Sharp Tools - Personal

Victory.

On the fourth attempt, I manage the herculean feat of wresting a New York State driver's license out of the Department of Motor Vehicles, in exchange for my clean-record Massachusetts license. The fourth attempt. Sigh.

Welcome to the world, Elizabeth Caroline. Don't go nowhere.

One of my oldest friends and his wife just called to inform me that I'm an uncle, sorta, again. Their daughter, Elizabeth Caroline, was born at 27 weeks rather than the normal 40, being somewhat impatient to come into the world apparently. They waited until the prognosis was good before notifying friends, so I'm hearing of her birth nine days after the fact.

She weighs one pound, ten ounces. Down from one pound fourteen at birth (normal weight loss, says the hospital).

Very few things in this world ever cause me to start asking the cosmos for favors at whatever ruinous interest rate said cosmos might charge. This is absolutely up there. Universe, please let us see Elizabeth hale and healthy a year from now. She's got top-notch parents. She's got all her bits and apparently went from full oxygen ventilation to just room air force flow in under a day. She's got us all pulling for her.

I believe my friend, her father, when he says they think she's going to stick around with us. He's a doc himself.

But for what my entreaty is worth, I'll add it anyway.

Now I gotta figure out how to order Gund bears online...

Eye Give Up

Warning, personal problems and associated whining follow this notice.

No, really.

So I've been going to see an opthalmologist due to the recent unpleasantness. He has been pleased with how my subepithelial infiltrates have responded to steroid treatment, and today declared me 'cured!' and fully weaned from my corticosteroidal eyebaths.

The problem is that, as I told him when I first went to see him, my right eye is (still) blurry.

I am (or was) nearsighted. This meant that typically I would read with my glasses off; closer than about twenty inches, both eyes would focus almost perfectly with no correction. This is still true for my left eye. As my vision has changed, it has changed entirely at the 'far end' - in other words, the correction required to give me 20/20 distance vision has shifted. Up until a few months ago, this was still true.

Now, however, my right eye is blurry all the way in to contact. This has been true since I had the damn pink eye in the first place. It's gotten better since the inflammation went away, but it isn't gone. The opthalmologist told me that he doesn't refract people (determine their prescription) anymore, because it's just not worth his time; looking at the cosmetic surgery ads in his office, I could understand that if not agree. He told me that my prescription (which was twenty months old at this point, true) needed to be redone and advised me to go to an optometrist.

I did that. Twice today, two different ones.

Neither was able to fully correct my right eye, no matter what combination of magic optics they had at their disposal. No matter what, I was unable to focus both eyes on a subject without at least slight double vision. Individually, my eyes seemed mostly sharp, but together - nope. My left eye was exactly as expected - very slightly worse off than twenty months ago. It takes slight but noticeable effort to focus so as to eliminate the doubled vision (i.e. even wearing the test specs in the office) and my eyes quickly tire. I can't do it all the time, either.

So now what the hell do I do?

I mean, I know, get another opthalmologist. But still. Fuck.

Then to make matters worse, when I came out to the front of the store that I presently use to get my glasses (the first optometrist was theirs) they said that to make the lenses he was able to recommend would cost $589 (no frames, mind you, reusing mine) and when I said "okay, file my prescription for a while then please" the woman helping me got narrow-eyed and said "well how much of a deposit can you leave now?"

When I explained that I wasn't going to make a $600 purchase without carefully checking my monthly budget, she got more insistent about leaving a deposit. Finally she relented, but only after charging me $50 for the eye exam "which would have been waived."

I mean, I had no problem paying for the exam, but man, her manner just lost that store a sale. I really hope they give me shit about handing me the prescription when I go get it.

Tastiness.

Halal Bastirma and a small Challah loaf = lunch yummy.

News that every computer geek loves to hear.

"Well, yes, there appears to be some eye damage."

Fuck.

On the plus side, I have something which apparently is a not-uncommon result of viral conjunctivitis known as sub-epithelial infiltrates. According to my eye doc, dead virii underneath the corneal skin cause localized immune reactions, which produce small opaque white spots in the cornea. My eye is having trouble focusing due to the interference.

Also on the plus side, this is 'nearly always' amenable to steroid treatment.

On the minus side, it can take 'months.'

Sigh.

Ow.

So for what seems to be the first time in my life, I have contracted conjunctivitis. Ouch. I dunno which variety (going to see a doc tomorrow) but all I know is my right eye looks like I took a really hard punch. Feels like it, too.

Ways in which New York City sucks - health care version

I understand the legal requirements of the warning, but still. When you call a mental health care professional because another mental health care professional who diagnosed you with a critical problem due to depression referred you, having the second doc refer you to his assistant whose job is to say "You do understand that the doctor does not take health insurance and the fee for consultation is $400" is not likely to make me willfully enter treatment.

The only thing I can think of is rent, honestly. I just left Boston, where the average hourly rate for psychiatric services in private practice seemed to bounce between $125 and $175 depending on where in the metro area you were. Maybe there are, indeed, fewer mental docs per capita in New York, and this is a purely market-based difference.

But, I mean, *fuck*.

Flip out and kill the whole town

So I very rarely talk on this blog anymore, and I almost never talk about work. Not totally sure why, but there it is. I think I've gone a long time since I felt I had anything to say that I wanted other people to hear, or even to tell myself in a forum others can read. Depression does that to you. It's still quite true, but I did turn a bit of a corner today. Not 'towards the better' or anything, but a situation I'd worked myself into took on a different perspective due to the advice of a good friend who knew me, there when it mattered, better than I knew myself.

I work for a tech company, now, doing "analysis" for a C-level executive. That is to say, I investigate, analyze, write up, and in some cases roving-audit what our company is doing in the IT space and report to him on a regular basis. Sounds like the ideal job for me, and in many ways, it absolutely is.

