Christmas Night 2017: An Evening Of Poor Decisions

Posted by on December 26, 2017 No comments

As my previous post mentioned, I, along with a couple of cohorts, put luminaries throughout the neighborhood.  Unfortunately, it rained overnight and about 80% of the bags were flat in the morning.  So collection of the luminaries began a day earlier than expected.

I don’t have a big neighborhood, but it feels a lot bigger when you have to make trips to and from your house over and over, carrying about 25 pounds of sand each time.  And, while I was grateful to have all the extra help putting out the lights, it’s probably pretty well known to event organizers that cleanup is a lonely task.

It took about 3 hours and according to my MS Band, which has come out of retirement today, it was over five miles of walking, stooping, standing, and carrying.  The Band does not have a monitor for self-pity, but even if it did, I wouldn’t want to see the results.  A maxed-out chart is uninteresting anyway.

My self-absorbed activity absorbed most of my day and resulted in me skipping substantial meals.  I snacked on shit and salad (got to be balanced), but after the luminaries collection was finished and the tea lights separated from two trash bags full of crumpled paper bags, I was ready to eat.

On Christmas day, your dining options are limited.  So, fault me for not planning ahead and having food of my own to eat at the house (just shit and salad).  Of the available options, I chose IHOP, because they have a sirloin tip dinner that isn’t half bad (It’s close to half-bad, but not all the way there).  The roads are pretty empty going there, which is positive.  But then I found out why the roads were empty.  Everyone was already parked at IHOP.

Sometimes, you can tell when a restaurant is fucked right when you walk in.  I got that.  Sometimes, you can tell why a place is fucked, too.  Mmmm, probably the party of 12, would be my guess.  I don’t know why this is not common knowledge that as the size of the dining party grows, the time and effort to service that party grows exponentially.  That’s for another blog post.

I did eventually get seated and got my food.  It was good, but it wasn’t enough.  I know, right?  You want more shitty food?  A little shitty food, actually, a normal portion of shitty food isn’t enough?  Yes, that is what I am saying.  But, me, being the courteous customer, keenly aware of the long line of people waiting for their opportunity to eat shitty food, I got out quickly.  But I was still hungry.  For what?

Convenience store hot dogs, that’s what!  I was mentally prepared to purchase and eat two roller dogs, so I made my way to a nearby Circle K.  Unfortunately, they had two hot dogs on the grill.  Also unfortunately, they were “jumbo” hot dogs, which isn’t something I’m into.  It has nothing to do with any intimidation or personal inadequacy, it’s a mathematical law – the meat-to-bun ratio.  This is also a post of its own, but in summary, the amount of meat has to be balanced with the amount of bread, just so, otherwise, it’s shit.

Despite the out-of-whack ratio I was facing, I made my move on the dogs, which were spinning slowly in front of me.  Did they think they could escape, confusing rotational motion for forward motion?  I was just about to take down my first dog when the counter lady said, “Oh, you don’t want them.  They’ve been there since about noon.”  But, but, these are the only spinning meat sticks you have.  I think I do want them.

She talked me out of one more poor decision for the evening.  Undeterred, I went to another Circle K down the road.  This store had an array of jumbo dogs, but they were all corralled behind a sign that said “still cooking”.  I sense a poor decision coming on…

And so it was made.  I left the dogs undisturbed and instead bought a cup of boiled peanuts. And a coke.  And pretzels.  And since this is probably my last night on earth, a Powerball ticket.  Once in my car, I make another excellent decision – eat the peanuts here and now.  If you’ve never had fresh boiled peanuts, just understand that these things are soaking in brine for hours and hours and hours (and hours and hours and hours more if no one’s buying them).  In that time, they absorb liquid.  And when you go to free the peanuts from the shells, that liquid is expelled in the most messy way possible.  It’s like popping zits of brine (oooo, a new band name for AK).

After realizing I had nothing to wipe my hands or vehicle interior with, I shuttled the peanuts back home where I ate them hastily.  My stomach protested loudly at every bad decision I had made in the last hour or so.  This led to finishing off some ice cream, straight out of the carton.  Why not?  Gonna die.  Or get some serious shits.  But know this about me:  I do not puke.

And all of that leads me to my final poor decision of the night and possibly my life – writing this post.

