I hate my job. I know… who doesn’t? But here’s the rub, I like what I do. I like my job description, I like the projects I’ve been assigned. I even like many of my co-workers.

But my peers, the other Network Engineers, they are ruining it for me. Of course, I can’t go around blaming other people for my problems. (I mean, obviously, I could… but then I would be like all those other assholes.)

It’s my own fault. I found an opportunity to design a very large project for the department. No one cares about the details, but our core servers are all on an outmoded platform. There had been discussion of bringing in consultants to migrate us to a newer platform, but the cost was prohibitive.

I looked at the situation and decided that it was possible for us to do this migration in house. I started scoping and planning the migration. I presented my plan to my boss and got her approval. So I presented this plan to my peers.

I had this stupid idea. This belief that they would somehow step up and take ownership of this project. They always complain that management doesn’t trust them with large projects. They always complain about be saddled with of date servers. This was gonna be a chance for them to solve both of these problems. As a team we could totally kick this project’s ass.

What was I thinking? Needless to say, that’s not how it went at all. Instead of a team effort, what I got was an assload of petty bullshit, resentment from my so-called team mates, and a bunch of assholes who were more interested in throwing a roadblocks, than finding solutions.

I should have seen this coming. I should have known better. And maybe if I had seen it coming, it wouldn’t have weighed so heavily on me.

I’ve been working on this for a year. And as of today I now have 2 sites (of 42) running on the new system and the infrastructure in place allow for the rest of the migration. This should be a proud moment. This is a real major accomplishment.

Instead, I feel tired, useless and generally miserable. The whole thing did not go as smooth as I would have liked, of course that is no surprise. I would have liked to have had a a team of eight engineers working on this. Instead, I carried the load with only grudging support from my “team.”

Yes, one of those days.

You know the ones? The kind where nothing really goes right. Nothing goes very wrong, but nothing really goes right. I shouldn’t even complain, there are a lot of people in the world who have it so much worse than me. But I can’t help it… today everything just seemed to be conspiring against me.

Where to start…

Work? Oh yeah, work is great. Well, not great, but actually shitty. Why? It’s hard to put it in words really, its more of a feel than anything in particular. For example, today we had our one of twice weekly project meetings. We got through the agenda, my boss said that we were done. I packed up my shit and went to my desk, cause I had shit to take care of. After a while, it dawned on me that the other Network Engineers were still in the conference room. My boss had left, I had left but they were still in there. They remained in there for about 45 minutes.

I don’t know what they talked about. What I do know is that what ever it was, they didn’t feel the need to consult or ask me about it. Nor did they feel the need to update me on what ever it was.

Wow. Don’t I feel like an important and integral part of my ‘team?’ No I don’t. Not even a little bit.

My made up club, the shitty blogs club’s domain name seems to be parked at godaddy. The fact of the matter is The domain name and hosting were gifted to me. Same thing for shitty blog radio. I think the SBC domain name expired. The SBR one will be next. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I’m not 100% sure why it happened, but I’m fairly certain that there is more than a reasonable explanation for it. Hell, I can’t complain about that part at all.

The problem is, since it I didn’t register it, I can’t renew it. Whois shows it as expired, but none of the registration places will let me purchase it. Is this because of a bit of lag in the whole registration thing, or did some one else buy it? I don’t know. I am powerless to do much about it. I could register .net domains, but I’m not sure if it is worth it.

The bigger issue will be when shittyblogradio.com goes… I can register the domain, but I can’t afford to replace the level of hosting I’ve been enjoying. I’m not sure what I am going to do about that either.

At the gym, I was just stiff enough to stop me from running well.

My car was in for regular maintenance, so I couldn’t drive home for lunch. So I skipped it.

So on and so forth.

Just one of those days.

… but I think my chi is all fucked up. Or maybe it’s karma. Or maybe it’s just shit.

Things aren’t right, but I know that the root of all of it is me. There are some external factors fucking with me, but mostly it’s just me.

Nothing seems right. And I can’t fix it. As a matter of fact, quite the opposite. Whatever attempt I make to fix things, seems to make it worse.

Some times, when shit is off like this, I rage a bit and then feel better. But we’re well beyond raging. I don’t know what to do when this happens. (Yes, it has happened many times before.) So I get manic. And obsessive.

