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elevenovembers


For some reason, this seemed like a good thing to do today. Eleven years of Thanksgiving-time writing, from 1995 to last year. Cobbled together from pre-blog journals, and post-journal blogs. Random, but perhaps interesting…

Enjoy.

——————

11/23/95

Turkey Day!! I’ve been listening to the Rascals a lot, Animals too. But The Beatles’ Anthology Volume One came out Tuesday – I’ve been hitting that pretty hard. I guess the album of the moment though is JJ Cale’s Naturally; it’s freakin’ awesome. Much props and nuff spect to Bob for that one.

Joey and I went back to Astro yesterday – we pried the manhole cover off and actually descended into the chamber of doom. We took a large magic marker and wrote our own coded messages on the wall. I wrote “the chamber of doom has been breached.” Then over the proper entrance to the tunnels, I wrote “we now rule the underworld” and left first and last initials for he, Kyle, and I. Pretty cool it was.

I’m listening to the Beatles’ rooftop concert now. Guess I’m kinda bored since I’m sitting here writing on this computer. I wish there was something to do ya know? I saw the movie Clerks last night and it was pretty good. Christmas will be here soon, my B-day even sooner – 19 whole years of life, and lots of information swimming around up there ya know. One day I swear I’ll be pretty smart. Maybe not. Someone’s at the door – I guess I might have to go when they walk in here.

11/7/96

dave
is a lunafoil
and his hands are
very cold
It hurts to grip a pencil
And stings to crack his knuckles
His bones are tired and heavy
And his skin is dry and warm
His feet fit well in his own shoes
And his long shirt hangs limp

12/4/97

Woke up late today and had to rush out to class. Only come to find out that we have some quiz that I didn’t even know about. Needless to say, I didn’t do very well. This Physics class is really bringing me down – I just can’t get it. I just pray that I get at least a C in there so I don’t have to take the whole God-forsaken class over again next semester, that could screw everything up.

I am going home tomorrow again to work for Frank the funnel cake man. Wheee! I love work in the food business. Owell, it’s $100 and boy do I need it. I wish I could win the lottery, I’d keep going to school for the education sake of it, but I wouldn’t be as pressured. My finances would be set for life, no more worry. The whole money thing really sucks. I mean, I know there’s no other way to do it. You have to have some sort of economy, but I don’t understand how it works. How can our money be backed by gold, why is gold so special anyway? What makes it so valuable. I guess it’s the same unknown force that can make some words “bad.” Arbitrary choice is what I call it. Okay, maybe the scarcity of gold plays a role, but still – who cares. Dinosaur eggs are pretty rare too – why not back our money with those?

I mean, whose to say that this money is actually worth something? It’s all just paper. If someone who had no concept of money was offered a $500 bill, they’d say “What do I want with paper?” “But, it’s backed up with valuable gold sir.” “What’s gold, I don’t care, give me food or shelter or love, something I can really use, you know? What do I want with a shiny metal or green paper, they won’t sustain my life.” Ahhh, but without them you can’t get shelter or food. That’s the catch.

So, I can understand the need for money and economy – I just wish it didn’t govern my life so much. I mean, why am I really in college right now? Because I have a passion for learning and love to go to school?, not really – although I do like to learn. But the reality is that I am in college because I need a degree to get a job, I need a job to get money, which I need to live. I guess it’s a valid argument to say that you really don’t need money to live, you can always live without money, there’s plenty of ways. But those are the ways of a man in the mountains who traps and makes all his own food, has no electricity, and lives like a pioneer.

Maybe that’s why I am drawn to that lifestyle, not the full-on pioneer life, but a happy mix of mine and theirs. You know, a mountain cabin, but with electricity so I can have lights, television, and computer. Just enough amenities to live comfortably. I wish that I could just be retired but not old. Have some money to live off of that I never worked for. Man, the lottery would be great. Almost time to head back to school.

11/24/98

Well, the once a month entries continue – not by choice, it’s school clamping down on me again. It’s now the day before I go home for Thanksgiving, which means to me that in my head, the holiday season I love so much has begun. I am now reading Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. I am about 600 pages into the first book, and there are eight of them. It’ll be neat to see when I actually finish the whole thing. And he’s still writing. I can’t wait until Christmas, but then again when can I ever? I think I am going to fare pretty well in my classes this semester. Hopefully. Owell, I think I am going to go now – gotta get busy doing nothing.