Getting Lit For Christmas

Posted by on December 25, 2017 No comments

This year, I am following through on an idea I had two years ago when I first re-acquired my house.  At the time. I was very interested in getting more community-focused.  I have lived in my house for 12 years now, So I think I’m a fairly established community resident.  But I have seen over my years here that fewer people are interacting with each other, and I’m certainly not helping in that regard.  So, in 2015, I planned to do a community event.  I registered an Internet domain for it and everything.  And it didn’t happen.  In 2016, I wanted to do it again, but in December, the GF and I ended up on a cruise for vacation, so there wasn’t really much time to organize it.  I should have started much earlier than December anyway.

This year, I committed to doing the event.  Right after Thanksgiving, I put flyers on everyone’s door announcing my plan and asking for replies.  Surprisingly, I did get some replies, so the event was a go in my mind.  What event?  What the fuck are you going to do?  Yeah, I hear you, I’m getting to that.

I had already assumed I wasn’t going to have any assistance from the community, so I budgeted all the supplies as if I was going to do the whole thing myself.  As it turned out, there were almost a dozen people who contributed, so my supplies were way, way, way overbought.  It’s fine, though.  I consider them backup supplies, and maybe I’ll need them next year.

Ok, so here’s my plan.  I want to decorate the whole neighborhood with… LUMINARIES.

All you need are paper bags, lights, sand, and lot of effort.  I did a quick estimation of how much roadway I’d need to cover in my neighborhood and estimated I’d need somewhere close to 1000 lights.  Holy shit.  So I got online and ordered supplies for 1000 lights.

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Shortly after placing the order, I realized that my measurements were wrong.  I didn’t take into consideration that there wouldn’t be any lights placed in front of driveways.  That significantly trimmed down the required roadway to cover, so I have plenty of extra.  Plus, some people did choose to provide their own lights, so that’s even less.

So I spent days and days folding the lips of bags to keep them upright and sturdy.  Then, the day prior to the installation, I began filling the bags with sand.

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And more

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And more

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And more

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That’s 430 lights.  How many will go out, I’m not sure.

This is the day of the event and regretfully, I haven’t really communicated with the participants.  With a week to go, I placed flyers on all the community mailboxes with a bright “One Week To Go!!!” message at the top.

The witching hour came and with the assistance of AK and Husband, the final assembly of the luminaries took place – placing the lit LED light in it.  Then the lights were taken to two waiting vehicles.  Once those vehicles were filled, the extras started going out on the lawn.  That’s when the people started showing up.

My neighbors across the street all came over and collected lights and took them away for their property.  Then they came back and took more for further down the road.  Then trucks started coming and loading up more lights in the trailer beds and driving them off.  I can’t say it was incredible participation of the neighborhood, but the ones that were into it were really into it.  There wasn’t any complaining to be heard, just getting it done.

The three of us headed up in one car to begin filling in the gaps.  I chose to start at the far end and work our way back.  We emptied the car after completely covering one area.  It was a little depressing to see the lack of participation in that section, but that’s why I got so many.

I swapped cars and we began filling in more empty areas.  And sadly, we ran out with maybe 10 houses left.  We went back to the house and scrambled to make some more luminaries.  We stopped at an even 500 and that limit was due to lack of sand to weight the lights down.  It made me a little irritated that I must have squandered what sand I had for the early lights.

We drove back out and placed the remaining lights.  We were still about 5 houses shy of fully coving the neighborhood and most unfortunate for me, we did not get the lights out to the main roadway, which would have been a pleasant invitation for others to visit.

Nighttime photography is not easy, and this is my first attempt at it.  Take it for what you will.

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Nickeled And Dimed

Posted by on December 21, 2017 No comments

My car is seven years old.  It was purchased in May, 2010 with 10 miles on the odometer.  Now, my car has 253,000 miles on the odometer.  It’s been a long, fun trip.  And now it’s time to pay up.

The shocks on the car really need replaced.  Really.  The car bottoms out on many bumps, which is hard to bear.  So, in my research of replacement shocks, I was entirely overwhelmed with options.  Since my car is a sports car, you have the basic replacement option, then you have somewhere on the order of a thousand “performance” options.  There’s another issue as well.  One that I know because it’s not the first time I’ve had shocks changed on a car. 