So far this week, I’ve updated my long lost forum. Well, a little bit. I’ve imported a number of Ratdog and Dead shows into my iTunes. Edited, organized and tagged several hundred photos. Researched alternatives for streaming my stupid radio show. Cleaned the kitchen. And all of that in my free time. I’ve spent most of my time at work.

Don’t think that it stops when I’m at work either. I’ve organized my files. Updated my address book and calendar. Updated all kinds of documentation.

Even my dreams are fucked up.

It’s this same manic behavior that leaves me with 4 or 5 blogs, a radio show, a forum, a (defunct) club and I don’t even know what else.

I don’t enjoy any of this stuff, I just need to DO something. Anything.

It doesn’t work.

I tend to interrupt myself to jump from one obsession to another.

I suppose this will pass, but I don’t know when. Consider yourself warned.

I do hate January. I hate the short, cold gray days. I hate that everything is dead. It’s a stupid time of year. One of these years, I’m gonna say, fuck it and move somewhere that is warm and bright. Florida, Arizona, Somewhere.

I get depressed. I don’t want to, but it seems to be out of my control. I’m sure this has to do with the general deadness of everything. And the lack of sunlight. Every year, I struggle through it.

On the bright side. I have a new toy.

After two and a half years and 100 plus episodes of Shitty Blog Radio, it seemed like it was time for some better equipment. It took me a few hours to get it all working, but after a good test drive tonight, I think I’ve got it.

Of course, new mic or not, Shitty Blog Radio will still suck. You can increase the sound fidelity but it won’t fix the content. You can (of course) tune in Thursdays at 10 PM EST to decide for yourself.

Work has been a drag. Budget cuts and bullshit politics have ground my project to halt. I am beginning to wonder if I am working in the right place.

So, to amuse myself, I follow the Ravens hunt for head coach and watch as the Patriots march on to history. And the good news is… by the time they get there, this god forsaken month will be over.

It hit me around 8:00 PM Thursday night. I’d been doing it wrong. And I’d been doing it wrong all week.

What it was that I was doing, doesn’t really matter. It’s a mindless but tedious task that I had been doing to help out. The mistake won’t make any difference, really.

But still I had been doing wrong all fucking week.

And it was 8 o’clock at night. I’d been at work for 13 hours. Again.

And I started to question things.

Why do I bother?
If I’ve been messing this up, is it even worth it?
Things are still not caught up, even for my all my effort. Again why Bother?

I packed up some shit and went home. And I was in a foul mood. The few who bothered to tune in to SBR can attest to that.

My mood was no better in the morning. I went to work early, to make sure I was there and ready when the help desk opened.

My mood got worse as the day went on.

The CIO was going to buy us pizza, to thank us for all of hard work. And while it was a nice thought, I found myself getting angry as the same people who have been coming in late and ducking out early are the ones who can’t wait for the pizza.

I stayed and covered the phones while they ate pizza. I had no desire to be near them. The thought made me sick. Hell, the hour I was there by myself was the best one all day.

I could feel the overwork and lack of sleep catching up with me, and I knew that was really most of the problem. But my anger is real.

As a rule, I try very hard not to worry about how other people do their job, I do mine and I do it as well I can and leave it at that. But I’m finding hard to ignore that one of our Network Engineers, a peer of mine, has come in late and left early every single day last week. Our busiest support week. He worked, on average, six hours a day. To contrast that, I worked an average of 12 hours a day. I worked twice as much as he did.

It’s a fucking crime that our paychecks don’t reflect that. He makes significantly more than me. The joys of working in the public sector. Seniority trumps skill. I could complain to my boss, but she knows. She frustrated and doesn’t want to hear it from me. It’s not like she can fire him. It’s the public sector. Seniority trumps everything.

I don’t remember ever needing a three day weekend like I do right now.

Sometimes, I like my job. I really do. I get to do interesting work. The more that I do, the more my bosses come to trust and depend on me. I like that.

But of the engineers I work with, only one other works with the kind of dedication that I do. He support our WAN and works on his, mostly. The rest of us are a ‘team.’ One is working towards retirement and just wants to maintain the status quo. Troubleshoot the symptoms, ignore the cause. Another is not far behind him. One researches but never acts. Paralysis by analysis. One, as a mentioned works part time (or so it seems) and spends more energy figuring why a plan won’t work than look for the solution that would make it work. And the last hates my boss. He invests his energy into criticizing and undermining her.

