Tuesday, 5-27-8

The load just shifts, it never disappears.  Be careful how much you load up because it will stay there until you realize that, no matter how you try, things never get better, they only shift.  You're out there thinking, "If only I can get..." or "If I can hang on until...", "Things will get better".  You may get there, you may make it to your arbitrary date.  But the load never goes away.  It hangs on with a tenacity that can transcend death herself.  If you take on too much, if you don't stop to unpack your burdens, you'll carry them all to the grave and the trip will seem all too short.  There is no magic bullet, you have to stop and unload manually.  You have to choose which parts of the load you want to go on carrying.  Sometimes it goes so long between stops, the load can pile up higher than you can see.  At times like that, you can either weed through it slowly or give up and burn them all.  Good loads can get lost in the wake of an emotional meltdown like that.

Got in to Miami this afternoon.  Welcome back to Hell.  I've been playing the same song over and over in my head recently, I really wish there was such a place.  "It's a five o'clock world when the whistle blows; No one owns a piece of my time".  That place just doesn't exist for me.  On the road, out of town and alone.  I'm living the life of a rock star but without ANY of the benefits.  The first benefit missed is not being in a band, the lack of groupies runs a close second...  I'm on the clock 24/7 out here.  I'm not getting paid 24/7 but I can't go home, I can't exist.  At home I'm nothing but a ghostly memory that shows up occasionally just to promote the rumor that I am still alive.  How long before I'm not the "me" I remember?

I had a minor celebrity run-in this afternoon.  As I checked in to the hotel I waited in line behind Spike Lee.  He already had his key and was asking about some other people in the hotel.  I thought it was kind of cool to see someone famous, even if I'm not really a fan.  Eleven minutes later (I timed it!) I finally got to the counter and he was the ONLY person in front of me.  He spent that time asking if some of the others in his party had shown up yet.  He got upset when the clerk wouldn't give him their room numbers.  Eleven minutes I waited and he already had his room keys when I walked up!  So I'm guessing all celebrities I will spot in Miami will run at about a 50% cool rate.  Andy Garcia was cool, Spike Lee is a dick!

Other bad news, There should be only one!  Part one; chock-full-of-Awesome!  Part two; so bad it made me forget part one.  And the remainder of the movies/television shows get only slightly better from there.  Twenty years later; they are doing a remake.  If you don't know the catchphrase, you won't care.  They could cast Damon Wayans as Connor MacLeod and you wouldn't care.  Everyone else is afraid.  Very afraid.

But news on the movie front is not all bad.  If you stuck around for the credits in "Iron Man" you are already hip to this, straight from the mouth of Nick Fury himself.  The success of "Iron Man" and the new "Hulk" is paving the way for "Thor" and "Captain America" to be followed up shortly by "The Avengers".  This could be good.  Especially that I just heard that much of the fight/action in Thor will take place in Asgard.  Oh yeah, this could be good.

So we started with shitty news, melted into good news and now we'll finish on ehhh...  If you haven't seen Indiana Jones 4 yet, don't highlight the next line.  I love both of the Indy films (Temple of Doom has been erased from my mind) and part 4 is good even though there is an element of ugh in it.  I'll do it semi-spoiler free with a single word.  HIGHLIGHT HERE> ----- ALIENS -----  Even after you read that single word, you'll immediately think the movie is a stinker.  Not really, it's still a good Indy movie.  They don't ruin it like I imagine they could have.  If you like the franchise, it holds up just fine.  If you're looking for a reason to hate it, there's your key.

So I'm going away now.  I've got a headache that just won't stop.  For those of you who use FireFox, I heard they are starting to share your info.  So aside from being a memory hog, now it can custom-spam you.  Old news to those of you in the know, something you should look into if not.  I never know when to change or adapt to new software.  I haven't upgraded to iTunes 7.6.2 yet because I hate taking the upgrade as soon as it is offered.  I never have good luck with software.  It seems that every time I start using software it dies or becomes useless.  "Audacity" don't fail me now...

Music in my head, depression on my brain.  Don't read too deeply into either one...

"Love lies and doesn't pay the rent, neither does hate but it never makes you think it will."

Thursday, 5-22-8; 6:30pm

Just read a story in the paper about some veterans visiting the WWII monument in DC.  One of the people orchestrating the tour said it was a goal for them to have every surviving WWII vet visit the monument.  At first that sounded like a bit of grandstanding or pipe-dreaming but then it hit me; there really aren't that many of them left anymore.  Every day there are fewer and fewer.  Soon, we'll be able to rent a bus and pick them all up at once.  The Korean and Vietnam vets are the "old guys" now.