The first time I had the shocks changed on a previous car, I was wowed for a couple of days.  The car rode like brand new!  But then, it faded and the ride became just ok.  So the next car, which was a beater, I had the springs and the shocks replaced at the same time.  It’s kind of dumb to put almost 50% of the purchase price of the car into an upgrade, right?  The new car sensation lasted a bit longer, but eventually faded again.  Maybe I wasn’t buying high-quality parts, I don’t know.  But it’s not something you can just experiment with.  It’s fucking expensive.

So, in my research, it looks like I can spend about $600 for front and rear shocks that should be the same as OEM, or I can go wild with an adjustable $1500 system.  Regardless, $600 plus installation isn’t penny change.  I’m undecided as to whether to attempt the installation myself or utilize my neighbor or go to a shop.

Along with that issue, I have a headlight burned out right now.  That doesn’t sound like a big deal, right?  Go to AutoZone and they’ll install it for you?  You don’t know my car.  To change a headlight, you have to take the wheels off and remove the wheel well liner to access the headlight mount.  It’s a multi-hour process.  It is something I can do myself and I hate doing it every single time.  I’ve changed headlights at least 3 times.

When you’re taking out the fender liner, there are plastic fasteners that hold the liner in place.  These plastic pieces naturally become brittle over time and crack and fail.  I purchased a bunch of similar pieces and have used them in the past, but they’re not exactly like the originals and don’t fit very well.  And they crack even easier.  So I should buy new ones.  Those fasteners aren’t cheap either.  They’re over $1 each and I’ll probably need a couple dozen.  That and the light bulbs.

But that’s not all.  The headlight lenses are completely fogged over.  This condition started after the car was flooded many years ago.  And unlike the condition all the self-polishing kits attempt to remedy, my fogging is in the inside of the lenses, where it can’t be polished out.  So what’s the recourse?  Replacement.  When I did some research on replacements, I was floored by the prices.  Almost $1200 to replace both (in just parts).  And you know replacement would involve removing the entire bumper, which I might be able to do myself.  A later search revealed I was looking at the HID headlight lenses, which I don’t have.  That brought my parts cost down to about $800.  That’s still a hard pill to swallow, but more manageable.

So let’s tally up the whole renovation.  $600 for new shocks, maybe $50 for lights and fasteners, and $800 for headlight lenses.  Let’s just say $1500 in parts.  If I really wanted to make the car like-new, I’d need it repainted.  I’m not going to even entertain that right now.  The car itself has a blue book value of probably $4000, and with a flood on its history, it’s probably less.  So, I’m looking at spending almost half the car’s value to get it back up to standard usability.  That’s dumb, right?  But, to put the cost in perspective, I haven’t had a car payment in many, many, many months.  And this large expense is really only a few months of car payments, so I’m actually ahead of the game.

Bible Study

Posted by on December 19, 2017 No comments

I was sitting at my little bistro table, eating some dinner – double-decker peanut butter sandwich and potato chips – and absently studying a snow globe in the middle of the table.  Inside the snow globe were “the three wise men” from the birth of Jesus.  My mind started wandering a little bit.

My first thought was AK’s nativity post that had four wise men.  And me, being the insensitive heretic I am wondered, “was the fourth one Shemp?”  What were their names anyway?  Frank, Goldman-Sachs, and MIR?  And then I got thinking about the gifts.  I don’t know about the other things, but I know gold.  That’s a pretty fine gift, right there.  Of course, nowadays, you better be bringing bitcoin.  But, despite not having a 600% growth curve, gold is still useful.  You know, it could pay for a room at the inn, instead of being stuck in the stable.

And how about those lodgings?  I mean, you must be the son of god to survive being born in a stable.  There’s no incubator, no heart monitors, no nothing.  But I’ll bet there was a whole lot of blood.  The innkeeper was probably like, “When’s she due?  Oh, I don’t have any rooms for that kind of mess…”  So, you deliver the baby and now to clean up.  “Where’s the water?”  “Oh, just get some from the trough over there.”  “Good god.”  “Yes, he’s right here!”  “Put some clothes on him.”  “He’s a mess!”  “Well, don’t use the good clothes, use the… I don’t know… swaddling clothes!”

As I was making these horrible jokes, I started to get a little concerned.  Not because of the sacrilegious-ness of the jokes, but because I wanted them to be accurate.  You can only stretch the truth so far in a joke and then people will be like, “That’s not even funny.  That never happened.”  Of course we’re joking on a topic that some people take literally.  LITERALLY.  So for everyone’s benefit, I wanted to do some research before I do any more insulting.