Some team.

My plan remains unchanged. We are currently running a Novell Netware network. We need to migrate to Microsoft Active Directories. There are some budget and political issues, but it will happen. I can make it happen. These other assholes would sit around and wring their hands and figure out why it wouldn’t work. But I will make it happen.

And once I do, it will be my network, cause I will have set it up. More than that, putting a migration of an enterprise class network on my resume won’t hurt either.

Once it is done, I’ll take a look and see how I feel about my job.

Last week was a long one. Not bad, but long. I can’t believe that it has been only seven days since I was at the concert.

Long hours and a hectic pace at work contributed to this. The fact that one of our ‘team members’ can’t seem to do his job, didn’t help.

I don’t know what’s up with this kid. He’s assigned to be the technician at some of the sites that I am assigned to as a Network Engineer. He won’t close calls. He seems to be paralyzed by the amount of calls out there right now. He works on calls that are more complex for days, with out elevating the call to an engineer or even asking any questions. When he does choose to ask, he sort of just tells me to do his job for him. Meanwhile, his calls keep piling up.

He doesn’t understand that there is more to his job than just knowing how to solve these issues. Unlike comparable positions at other companies, he isn’t assigned a list of calls. He pulls all the calls for his sites out of the Help Desk and addresses them as he sees fit. When things get this busy, being able to prioritize is paramount. He needs to let the complex calls sit (or elevate them) and take care of the simple calls. He should be able to close 15 to 20 calls a day. He is closing about 3 or 4 a day. Meanwhile 25 to 30 calls are coming in each day. This pace will slow down, but by the time it does, he will be in a very deep hole.

I’m not his boss, but I am ultimately responsible for these sites. If he doesn’t get caught up soon, I’ll have to go out there myself (and maybe pull resources from other sites) and bail him out. If that happens, I will have to explain to our boss why I’m out closing calls instead of working on my projects.

This just causes me stress I don’t want or need. I hate it when people don’t just do their jobs. I hate it more when it messes with my job.

One a more positive note, my niece is going to be a senior in high school this year. Her school requires that seniors arrange to have their senior portraits taken by a professional photographer on their own, instead of having one come to the school. I guess she didn’t take care of arranging this when she first found out that she was supposed to, and by the time she got around to it, the photographers were booked up.

My wife mentioned to my sister-in-law that I am capable of taking those photos. And they asked me if I could do it. Last weekend we went out to a few scenic spots and took some shots of her and a few with her boyfriend. I also shot a few traditional head and shoulder shots of her, but I don’t have access to a professional backdrop so I just shot her against a wall. I was able to use Photoshop to cut the wall away and put her in front of a background that looks very much like a pro backdrop.

I thought I did a pretty good job, but this isn’t the kind of photography I usually do, and I’m not really very good in Photoshop (I really need to take a class on it.) I began to become concerned that the photos would not be up to a professional level. I knew they looked good, but there is a reason people pay a pro.

I went to get some proofs printed so we could choose which pictures she wanted to use. When I came back to pick them up, the little girl at the store says, “I’m sorry Mr. Jeckles, we cannot print these pictures.”

I began to panic, I start to try to think of what I might have done that would have caused this problem. Did I do something wrong in Photoshop? Did I use the wrong format? I couldn’t imagine what I had done wrong.

“We can’t print pictures taken by a professional photographer without his permission.”

I smiled, thanked her and assured her that she had my permission.

I can’t think of a better compliment.

Today I had the pleasure of attending a mandatory presentation.

It was a motivational speaker. Even for motivational speakers, this guy was awful.

His dad didn’t love him when he young. That rejection stayed with him his whole life. He found that he pushed himself harder to try gain the approval of a distant and cold father. He became successful, rich and women loved him. But somehow it all seemed empty, useless like life had no meaning.

As I sat and listened, all I could think was my Dad was pretty good as far as dads go, but I’m not rich or powerful. Women tolerate me at best. And many days I feel like life has no meaning.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU CRYING ABOUT?!?