11/3/99

Nothing much going on. I had my annual winter cold last weekend, it was a bad one too. I am just now beginning to feel better. I’m about to head out to the library and get some Operating Systems studied up. The test is tomorrow morning, and I really need to do well on it – although not as well as I need to do on the next Networking exam. Man – this school thing is going to be the death of me.

Listening to the new Counting Crows album, it came out yesterday – it’s pretty darn good, but I still have to get used to it before I flip out over it. Got a new modem for my computer, and I’ll get around to installing it when I have some free time. Frank moved out of the house back home – the parents are happy I guess. I can’t wait to be married and settle down. I am ready to start something of my own, a life, a family. I can’t wait. I hope that this operating systems test goes alright.

I know that these entries are so dull, I have nothing really to write about beside school. That’s all I do and think about. This thing will definitely be shut down after school.

11/28/2000

Right now I have taken two cash advances in less than a month, just to pay bills. I am paying bills with bills, and that’s not good. What happens if I max out my last credit card going to Florida and then have nothing to fall back on in case of emergency, or if I need to take one last cash advance to get us through January.

The money situation is really getting to me. I feel like a failure to Sharaun, and I have some guilt about the amount of debt we have. Talking to other grads at work and realizing that they have similar debts and money issues makes me feel better. And everyone keeps telling me that the first couple years starting out are really hard. But, I don’t want to be paying on my school loans right up until I retire – that’s ridiculous. I want to be out from under all this debt in a reasonable amount of time.

It’s the apartment rent that’s killing us now, along with the fact that work for Sharaun is slow and sparse at best. Half days here, full days less often – and just not enough extra income coming in right now. It’s not even really that, there is enough money – but there are also things in these next few months that are taking more than normal. Car downpayments, school loan payments starting, etc. I keep replying on MS Money’s cash forecast, saying that things will begin to go better after January. It sucks that our roughest month is the one month where it’s nice to have extra cash for gifts. But, whatever – we still have food to eat and a warm place to sleep – so what am I complaining about.

So now I’m just waiting for a conference call to begin, supposed to be getting some pick up work on somebody’s project. Whatever, I’m just glad to have something to do – I hope there’s a chance for some recognition with this work, whatever it is. I just want to start making a professional as well as personal impression on people. I have already established myself as a funny and friendly guy – now I need to put out the dual image of that guy doubled with a great worker. Then I can get my name out there and start on my path to riches!

Well, that’s enough for now – the phone should ring any minute…

11.25.2001

Thanksgiving was great!! We went to the a lodge in the mountains. It was almost like being at an “inn” from the Wheel of Time series that I am reading (again). We spent a lot of time relaxing, reading by the fire, watching the snow fall, etc. It was a blast. It was so gorgeous out there. Now I’m back at work, and just waiting until the next big vacation: Christmas. Then I have almost two weeks of off-time, not that my current on-time is all that taxing that I need some off-time, but whatever. We did all our Christmas shopping yesterday, and it’s been really Christmas-ey feeling lately. We’ve had a fire the past two nights, it’s been chilly enough.

Sharaun’s new job starts in January, and the money should start nearly doubling each month. That will be the biggest development since we’ve been here. Finally, enough money to pay off the last credit card, and then start sacking some away for a possible house downpayment, and start chipping away at the school loans. Right now, we’re set fine until Christmas, since I pulled out of our stock plan at work, and we got that check plus the extra each paycheck. So, once her money starts coming in, I can re-enroll in the stock plan and maybe even start putting the full into both retirement plans again. I really want to do that, and as soon as possible too. I have been too long out of them.

11.25.2002

Ever since I removed this thing from the work PC, I haven’t really written. Much, much, has happened. And I even think I lost an entry due some strange overwriting that may have gone on between this local file and the one on the server.

Anyway. So much. My boss got fired. One of my best friends is getting a divorce. Another, less-close, got an a car accident and nearly died; drunk. We took a limo to see Rent in San Francisco. Sharaun learned today her job is gone next year, so it’s back to the hand-pressing for her. Too much, way too much to write in detail about. I’ll let that serve enough, mostly because I’ve been through it all so many times in my head and out of my mouth, that I’m sick of talking about it all.