Here’s the problem.  I don’t have a bible.  Funny, huh?  I was raised Catholic and went through all the sacraments until I became a free-thinking adult, but I don’t seem to have my bible anymore.  Nor my rosary, nor my crucifix.  I kinda miss my crucifix, it was actually pretty sleek and modern, despite the dead, wasting body of Jesus on it.  In fact, I think if I did still have it, I might actually hang it in my house, because I understand modern Christians – the ones that think they can do whatever they want and just say, “I believe in Jesus” before they die and get a free pass to heaven – find crucifixes creepy as fuck because of the dead body.  They prefer unadorned crosses instead.

Anyway, my lack of bible.  Ironically, all the Family Christian stores have recently closed down around me, so I couldn’t go get a top-notch bible.  I mean, yeah, I could probably buy a bible at Dollar Tree, but seriously, would you trust a one-dollar bible that was made in China?  Harreruyah!  My other option would be to get a hotel room for the night and steal the bible from the nightstand, but that seemed wrong.  And too expensive.

The obvious option was an online bible, but, even though I hadn’t shaved for a few days, I felt like I had a full hipster beard when I recoiled at the thought of accessing the oldest printed text in the world through a non-printed medium.  Reading the word of god online?  That’s how they get ya!  Goddamn liberals.  Oh wait, I am a liberal.  So I shaved off what whiskers I had on my face, opened my browser of choice (Vivaldi, now) and went to what I thought would be the most likely guess for a place to read the bible – bible.org.  Fucking shit.  There’s no bibles here.  This is a website where you learn about the bible.  Blah, blah.  Let us tell you about this or that from the bible.  No, I want to read the goddamn fucking… oh, there it is.  Never mind…

So, I checked out Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who are like the Ninja Turtles of the bible.  And I was surprised at the lack of detail I got about the birth of Jesus.  I remember stories about how Joseph and Mary travelled from inn to inn looking for shelter and the details of how they were turned away and how finally someone took pity on them and let them stay in the barn.  I don’t remember if they got charged for staying in there, but that detail, along with all the others I thought I remember, aren’t there.

I was also really surprised at how fast the plot moved along.  It was only a few minutes of reading and suddenly Jesus is like 30 years old.  Understand, I went to Catholic elementary and high school.  We did a lot of bible study.  I was even motivated enough to draw out the family tree from Adam to Jesus in elementary school, which impressed the hell out of my teacher (odd choice of words, that). So, I don’t where I spent all my time studying.

But concerning the Jesus birth, I wanted a lot more detail.  Like, yeah, Jesus had a manger (which, BTW, if you search for images of “manger”, the ratio of baby Jesus pictures to actual farming equipment pictures is stupid), but where did Joseph and Mary sleep?  On bales of hay?  Sleeping bags?  And this guiding star that keeps getting mentioned.  I’ve gone geocaching a lot and there’s plenty of times I can’t find a cache with 15ft accuracy from nine satellites.  How can someone find a baby in a city with essentially one satellite?  Using a single star as a GPS unit is just a poor navigational decision.

In the end, it was all just a great time diversion.  I didn’t really learn anything and I did not attain a physical bible.  The lack of useful joke material in the bible kind of squelched my ideas, but the journey certainly made for a provocative post.

New Beginnings

Posted by on December 18, 2017 No comments

We’ve recently had a few retirements happen at my workplace.  These are people who have spent over a decade of their lives working here at this company.  The last one we recently had was a director, who had been with the company for 13 years.  As you might expect, there was a very early succession plan for someone to take over the large department she ran.  And because that plan was put into effect early, two things happened. 

First, her departure was a non-event.  All of her duties had been delegated away and she was probably reduced to consulting and advising in her final weeks. 

Second, her departure could become a huge event.  There were meetings and meetings and farewell meetings and other meetings and goodbyes, and capping the whole thing off, a send-off outside where all the employees lined the driveway and cheered (as ironic as that may sound) as she left.

This send off was utterly ridiculous.  I was trying to predict the result of this.  “She’s going to start crying, she’s going to get in a wreck and get injured, and it’s going to be all our fault.”  Then as she’s stopped at the exit with everyone clapping and waving around her car, “She can’t see traffic coming.  There’s people in the way.”  Then as they uprooted some farewell signs and put them in her car for memories, “Here’s some dirt for your back seat.”  No, I’m not cynical, why do you ask?