Recently, I was tasked with handling the infrastructure planning and buildout necessary to support the launch of a new product - a small product offering, initially, to be sure, but one completely separate from our existing service and hosting infrastructure. I was given fairly vague inputs and requirements, vague guidance on budget, and not enough time to do the job properly.

That last is the problem. I have been running around our company taking careful note of where we do things 'like a startup' that we should be doing 'like an enterprise.' I've been doing this for long enough, and with enough focus, that when I was given this task I accepted it - and then instantly snowed myself into a standstill thinking about all the things that a proper project plan would need in order to get done in the timeframe given, with the staffing available (i.e. me).

See, I never did that. It's not what I do. I know what not to do for 'sustainable and process-oriented deployment' because it's what I used to do all the time; I'm an ops ninja, if I can blow my own horn just slightly. I liked to get handed tasks with stupid requirements and even stupider resource commitments so that I could say "Okay, then, you want it to what? By when? Fine. Just don't ask me how it's doing it, don't look in the server room, and for God's sake get a real team working on building the next, proper version of the infrastructure so that we can rotate onto that when it's available, but in the meantime, I'll ninja your shit."

My friend listened to me complain about the lack of requirements, the lack of input data, the lack of staffing, and the lack of a project management skillset for about half an hour. Then he said: "Dude, some people build things, and some people break things. You're an ops ninja. You break things. You make shit happen in impossible situations when that's what the company needs done. Stop trying to do shit in a manner which you don't do, and be yourself. You can't fix how your company does things at the same time doing a project in a manner that's almost entirely new to you with insufficient support."

He's absolutely right. I need to do one thing, and in this case, that's make sure the infrastructure is available to run the product when it needs to go to production. That's it. Sure, it would be nice if I could do this in a completely documented, trivially scalable, enterprise grade manner; but realistically, that's not what I do. Good, fast, cheap, pick any two? I'm the latter two, thanks.

Now, my job is still to improve how we do things. But I need to remember not to let that get in the way of the more urgent, tactical objective: to get this code hosted and available when go-time comes.

Time to slide the wakizashi out, flip out, and kill the whole town. Because ninjas are flippin' sweet.

Having a day.

So.

At 4:10 am this morning, my mother passed away.

This was not a surprise. Nor was she in discomfort or pain, at the end.

With her passing, a large amount of the magic 'not thinking about problem X/Y/Z in my life' shield went away, and stuff started to become uncomfortably relevant again, but, you know, you deal with it.

Then I had to take my sister-in-law and her au pair to the airport a couple hours south. This was voluntary; I needed to get out of the house, and figured I'd run a couple errands in Boston. All good.

Um, yeah. There was this deer, see. 180 lb buck. Had this funny notion about highways.

Luckily, that imprint on the windshield right in front of where my face sits was from the deer's head, not mine. The state trooper's comment: "Those're well-built cars. 'Murican car'll jus' fold up around a deer that big."

Nobody hurt. All OK. Meg and Jenny even made their flight.

Still. Seems my week is going...well...consistently.

I couldn't even take the deer home and roast it. I'm not a Vermont resident. Sigh.

January 29, 2008

It's been almost a week, now, with all members of my immediate family in the house. Myself, my dad, my brother, his wife, and their two kids. Various friends of the family percolate in and out, with a few around almost constantly to help. My nephews, ages six and four, constitute a herd as they thunder about the house. We're trying to instill some quiet zone rules. My brother and I shamble about, sleeping on no particular schedule, reading, foraging for food, running errands. My dad spends as much time during the day as he can out of the house on errands.

My mom is in bed in the front living room. She is on oxygen, has a Foley catheter and a pulmonary drain in, and is taking liquid lorazepam through an implanted IV port. She's dying. That's why we're all here.

Her cancer is a metastized endometrial cancer, and is 'fully developed' in her heart and lungs. She refused to stop undergoing chemotherapy even at the end; as a result, her hair is mostly gone. Her skull is becoming uncomfortably visible when you look at her head as her body weight drops. She stopped taking food a couple of days ago, and now only intermittently accepts water. She is losing her ability to swallow. She hasn't said anything lucid in a couple of days, but at her most lucid will answer clearly that she is not in pain when asked.

Sometimes, pretty much whenever she wakes, she is extremely agitated, repeating "oh God, oh God, oh God" over and over again as an absent reminder of her distress. When she awakens, whoever is sitting by her bed calls in other members of the family, and we all assure her in quiet voices that we're all OK and tell her that she's at home, in her bed, with her cats, and that she can stop worrying, stop fighting. We're all going to be OK, Mom. You've done your part. You don't owe anybody anything. Do what you need to do.

(Die, in other words.)

When I'm not sitting with her, all I can think about is the sheer amount of crap in my life that is piling up as I sit here in northern Vermont. I haven't been to work in weeks. I moved to New York City less than a week before coming up here; my cats prowl my not yet-fully-unpacked apartment in New York, peeing on my sofa in their outrage according to the cousin who is feeding them. I need to get on with my life. I need to recover what of it I can; by the time I moved, it was a complete shambles, in between eighteen months of mom deteriorating and fighting my father over decisions involving her care, of my own ongoing depression and going broke over the move and carrying the upkeep of two apartments (since I haven't been able to rent out my original one in Boston) I really, really, really need to spend time pulling myself back upright.

But mom is still here. And mom needs us to talk to her, when she can hear; which might be all the time, for all I know. She needs that fractional infinitisemal version of the support she gave me, all my life, growing up.

I haven't cried. I will likely lose it once she's gone, any day now. I have to stay functional; between my father being almost completely irrational and unable to understand that, and my brother being fully occupied with his family, I have to be able to respond at any given moment to ongoing crises.

For example, today, we discovered that the cats have both worms and fleas. All ten of them. My parents' cats. Ten pills. Ten neurotoxic neck lotions to apply. I can't even tell all the little fuckers apart, really.

