My journey towards personal understanding and truth took two steps yesterday. A big one and a small one. The big one came as I was getting home from the store after work. While in the check out line I felt very out of control. The woman behind me found it necessary to crowd me the whole time, even bumping into me once or twice. I asked her to stop, telling her that she was in my personal space and that I didn’t like it. The checker added to my feeling by placing the bags with my items as far away on the counter as possible. I had to walk around the foot of the counter to pick them up.
Traffic was its usual slow cumbersome self, but I was beyond caring or understanding now. I was completely into my out of control fugue. When I got home my lovely wife knew immediately that I was loaded for bear and started a dialog. Neither of us likes it when I am like this, and she has the courage to open the ball so I can get whatever off my chest. This works for us, as we never make it about the other.
The realization I got was that my image of who I was at work, and what I mean to that organization is false. I am faced with a potential layoff in the next month; a layoff that could mean relocating again. I hate this thought and it eats at me. Most of the people I work with are only vaguely aware that layoffs are looming. The situation is very surreal. In the midst of this budget crisis I learned yesterday that the entire team is slated to get monitor upgrades from 17 inch to 19 inch within the next week. Team leads to get 21-inch monitors.
I snapped.
We haven’t got enough money to keep everyone employed, but we do have enough money to by new monitors for all. As she and I talked about this the truth finally hit home. The organization just doesn’t care about us as individuals. As full-time equivalents, yes, as people no. I recently read on ‘The Perils of Leisure’ about the progression from new job rose color glasses to taken the glasses off and putting blinders on, to finally seeing the truth about where you work. What happened to me yesterday was more profound. I saw what I had always known but never owned, that I have never mattered to any organization I’ve worked for. Ever. Not as an individual. Not as Mark Nichols. As a programmer or analyst or team lead, sure. But there will always be another body to fill that requirement for the organization.
I have for most of the past twenty years defined a large part of my self through who I was at work. Now that I see that who I am as and individual really doesn’t matter to the employer, I feel like I’ve lost that part of my self-image. Instead I have to lean on the internal image of me, the one that I don’t share at work, that one that isn’t a ‘programmer’ but is rather a human seeking understanding of himself.
Yesterday my wife and I went to see MIB II at the local multiplex theater. We find going to the movies harder and harder to do for several reasons. The audiences are ruder than ever before. People use their cell phone repeated during the movie, kids are running up and down the aisles, and it’s expensive. By the time the two of us get tickets and some popcorn and a drink, we’ve spent upwards of $25. To sit and be annoyed by the people around us who obviously had $25 to waste and could care less about the show.
For once, yesterday was different. At show-time we were alone in the theater. Hubba hubba. I thought for a moment that we would have that rarest of movie going experiences ~ a private showing. Sadly this was not to be; during the 15 minutes of trailers and commercials a couple and a single man wandered in and sat down. At least they were there to see the movie and were far enough away from us that we didn’t notice them at all during the show.
After not a little work, I’ve managed to convert my web site to a content management system called ‘Moveable Type’. It is freely available at moveabletype.org. If you maintain a blog, or would like to, I can highly recommend it.
There are a few wrinkles to work out yet; my history isn’t working, and the format of my signature isn’t quite what I had in mind. But the content is coming from the database, and the general formatting is correct.
My hope is that using this software will allow me to focus on capturing my thoughts without having to focus on the nuts and bolts of HTML to display them.
Stay tuned… more to come.
I have lunch a couple times a week at a local chili diner. The chili is simple and hot, the service quick, and the atmosphere pleasant.
There’s only one problem with this place. Once a week or so the server, dishing up your bowl of chili, is a woman who can’t get it right. I like my chili spicy, with extra meat and no beans. She only ever gets 1/3 of the order right. Not spicy, but no beans and extra meat. Or spicy, no extra meat and no beans. Or spicy with beans. Phooey.
It is so frustrating. How hard is this? I should say something to the owner, but I am reluctant to cause trouble.
I guess as a society we are raised to put up with near misses rather than ask for specifics. I know that we are all human and that we all make mistakes, but I think a systematic acceptance of less than leads to bigger problems. We are all capable of getting it right, if only we try.
I am sitting in carousel at the local Audi dealer waiting for my car to complete its 15K service visit.
I use the term service euphemistically as this is not pleasant.
There are two places to sit here ~ in the room with the TV or in the room with the loud obnoxious music on. Furthermore, when I arrived here I was lectured by the twerp doing my vehicle check in.