Right now I’m feeling depressed. I’m feeling removed, lonely or something. Sharaun is at a late-night soccer game, I stayed here. I guess part of the feeling I have right now is almost guilt. Over what, I don’t know. But I’m sure it’s guilt. I was driving home, thinking about how I’m sometimes proud at how well I roll with the punches, and also how sometimes I think I shouldn’t “roll” so easily. Sometimes I almost think I’m removed from things too much. I mean, I like to think that I just don’t let things I can’t change bother me. But maybe it’s more than that, maybe I just am too separated from it all. I kinda know what I wanna say here, but not really. It’s more rambling. It’s not like I’m a cyborg without feelings, but sometimes I’m very cleverly removed from experiencing things in the “conventional” way. I have this buffer zone or something, which I feel is somewhat admirable and somewhat questionably detestable. Or something.

11/24/2003

thiickkeenn your maan11y swordd

11/25/2004

thanks

11/24/2005

yellow photos

11/24/2006

football and leftovers

——————

Oh, and, oddly enough, I’m still trying to finish the Wheel of Time series…

Goodnight.

Posted on

washing cars


Happy Monday, in the new bizarro world where I go to work every morning.

I’ve been thinking lately about my longer-term career prospects. I think, providing I can maintain it, my current employment should provide a usable path to a lifetime career and decent retirement. What’s more, I do, more often than not, like what I do, and even take pride in my work on occasion. So, it’s not quite “meaningless toil” to me, which I feel is good. However, there are times when I begin to think that I could be just as fulfilled, if perhaps not more, doing any number of alternate jobs. I’ve often thought, for instance, about “running away” to somewhere in the rural Midwest. Maybe driving around through the farm-based heartland until I find a decently populated town which could use a little PC –repair shop. Somewhere where I could buy some land, go to work at my little storefront on Main Street, get to know the populous: who’s courting whom, who’s sister just had a baby, who’s marriage is on the rocks because Henry’s too fond of the sauce, that kind of stuff. When I think about “having money” in terms of “sustaining a happy standard of living” instead of “building a fortune,” these kind of alternative job-lifestyles really seem attractive.

And now I’ll totally change the subject. At the risk of talking about work, which, as a policy, I don’t do here – I wanted to write down some thoughts from Dave’s Management Playbook. Here goes:

One of the things I find difficult about being a manager is dealing with peoples’ constant desire to “do something more.” Don’t get me wrong: On the surface, aspiring to the “next big thing” is great. In fact, it’s often what you look for in employees, that yen to land the bigger fish, to take whatever they’re doing to that next level. It’s also, in some regards, the kind of attitude that often gets rewarded in the workplace. However, there are some boundaries to this “moving up the ladder” task-tackling-strategy that some folks don’t seem to understand. The biggest problem I see with people who have this mindset is that they seem to forget the limitations of their present job-role when they ask for “something bigger and better” to work on. As a manager, I’m looking to get you ahead – it’s an integral part of my job to help develop you. If you’re my performer, I’m always trying to get you that “high visibility” thing to work on, I want you to succeed and excel because, when you do, it makes us both look good. There are limits to this, though, and some people seem to understand them – while others don’t. Let me explain.

Here it is in a nutshell: If you want something “bigger, better” than what you’re currently doing, make sure that whatever you choose or suggest fits within the context of what you currently do at the company.

What do you mean, Dave? Well: If I managed a car wash, and all we did at the car wash was wash cars, I wouldn’t expect an employee to come to me and say something like, “Dave, I’ve been washing cars here now for three years. Next year, I don’t want to wash cars anymore; I’m tired of that kind of ‘mundane’ work. Everyone here washes cars. Instead, I’d like to paint cars. As my manager, I expect you to support my career decision.” Yeah. OK. Look buddy, this here business is a car wash. At the car wash, we wash cars. If you want to paint cars, go get a job at the car-painting place. If you work at the car wash, you should expect your job to involve washing cars. Just because everyone else, from the newest new-hire to the most senior car-washer, washes cars, doesn’t mean that work is “mundane.” In fact, at the car wash, washing cars is the most important job there is. There is no job more important, no task more critical, than getting the cars washed. “Everyone” washes cars here because if they didn’t, our business wouldn’t be successful. I fail to see how this is that so difficult to understand.