Doesn't matter. Do what you have to.

One of our friends, who is experienced with terminal hospice care, keeps recommending that we all 'tell mom what we need to tell her.' How can I make her understand that there isn't anything I need to tell her? I told her everything, all the time. There's no great cache of secrets. If she doesn't know how I feel, then we've been doing everything wrong, these years. I do tell her, when I speak to her, that I love her. She has always known this. I tell her that I am okay, and that she needn't feel that she is leaving with the job of me undone. I am lying in that I am not okay, but I am not lying in that there is nothing for her to do, nor would I expect there to be. She has nobly fulfilled her part. What is left is mine to solve.

Her lungs are shutting down as they fill with fluid.

I am not sure. Sometimes I hope, fiercely, that I will be sitting there holding her hand when she draws her last breath.

Sometimes I hope I am not; cowardly, I hope to be asleep, or running an errand, or just...not there.

I've told her everything I can.

I don't want her to suffer.

Migratory Habits of the Negriddishe¹

...that would be me, yes. There is a possibility, just a possibility, that I've found a place to live in New York City. I don't know. I'm desperately afraid of jinxing it, despite having told several people already. But until I'm past several hurdles, well, I'm not a tenant, so best not jump any howitzers too early.

Here's hoping, though.

One thing that still makes me drop my jaw - it has a private roof deck. Oh, please. Oh plllleeeeease....

¹ - Negro Yiddishe.

One More Straw

Not the last, just one more. Things always happen the night before I'm supposed to catch a plane, and hence should be sleeping. Tonight? Someone smashed my car window and jacked my iPod out of the car. The iPod itself, whatever. The car window, sure, I'm annoyed. It's just...I don't know, it's just the whole now I have to deal with this part of it. Have to get the car to the shop, deal with insurance, the whole nine yards, all while trying to be at Logan by 3pm. When I'm not packed. And my house is torn up by contractors enough that I can't really shower.

Coupled with all the other crap I'm thinking about and trying to get done (but instead watching pile up on top of me) I'm left just...fucking tired, is all. A kind of despondent angry, wishing I could turn the clock back enough to catch the fucker (I was out there within 45 seconds, not fast enough) so I could really get a good cathartic rage release on.

Now? Now it's just one more thing.

Fuck.

The internet is a wonderful thing for (my) feet.

Since I now have a job which requires me to actually wear footwear whilst at work (hi Arden!) and since removing it while sitting at my desk is easier if it's not sneakers, I found myself actually wearing my dress shoes a lot. This was also made true by the fact that for the first time in my life I owned dress shoes which were actually more comfortable to wear than my midprice sneakers. When you weigh what I weigh, this is a not-inconsiderable surprise; these shoes were picked out for me by a dear friend who marched me to Nordstrom's in Tyson's Corner one time before a job interview (hi Shurronne!).

Anyway, so I had one pair of Ecco dress shoes. The problem was that they were comfortable, and I was wearing them everywhere. Then Amazon.com started advertising some partner store, Endless, I think, which sold shoes (and handbags, for those of you who care). They were running some sort of sale whose tagline was that if you ordered shoes overnight shipped, they'd knock 5$ off the price and the shipping was free. Knowing full well that this means simply that the shoe prices are inflated, I shrugged, but there - there in front of me - was a whole range of Ecco shoes.

Overnight.

No hassle.

Ding. Thanks to the internet, for the first time in my life I have more than one pair of non-sneaker or boot shoes. And you know what? They're fucking comfortable.

It only took 38 years, mom.

Quick, nail up the mail slot!

...Mom's cat has apparently spawned again. Must...not...allow...intrusion......must resist...CUTENESS....

Seriously. I've reached maximum cat density.

Bodies at rest don't quite always stay there

So, and so. It is time to move on. I realized I haven't actually yabbled about this here, but a fairly significant personal change has happened in my (work) life. I've resigned from Novell, effective 3/2. I'll be taking vacation starting this weekend through 3/2, however, and back that day (a Friday) to deal with exit paperwork and the like.

I've been fairly harsh on Novell in the past, and it would not surprise some folks (me included) if this were the opening to a diatribe about something or other couched as a 'reasons I left' post...but, actually, that's not it at all. I was offered four opportunities in one that I couldn't really pass up; the first, to work with and for a long-time and good friend, the second to work for a company I am an angel investor in (albeit several years ago) and hence put my skills where my money is. Third, it involves doing difficult things with Linux, and fourth, it involves (hooray!) moving back to New York City.

I'm not sure when I'll be relocating, since that will involve all manner of logistical puzzlesolving on both my part and my new employer's part. They need to get more or new office space in Manhattan - not for me, per se, but because they currently have something like 200 people in a 150 person space. Since they're in the early phases of that process (either moving or getting new space and splitting the office) I am able to relocate in a somewhat leisurely timeframe.

Of course, this doesn't prevent my having to spend nine days in corporate training in Edison, NJ. Whee!

Seriously, though, it's been a hell of a ride with Ximian and the monkeys. I look forward to darkening their doors, email addresses, public appearances, and general reputations in the years to come.

I'm a loser.

You know you're in trouble when you and your buds don't even say hi but instead:

<jyeo> ping

<jbz> pong

<jyeo>  | .

<jbz> |      .|

<jyeo> |  :     | (i hax)

<jbz> |    .   |  .   

<jbz> ...fuck

<jyeo>  . |        | 

<jyeo> call it a draw

<jbz> heh

Yes, we read too much bash.org.

Disaster.

The boffins at Trader Joe's have informed me that the reason I can't find their tasty frozen gyoza is because the supplier has gone out of business.

DEFCON 2!

Apparently Whole Frauds has something similar. I'm debating whether that's enough of a reason to go there.