Almost makes me wish my dad had been distant.

He recommends that I keep a list of affirmations and read them every morning and every night. So I created a list and we will give it shot, starting right now.

I am a great fake radio DJ.
I am a good blogger.
I rule at the help desk.
I can install an OS in no time flat.
I know more about comic book characters than many people know about their own families.

Somehow I don’t feel better.

It’s probably the weather. This cold rainy shit is making me wish I was dead. I really need to move somewhere that is always summer.

He also suggested having my own personal Mission Statement. I can’t believe we paid this asshat to come talk to us.

I don’t know if I’ll have time to play the Ratdog Set before SBR tomorrow or not. I’ll post something if I’m going to do it.

Yeah.

It’s me. That’s not a real surprise.

I’m plucked. About a number of things, But I guess this isn’t the appropriate time or place.

I think that Red Bull was good. But I may need another one.

I’d be happier if more people were coming around.

Or maybe I wouldn’t. Who fucking knows. It is very unfortunate that this sinus infection lined up with the blogathon. I am quite simply no where near my best.

For that I apologize.

We are chilling with The Dead. Let your inner hippie come out and play.

If the power goes out… I guess I’m screwed. There isn’t a window in the geek cave, so I can’t tell how bad it is. But I can hear the thunder over the music.

I’m back on the air. Not that you care. I’m playing a power block of Pop Punk. You know Blink 182, Green Day, that kind of shit.

I keep catching typos. They are pretty bad. I’m very concerned about the ones I’m missing.

It is now tomorrow. Or at least it’s after midnight. It feel much later. I’m not sure why. Probably because almost none of the freaks I talk to online are online.

Rage upcoming on the Mango Radio.

More lame posting in 30 minutes on this blog.

I’m sitting here, with my shades on. I’m in the MPYR radio chatroom. I fucking hate chatrooms. They fill me with rage. Even more than normal.

Shutter is our most recent Super Hero.
Without babbling on like a little girl, this one means a lot to me. Thanks, dude.

I’m getting tired. I’ll blame this sinus infection. Staying up usually isn’t a problem for me. I guess I have no choice but to make some coffee.

I love coffee. I guess I wouldn’t be so bored if people were visiting. But as I’ve said before, I’m not one of the cool kids. Just my destiny, I suppose.

That’s ok, I’ll just keep posting. The 2 or 3 of you that are reading, will keep reading. And later, in the wee hours of the morning, I’ll rage to no one on SBR about how the rest of you suck.

Have a nice day.

Yes. You missed a block of Disco and Rage on Shitty Blogathon Radio. I know you don’t care. I don’t care that you don’t care. So there.

Mango was there. He eggs me on, you know. He tries to get me to do bad things. Very bad.

I think I have been in front of the PC too long. I mean I’m used to being in front of a computer, but this is relentless. At least I work, I get interrupted with meetings and phone calls and Shutter. All I have here is Geek Blog, Misfitopia, IM and Shitty Radio. It may be making me a bit crazy.

Mango informs me that CBS is broadcasting an XBox360 GuitarHero Championship. This is fucking retarded. Do I really need to elaborate.

Mango is going back to whatever it is that he is doing in Buffalo. So I’ll be back to being kind of alone. Again. He says he’ll be back in the middle of the night. I’ll play Enya and GnR to celebrate.

And maybe some ‘All Along the Watchtower.’

What was it that Tyler Durden said about ‘the Happy Place?’ You know… when he was giving the narrator a chemical burn?

Nevermind.

Like most days…

It’s lunch time and I am filled with rage. Don’t ask. It just seems to work that way. Maybe it’s techno music I’m listening to. Wanna listen. Go to SBR and click on one of the links on the sidebar. To the best of knowledge, they work.

I’ve get left over hot dogs on the menu. Who wants to figure out the over/under on me spilling mustard on me. It’s pathetic. I know.

To expand on the point that i was failing to make earlier. All I’ve wanted to do was to be popular. In high school and college that would have never happened. It’s not likely to happen at work. But, You would think… at least I would, that on the Internet, I’d have a chance.

The playing field should leveled. Looks don’t matter. Background doesn’t matter. Yet, the blogosphere (and elsewhere on the ‘net) makes its own cliques. I hate it.