After that whole spectacle, I got to thinking.  Retirement is scary.  Especially so if work is the only social interaction you have in life.  I know we all know people for whom work is life.  Those people may lose their passion for life after retirement because they’ve lost all the people who they were close with.  Along those same lines, it can also be a harsh lesson to learn that the people you thought were your friends were only friends out of convenience.  That you really only ever had one thing in common – your work.

People come and go from jobs all the time.  There’s always chances to make new friends as you change jobs, even if those friends are restricted to the workplace.  But there’s really only one retirement.  Unless you come out of retirement, of course, but usually, you retire once.  And when that happens, you need to face what you have right then.

At my job previous to this one, my boss was one of those people who just would not let go.  I was hired under the promise that I was going to take over the department.  Four years later, he was still there.  He kept saying he had plans for retirement; that he had lots of things he wanted to do.  But I think the real reason for him staying was the money, despite my blog topic of hanging on to your “friends”.

So, what am I going to do at retirement (assuming I make it)?  Well, I’m in a unique situation because of my relationship, so I will probably be doing community things, both local and online.  I may do a lot of volunteering or I may just sit on my ass and see just how big the Internet really is.  I keep saying I have so many ideas and no time to do any of them.  What will happen when I have the time?  I’ll find out when I get there.

A Ghost Of Christmas Past

Posted by on December 16, 2017 No comments

Last night, the GF and I were eating dinner at home, a rare occurrence, and my phone chimed, also a rare occurrence.  We were both surprised by it.  Who could it be?  My asshole brother?  AK?  T-Mobile?  I don’t get a lot of texts from anyone, and especially later in the evening, so I was curious.  I went over to the counter and got my phone, then opened up the messages app.  It wasn’t any of our original guesses.  It was an unexpected contact.  It was my ex-wife.

When I first saw the name, I was shocked.  I read the message, but it didn’t really sink in.  I read enough individual words to make out what it was about.  The message was benign.  She didn’t care about me or wish me a happy holiday or life or anything.  She just wanted to know how the cat was doing and maybe get some new pictures of her.  My immediate reaction was, “Nope.”

I have not had a single communication with this woman since I got all her shit out of the house 18 months ago.  I will admit, I had a morbid fascination of following her DUI trial through the online clerk of court records, but that wrapped up in March of this year and I haven’t cared since.  Life has been excellent ever since I got my house back and never had to think about her again.  Yes, I still get mail addressed to her, but that’s no different than getting mail for the house’s previous owners, which also still happens.

There’s countless ways I can handle this situation, and I’ve thought through quite a bit of them.  There’s plenty of replies that could be made.  I could say fuck off.  I could say, “who are you?” and pretend my phone number is no longer valid.  I could say the cat died just last week and make her feel terrible.  I could say the cat died last year and make her feel bad for not checking in earlier.  I could put her number online and let the Internet have its way with her.  All these different ways of retribution for contacting me out of the blue on such a stupid premise.

But, despite the schadenfreude of seeing her life go down in flames from a DUI conviction, I am not a vengeful person.  I also actively avoid conflict.  And, as I’ve mentioned recently, I’ve found myself to become a minstrel, always focusing on the positive.  So, after recovering from the shock of being contacted by an unpleasant memory of my past, I try to empathize.  She is probably not having a happy holiday.  She is probably alone.  She is obviously having nostalgic memories of her former pet.  So, her life is certainly not as good as mine is.

So, should I cheer her up and send her some recent pictures of the cat?  Be a Santa Clause and brighten her day?  Be the better person and engage in holiday cheer?  No.

While all of those things are laudable and good and kind, every person has an obligation to self-preservation.  And in this case, opening up a line of communication and engaging would threaten that delicate bubble of happiness I have in my life right now.  The received message alone was like an incoming projectile that rattled the defensive walls I erected over a year ago.  Why would I open up the gate and lower the drawbridge?  Likewise, why should I fire back?  The best course of action is simply to not respond. 

Nowhere is it written that says you have to sacrifice your happiness for another’s happiness.  In fact, it is a common truth that providing happiness for another should provide happiness for yourself.  If that is not what is happening, you need to re-evaluate.  This is the Christmas holiday and there is a lot of pressure to spread joy and happiness.  But, if you can’t do it without causing yourself grief, you should scale back your glad tidings.