Important Tip for Cambridge/Somerville Residents

...Rosie's Bakery in Inman Square is selling fullsize pies left over from Thanksgiving for $5. Er, as of Tues. morning, they were down to the small-sized pumpkins and the pumpkin cheesecakes. Whoo! I got an apple, and it's tasty.

Departed, a mentor.

I received sad news today. A gentleman I considered a mentor and friend, Dr. Glenn Gotz, passed away a couple of weeks ago. Glenn hired me as a summer intern at the RAND corporation several years ago, and has been a cheerful and supportive presence in my life ever since. He was an enthusiastic person, a gregarious person, a people person, a smart man, and one of the best reasons I had to want to finish my Ph.D. I'll miss him sorely, as will most all of us lucky enough to have been touched by his vigor.

Peace, Glenn.

I Reached Out and Touched The Soul of Douglas Adams

I had a moment of understanding tonight, lying in bed with the CPAP strapped to my bean. The sadly-not-immortal Douglas Adams wrote a book titled The Long Dark Tea-Time Of the Soul, about which title he did in fact offer a bit of an explanation. It never made much visceral sense to me before.

Bear with me, this is from scattered memory and I don't have a copy of his words handy. I am sure I could find them if I asked the miracle of the internet, but this being a daylog, this isn't really about precisely what he said - it's about my understanding of what I thought he said. The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, Adams said, is in many ways exactly like a Sunday afternoon when the weather is somewhat gloomy - not bad enough to be noteworthy, just not good - when one has nothing interesting to read, it's past lunch but not yet time for dinner, there's no good reason to change out of one's pajamas and one has already taken all the baths one can profitably take.

I have been intimately familiar with this form of malaise on a grand scale for quite some time. With the assistance of pharmacology and friends, sometimes more the former and sometimes more the latter, I endeavour to keep on keeping on. It's not always successful, and I think at the moment this is one of those times.

In any case, lying in bed a few minutes ago and realizing that I was (again) exhausted but not tired and hence not going to get to sleep past the artificial overpressure in my airway and generally viola-tuned muscles, I felt something strange happen.

I don't have a very full schedule these days - work, mostly, and that mostly placeholder stuff - but I try doggedly to keep at least three or four personal things in my organizer over any given two week period just so I'll have some form of event to break up the time and anticipate. Movie releases, visits with friends, dinner with relatives, pick up the TR from the upholstery shop where she's getting a new top, etc. If it's something that I can tell myself is fun, extra credit.

Lying in bed, I was thinking about the several things I have coming up over the next few weeks, which include a trip to Vegas for a wedding (i.e. sheer stupid silliness) - and I wached all the psychic buoyancy of those little mental flotation assists evaporate.

That's new. I have often had periods where I've thought about my schedule and realized somewhat dully that there's nothing in my life that I look forward to - and that's how I can usually diagnose myself as 'being in a depressive period.' To the best of my knowledge, though, I don't think I've ever caught myself observing an actual inversion - actually thinking about upcoming things and having their status go in my head from 'anticipated' in a smooth sine curve over to 'who the hell cares.'

As I lay there, I had a sudden and immensely strong image of a Sunday afternoon with clouds and a teacup holding only cooling dregs. The newspaper contained nothing but bad or boring stuff, and I'd finished it (even the crossword) and had bathed for so long that my bathrobe felt like sandpaper. I walked back into my bedroom to lay down for a nap, and the act of assuming a supine position woke aches in my muscles which felt that they hadn't had any exercise since their last recline - and I was in no way tired.

The long, dark, tea-time of the soul.

I'm not going to be able to see the psychopharm for five weeks, and the last three times we tried adjusting the dosages it only made things worse.

Damn it.

Why medical science fucking sucks.

I have 'Severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea.' In layman's terms, this means that at night, my airway collapses and I stop breathing for ten seconds or more an average of 85 times per hour. That was as measured by two sleep studies in hospitals, in which they wired me up with all manner of sensors and fixed visible/lowlight cams on me and watched me sleep - so I'm reasonably sure it's not hypochondria. I have had a surgical procedure called a UPPP, or uvulopalatopharyngoplasty, along with a tonsillectomy. Neither of them has fixed the problem.

That I have the problem doesn't piss me off. What does is the following. This problem first became really noticeable to me immediately after college. At the time, I was working out religiously, and weighed roughly 240 lbs. - I was in better shape than I'd ever been, and in better shape than I have been since. This period of high athleticism lasted two and a half years, until my return to grad school - but it was already on the wane by then, hampered by my increasing difficulty in getting restful sleep.

As of now, I'm pretty overweight. What really bothers me, though, is that no medical professional I can find seems able to actually accept the fact that my problem began before I became so. Their answers all are, initially, something along the lines of "Oh, you just need to lose around a hundred pounds." Well, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. For two reasons. First of all, they all say this, despite the fact that there's no way I could lose a hundred pounds safely. As I said, when I was working out three or four times a week, and in good enough shape to run a half-mile without really losing my breath, I weighed 240. I weigh 320 now. So really, 80 lbs. is my 'grail' maximum.

The problem is, though, that they have these fucking 'body mass index' charts that some thumbsitter in the guv'mint gives that that says that I, as a 5'11" male, 'should' weight around '185 lbs.' Before they look at me, even after they see me, that number is sitting in their head, and my weight is nothing more than a delta from that 'ideal' - no matter what my physiognomy. Never mind that whoever they studied for that ideal weight had nothing like my body shape.

Anyway. So here's the second fuck you. See, one of the symptoms of sleep apnea is - wait for it - weight gain. Yes indeed. And one of the 'risks of weight gain?' Sleep apnea! Whoohoo. Those AMA charts are doing us a fuckload of good, aren't they? So what's always their advice? "Um, lose weight."