Wanna know what else sucks? I really though it would take long for me to be reduced to rambling, babbling.

I’ll babble some more after lunch.

I was so plucked that I didn’t even get the “Sponsor this Blog’ button up last time.

God, I suck.

And If I don’t figure out how to get some lunch soon, I’m screwed. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point I started getting very regimented on when I eat. Which is good, I suppose… but when I get off schedule, it fucks wit me a lot. You know… like right now.

Did I mention I hate blogging.

I’m not sure why I don’t just write. For myself. On my computer and leave it there. It would eliminate a lot of my frustration. It’s my own… insecurity… need for affirmation… something that makes me blog. I could write and save it to the hard drive. But I would never know if you got it. I wouldn’t know if I had got my point across.

But by the same token, I have always felt like there is some huge blogging community out there. And I am some where outside of it.

I know. I know.

It’s my own fault. I don’t play the GAME. Hell, I don’t even understand the game, nor do I want to. Most of the time this shit doesn’t bother me at all. I just do my thing. I have my few, but extremely loyal groupies readers. But sometimes, like when those stupid awards come out or during this blogathon, it begins to get to me.

I read other blogs and it sounds like they are all blogging this thing together. I feel like I’m sitting here at my computer, alone, blogging. Do the rest of them have a better imagination than I do? Are they IMing back and forth between posts. Calling each other on the phone?

I don’t know. This is probably my tendency to be extremely literal giving me a hard time again.

Yes. It is hard to be me. No. I do not expect you to feel the slightest bit sorry from me. Yes. I do expect some of you to mock me derisively.

Did you ever feel like you were trying to make point, but had no idea what the hell it was? No? Must just be me and my aneurysm .

Thank you. You’re too kind. I’ll be here all fucking day, don’t forget to tip.

Am I bit plucked….

Yes I am.

Of course, I’ll just be told that I’m not a good sport. Not a team player. You would think that I would be used to that by now.

I apologize that this isn’t a very good post. I don’t have a lot of time to put this together.

Instead of writing during the last 30 minutes, I’ve been fucking with my template. My template that has been perfectly good for over a year now (including last year’s blogathon.) I’ve added a time stamp.

That, in and of itself, wouldn’t be so bad. But then I discovered that blogsome doesn’t change for daylight savings time automatically. So the first six posts were an hour early. I had to change my time to reflect DST and then I had to update the time stamps on each of those posts.

Fucking great.

I certainly hope it helps a lot. A whole lot.

And now my head ache has gone into overdrive. Excuse me while I go find some coffee… and Advil.

As I was saying…

There is plenty of food, more than enough.

I truly believe that there is enough food out there to prevent chronic hunger forever. It’s just not all in the right place.

We can fix this. (No smartass, I don’t want you to mail that left over piece of pizza to Africa.) A relatively small amount of money can help not only feed people who are starving, but help to education them on how to manage finance and improve infrastructure.

And if it is possible to fix this, and I believe it is, then we must do this. How can it be that there are people starving, when it can be fixed?

So I picked Freedom from Hunger for my charity. They believe, as I do, that hunger can be eliminated.

Hey, you can help too! Five dollars can make a difference. $25 is huge! And $100 would be AWESOME! You want to be awesome, don’t you?

And I’m putting my money where my mouth is. I’m matching 10% of the total pledges. I want to get up to $500 in pledges before this is done. I know it is unlikely, but I would love nothing more than to have to shell out $100 to match a $1000 in pledges.

I’ll be back in 30 minutes. Hell… I’ll be here all day.

Do you ever wonder how people come to choose a charity to get behind? I mean not just blogathon either. How do celebrities end up sponsoring this charity or that charity? I guess they have people for that. People who go find charities that match their interests (and will best serve their PR people.)

I, believe it or not, don’t have people. Yet I still had to pick a charity. For me, this wasn’t easy. I am passionate about many things and there are dozens of charities that address these things. How to narrow it down to one that I am willing to give up a day of my life for. How to pick one that I am willing to ask friends and strangers to support?

It wasn’t easy. But I think that one of the things that upsets me the most is this: I live in a country that thrives on excess. Super-sized fast food, big-fucking-sodas at the convenience store. And Junk Food. Everywhere I look, there is food and too much of it. More than we really need. And that’s fine I guess.