When Becca was on her DC trip one of the kids noticed the back of the WWII monument had some graffiti on it.  Not really on it, but IN it.  The "Kilroy was here" face was etched in one of the stone blocks.  I don't know if he was pulling their legs or if he really didn't know but their tour guide told them that someone must have stolen the block, taken it home, carved it and then replaced it.  Even if he was messing them, Becca took him serious.  She was actually upset that someone would deface a national monument.  I had to set her straight about the Kilroy story.  I thought the carving was a really nice touch.  It is hidden on the back of the monument, out of the way and inconspicuous.  Very cool.

I'm back at the airport watching the guys run a diagnostic on the WBI.  I just missed Hutch by 2 hours.  He Twittered that he was at the airport flying out for Balticon.  Would have been cool to meet an e-friend face to face...  Well, if everything stays green on this test and it passes the big test two hours from now, I'll be out of here and get to drive home in the morning.  Fingers crossed.

Thursday, 5-22-8; 2:30am

"Ok, we're powered up and the machine appears to be working.  We'll be ready for final testing in about 30 minutes."

"Wait a minute, why isn't the dome light turning on?"

"It's the first thing on the final test checklist so we'd better find out now before we begin the test."

"It's got to be something simple.  Something like the bulb was shipped unplugged or the light module isn't plugged into the machine."

"No, it can't be that.  We have to tear down the ceiling to check the wiring."

"But the dome light has two screws holding the cover on, why wouldn't you check that first before you take down the twenty that hold the roof?"

"We know what we're doing."

"Ok, it's not the wiring.  It must be the power source.  Why isn't it giving the light power?  Take down the speaker panel and check behind that."

45 minutes and 30 screws later, the light comes on.

"What was it?"

"It wasn't plugged in."

Welcome to my world.  2 screws and 30 seconds it would have been fixed.  It is 2:30 in the morning and I am running on no sleep since last week.  I am becoming irritated!

Wednesday, 5-21-8; 3am (finished and posted 6pm)

Sometimes I get to see the coolest things.  We are installing (I am supervising the installation of) a Whole Body Imager here at Miami.  This thing is amazing.  Using RF in the millimeter wave field it creates a 3D holographic image of the person inside.  It is so detailed that there is MAJOR issues and concerns over privacy.  Once you step inside, the image displayed on the monitor is basically a full 3D b/w nude shot of you.  They are taking a whole bunch of precautions like making sure the person scanning the images never sees the live person, no way to save or transmit the image...  They know that this could be used for evil purposes.  But damn, technology is cool.

On to low tech shit.  My website sucks.  It needs a major overhaul and I just don't have the know-how and I really just don't have the time to learn from scratch.  I want to do cool new things but I just don't see it happening any time soon.  I may try to clean up the site a little bit but as for any major changes to make it LOOK good, well we're all going to have to wait until I get the time and motivation (both at the same time).

I am working on something new that isn't directly connected to the website but when I have it perfected you'll read about it here first.  It may be nothing, it may be something, it may be cool, it may suck...  Just roll the dice and try.

I have to get some sleep here sometime soon.  I was up all night Saturday with Fred, KC and Zephyr.  We had fun playing Wii and making fun of bad hair-metal videos until 4am or something like that.  Sunday night Teresa gave me all the pictures she wanted put on discs for her Girl Scout troop.  I already made sure I had plenty of CD-Rs and covers so that I wouldn't be caught by surprise.  She had 2.7 Gigs of pictures and videos.  SURPRISE!!!  So I had to run out to Wal-Wart and pick up some DVD-Rs to burn them all.  My computer is slowly dying and was only burning at 2x so by the time I made 15 of the 20 DVDs it was 4am again.  I crashed and made the last of them in the morning.  We got up at 6:30 to take Becca to school and get my rental car.  I had breakfast, finished those DVDs and then drove to Miami.  I got here at 3pm and had to be at work by 6pm.  So when we finally got done last night (this morning) at 5am, I was very happy to get to bed.  But I couldn't sleep long because we had a 9am conference call we had to be on.  I joined the call and then crashed hard until 1pm.  I got up, dealt with the airport administrators for over an hour and they finally told me I needed proof of citizenship for my badge application.  Back to the hotel for a nap, until Steve calls and tells me that they are delivering the equipment an hour early and we need to be there now.  It is 3am now and we'll be here until 4:30 or 5...  When I get back to that hotel there better not be a phone call, a maid, a low-flying jet, ANYTHING that dares to wake me up!