That'd be nice. It'd be nice if I could, say, perform more than five minutes of physical exercise without becoming exhausted - and I don't mean the nausea-related exhaustion of being out of shape and out of blood sugar, but the I need to sleep NOW exhaustion that reminds me that I haven't really had a good night's sleep in, oh, maybe three or so years, which was when I had the surgery. That, mind you, is with using the damn CPAP religiously - because if I don't, I wake up with cold sweats and aching joints that tell me I've gone lethally hypoxic, and the pounding in my temples that tells me my blood pressure probably hit two hundred plus systolic while I fought for air.

A more general and final fuck you is reserved for this otherwise good summary of my condition. Why? Because it uses my favorite fucking phrase ever, which every doc I've ever been to about this has slipped into using at one point or another. Really, I love it. The "noncompliant patient."

Get it?

I'm the problem.

It's my fault. Their fucking literature tells them so.

And people wonder why heavy weapons fascinate me.

Don't drive here.

This is the third time since coming to the Boston area I've suffered mid-to-major body damage to my car. In all three cases, I was stationary. This time? I was waiting at a light. Fuck this place.

A Word Of Thanks to a Tow Truck Driver

This morning, I was awakened from a sound oversleep by the sound of a car alarm. Which, when I stumbled to the living room window in the grip of an unconscious impulse, turned out to be my car alarm. Darth was protesting his ass end being unceremoniously hoisted upwards. Adrenaline kicked me fully awake, and I managed to bolt out of the house just as the tow truck was pulling away. I ran up to the door in my briefs (to the general hilarity of the two Cambridge cops and four other tow drivers on my block) and gasp/wheezed "...drop fee?"

The driver looked at me and grinned (not actually cruelly) and said "Seventy-five. You have it inside?" I nodded, and he said "Okay, I have to keep moving, but I'll pull over across the street, okay?" He pointed. I moved away, and he pulled past the cross-street and up to the curb, waiting. I went back inside for pants and cash.

Which was a problem. I came back out and trudged over to meet him, shaking my head.

"You got it?"

"No, man, I think you still got me. I only have $17." Which was totally true, it was all the cash I had in the house.

He looked at me for a second, then laughed and said "Nah, I'll take your $17." Which he did, then dropped the car carefully and shook my hand. "You still have the ticket, though, I can't do anything about that."

"'Course not, man, thanks, thanks a lot."

I drove Darth back into my driveway. Hell, if running out of my house in tighty-whities to get a laugh saves me from having to go to the tow yard, that alone would've been worth it. The ticket was $20. I can't really complain at all about the tow, since yep, I was on the wrong side of the street (they switched the street sides a year ago when they repaved and put the signs back, and I still get them wrong...first Friday and second Monday, which side?) and they didn't get to my car until 10:20am instead of the 8:00am they normally do (which I would've slept through) and he was cool about it and made my Monday not suck.

Whew. So here's to human, good-natured tow guys. Thank you, sir.

My mother's hurting, and the emptiness is awful.

The CallerID information on my cell phone guaranteed I wasn't going to enjoy the interaction.

I received a call today from my mother. Now, normally, I enjoy talking to her. However, she's been having a bit of a tough time recently for a number of reasons. To cap it off, a couple of weeks ago, her favorite cat vanished. This is something that all owners of 'outside cats' dread. I had told her numerous times that this was a possibility - not to prepo an 'I told you so' but because I knew it was something she wasn't really prepared for, despite her nightly almost-panicked session of calling for the cats to come in the house.

My parents live in a rural area, next to the main two-lane highway through the region (and only main road). There are hunters in season, there are tractors on fields around the house, and there are occasionally just mean-spirited jerks with .22s or shotguns and not much to do. There are predators of all kinds. There are all manner of poisonous things a cat might eat - or that its prey might eat.

In short, it's not that the cat did anything stupid (for a cat) or even made a mistake. The odds are stacked against them, up there.

However, this cat had made it a couple of years, after her predecessor had been hit by a car almost immediately after being adopted as a kitten. She was a proud (and fierce) hunter, bringing field mice, shrews and birds into the house to play with until they stopped moving - and then, always, she ate what she caught. We'd started treating Mom's predictable nightly cat-calls with amusement and (I am guilty to realize) some derision - on the premise that 'if you're going to have an outside cat in the boonies, deal.' My mother is a crazy cat lady; when did that happen?

A couple of weeks ago, the cat didn't come home.

My family searched everywhere they could, and found no sign. There were several cats missing from the village they live in, and they had seen a fox in their front yard a couple of times. Normally, foxes would avoid cats (and vice versa) since they're both after roughly the same prey - but the Fish & Wildlife department explained to Mom that in the midsummer, foxes are teaching their kits to hunt. Thus, August is the only month of the year, typically, where 'domestic animals' might suffer their privations.

Not good.

Mom tearfully told me that a couple of times, she'd heard faint meowing when in the front yard. She'd searched every time, and found no sign of Sweetie (yes, the cat is named Sweetie; I was scandalized by this until I met her, because...well...that was her name). I attempted to comfort my mother a few days ago, because she was suffering tremendous guilt that the night Sweetie had gone, the other cat had been anxious in the kitchen - usually a sign of trouble - and Mom hadn't gone into the yard to check in the middle of the night when she was getting a glass of water. Had she done so, she was sure, she would have been able to save the cat.

Now, my mother is, in fact, 'loading' an enormous amount of her current problems onto this straightforward real-world one. She's ascribing guilt to herself enormously and has her emotions bound up in her cats - too much, perhaps - because she's under stress, is working hard, and for any number of other reasons I don't know or understand right now.