But here’s the rub, if we have so much extra, how is it that anyone, anywhere is starving?

I think this thought is bigger than the time I have… I’ll finish it in the next post!

I’m not just a blogger, I’m the leader of a group of elite bloggers. Elite might be too strong of a word. Shitty might be more accurate. It’s a joke really. A big self-deprecating inside joke for people who write blogs, but don’t take themselves too seriously.

Amazingly, there are over hundred semi-active members. It’s amazing that my brand of pissed off humor appreals to that many people.

Apparently, not everyone appreciates my sense of humor. There are these other shitty bloggers out there. I don’t know where they came from. I don’t care. We made a big stink about them having the same name as us. Well, not even the same name but close. We pretended to be all offended and a good time was had by all.

Wait. Not by all. Like I said, not everyone appreciates my humor or lack thereof. Someone complained to blogsome and they deleted the Shitty Blogs Club outright. Harsh. It’s okay. I moved to the back up plan. The blog is now located at shittyblogsclub.com. I was going to move it some day anyhow… it just seemed like a lot of work. I have all of the posts kind of backed up. Some of the images are lost and the template is gone.

I guess I should be flattered that my humor was so offensive that it had to be suppressed. I don’t get it. I really don’t.

Of course, I don’t have time for this shit.

I just bought a house. I am now a slum lord.

We spent like 3 hours and nearly a thousand dollars in Lowes tonight. I’ve got a busy weekend ahead of me.

On the list: Replacing a window, replacing some dry wall, boarding up the broken windows in the basement, cleaning (and I mean really cleaning) and painting.

I feel like I belong on one of those shows on HGTV. Of course, buying a bunch of shit is the easy part. Tomorrow I need to start making it fixed.

Hopefully, I’ll remember to take before and after pictures.

The replacing the window is going to be the most challenging task. The existing window is 28 inches by 60 inches. Replacement windows come in 28 by 54. I’ll need to make the hole smaller. I know what I need to do and I’m pretty sure of how I want to do it. But often times these things end up getting harder once you start.

If you’re not doing anything tomorrow, come on over. We’ll be happy to let you paint.

My head hurts. I’m tired. I’m grumpy.

And no one cares.

I think it the last part that bothers me the most.

How has it been nearly two decades since high school and I find myself facing the same problems. I don’t fit in.

I don’t make friends well. I’m no good at it.

I could make some dramatic statement about how hard it is for me trust people, because of the way my life has gone. But that doesn’t ring true. I couldn’t make friends in high school either. Or before them.

I’m just not wired correctly.

I guess most of teh time I’m at peace with it. I just sit around and do my thing. But some days I look around and se people hanging out outside of work. Doing shit together and I feel left out.

Maybe this head ache has impaired my ability to function like a rational human being.

I just want to yell at people. Be a real dick. Somehow that seems like it would make things better. It probably wouldn’t and I doubt it would make me feel better. But if I could make a few people as miserable as I am, that would be a small consolation.

I know.

Small.
Petty.

But it sounds good. It really does.

I won’t do it. I’ll just stalk around and grumble to myself.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

My job is making me nuts. I’ve been there for two years. I had expected that I would move up in the pecking order during that time.

It’s not going to happen. Too much bureaucracy. To move up, a new job needs to be created or someone need to leave. I don’t see either of those things happening.

Which means the ball is in my court.

Excuse my while I walk around and grumble some more.

I don’t blog as much as I used to.

I don’t blog as much as I want to.

I sit down with every intention to write something, but I don’t. Mostly, this is due to the fact that all of my post would sound the same.

My job frustrates me.
People are dumb.
I hate dumb people.
I hate dumb people on the internet.
I hate dumb people at work toady.
I went to the gym, there were dumb people there.
I hate that.

Do you want to read that? I don’t want to write it. It get’s stale after a while. My life is a bit stale, to tell the truth.

I’m a in a rut. Work does frustrate me. I could tell you all about it, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I don’t need to. Maybe work is simply a frustrating thing. I fear that my work frustration is far from unique. And that is depressing in and of itself. I mean, if I have to suffer like this, you would hope that at least it would make for an interesting story. But it doesn’t. It just makes for another guy bitching about his job.