Now, that being (somewhat sarcastically) said, there is room at the car wash for that three-year veteran to “move ahead” and potentially get to that “next big thing.” How? Well, there are infinite ways, really, but let me dream some up right here. How about coming to me and suggesting some things that might improve our custom? Or, suggesting some process tweaks that may save us time and/or money? You want to do something different? How about coming to me with an idea about offering an interior detailing service for a premium over our basic wash, and offering yourself as the person who’d be in charge, maybe with some supporting projections on the potential financial upside? See, there are plenty of ways you can get yourself noticed, and potentially even shift the bulk of your work away from car washing per se, while still operating within the bounds of our business. As the car wash manager, these ideas will likely impress me, and I’ll be much more willing to bite on them, as they play right back into our core business. I would expect you to remember, however, that, at the heart of things, you still work at a car wash – and, as such, you’d still be expected to wash cars. It is, after all, what we do at the car wash.

Let me clarify that there is nothing wrong with working at the car wash and aspiring to someday paint cars. Heck, if that’s what you want to do, and the car wash is merely a stepping stone on your path there – you can expect me, as a good manager, to support you. I’ll even keep an eye out for car-painting jobs which may be open, and be sure to send you with all the good recommendations I can manager. I’ll do this because, ultimately, I’m primarily concerned with you working hard for me while you work for me – and I know that keeping you happy will also keep you working hard. If you can comprehend this, we’ll do well together. But, if you expect me, as your manager at the car wash, to “reward” you for your service by exempting you from the “everyday” task of washing cars, you’re going to be disappointed. I understand that you want to be set apart from the hired-last-week Armor All guy, I do; I’ve been there. But don’t expect a special job that doesn’t involve washing cars. Once again, this is a car wash – and we need pretty much everyone here to wash cars or we don’t make money.

So, workers, never give up looking for your big break. Never stop “thinking ahead” and looking for your opportunity to excel and make your own way. But, unless you’re willing or wanting to change jobs, make sure to look for these things within the context of what you currently do. I understand that jobs get “comfortable,” and it’s tempting to want to do that next big thing from within the comfort zone you’ve built-up in your current position. If you’re looking to make a career move, then you should make your career move. It’s very difficult to make a successful upward career move while maintaining the comfort level you’ve achieved “doing what you’re good at” currently. In fact, this kind of career “slide” or “shift” is only doable by those with keen networking and political maneuvering skills. If you’re the girl at the car wash who expects her manager to reward her by letting her not was cars with the rest of the troops – you likely don’t have the slickness to negotiate one of these “shifts.” And, since I could write a whole other Playbook entry about making those “slick” moves, I’ll leave it at that.

So, what can you, Mr. Car Wash Worker-Bee, do? Let me leave you with some concrete suggestions which will probably get you ahead within the operational boundaries of your business: First up, why not try to continue kicking butt at the car wash? Do better than the car washers you can do better than. Maintain a good attitude and be friendly. Demonstrate to the boss that you understand how important getting cars washed is to her business. Perhaps help her identify ways to wash more cars, or wash the cars you already wash better in the same amount of time. Make an effort to understand the car wash industry, and relate what you’re doing at your car wash to how others are doing things are their car washes. Make connections with people who work at other car washes, mention to your boss that the Southside Suds is doing a two-for-one promo next week, that you heard it from a buddy you know who works there, convince him it may be a good idea to send out coupons for free waxing with every wash that week – show him your knowledge and connections can help him be competitive. You get the idea. There are millions of way to shine at your job, just don’t make the mistake of forgetting what exactly it is you where hired to do when you shine.

There are millions of ways to “move up” at your current job, but unless you also want to “move out,” make sure you’re appropriately tying your aspirations to your role.

Goodnight lovers.

Posted on

those paid suckers


Sunday. Don’t want to go to work tomorrow. Don’t want to go to work period. Just flat out don’t want to go to work. Would like to do most anything otherwise. But, I’m going to work; I am. I’ll be there at 8am, just like the rest of those paid suckers. Doesn’t mean I can’t complain.

As much as I hate the end of daylight savings time for having to leave work in the dark, a little part of me likes it because it it somehow fools me into feeling less lazy with that post-work time. Since it’s dark outside when I get home every evening, I feel less wasteful not taking advantage of the remaining post-work daylight to “get something done.” With no post-work daylight, assuming a position on the couch as soon as I’ve kicked off my shoes and splashed the days’ grease off my face at the sink is just easier to abide. Thing is, even with the extended hours of sunlight daylight savings time affords me, I don’t do much with it. The difference is purely psychological, but it works for me.