I explained that if a fox had taken Sweetie, there's no doubt she (or he) could have killed the cat - but that there was very little likelihood that s/he could have done so silently. Sweetie was a night hunter - and while a fox could certainly kill her in a straight fight, there's no way I can conceive of that she could have been surprised. The noise would have been awful, and there would have been no doubt what was going on. I've been in the yard when Sweetie's brother tried to sneak up on her, leading to a catfight - and a couple of times, it's escalated to a racket that no-one would be able to sleep through a mere fifteen feet away with open windows.

But today she called me.

She was crying again, and she told me that she'd heard the meows (she realizes) near one area of the house every time - near where there is a fairly large porch, walled off from the foundation. Today, there's a 'smell' near there.

When trying to comfort her over the past two or three weeks, I didn't dwell on the tendency of cats to come home and hide when injured. I've seen other relatives' cats do that when hit by a car, for example.

I just spoke to my father. They pulled the siding off the porch area, and there's a stench. They're very, very sure the cat is in there.

I don't know what to say. If my mother wasn't hearing things, then the cat was alive under the porch and unable to come out for at least a week and a half after she went missing. She would have died literally underneath her family's feet.

I know, intellectually, that it's not our fault. I know that this is the kind of thing that happens. I know that this cat, adopted from a barn, had two and half (three?) years of perhaps the happiest life I've seen a cat live.

None of that is going to make a difference when I think of her under the porch, dying.

I'm worried about my Mom. I love her, and I know this is hurting her terribly.

The little things that make them people

One of the joys of living with cats is learning what makes them individuals - watching their personalities develop as they grow from kitten into older companion. This process is occasionally its own bright reward when one of them decides to let you know something very distinctive about his or herself - something that can't be explained by 'normal predator behavior' or other dry-sounding theory, and really can only be looked at as a streak of individuality.

Despite her carnivore purity of heritage, Rory likes watermelon.

Tasty redundant bad-for-me-ness

I can now state following experimentation and without reservation that this is, in fact, delicious.

Very bad for you as well, thank the lords of fat.

I recommend doubling or tripling the described garlic allowance. :-)

Sweetie, please be OK.

A few minutes after I wrote the prior entry, my Mom called tearfully to tell me that her youngest cat, Sweetie (I know, I know, but you have to know the cat, she's actually perfectly named) has been missing for a day and a half from their home in Vermont. Normally I wouldn't be all that concerned, but a fisher cat has been seen in the neighborhood and one of the neighbor's cats vanished two weeks ago. Sweetie, I hope you're OK and come home soon. I know you've stayed out all night before but Mom is a bit fragile where her kittens are concerned.

Tow trucks and problem resolution.

Argh. So, I was out of town last Friday, and my memory glitched the 'side of the street' parking regulations. As a consequence, my TR6 was towed. I went to pick it up this morning, fearing what I'd find; the TR is really too small to be handled by standard wreckers without damage. I paid the $130 ransom for the car at the office, and the manager said "Oh, the green TR? Yep, I wantcha to know, we used a wheel lift on that...can't tow 'em from the frame, we know that."

I was heartened by his assurances, and thanked him before heading out to pick Amanda up from the tow lot.

Unfortunately, there's a massive gouge in her front fender, all the way down into the metal, and the fender (up near the headlight) is dented in from the impact.

Breathe.

I pointed this out to the manager, who really did seem quite upset that after the lengths he'd gone to reassure me, there was damage to the car. As I am a firm believer that the best way to sort things out is up front and amongst the parties involved, I let him check his paperwork to verify the gouge hadn't been there (well, I knew it hadn't, and it was clearly fresh, but I'm not going to begrudge him the check).

He has asked me to take the car to his associated body shop, where they will 'make things right.' I checked with the police to make sure I didn't lose any documented rights by accepting the car (after taking cameraphone pictures of it), but shook his hand on it and drove off the lot.

Part of me thinks I may get screwed. But on the other hand, it's one fine thing to rant and bitch that not enough people in the world just make the effort to fix things without resorting to lawyers and all manner of measures like that. He treated me civilly and offered a solution which would result in no paperwork, and no out of pocket expense to either of us. While I may have less recourse if I'm not happy with the results, I have no reason to state ahead of time that I won't be, and it's in both our best interests for me to be happy with the repair. Given that, and given his courteous treatment of me given this offer to amend the situation, then I'm going to say it's my burden to take him up on his offer.

We'll see how it goes.

If the repair is well done, then I'll buy him a bottle of whatever he's drinking, on the theory that when problems like this are solved with both parties shaking hands and doing the right thing, we're all better off. There's too much crap in the world for our blood pressure to suffer from things that go right. I do hope that's what ends up happening; I'll add the cost of the bottle to the cost of the tow in my mental "YOU IDIOT" budget.

Then I'll apologize to my car for leaving her on the wrong side of the street. :-(

Disappointment with one's alma mater...

...is not an unfamiliar feeling, unfortunately.

All right. I'm a dork.

But you knew that, if you're reading this. The real question is...

How much of a dork like me are you?

Heh.

It is the greatest movie of all time. Worship it.

Hm. How do we square this with the *last* one...?

a Ninja You scored 12 Honor, 4 Justice, 3 Adventure, and 5 Individuality!

You are a soldier of the night. You rely on no more than your cunning and your repuation to strike fear in the hearts of lord and peasant alike. You've a sense of honor, but one that comes from within, not imposed from outside. Black clothes and shuriken for you. You're gonna do just fine.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 94% on Ninjinuity You scored higher than 25% on Knightlyness You scored higher than 5% on Cowboiosity You scored higher than 47% on Piratical Bent

Link: The Cowboy-Ninja-Pirate-Knight Test written by fluffy71 on Ok Cupid

Now, there's no hard and fast rule that says ninja can't carry Desert Eagles, I suppose. But getting back into stealth is gonna be really really hard. Still, when you run out of shuriken and you gotta take out the guy across the yard, well...heh.

Update: A coworker put it quite succintly: "jbz: They don't see you coming, they don't see you leave, but they sure as fuck know you were there."