When I bought the car I was told it had a service indication system that would notify me when it required service. So I waited until the computer display in the car said it was less than 500 miles from its next service point to bring the car in. The service receptionist chastised me because I hadn’t brought the car in for its 10K checkup. When I explained that the display hadn’t come on he said to ignore the display and bring the car in every 10K regardless.
Why put a system into car if you aren’t going to use it? This makes no sense to me at all. I can imagine that there was considerable time, money and effort put into the development and deployment of the diagnostic system in my Audi TT. Imagine the chagrin at Audi HQ if they knew a $7.50/hour high school graduate was circumventing the whole system.
My wife and I are traveling to Hawaii for a cruise at Christmas time. I’ve been fretting over the flight arrangements. The cruise line has discounted tickets, but you lose a lot of control over them.
If you book the flight with Norwegian they send you your plane tickets approximately 1 month before your cruise departure date. At that time you can call the airline an request a seat preference. I was not happy with putting it off so late ~ particularly since we are flying December 20th and 29th.
So I looked into booking them myself. The cost difference is roughly 1000 dollars. More. Some would argue that it was foolish to spend $1000 more for the same seats. I would argue that the intangible benefits from booking our own airline tickets far exceeds any price, much less $1000.
We have a non-stop flight. We are flying from our local airport, where we will clear security and check baggage; avoiding the whole checkin mess at the international airport. We have our seat preferences on file now ~ 7 months in advance.
Mostly we have peace of mind. I won’t fret about the arrangements for the next 6 months, and my lovely wife is at ease knowing what to expect for the most difficult part of the trip.
Our way is priceless. Our feelings and comfort level is priceless.
I have the tickets in hand now… 2-seat row outbound, 2-seat row inbound. Life is very good.
We are going to hawaii in December for Christmas. Three years ago we spent Christmas by ourselves after having travelled to see my family at Thanksgiving, and my wife’s mother the weekend before Christmas. Michele was sick with pneumonia from Christmas until late january, and didn’t fully recover until months later.
The following year, the holidays were spent with my family. This past year we went to Tampa to see Michele’s old stomping grounds.
This coming year Christmas is for us and us alone. I’m sure that we’ll see some of my family (as then all live within an hour’s drive) before going. But the main thrust of the season this year is on us.
Jingle Bells
We had a fabulous weekend. Friday evening we had pizza from Papa Murphy’s ~ they build it and you bake it. This way it is hot and fresh no matter what. Plus their pizza is good.
Saturday we had lunch with my mom, a belated mother’s day lunch. It was most enjoyable: good food, good company, and a pleasant visit. That evening we decided to take in a movie. We rarely go to the movies on a weekend night as that is when everyone goes and it is just too much hassle. However, we wanted to see Gosford Park, which was playing at the local second run theater. So we went and had a wonderful time. Excellent movie.
Sunday we had a lazy morning followed by a lunch out at Lone Star. We hadn’t been there for a while so it was very good. In the afternoon I went to see Spider-man. It was good, predictable in all aspects; the action scenes were well done. I must admit that I thought the Gobblin’s mask could have been much better.
After getting home I cleaned the pool and we had a two hour swim. The air temperature was only 65 or so, but the water was a comfortable 88~90 degrees. Michele must have gotten chilled towards the end as she became hypothermic almost immediately upon getting out. She has had trouble with this several times now that she is entering menopause. She was still cold and feeling puny when we went to bed several hours later. We are going to have to be more careful about swimming when there is that big a difference between the air and water temperatures.
I am sitting in carousel at the local Audi dealer writing for my car to complete its 15K service visit.
I use the term service euphemistically as this is not pleasant.
There are two places to sit here ~ in the room with the TV or in the room with the loud obnoxious music on. Furthermore, when I arrived here I was lectured by the twerp doing my vehicle check in.
When I bought the car I was told it had a service indication system that would notify me when it required service. So I waited until the computer display in the car said it was less than 500 miles from its next service point to bring the car in. The service receptionist chastised me because I hadn’t brought the car in for its 10K checkup. WHen I explained that the display hadn’t come on he said to ignore the display and bring the car in every 10K regardless.
Why put a system into car if you aren’t going to use it? This makes no sense to me at all. I can imagine that there was considerable time, money and effort put into the development and deployment of the diagnostic system in my Audi TT. Imagine the chagrin at Audi HQ if they knew a $7.50/hour high school graduate was circumventing the whole system.