This weekend, we finally got some rain. I think it rained all night Saturday – I mean, as far as I could tell in the few times I awoke. I’ve written before about how much I love the rain, sometimes, and this year we’ve been pretty much entirely dry until now. I actually got up early and mowed the lawn at 8am that day, the earliest I dared on the weekend with sleeping neighbors. I beat the rain by a few hours, and it felt good to be done by 10am. The rest of the day was spent indulging in a triad of manly vices: beer, meat, and football. It was a good day, though, despite likely taking a few days off my life in the long run. Who says that’s not a valid trade, anyway, I mean, I had a good time.

I guess, looking back on last week’s lack of writing, that my triumphant return to work had me reeling more than I thought. Despite feeling like I walked back and and picked up where I left off without a hitch, it instead seems that I was indeed adjusting to the grind again. Getting back into the habit of hearing my BlackBerry chirp through the night, heralding each new e-mail piling up in my inbox; trying to re-commit to my short-term memory the unimportant dates which are so important to what I do; and re-establishing those all-important “networking” links by having half-work/half-not “catch-up” meetings with coworkers. In the evenings, I went back to my no-laptop-while-Keaton’s-awake policy, and that hurt the blogging too. Hopefully it gets better… but the fact that I’m forsaking friends right now to type this should speak to my dedication.

Unfortunately, I don’t have more in me. Goodnight.

Posted on

who are you guys?


Another day at the fount-of-busy that is the sawmill. It’s hard for me to believe that this was only my third day back, like being dropped into a jungle thick with undergrowth and having to machete (as a verb, mind you) my way out. Stupid work, where’s my warm-up time? Where’s my trial-run? Where’s my mulligan? Anyway, I feel like I’m kicking butt. And, despite having had to go back to work to get that feeling – I kinda like it. You just don’t go home from a long day sitting on the couch reading a book thinking, “Yeah, I kicked ass today.” Then again, the ass-kicking means nothing to no-one, in the long-run. There, I think that’s sufficiently pro’d and con’d as per my style – never say anything, stay on the fence, the non-committal commitment. What?

Sometimes I wonder about people reading this blog. Do I know them? Do they know me? My stats tell me I also get a “decent” amount of daily traffic. I mean, check it out, here’s a snapshot of my daily traffic numbers over the past week or so:


sounds familiar visitors per day

Surprisingly, this graph says that sounds familiar averages between sixty and seventy unique hits a day. This is exciting to me. Sixty people a day? Who the heck are all of you? I know I get the random Google or Yahoo-referred visitor, who likely only stay to read what they came for and then move onto the next stop on the internet, and that these visitors can add up… but still, that leaves some percentage (I bet greater than fifty percent) of those ~sixty daily visitors who are real readers. Maybe not repeat readers, the basic stats package I have doesn’t go into that much detail (and even when I had StatTraq installed it wasn’t easy to track), but they are real people who at least alight here at sounds familiar whether by chance or will.

As an aside: I think it’s interesting that there’s an almost triple-traffic spike on October 29th – which is the day I wrote about two extremely internet-vogue items: the OiNK raid and the new Radiohead album. Seems blogging about current events can really boost your audience.

And, since we’re talking about my traffic patterns here at the old blog (because I can think of nothing else to write about), let’s back this thing out and take a look at visitors in week time-chunks:

Visitors per week.
sounds familiar visitors per week

Seems to prove out the sixty-seventy per-day thing, at least for the past couple weeks, but it also shows that, on the whole, traffic is on the decline from some sort of visitor heyday back towards the middle of the year. Again, the data seems odd to me. I mean, did I really have some three-thousand visitors back in the second week of June? The only thing I wrote about that week was the Santa Maria style BBQ Anthony I and built, and I can’t even get those entries to show up on Google with hand-picked keywords. Funny, but three-thousand visitors is totally intriguing. Wonder what what would happen if we zoomed out and looked at things from a month-chunk basis?


sounds familiar visitors per month

Holy crap what?! Hovering over that June 2007 peak on the live page tells me that it sits at 10,423 visitors. Ten-thousand?! What the crap? How is that even possible? Looking at this, I start thinking the 3,000 peak from the week-level graph may just be the downtrending “tail” from this huge early-June spike. So, what happened earlier in June or late May? On the 29th of May, I wrote about how my then host, StartLogic, sucked ass. That could draw visitors, I suppose. On the 31st of May, I mentioned the Arcade Fire show we attended in Berkeley, and linked to several popular Arcade Fire sites. I guess that could also pull visitors. I’m not sure, but it sure was fun to look at all this, was it not?