Heeheehee. Pass that man a beer.

Uncanny. They have discovered my Counterstrike self.

Desert Eagle You preferred a weapon with 38% power over speed and 70% range over melee.

You use a Desert Eagle. One of the most powerful handguns in production, the Desert Eagle is a heavy punch in a small package. Its reliability and speed are remarkable for a gun with such high caliber. Your enemies won't stand a chance as you fell them bullet by bullet.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 25% on power You scored higher than 80% on range

Link: The What's Your Signature Weapon Test written by inurashii on OkCupid Free Online Dating

Heh. So guess which weapon I tended to always buy in Counterstrike...

deagledeagledeagle...

Online Personals and other Wound Saltings

In the never-ending attempt to convince myself that my genome isn't doomed, I ventured forth once more. I picked an ad which gave a fairly detailed amount of information - likes, dislikes, personal touches, a couple of lists and a few paragraphs of abouts, some wants. Hmm. Okay. It didn't ask for pictures, rather it asked for information...encouraging.

I responded in kind, mirroring the format of the ad, and offering a pointer to a webpage of mine where there is, in fact, a link to a picture of me, using my real email account - figured what the hell, it's on the web anyway.

I got back a one line replay from a yahoo email account which read something like "i couldn't open your picture can you send it as an attachment?"

Okay, fair enough, I hadn't sent a link directly to the pic, and the description I'd sent of the link in question was in fact sort of vague. I attached the pic, sent it off.

No reply. But the personal was reposted later that day.

Now, I realize that I have no right to expect anything from this person. I realize that this person could just be a picture collector (something I had no idea existed until I began the trail of tears that these boards can be if you're actually there because you don't have much other option). On the other hand, the lack of request for a picture in the posting, and the generally detailed nature of the post, plus the generally detailed reply I'd sent, had made me think not that physical attraction didn't matter (never that) but that perhaps, given the interaction and effort already expended, and given that the other party apparently had at least put in the effort to respond to my email, I might get some form of polite reply rather than simple void.

Ah well.

Sorry, ignore this. Bitter crap.

Oh God, I'm so sorry

Charlette, I'm so sorry. I failed you, and I'm sorry. I hope when we meet again you can find it in your small heart to forgive me, but please know that the one thing I had hoped was that I could avoid this.

To all of you who aren't her: I've known for two weeks or so that it was quite likely my last ferret had cancer. While waiting for the cytology report, I had her at home and was making her comfortable, since she didn't appear to be in any pain, but was losing a great deal of weight. Finally, two days ago, her weight had dropped far enough that I had decided to ease her transition rather than wait for her to start sufferingpain as well as privation - since she still gamely would run up and lick my nose, despite her back legs not being able to support her, and seemed chipper, it was clear that she was no longer able to use the litter box and soon wouldn't be able to feed herself. The cytology report indicated that yes, it was most likely a widely-metastized cancer.

I scheduled a Wednesday morning appointment, the soonest her physician could get into the hospital, since she seemed fine if weak.

Today I came home to find I was wrong. She decided she couldn't wait. She apparently passed away at some point early this morning - perhaps even late last night, since I poked my head in the door but didn't actually see her on the way out, but that was normal - she sleeps in. I can't remember if I actually looked at the spot in which I found her poor little self this afternoon.

I'm sorry, Charlette. Above all else, I didn't want you to have to move on alone. God, I'm sorry.

They swear this is unrelated...

...and I believe them. :-)

Anyway, as my boss told me yesterday, apparently there was a problem with my job title on our corporate guide site. The CIO was presented with a (not short) list of personnel (by Legal) whose job titles were...'problematic.' Therefore, let it be known that I am no longer an 'Applied Entropy Monkey.' I am, instead, 'RDT&E Operations and Support.'

Somehow, some small and precious part of me has died. :-)

The late unpleasantness

For reasons I won't go into, I was recently involved in a standard sort of corporate procedure involving an HR complaint process and subsequent investigation. This is why blog posts have been a bit thin recently. I had considered not posting about it at all, but decided that that would really be counter to the purpose of this blog, which is (in part) to describe and discuss things that I think are important.

This is.

Let me say at the outset that the circumstances involving the incident and resulting week-and-a-half experience are not relevant to this post. I'm not going to discuss them here, and not because of legal reasons; rather, because I've already discussed them with everyone involved, and I don't think it fair or proper to discuss them with the world at large. I bring it up here because several people asked me where the *()@# I've been and a couple others asked me what the hell was going on or how the hell it all turned out. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then don't worry about it; I'm fine, it doesn't matter, and you should cheerfully skip to the next entry.

I did want to say that in the main and looking back, I feel that Novell (my employer) behaved, as a company, in a completely above-board, proper, and (most important, to me) respectful manner to me. I'm not going to claim the process was without angst and its friction, but I will say this: at the end of the process, I am proud to work here. I spend a lot of time ranting about corporate and political behavior, but it is important to me (and I hope it comes through) to be even-handed about my standards. That is, when an organization or entity behaves in a manner of which I approve, it is incumbent on me to acknowledge that fact - and not just concentrate on the negatives.

Anyway. The process that took place was not malicious, nor capricious. It was Novell carrying out its corporate responsibilities. At the end of it, I've learned things about the company I work for as well as myself - and I'm happy I work here.

Enough said.

Deep golden, clear and bright

Today.

Today a good friend and I opened a bottle that he'd given me some months ago. We opened the bottle, poured, sniffed, clinked, and drank.

Deep golden, clear and bright.

I Appear to have forgotten The Rules.

Rule #1: Users suck.

Rule #2: They're all users.

Rule #3: See rule #2.

Seriously, I used to take some small amount of satisfaction in trying to avoid behaving like a true BOFH.

Note to self: It's your own fault. Don't be such a credulous asshole next time.