If You Can’t Feed The One You Love, Feed The One You’re With

Posted by on December 14, 2017 No comments

This idea came to me the night I was in charge of running my local Blimpie.  The customer in there was complaining about women.  You know, you can’t live with ‘em and whatnot.  He’d gotten himself in a bind because he had a girlfriend or maybe a wife, and one of his other female friends slipped a phone number to him of her friend who probably wanted to get with him.  The fact the guy was unattractive is completely beside the point, but does bear noting.

This guy thinks he’s going to get in trouble from one of these three women involved.  I’m thinking to myself, “Feed ‘em!”  You’re here at Blimpie and I’m in charge, wait, the owner’s back, so I guess I’m second in charge now.  Get an extra sub for the woman, whichever woman you’re going to see next.  That will show you care.

I made a promise to my GF a long time ago that I would always make sure she would be fed.  There was a period of time where she was schooling full-time with no income.  I kept my promise.  I cashed in tens of thousands of credit card reward miles for Longhorn gift cards and with those, she ate and studied at the local restaurant.  It was such a frequent thing for her that the wait staff gave her a corner of her own so she could eat and do schoolwork unbothered.

Back to this guy and his woman issues.  Showing affection with food is something that works on every relationship level. It keeps the relationship healthy (even if the food itself isn’t healthy).  Obviously I feed the GF well, but I also have a close friend that I gift food to, and another co-worker that I treat specially as well.  And it’s become a two-way street with gifts of snacks and candy going back and forth between all of us.  In addition to that, there’s social interaction over work cake (and it’s curious to see who participates and when and who huddles together devouring the spoils).

Although I consider myself more of a financial provider in my relationships, I can totally understand how women, mothers especially, get so much satisfaction from feeding people.  With the holidays here, I’ve somewhat taken on some cooking duties.  I’m not complaining, it’s a great thing to be able to do.  My skills are limited, but I am becoming a specialist in mashed potatoes.  I will not apologize for choosing such a specialty.

Evading Death

Posted by on December 13, 2017 No comments

Story time.

It’s been very cold here recently, which makes me think of snow.  As I was working on my previous post regarding driving, I remembered a story that I shouldn’t have lived to tell about.  This was a long time ago when I was in “college”.  Let’s see how many of the details I can remember.

Back then, I would have been driving… what?  It was probably a 1987 Dodge Lancer (turbo, of course).  I probably had recently gotten rid of my 1969 Mustang (fastback, of course).  The car is sort of important if you want to imagine what the result of my youthful stupidity could have looked like, but it doesn’t factor into any details of the story.

I was “going” to “school” at The Art “Institute” of Pittsburgh (for music production, of course) and we were coming up on a holiday break.  Probably Christmas, considering the weather.  I never really got close to anyone at school.  I was pretty much a loner and I had an apartment kind of removed from the school, which was downtown.  Other students were all in a common apartment building near the school so they had opportunities to socialize.  But whatever.  Me being a loner is nothing new.

But, fate was doing some weird shit that holiday.  The last day of class, before leaving, I happened to talk to the class burnout.  This guy was a major acid user and always complained about his back hurting.  (Minor research says that the pain was nothing involving spinal fluid and was probably muscle tension, which is contrary to what we all believed at the time)  So, in my rare discussion with him, I found out he lived in a city less than half an hour from me.  And he had no way to get home for Christmas.  So I offered him a ride, since I was driving almost two hours that direction anyway.  And he accepted.  We’d never spoken much before and now we were going on a car ride for a couple of hours.  That’s not exactly normal for me.  I’m probably going to be driving with someone tripping on acid.  Again, not normal.  I mean, I was the only person in my entire circle of friends that didn’t smoke pot, but acid?  That’s another plane of existence (for both of us).

School’s out, we’re loaded up in my car and we headed north.  Winter in the wasteland means it gets dark early.  Like nighttime at 5:00pm dark/early.  And it’s interstate driving the whole way.  And it’s winter.  And… we enter a blizzard.  There’s hardly any way for me to really explain the gravity of this.  I drove, me and this burnout doper, we drove through this blizzard in near white-out conditions, at full fucking highway speed.  I drove at probably 70 miles an hour, for at least an hour.  There was not a single car on the highway.  There was not a single snowplow truck on the highway.  There was nobody out but us.  For at least an hour.  If there was anyone – anyone – out on the highway, we would be dead.  Snowy roads with near zero visibility at 70 miles an hour.  No one would be able to avoid a collision or swerving off the road to their death.  For most of the drive, I don’t think we spoke much at all.  The snow flying over the windshield was like a hypnotic screen saver (in the days before screen savers).  Maybe my passenger was tripping, I wouldn’t know.  But if he was, the visuals would have been stupendous.

