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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.

Posted on

treading water

I know how you feel... my brother from the animal kingdom...
Tonight was supposed to be my night. Work wasn’t going to ruin it. Work wasn’t going to stop me from getting my haircut or mowing my lawn. Work wasn’t going to keep me up into the wee hours. Work wasn’t going to own me tonight.

It started off right. I got my haircut, mowed my lawn, and then sat down after dinner and began to succumb to the call of sleep. My 2am night last night didn’t help. Right now I am beat-down something fierce. But… I have to be up. I have to finish. I have two presentations that need to be ready by tomorrow. One has to go out before I can sleep. But, I’m writing instead of working because my laptop decided to act up. Now I’m re-installing SP2 over my work’s VPN… and just watching the wasted minutes slip by. My presentation is on there, going wholly unworked on. Man, I was wrong about the crunch. It came on all smooth and slick, with a shiny glittery air about it that made me like it. The crunch’s pickup lines were practiced, coolly delivered, and believable. “Hey, take this extra work, the recognition will be worth it.” “You’re talented enough to be successful at this, it’s time to own your own career.” Oh the crunch, you’re a wily fox, a forked-tongue devil, a siren sweetly singing me towards the shoals. I fell for your charms, I sure did – and now you’re exposed for the time-sink of a whore you really are. Taking away my nights and my lunches, you bastard. 11pm and I’m here thinking of you… I only gave you my best, how could you do me wrong like this the crunch? I fell for you…

This is ridiculous. I’ve been waiting for this laptop to be “available” for nearly two hours now. Hangs, reboots, power cycles, more hangs… it’s infuriating. I’m at the point where I’m about to just chuck this brick out the damn window. I considered going to bed and waking up early to do this, since I’m about to fall over anyway… but if I can’t get the computer running it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m so frustrated right now. I keep thinking about mowing the lawn and how my mind was completely off work. I want to be back out there again, where I’m only concerned about making sure each pass back and forth overlaps the last one I made. It’s so much easier… I want to be back there.

Sorry, I’m devoid of all non-work thought… but at least I got a bitchin’ haircut and my lawn is the envy of the neighbors. Goodnight.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

down one hill and up another

The push into his own territory.
Good evening my friends. Welcome to the leavings of a fine weekend, the makings of which you can read about in more detail below. For now though, lets get right down to the goods – before this dull-ache in the back of my head turns into full-on sleepiness and I can no longer resist the calling of the sheets. So… we go…

Written late Friday night, never made it:

Well, lest you were wondering, I pulled it off. I don’t know how I manage sometimes… I swear I’m just lucky by nature – things just tend to go right for me. If you haven’t been reading lately, I’m referring to a formal content review I had this evening some presentation material I’ll be giving at a conference later this month. Anyway, the review went stellar – better than I could’ve hoped. There was no way my material was at the requisite 95% completion, but I prefaced my review with that fact and cited special circumstances (you may call it “an excuse”) as to why that was. In the end, I actually got some accolades for having as much depth as I did under the conditions I’m working with – see, I’m just plain lucky… Oh, and as a sideline, I think this is the longest-running work-related topic I’ve ever written about. For the most part I tend to keep my work-related blogging abstract, talking more about how I work than what I’m working on. So, this running topic of my presentation crunch has effectively charting new territory for me.

And now, I’m writing a sentence here and there in between another midnight-oil evening slaving over PowerPoint and Outlook. Yes yes, work is still all consuming. However, just up ahead in the near future I spy what may possibly be a small respite from the crunch. Not tonight, however, where I’m under the gun to produce two very tangible (and very non-existent, at this point) pieces of output. So, I work till I get tired of it, then write till I get tired of that, and just keep switching. We’ll see how long this lasts, it’s already 10:30pm as it is. OK, enough about work… for real.

Sunday night now, welcome to the present.

What a weekend. Gorgeous weather, productive days. Saturday, Erik called and motivated me to work out in the backyard. We made some awesome progress, clear-cutting the forest of weeds that the winter rains gave birth to, and firing up the saw to cut pavers for the porch. Being able to see the ground through the weeds makes the yard show so much more promise… it just looks yard-like again. Sunday, Sharaun helped me cut and place the final pavers for the porch. Yup, you heard right – the porch is d-o-n-e done. And suddenly, things seem so much more measurable. I’ve probably said it at the end of each distinct phase of work, but I can count the steps to “done” so much better now: adjust the sprinklers to height, remove rocks and debris, fill/grade with topsoil, and bring in sod. Once the sod is in, it’s all “prettying” from then on. Time for plants, flowers, finishing touches, etc. I dunno… I remember saying I’d be done by last Halloween… perhaps I’ll only be a year off my prediction.