Oh, it wasn’t? Sorry.

Well, then, check this out. While this whole page about some cool things in China is neat-o, I’m linking it because I want you to scroll down to the big black box with the skull and crossbones that says “The Deadly South Peak.” There’s a written account there from a Western guy who hiked this trail in China, and the pictures and story are very well done. You have to see this trail to believe it. I checked, and the trip from Shanghai to Xi’an, which is about 75mi south of Mt. Haushan, is only a two-and-a-half hour flight and is relatively cheap. I’m thinking, “Hey, I go to Shanghai a couple times a year… maybe I should go climb this thing.” Man, would that be an adventure. An insane, ill-fated adventure on which I would likely kill or injure myself… but an adventure nonetheless. I think, if I could get someone to try it with me – it might be up for it. You down?

Goodnight.

Posted on

angry, resigned, jaded


I did write Sunday, but it was only this, and it wasn’t enough.

Sunday and… and… Oh Lord in Heaven I can barely stand to type it… and… I have to go to work tomorrow. It’s my absolute last day of this nine week vacation, and it’s a day of tears and anguish. I had planned, like a good conscientious homeowner, to mow the lawn today. But, when I got up to change into the ratty clothes I wear to cut grass, I had a sudden change of heart. Mow the lawn on my last day of freedom? I think not. No sir, I most certainly think not. You see, even knowing that today is very likely the last chance I’ll have to mow before next weekend (being that it’s gonna be dark after work now with the time change), I just couldn’t bring myself to sacrifice my last day to something so work-like. Instead, I want to read my book, listen to some Dylan, maybe take a nap after playing with Keaton – yeah, wide open.

After that the apathy overcame me, and I just gave up on posting for the day.

Today, however, was Monday (noobs: I write at night, the evening before I post, hence the date discrepancy) and it was my first day back at work. I look back on the day I wrote this entry, on my last day of work some two months ago, and it seems so far away… so why does my time off seem to have gone by so fast? I went into work this morning, and it was like picking up right where I left off. No gradual ramp into activity, rather a nose-dive into the same frigid waters of stress and deadlines. The shock of how quickly things got busy really surprised me. Then again, maybe I’m more overwhelmed than busy – I always have had a problem with trying to solve problems myself rather than let them be solved elsewhere. In some ways, I guess my coming back feels like a big inheritance of problems. I’ve gotten better, for the most part I can force myself to let those working for me solve the problems… but that temptation to jump in and run is still there.

Anyway, I’m starting to not make sense. Regarding my first day back: I thought it went extremely well. I wasn’t crushed by having to return, more like I slid right back into place. That in itself is kinda scary, like I’m so accustomed to work it’s like riding a bike… but it was also kinda nice. Actually, I felt like I got quite a bit “done” today – which is to say, I did a lot to understand what happened while I was out, and get myself back into the game. I know I was dreading it, and I can’t say I wouldn’t have rather lounge about the house reading, but, in the end, it really wasn’t as bad as I thought. Sort of like slamming into a brick wall with a seatbelt on, or something. And now the cycle begins anew: wake, work, family, sleep, repeat. I wonder how I’ll feel come the end of the week? A fellow worker said that his first three post-sabbatical weeks went: angry, resigned, jaded. After that, jaded was permanent. I’ll let you know.

Right now, though, Sharaun’s gone at some chef-kinda party, Keaton’s down for the night, and I’ve put on the Figurines’ latest album (which is no longer new at all) to give it another go. I loved their first album so much I just can’t seem to accept the fact that their follow-up didn’t do much for me. And, it does have some goodness, it just doesn’t hold a candle to their debut. Stinks. I hate it when that happens. The other night I TiVo’d a bunch of old black and white western serials off of the old-stuff channel, and I’ve really been enjoying then. The times when the kids of this nation were weaned on cowboy-‘n’-indian movies has always seemed like good times to me, not sure why. I figure it’s somehow good, from a cultural-history perspective or something, to know about the Trail Blazers’ spot in old-timey westerns.

Goooooood night.