I remember not taking him directly to his house, but dropping him off somewhere along the way.  He said he was going to meet someone there who would drive him home.  This is pre-cell phone era, so I don’t even know how this was planned.  I don’t remember much after that.  I don’t seem to remember him coming back to school after Christmas break.  I didn’t stay long in school after that incident either.  I’d become a little suspicious about how would there would be jobs for all these music production graduates, so I eventually dropped out.

But that shared moment was something that just defies reality to me.  Foremost that we didn’t die, but also that it was a connection with someone that I never talked to before and never talked to since.  And the circumstances of that chance meeting delivering us safely to our destinations despite all efforts to the contrary.  I realize just how stupid I was and how I could have been just another headline in our shitty local paper.

It’s definitely an overused saying, but someone was watching over us that night.

Lack Of Drive

Posted by on December 12, 2017 No comments

The other morning, I was in RaceTrac getting my usual breakfast and there were a couple of kids in the store.  I say kids, but I don’t mean like little kids.  Probably teens, probably 16.  They were milling around and eventually bought some stuff, then milled around a bit more.  A few things struck me as kind of odd about that.

First, there weren’t any parents with them.  I’m not sure why I thought this, since they’re old enough to be out and about on their own.  But the idea that they didn’t just go in the store, buy stuff, then leave made me think they were chaperoned. 

When I was growing up, when you got to your teens, you wanted to be independent.  You demanded independence.  Because I lived in such a tiny town, I would drive almost 45 minutes just to eat at Wendy’s.  I would drive over an hour to go to a decent mall.  Even today, I still don’t see any problem drive half an hour for food.

As a completely-unrelated aside, this current era is nothing like my youth.  I distinctly remember standing alone in a checkout line and the cashier wouldn’t even acknowledge my existence because I didn’t look old enough to buy anything on my own.  Kids now have purchasing power and don’t get ignored if they want to buy something. 

But back to these teens, when they made their purchase, I expected them to head right outside and leave.  One probably just got his or her driver’s license.  But, because they remained in the building and just hung out, it was pretty clear they didn’t have their own vehicle, which is another oddity to me.

I’ve read plenty of articles saying that the new youth have little care for cars, which completely boggles my mind.  Having a vehicle is freedom.  It lets you get out and see more things, on your own terms.  I must assume that because so much entertainment is at hand via phones and TV, there is less desire to find entertainment through exploration.  Also, since everyone is so isolated in their virtual worlds, there is also little desire to get away – because they are always “away”.

The GF is the same way.  Maybe it also has to do with growing up in a small town, where you had to have transportation to do anything or see anything interesting.  But that desire to see and explore continued long into our lives.  On a vacation a while ago, while driving on some random highway, I observed that unlike other couples that sit at home and watch TV, this (identifying the car seats) was our couch, and this (identifying the windshield) was our television.  It’s not like we couldn’t see other places and other things by sitting home on the Internet, but that’s unsatisfying for us.

Recently, we wanted to go to touristville, which ended up with a crazy meal at a steakhouse.  Instead of taking the interstate, which would have been a minimum trip time of an hour (with no defined maximum due to traffic), we chose to take all back roads, which gave us a more predictable, although longer trip time.  But more importantly, it gave us something to experience other than stopped traffic.

Similarly, when I moved from the wasteland across the great commonwealth, I would sometimes return home to visit friends.  The first (or last depending on direction) leg of the return trip, I had a choice to take an interstate or take a smaller, alternate route.  Without fail, whenever I chose the interstate for time concerns, I always regretted it because the drive was so uninteresting and fatiguing.

Driving is embedded in my being.  If I lost the ability to drive, I think I would have a very difficult remainder of my life.  Driving is freedom; driving is experience; driving is risk and reward.  America is a big country and deserves to be seen down low, not from far above.

My Year In Review

Posted by on December 11, 2017 No comments

This week is my annual review at my workplace.  I’m sure anyone that has an office job understands what an ordeal this is.  The post is already written in your head for those of you that have been through it.  So, what I’ll try to do is just give some insight as to our company’s brand of ineffectual review.

