the rainy days, but I was apparently wrong. The sound of it woke me up around 4am, and I noticed Sharaun was awake. “Is it raining?” I asked, a little unbelieving. “Yes,” she replied, “and your snoring is keeping me awake.” “Too bad, get over it,” I grunt out of sleep-rudeness and roll back over. It rained all day, I think… I don’t really know because I didn’t leave the building between 8am and 7pm… but I can tell you it was raining at both those times. I actually kind of liked the rain, I always like to hear it at night.

Goodnight, I’m spent.

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porn potential

Look close to see the jubblies.
Resisting my better urges, I’m staying up to try and log an entry for tomorrow (or today, by the clock). I finally signed off my VPN’d work connection, sending and receiving mail (yes, I’m not the only swamped person working late, it seems), and I was getting ready to go to bed. Then, I realized I’d downloaded some new tunes over the past couple days and wanted to hear them… it was enough of an excuse to move my computer-staring activities from the living room to the computer room, where I can listen to music on some proper speakers. So I’m here, and I’m writing… it’s a start.

Guys, I apologize. The writing about work has got to stop. But, I’m gonna do it again for a minute, because lately it’s been what’s all-consuming. While I had hopes for a change, today continued along the alarming trend of having no time to breathe between tasks. In fact, I’ve taken to adding a 3rd class of Post It note to my Post It notes filing/tracking system – the “to do tonight” note. A subset of the broader “to do” list, this small note contains only the items which need to get done before the next workday. The stuff that, while it is important and has to be done, just gets pushed aside while putting out the day’s many randomly arising and ill-timed fires. So, tonight I’ve got a couple hours to log before I can start tomorrow with a relatively clean slate. At first, the crunch was exciting… made me feel important. Now, I’m starting to get tired of the crunch. Today, the crunch prevented me from getting a much needed haircut, not to mention stopping me from mowing my overgrown lawn. So as boring and repetitive as it may be, my writing will continue to be dominated by the overriding activities of my day… and for the immediate future, I have a feeling that’s gonna be work, work, and more work.

A lot of times, when my phone rings, I purposely ignore it. I may be that I just don’t feel like talking, or it may be that I just don’t feel like talking to you… either way I just silence the thing and go on with my business. I always have this fear though, that the person calling me is outside my house, or somewhere where they are able to see that I’m there to answer my phone… walking behind me in a public place for instance. I can imagine someone watching me look at my phone, press a button, and get transferred to voicemail. So, even though I’m sure I’ll always continue to ignore phone calls – I do get a small pang of guilt every time I do it. Now, at work I’ve got caller ID on my phone, so I know when someone’s calling from their desk that they’re at their desk – and I can safely ignore it. Cellphones, however, add caller mobility as an unknown. Stupid cellphones, making my call-shirking all the more difficult.

When I was growing up, my friends and I of course enjoyed thumbing through the occasional pornographic magazine. However, being that we were in the 5th grade (or 6th, 7th… whatever, it was a pretty consistent trend in the post-5th grades), we couldn’t exactly go and pick up a skin mag at the local 7-11. No, we had to rely on the many kid-tested porn “dumps.” I don’t know if you guys had this kind of thing or not. But, as boys, we had an almost instinctual knowledge of a place’s porn-potential. For instance, when I lived in Lompoc, there were a series of empty fields which were known as “the dirt trails,” where kids would go ride their bikes. There were burms and corners and dips and jumps, it was a BMXers paradise. It was also a notorious skin mag dump. If you spent a few minutes exploring the underbrush off the trails, chances are you’d happen on a hidden cache of Playboys, Penthouses, Juggses, Barely Legals, Hustlers, and occasional Cherry. When your primary method of transportation is your bike, you tend to either find, or hear about, likely porn locales all around town. In Florida, we had a “Playboy ditch;” so named because a ride back and forth along the edges would almost always produce a sun-faded, bug-addled, waterlogged flesh rag. It wasn’t a once-in-a-million, you-might-get-lucky kinda thing – it was almost a sure-thing that you could score a magazine at these places. Don’t discount these kinda stories as some sort of coming-of-age apocrypha – I would wager a decent percentage of males reading this can identify with something similar from their growin’ up days… but… I could be wrong.

1am folks… and I’m ready for sleep. I’m gonna wake up tomorrow and do this all again, so wish me luck with that OK? Thanks, I appreciate it. Goodnight.

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the crunch

Nose to it.
There’s not enough room on this Post-It note to write all the things I have to do. This is a problem. If there was room on my Post-It note of problems-to-be-solved, I could add it too the list. But, that’s my week this week. I’m 100% balls-out on this work though… like now, it’s 20-till-10pm and I’m still chuggin’. Sure, I took a 40min walk around the block with my wife to clear my mind (clear my staring-at-the-monitor headache, really), but other than that I’ve been working solid since 8am. It has to be done folks, this is crunch week and I just have to knuckle under if I want to have a successful month of presenting. Speaking of month, June won’t be much of one… at least not one at home. Percentage-wise, I’ll only be gone 23% of the month – but in my head it sure seems more inconvenient than that. On the upside, I’ve never been to New York City, and I think I may have been to Denver when I was a kid – but I sure don’t remember anything about it. So, the travel may be cool…

If you can’t tell, I’m slightly (and I do mean slightly, ever-so, ever-so slightly) less screwed-up about my presentation. My work-overdrive has made me feel a little more confident that I’ll be prepared and ready to go. I still have guilt for not being on the “schedule,” but when I’m this up against the wall I just don’t care. If I get done the night before, I’ll consider that “meeting the schedule,” regardless of what the real schedule was. I just want it to be over… can it just be over? It’s midnight now, and it’s not over yet… But you know, I totally get off on being able to get serious when the conditions demand it… so this is as much ego-stroking as it is burning the candle at both ends. You mean you worked until midnight, downloaded the newest tunes for perusal tomorrow, and managed to pay bills, take a walk, and do dishes tonight? Yeah I did… and I didn’t even have to take that much speed to make it happen, I’m just half-machine.

I’ve been feeling a bit pretentious at work lately, perhaps unjustifiably so. I mean, I feel like I’m working hard; really hard, in fact. And… I admit it: I feel important. However, I also see this is a risky way to feel. I don’t think I lack humility, but I’m very wary of ever getting to that point. In some cases, I think I’m a bit over-conscious of being humble. I tend to shy away from conversations where I would come off as patting myself on the back, at least – I like to think I tend to shy away from them. To give you an example, I had to take a phone call on the way to lunch today – a work-related phone call. Sitting in the backseat, ignoring a carful of my friends, and talking shop on the phone – I felt bad. I felt like I was somehow “showing off.” This is probably paranoia on my part, but my lack-of-love for self-important people makes me think like that. Problem is, taking charge and forging ahead actually requires some level of self-import. I guess what I’m worried about is crossing the seemingly thin line between self-confidence and ostentatiousness. I’m probably concerned over nothing, but it’s just something I think about sometimes.

So that’s it. Work all day, and blog about work. I’m truly one-track right now. Rock on.