Posted on

the streetlights come on in two days


Today (Friday) is the last day of my sabbatical. My last true day, although I do have the weekend before I have to actually punch a timecard again. It’s a sad day for me… the end of what now seems like an impossible dream that went way to fast. The non-working, still-paid, man’s life… the life that I fantasize about. But, alas, the life that just ain’t too realistic. And now it’s over. I guess all good things… bah… let’s do this.

Let me tell you about a time I was embarrassed (for no other reason than the story came to me). I think of it often, actually, as it was a fairly recent occurrence, and I think it does a good a job deflating me when my head’s grown too big for its own good. Here goes: For work, I had traveled to a customer site for an important “face to face” meeting between their higher-ups and our higher-ups. Of the higher-ups from my sawmill, I was the lowest-up; but I had a good handle on the pulse of a certain program which was likely to become a topic of conversation at the meeting, so I was included. We all sat in a larger room, seated randomly at a large table in the form a 3-sided square/horseshoe (carefully staggering ourselves so as to not appear a single “front” to our customer, gotta be aware of that, y’know!). I am a pooperface.

The conversation was driven off a presentation on the big screen at the front of the room, but was all largely organic and free-flowing, as presentations to higher-ups tend to be. At one point, the highest-up who’d traveled from the sawmill with me was making a statement about when our customer would get something we’d promised them, and that something was part of the program I manage. The highest-up said something like, “And, you’ll be happy to know that you should be getting ThingZ on….,” and paused as if thinking. Taking this as my cue, and thinking him pausing for the “expert” to jump in and not make him look like he was unaware of the date, I jumped into the conversation with, “I’m pretty sure your ThingsZ shipped on Friday.” What I hadn’t heard, however, was the highest-up completing his own thought shortly after his pause – I had spoken right over his own date with my own, unknowingly, thinking he needed help. The highest-up most definitely did not like this, and apparently took it for the lowest-up trying to trump his piece of good news. The date was earlier than our customer would’ve expected, and I’m sure he thought I was trying to clutch at the glory of that announcement.

Without even looking at me, the highest-up stated, in an arrogant, no-nonsense tone, “Don’t argue with me. I think I know my own ThingZs.” It was like he was a mother on the phone with a friend, and I a child tugging on her apronstrings whining “Mommy! Mommy!” That was the tone he used. I heard his words more like, “Shut up, you know-nothing underling, we all know who’s in charge here.” The words stung immediately, but I was able to react quickly enough to laugh out loud, hoping to play it off as some good-natured ribbing between coworkers. It worked, to a degree, the room joined me in laughing, as did the higher-up, perhaps slightly embarrassed himself at calling out one of his own ranks so in front of customers. Oh but did I replay that quip in my head on the flight home, feeling the snub every single time. Seems a small thing, I know, but it was terribly embarrassing at the time. It does me good to think on it at times, to reign in my ego, get my head in check – even if it was a mistake on my part and no real vie for notoriety. Still sucked getting called out, though…

Nerd stuff coming, beware.

Oh man… I found the coolest thing online today, by pure happenstance, too. Seems that my torrent client of choice, µTorrent, has a plugin called WebUI that allows you to access the client over any standard HTTP connection. I know, this seems kinda nerdy, but I’m’a tell you what it means here next. See, I use BitTorrent to download all sorts of things. Mostly legal stuff, of course, like live concert recordings from sites like archive.org, Dime, Tapecity, and the Trader’s Den, as well as TV shows Sharaun and I follow yet may have missed from sites like EZTV or shareTV. I’ve also occasionally used it to download a Linux LiveCD or two.

Anyway, suffice it to say that µTorrent is open on my home PC, sucking up my broadband on a regular basis. the WebUI plugin for µTorrent allows me to remotely login to the client software which is running on my home machine, from anywhere that has an internet connection, through the standard µTorrent port (which is open on my router). I supply a username and password, and I get a slick-looking web interface where I can manage all the torrents I’m seeding/leeching, as well as add a new torrent, delete a torrent, stop or pause a torrent, etc. You’d think this may be something you’d never want to do, but you’d be surprised when it may be useful to login to a torrent client and delete all your seedings every once in a while. WebUI is awesome. If I wanted to, I could find a cool new torrent online while I’m away from home, logon to µTorrent and add it, and it’d be waiting for me when I got there. Sweet.

I can’t believe I have to go back to work…

Oh, lord… I have to go back to work. It’s over.