The process starts a few weeks out from your anniversary date.  This anniversary date is actually not your start date, because when you are hired contract-to-perm, the “contract” part of your time there is not as an employee.  Your actual start date is when you convert from contract to perm employee.  Yeah, I get it, I just think it’s kinda dumb.  If I really wanted to be bitter about it (which I guess I am internally, but you can’t blame fate), I could say that the difference between my first day of work and my first day of employment also means the difference between getting an annual holiday bonus based on my pre-raise salary or my post-raise salary.

Timing issues aside, what you get is a self evaluation document to fill out and return.  You need to return it something like a week before your review.  I always return it within a couple hours of getting it.  I never understand what the big deal is.

This eval form.  Because our department is considered administrative, the things we do can’t be evaluated, performance-wise, the same.  So we have a short list of statements and we have to choose how well we think we met the statement’s metric.  Is the scale 1-10?  No.  1-5 stars?  No.  It’s three options: Exceeds Expectations, Meets Expectations, or Needs Improvement.  This is the second year we’ve had the 3-option scale and the second year that I have been unable to indicate where I feel I am good or bad.  Everything is “Meets Expectations”.  I don’t think I consistently exceed anything and likewise, I don’t think I suck all the time either (just lately).  But there’s no way for me to say I suck a little, but that’s ok, because I make up for it in other ways.

On review day, we all meet in the conference room and the weirdness starts.  I get a copy of the self evaluation I did, then I get a copy of an evaluation by my boss.  And while my boss and his boss silently watch me, I read the evaluation silently to myself.  It’s truly an awkward silence.

But what’s weird to me about it is that my boss consistently ranks me higher than I rank myself.  Maybe that’s supposed to be good.  I understand they want to find cases where someone thinks, “I am on fire” and their boss has a totally different perspective.  BTW, the only time you can self-evaluate yourself as “I am on fire” is when the statement is literal and not colloquial.

So because of the useless ranking/rating system, what ends up happening is everything useful goes in the comments section, which as any programmer will tell you, is absolutely useless for extracting any useful metrics.  I’ve mentioned before that I worked on a survey engine.  One of the interesting sections of the report was a keyword search in the survey’s comment fields.  One interesting application of this would be to see if the survey taker “spoke the lingo”.  Anyway, that’s a pointless (and self-promoting) comment because we don’t do anything like that.

My comments are a list of higher-profile projects that I worked on the last year followed by some pity statements about how I didn’t meet my own expectations and that I’ll do better next year.  I’m not sure if my boss’s review of me is based off what I said, which would make his part super-easy.  But generally, it says kind of the same thing I said, just from a managerial standpoint, as if he’s pleading with HR to justify me remaining hired and even deserving of a raise.

And as time goes on – this is year 7 – this entire process becomes more and more irrelevant.  We aren’t so huge of a company that any IT person is unknown to management.  We all have high-profile projects.  We all save the day at one point or another.  Everyone knows who we are.  I list my biggest projects for the year like I’m releasing a greatest hits album and people are like “Oh, I remember that one!  Sick beat!”  But the greatest hits releases are the moneymakers, because that’s all people care about – the hits.  They honestly don’t remember the ones that never charted.  And they probably don’t care, because that’s not where we are now.

So, because I really want to beat this topic to death so I never have to talk about it again, I will say that we tried something to catch the failed hits, so they wouldn’t be forgotten at review time.  Or at least, they wouldn’t be a time bomb building up so your review wasn’t a shit shower blasted from a fire hose.  We tried quarterly, informal reviews.

This process was walking into my boss’s office, him asking “You got anything?”, me saying, “Nope.” and that was it.  To be fair, I was a lot more engaged when these reviews started, but there was more to talk about then, too.  Our team is quite stable and we all work well together, so there’s no changes worth discussing, like how the new guy is working out or OMG, there’s a female working with us now.

So by the time I got to the point of saying “nope”, they had scrapped the whole idea and the truth came out that these reviews were only implemented because some managers refused to talk to their subordinates.  I assume that problem cleared itself out through attrition.

But anyway, this year, I have an ace up my sleeve.  I’m taking the entire department out to lunch for the holidays and it happens to be on my review day.  As long as there is no food poisoning, I can’t lose.