I try not to dwell on work. I go to the gym nearly every night and run for 40 minutes. You’d think that this is the kind of activity that would make my life better. Help me feel healthier and happier. Who knows, maybe it does. But I’m still in a rut.

I know I mentioned it before, but it is so true. I want to pack my shit and go some where warm. Get a new job. How bad could it be? Even if the job sucked, when you were done work, you’d be in Florida anyways.

If I were single, I’d probably do it. But it’s a lot harder to figure how to afford to transplant a family. And let’s be honest here, there is nothing so unique or special in my skill set to make some one want to relocate me.

I try to amuse myself, to keep myself from dwelling on this shit.

And to that end, I’m gonna run Shitty Blog Survivor again and Shitty Blog Radio seems to have resurfaced. Of course, that nature of diversion has limited appeal.

For now I just look forward to my next backpacking trip. Currently, the forecast is for rain and snow. This will not do.

I hate this time of year.

Is privacy important?

The nature of this question keeps changing. Should we sacrifice a little privacy to make the world safer? To make it more convenient?

It seems that this question is no longer academic for me.

At work we got a new piece of equipment. A network analyzer to go with our firewall. Our Network Analyst, who is responsible for the firewall has been testing it out.

It seems that there is very little information that is hidden from him.

Oh. I know the information has always been there, for anyone with the right tools and enough time. But this has raised the stakes. He can read in near real time what you are saying on IM or what web page your are reading. Who you are logged in as.

If he were inclined, he could know just about anything I did on line, with no more effort than you are expending to read this blog.

He let our Network Engineers know about the capabilities of this device by reading verbatim an IM conversation between to of them.

The reaction in the room was unanimous: Fuck this.

Like I said, we know that nothing is safe or secret in the electronic world. We know that better than most people. We also know the pure volume of stuff happening on the network at any given moment should mean that whatever we do is just part of the noise.

Not anymore.

Of course, the argument always goes— if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

Like most old arguments, it’s dead wrong.

Typical Chat conversation:

jeckles:dude
shutter:what’s up!
jeckles:that meeting was lame!
shutter:oh yeah?
jeckles:fuck yeah. you should have heard the dumbass shit that so and so was saying.
shutter:hahahhaha. I know so and so is such a tool… why do they invite him to those meetings
jeckles:to make me nuts, I think

Harmless. Just a little venting between co-workers. I’m sure it happens all the time. But what if ’so and so’ got access to the logs of the analyzer? Yeah. That would be bad.

And even if I refrained from criticizing or insulting anyone on IM, would it still be OK?

No.

Imagine if your boss offered you overtime to work on a project. You declined because you had plans for the weekend. You don’t tell your boss that your plans are to watch all 12 hours of LotR, its none of her business. But when you tell your buddy about your plans and she sees the logs…

What if some one was planning to quit? That’s not illegal or immoral, yet you wouldn’t want anyone at work to no about it before you told them.

The scenarios are endless. The fact remains that recording personal conversations is wrong. It’s probably legal, but what’s legal and what’s right often don’t line up.

There is a need to monitor what happens on a network and to control the kinds of traffic that is on the network. But there has to be a way to do it without spying on your own employees. I’d rather have IM blocked than monitored.

So what happened at work?

We downloaded and install a tool to encrypt our IM. Our Network Analysts blocked our IM. Our CIO said, “You guys can encrypt it? Send me the link.” Our Analyst backed off.

But this isn’t going to go away.

What should you take out of this? Two things.

Protect your privacy. If you think you have nothing to hide, you underestimate the ill will people can possess.

And if you IM me while I’m at work, assume what ever you type is being read. Cause it probably is.

I have been seriously questioning why I still doing this.

I think that most of the people who used to read this have moved on.
And writing it feels like a chore.

I go through cycles on this shit. Hot and cold.

Right now, I feeling cold.

I sit down to post something, but don’t. I don’t feel like it. I don’t feel like reading the well meaning comment from people who don’t understand what I’m trying to say.

Like this post. I’m not look for someone to talk me into keep blogging. Shit. That’s the last thing I want.

When I started doing this, I wanted a place to put my thoughts out there and that was it. But it’s changed. Once people started reading, that changed everything. Then I started thinking about what the readers thought.