Anyway, these two days of not-working were even sweeter for the work-bonanza that was my last week. 8am to 1 or 2am each night really took a toll on me – and come Friday at 4pm I was more than ready for an outdoor happy hour at the local watering hole. My Thursday-night-to-Friday was a blur of presentation-writing and presentation-giving… all of which I miraculously pulled off to my satisfaction. This week shouldn’t be as insane, but I still have to maintain a fairly good clip if I want to be prepared for the major presentation in a week’s time. The ratio I’m shooting for this week is about 40% content development and 60% rehearsal. I want to make darn sure I have my patter down before I get up in front of that roomful of inquisitive folks. Ugh…

On on off note, I was perusing Pat’s page the other day and came across an interesting comment to one of his front-page updates (you can check it out here). A fella whom neither I, nor Pat I presume, has ever met left a comment on his site, mentioning he’d been brought there from some link at my site, which he’d originally landed on while researching Pac Man stuff. Unknown readers: the blogger’s Holy Grail. Seeing stuff like that, and WHOISing unfamiliar IPs to see if you might have a lurking regular with whom you’re unfamiliar… it all somehow validates the time spent writing. So thanks to you, lurkers, you make it worth it. Oh, and you too, known readers. You all rock.

Now, I’m going to bed. No, I don’t care what you do… I said I’m going to bed. Goodnight.

Posted on

judgement day

Will he make it?
My dad’s birthday was this past weekend. My cellphone even went off to remind me, and I snoozed it telling myself to send a card. But, alas, I missed it. That puts me at three missed-birthdays for my folks (two for mom, one for dad). And yeah, it really makes you feel like shit. Having spent years perfecting my avoidance strategy with respect to uncomfortable situations – I’ve yet to call my pops and wish him a happy belated. What kinda kid chronically forgets his folks’ birthdays? One in his late-20s you say? Well yeah, that’s what I’d like to think too. My negligence is a product of my self-centered age bracket… where my life hinges on my friends and my job. I swear dad, I knew it was your birthday, and I mean to send a card… I even went downstairs at work to pick one up. Who knows what happened. Put another tick in the “terrible son” column and go back to loving me unconditionally OK? Thanks.

Today I came home all motivated to put in another 6hrs of work, but as it turns out I fell asleep on the couch and am now writing instead. I think I’ll get to some work tonight, but perhaps not quite as much as I did yesterday. Now, tomorrow evening at 5pm is my big pre-conference review meeting, where I get to debut my far-behind-schedule materials. I’m less concerned than I was previously, mainly because I’ve come to terms with the fact that it’s just gonna be a photo-finish. I’m OK with that, I just hope I don’t get torn up over it too much in the meeting.

Wait… no one wants to hear about this, right? What do you want to hear about instead? What’s in-vogue with bloggers these days? Music?

So, the Desaparicidos were a one-off thing. As much as I loved that album, I can live with the fact that there’ll never be another one. Sometimes it’s better that way, like with the Unicorns’ Who’ll Cut Our Hair…, I don’t think the could’ve followed up that record. But, even tho I’ll never hear Connor with the Desa’s again – this new album by Little Brazil works nicely as a stand-in. A little bouncier and less afraid to slow it down, but it elicits the same rockish excitement when I hear it. Vintage sounding, with catchy phrasing and hooks, I’m all about it. Check it out if you’re not a pussy. Oh wow, I just read up on this band – and the bass player is the bass player from Desaparicidos! I swear, I didn’t know that before writing this paragraph. He either plays a super distinctive bass (hard to do), or has a lot of creative influence on his bands.

Roughly three months to go and this website turns two. Two years of writing. That’s a lot of writing. Some of it is good, some of it isn’t. I like to use the “random entry” link on the sidebar on occasion, just to see what comes up. It’s fun to remember writing certain things. I’m actually happy I’m still doing it, I couldn’t really have known I’d keep up with it back when I started. Based on the page’s statistics, I still don’t have a very big readership, and even less of what I do have are what you’d call “regulars.” But, I do see some IPs pop up pretty frequently – so thanks for sticking with me when I was boring, or when I was drunk, or whatever. I sometimes surprise myself by finding the time to write every day… but I’m glad I do it. Two years… man, that seems like forever. I tell you what, I’ll keep writing if you promise to check back every now and then and keep reading, OK? Deal.

Stumbled across this the other day online, and I love it. What a cool idea. This is the kinda stuff I love the internet for.