We have to do this again tomorrow night but that should be it for the week.  I get to come home Friday morning I hope.  Next week I get my badge and we'll do this all over again at the "Concourse G" checkpoint.  I had a week of down-time last week where I spend Monday -Thursday in the hotel just waiting for everything to get started.  Now that it started we're running hot.  This will go on all summer long.  I just got the call that they need engineers to cover work at Las Vegas International this weekend and could I leave tomorrow morning?  I very politely but firmly said, OH HELL NO!  Teresa has plans to spend the weekend relaxing by a pool and that sounds fine by me.  I need the down time with the family.  I haven't seen much of them recently.  Hell, I haven't seen much of myself...  I know I was scared a few weeks ago when the job came to an end and I was relieved that I fell into HSS.  Things look busy again for a while and that is a good thing but really, if it all ended tomorrow and I had to go back to flipping burgers and we had to move into a 2-room shack; I'd be happier.

So now I'll leave you with something cheerier than my own self-destruction.  Some funny thoughts that occurred to me while watching television.

First; from the world of the Superfriends.  I was watching the old cartoon on the Boomerang channel (Thanks for ordering that T!) and I got a great laugh out of two particular statements.  Lex Luthor was beating Superman and he says, "I didn't know that the S on your chest stood for Sucker!"  It was really funny especially because Teresa and I were trying to decipher whose voice it was and the closest we could come up with was Morgan Freeman.

Another Superfriends moment was when the Hall Of Justice gets a distress call from a distant planet and Superman says, "Planet (whatever the name was)?  That's over 6 trillion light years from here, we'd better leave soon!"  That shit made me laugh for 20 minutes.  That was almost as funny as "It's the ship that made the Kessel run in 12 parsecs". 

And my final television moment was from watching the Biography channel.  They have a channel for damn near everything now don't they?  I watched the Bio on Elton John and I have come to believe that if Elton John walked up to you anywhere at any time, you'd never recognize him unless he was wearing oversized glasses or a lot of sequins.  They showed some footage and pictures of when he owned a soccer team and although I knew he was in the picture, I had a hard time spotting him.  Without his costume he looks like an ordinary guy.  And we rarely see him out of costume.  A lot of people are just the same way, except we don't have costumes.  How many times have you seen your friend do something completely out of character and gotten upset?  Or at least a little confused.  That's because we don't wear sequins or blue tights and a red cape.  Our alter-ego looks just like our Clark Kent types.  Unlike Elton John, a pair of glasses don't hide our super/sub-human powers.  We look like we always look, we look like the guy on the corner, we look like you.  The truly scary part is, we act just like you too, we just don't have much control over when/where.  Don't make me angry, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry.  So now that sleep deprivation has cause me to rant about home I'm worthy of my own superhero comic I'll come back to earth now.  I believe I have thirty spare minutes before I have to get showered and back in to the airport... 

Insomnia attacks
Watching flies with my eyes till sunrise
It's daylight when I hit the sack

Monday, 5-5-8

Back to work.  Finally!  I'm sure Teresa was getting sick and tired of me hanging around the house.  I'm in Miami this week and next week looks like a trip to JFK in New York.  Just to show what a lousy judge I can be of "how the job market is" you should know that last Monday, just a few days after posting that I thought that the new project was finally picking up and that I would start getting back to work, we all got the call that our new project was flat busted and dissolved as of Monday morning.  Just when I thought things were starting to look good, they were at their worst.  So don't ask me for career advice, I'm oblivious.  But the program director shuffled the cards and put us each on new projects.  I landed in the Department of Homeland Security.  Today is my first day in the new project but it looks like I'm getting back into the design/engineering side of the house.  It's painful to watch the slow gears of beurocracy working here.  Government agency politics mixed in with engineers that have never been in the trenches...  I'm only in this for one day so far and I've already witnessed four hours wasted making plans for meetings, pre-meeting-meetings and briefings.  Scheduling conflicts for these meetings will mean we have to push out the deadline.  All about something that I could fix in twenty minutes with a basic screwdriver and a trip to Home Depot.  I won't last long in this kind of atmosphere.  We'll see where this one takes us but for now, I'm still working and things really ARE looking up this time.