Well. This Doesn't Bode Well. Emo, Rory, get over here.

Hmmm.

Scruffy, loner, suspicious, manic depression...

hmmm.

"What do you do with it?"

"What's haggis?"

"Sheep's stomach, stuffed with meat and barley!"

"...and what do you do with it?"

"You eat it!"

"How revolting!"

Heh. Not really. It's quite tasty, actually. Especially wi' a pint a' 80.

Fuck right off, you

...said Tick. So I did. I'll be relocating (albeit briefly) to a land where they make wondrous potions. More pointless ranting later.

I'm HIGH TEST, man.

Whew. Thank whatever's holy my beer score was higher than my wine score, or I'd never hear the end of it at work.

Bacardi 151 Congratulations! You're 132 proof, with specific scores in beer (80) , wine (66), and liquor (147).

All right. No more messing around. Your knowledge of alcohol is so high that you have drinking and getting plastered down to a science. Sure, you could get wasted drinking beer, but who needs all those trips to the bathroom? You head straight for the bar and pick up that which is most efficient.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 58% on proof You scored higher than 89% on beer index You scored higher than 87% on wine index You scored higher than 99% on liquor index

Link: The Alcohol Knowledge Test written by hoppersplit on Ok Cupid

Fellow Travellers

It is so good to find like-minded folk out there. Heh.

Sleep? We need no sleep, we have new Murakami.

Made the cardinal mistake of trying to induce drowsiness by reading, some wee hour this morning. Not just by reading, but by opening the new Haruki Murakami novel Kafka on the Shore which has been patiently looking at me since I brought the hardcover home from work. Amazon delivers there, of course, since I'm there during the day.

Aside: I wonder how many people have blogged about the dichotomy of the instant-on consumer shipping world and the 'must-get-signature' crapola that screws with it? Plus the 'your work address is not on file' nonsense or the 'we don't accept personal packages at work' much less the 'THERE MIGHT BE A TERRORIST MOUSE IN THERE YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD' meme? Must hit Google.

In any case, Kafka on the Shore was a fast read (but not fast enough to prevent me from seeing daylight twice that cycle, bitch whine moan) and an enjoyable one. I'll be going back. Murakami has returned to his two tested themes - converging plotlines and parallel worlds. As usual, human sexuality, classical music, cooking, contemporary Japan, literature, pop culture and modern automotive blandness all make their appearances, along with some detailed bits of niche but important history which may or may not correspond to reality - but that correspondence isn't quite important.

Kafka on the Shore refers to the name of one of the central characters (a fifteen-year-old runaway named Kafka), a painting with the same title, and in fact at least one situation in the story that may or may not involve the character. Throw in erased hollow people (at least one of whom is a nice grandfatherly type who is fond of telling people Nakata is not to bright - that's his name, he speaks in third person - but can talk to cats, Siamese most easily), the mysteries of living spirits, and a green Miata with a bit of a deathwish and there you go - a Murakami novel.

It's grounded in a much more recognizable setting than, say, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World but that's because the latter is a deliberate genre piece. I was actually reminded a bit, in the final third of the book, of a Tim Powers book - Last Call, I think it was. A great deal of everyday magic happens, which may or may not be happening, and may or may not be having enormous impact. Film at eleven. Unless the world ends first. But if it doesn't, we may just skip that segment of the news, and you'll never know.

Oh, and the blank homeless gent is a shiatsu master.

And, in other news, I still have no life.

Heh. What with all my ranting and foaming at the mouth about the recent unpleasantness I haven't had a moment to write a word about my own life, or the typical lack thereof. Many of you will consider this a blessing.

HA! TOO BAD!

Um.

Spent time with some friends at work discussing our latest addiction and its technical underpinnings. As an Op, am naturally fascinated and vacillate between pained sympathy, irritated customeritis and pure I-coulda-done-it-better schadenfreude whenever our home starts to...well..tank. "Hm, anyone have NPCs in Ironforge? No? Sigh."

Chatted with a friend in LA about the Eyes deal; he's a college roommate and now a filmmaker himself. Ended up having to thank him for allowing me to bend his ear griping my frustrations, but then had to retract apologies; he's going to Tokyo for a week with his lovely wife, the lucky bugger. Jealousy.

Technology...love it. Tried out Skype now that there's a Mac OS X and Linux client available. Like the Mac OS version for its 'telephony' focus, but will stick with my iSight and iChat AV for family-and-friends use. Still, I'm tempted to buy some SkypeOut minutes. If only I spent more time in coffeeshops with my Powerbook and had a headset...oh, wait, no, I'm fairly glad I don't. I think. Then I'd just spend time in public playing World of Warcraft and looking like a loser.

Speaking of coffee shops, I tried out this new 'drinking chocolate' monstrosity at (shudder) Starbucks, 'Chantico,' after my usual postmodern deathmatch linguistic throwdown:

"Yeah, let me have a large Chantico please."

"Venti?"

"Big. Biggest you have."

-silence-"...well, it comes in these six-ounce cups..."

"Okay, then why did you ask if I wanted that word that I won't deign to repeat if it's not available in the first place?"

"...sir?"

"Gimme. And shut up."

Yes, I'm like that until I've had my coffee or other stimulant. If I had a bowel disruptor, it'd be on steaming rectal volcano and some son of a bitch would pay.

So anyhow, Chantico. This is how chocolate was supposed to be drunk, originally. This is how you get chocolate if you wander into a small stube in Wien and ask for it. The only problem is that this is the United States, and the franchise ghetto to boot. So, of course, there's enough sugar in this concoction to stun a pre-teen child who is terminally addicted to Twinkies. I really think this could be tasty if they just yanked like 4/5 of the sugar out of it and maybe added some alcohol. Okay, I'd be willing to add the booze myself. But for God's sake, the