Goodnight.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

scrobbin away

Under the gun.
Ahhh…. I took Thursday and Friday off from work, which, coupled with the Monday holiday, made this weekend seem blissfully long. With family (sister- and brother-in-law) in town, we had a busy time trudging from coast to mountains. And now, although it’s Monday, and I have the day off, and I have a myriad of things I could be doing, I’m sitting here doing nothing. It’s been a good do-nothing day though, since we got up at 6am to take our visiting family to the airport – making it feel like I’ve already slacked for a full day when it’s not even noon yet. Of course, I have the appropriate guilt that’s associated with this level of laziness. I just don’t care. I’m not motivated to do anything… how crappy is that? Ugh…

Let me tell you what’s been keeping me up at nights lately. I have a pretty big-scale conference mid-month at which I’m a presenter. This is a pretty big deal for two reasons. First, the topic of my material will be a very high-interest one, and in fact the two times I teach the class are already booked to capacity. Second, I am woefully behind schedule in regards to developing my content. Normally, I wouldn’t be too worried – I am, by nature, a procrastinator, but I also work well under pressure, so it’s normally not that bad. The difference here is, I am teaching a class about a subject I’m really unfamiliar with. So, in addition to the normal task of developing the material, I also have to educate myself on everything. I have roughly two weeks to do this. However, per the development schedule for the conference, my material should be at 95% this week. People, my material is at roughly… 5%. For the first time in a while, I’m worried about pulling something off. Not that I won’t have the material ready in time – that’s just not an option, my real worry is making a fool of myself.

I’ve given bad presentations before, and I know from experience that it is a low, low feeling to not know your subject matter – and to have that fact be painfully obvious to your audience. Oh, I can still remember the searing embarrassment and desire to run and hide under a rock for the rest of the day. I do not want to experience that again… I’ll do anything. So, I’ve set myself a strict regimen this week. I’ll not only work during the days, but also log hours at night doing as much time-clearing work for the following day as I can. I’m dedicated to reading several pages an evening on the material I’ll be talking to – to get myself properly educated for any probative questions from the peanut gallery. From now until I leave this next-next Monday, I’m going to try and be the world’s most effective worker, cranking out not only my daily requirements but producing a top-notch presentation, as well as a sponge for information that may help me pull off the required feat. I realize that, in doing this, the blog may suffer. But hey, this seems to be the month of the suffering blog… so I might as well roll with it.

Sunday my truck broke. Yeah… just wouldn’t turn over. It’s not the battery, and I only know that because the extent of my car-problem knowledge is what happens when you try to start a car with a bad battery – and this wasn’t it. The thing would sputter and sputter like it was trying to come to life on a winter day, and when the engine finally bit and started to turn over it’d run for all of two seconds before just shutting back off. Perhaps the cracks in my exhaust manifolds that have gone long-unrepaired spontaneously turned into full-on ruptures and I have no back pressure. But honestly, I have no idea what that last sentence even means and the only reason I said it is because I know there’s some key relationship between exhaust pressure and the whole engine bit. So, painfully ignorant to the inner workings of my prime method of conveyance, I left that thing in the parking lot. And that’s where it sits today… waiting for me to play my AAA card and have it towed to some shop so I can be taken advantage of. Stupid truck… what did I ever do to it? Why can’t all machines be like refrigerators? Seriously, when’s the last time your fridge just up and broke down? I don’t care how exponentially more complex a machine an automobile is – that’s no excuse.

Tonight, taking a cue from the only blog that I regularly read, I checked into audioscrobbler.com and setup an account for myself. Audioscrobbler is like a natural extension of what I was trying to do with my “currently hearing” section on the sidebar. Except, audioscrobbler is much better. It gives you infinite history as opposed to my sidebar’s puny “last 7” or whatever, and it also assembles your listening habits into meaningful (at least to music buffs) data that can show trends and favorites. For someone like me, that’s a pretty intriguing idea. Not only does audioscrobbler scrobble together your personal listening habits, it offers aggregate stats for all the users of its service. So, you can track trends, and even get suggestions from other peoples’ playlists for things you might like based on what you tend to listen to. It will take a while to build up any meaningful data, but I think as a long-term thing I’ll replace my simplistic “currently hearing” output with some more interesting statistics.

And, once again, rather than wracking the old brain for more stuff to write – I’m calling it a night. Oh, and before I go – some pictures from our weekend hiking-season break-in hike up Pyramid Peak. We didn’t make it to the top, lost the trail in the snow, but it was a great day outside and a good way for me to remember how horridly out of shape I am.

Goodnight friends… goodnight.