Last week I had a GREAT idea that got me thinking and I wanted to write it all down but I was driving.  It was topical and insightful.  More than the simple posts I've been putting up now and then, this one was worthy of its own post.  It was colossal!  By the time I got somewhere to write it all down, I forgot what it was.  Such are the perils of allowing all my best ideas to come when I am on the road.  So, I'll leave a few blank lines and you can imagine some genius commentary here...

Nothing has popped into my head yet.  I really wish it would come back to me, it really was a good thought.

No, really, it WAS!!

Ok, it's gone...

So as long as I can't come up with something good, here's something awful.  I have noticed something and I have narrowed it down to three possible choices.

Is the news media racist?

Am I imagining it and therefore I am the racist?

Or is it just true?

Whenever they show a murder on the news you get one of two camera responses (sometimes both).  You either get the neighbor talking about the killer saying, "He was just a regular quiet neighbor.  I'm shocked that this happened."  Or, you get the family response to the victim.  And my question is about the women who are caught responding on camera.  Is it my imagination or is it that most of the women who sob into their husband's shoulder are white and the women who scream and lose their mind are black?  Am I noticing a cultural difference or am I displaying my bigotry for all to see?  In my mind I can't recall seeing anyone other than a black woman screaming and crying in front of the camera.

That's all, I just had that thought and I figured I'd throw it out there for you to think about too.  It's not the amazing showstopper I had in my head from earlier but this one will have to do.

We're moved in to the new house and things are going well but for a few things.  The dogs haven't learned to lay nice with others yet.  Every time the neighbor dogs come out they go nuts.  We walk over to the fence and they all get along nicely and quiet down.  Then, the next time the neighbor dogs come out again it's like our dogs forgot all about them and the barking starts up again.  This better stop soon or I'll get tired of it real fast.

My garage ( I LOVE saying that, MY garage...cool!)  My garage is full of crap.  Boxes that will likely never be unpacked full of Teresa's crap and my stuff as well.  Yes, her stuff is crap, my crap is stuff...  But there's a lot of it and we need to go through it before bringing it into the house.  But there's just SO much of it!  The longer it takes to clean that all up, the longer it takes me to set up my workbench and drum set!  I need space to play around in my garage!

The only real problem in the house is the doorbell.  We have two of them, on regular doorbell and the other is the intercom system.  I can hear both of them when I am sitting at my computer upstairs but they are real faint in the bedroom.  If the TV is on (which it almost ALWAYS is when we are in the bedroom) you can't hear the doorbell.  This will be nice for sleeping in late on Saturday mornings but it sucks when your neighbor comes next door at 8pm to tell you the dome light is on in your car.

I've been toying with the idea of cutting off the mop on top of my head for a few months now.  I threatened to shave it down to the skin but T said I'd have to live somewhere else until it grows back out.  Becca said she wants me to keep the hair because I look stupid with short hair...  Thanks.  I mentioned it this weekend and I got told to keep it long for whole other reasons.  So I don't know what I'll do for now.  The summer is coming up and I'm not looking forward to being all sweaty and hot again.  Of course, the new job (if it holds out) is more of an air-conditioned type of job, maybe it won't hurt to wait and see...

Summing up; all is well.  We are in the new house and I am back on the job facilitating the deployment of the machines that make your life a living hell at the airports.  When do the machines take over?  Terminator, I Robot, BSG, The Matrix, all of them paint a world where we have allowed the machines to take over.  And that world is not too far away from where we are now.  We create the machines to make our lives easier and then we spend all that free time as slaves to the machines.  Repairs, upgrades, games, surfing...  Hours spent in front of a screen worshipping the computer that was meant to make our lives easier and more free.  Now we are chained to them even more.  It is already irreversible.  There is no way we can wean ourselves off or our dependency.  Business would shut down without e-mail, people would lose their minds without being in constant contact with each other.  Just twenty years ago you could go for a walk in the woods and be alone.  You'd come home and maybe find a nice letter from Grandma in the mailbox.  Now you can text message Grandma from the woods.  And what about cars?  Think you can fix your car if something breaks?  You'd better think again.  There's more computer than engine under that hood now.  So when do we get time away from the high and mighty technology gods?  Never, that's when.  I'll spend hours in front of the screen playing a game, then I'll check my e-mail.  Maybe I'll get around to writing for a couple of hours, then I'll surf the net for "cool stuff".  And that's just down time.  Work is spent in front of the screen and on the phone.  No time for getting outdoors man, I've got to get back in front of that computer...  And on that note, I'll close down the screen and go for a walk.  Of course it might help a little that I'm in Miami Beach and the scenery is a little prettier here...