The problem, I suppose, is that I really don’t like people.

I really don’t. As I am sitting here trying to type this, this buffoon I work with is trying to give me his malformed opinion of a presentation/meeting we had at work. It’s taking all of the strength I have not to say, “I don’t give a shit what you think. Shut up and leave alone, can’t you see me typing here.”

I guess that makes me not a nice person. I kind of wish I were a nice person, but it doesn’t seem to be in the cards for me. I am who I am. I am a product of the events that have shaped me and there isn’t much to be done about it.

Back to the point, Blogging seems to be an interactive/community kind of thing. My general dislike for people doesn’t work well with that.

So I ask myself, should I keep doing this and just say fuck ‘em, when the other bloggers rub me the wrong way? Or should I pack it up and try something else?

I don’t know. Not right now anyway.

I’m not here to make friends. I’m not here to get your approval. I’m not here to fit in to some sort of community. And I’m not here to be judged.

I’m here to say what I think. And recently, that seems more trouble than it’s worth.

Once upon a time, I started a blog. I did it because I had read a few blogs and it seemed interesting. But mostly I did it, because I had heard a rumor that Blogger was giving Gmail accounts to its members. I didn’t get a Gmail account from Blogger. I did eventually get one from some other blogger, because of my whining about it on my blog.

I liked blogging. I put my thoughts up on the internet, but no one read them. I signed up with a bunch of things to draw traffic to my blog. If only people could see his blog then they would read it. But for the most part they did not. For the most part, they still don’t.

Once upon a time, I joined a blogging club. It was kind of a joke. Before long I found myself in charge of it. People like silliness on the internet, I’ll have contests and polls and shit. People will come and hang out and it will be fun. People did come, but mostly just to get another link. Everyone wants a link. Fun? Not so much. People told me that I had to do this and I had to do that. I held make believe contests and people got mad.

Once upon time, I believed I could be a writer. I wrote stories. Carefully choosing every word. People came and told me how great my writing was. I read their sites and told them how great they were. I decided to get serious. Maybe write a novel. Maybe not. Maybe I should just stick to let people compliment me on the internet.

Once upon a time, I had a radio show. It was dumb. It was a joke. I didn’t try to make anything serious, just a diversion for fun. Well, yeah, that didn’t work out either.

People ask me why I hate the Internet so much. No reason.

I think that what is wrong with me… and don’t doubt for a minute that something is wrong with me. What is wrong with me may be that I don’t know what I want.

Or perhaps as my wife says, “You think to much about stuff.”

It’s true. But that doesn’t matter. I can’t help it.

Warning. This post is long, boring and probably filled with self pity. If that is a problem for you go read something else.

Work is making me nuts. Not the job itself, but my co-workers. To explain…

It’s complicated. Of course it is, probably because I’ve thought about too much.

I don’t think I’ve blogged too much about this, mostly because I have no desire to whine about things here. But to understand, you have to understand the back story.

At my job, and you probably have some one like this at your job too, there is this guy. He’s an idiot. Truly. Let’s call him Buddy. To add insult to injury, unlike many of us he a College Diploma, though I can’t imagine how. He knows less about computers than most of our users. He doesn’t understand the network. He can’t multi-task. He’s a hold over from a different time. Before there was IT. He was the ‘tech.’ A hardware monkey that could set up dot matrix printers and Apple IIe’s and whatever else. No real technical skill need.

But bureaucracy works in funny ways. You promote people for working somewhere a long time, you bounce him from department to department. Until somehow, he’s a “Network Engineer.” Of course no one thinks that he could do anything remotely like what a Network Engineer needs to do. So they put him in charge of ordering parts and processing repairs. They stick him in a warehouse and forget about him.

I don’t care about any of that. Not really. It burns me a little bit that this monkey gets paid more than me. A lot more than me. But his paycheck is his business and I know that.

Our department is growing rapidly and our office is over crowded as a result. Another tech and myself get relocated out to the warehouse. Since we are onsite technicians it shouldn’t matter to much.

And it doesn’t.

So when I am at my ‘desk,’ I get to see Buddy in action. It’s a site to behold. He talks to himself, get frustrated the first time doesn’t go the way he thinks it should, and he cannot trouble shoot anything. First roadblock and he’s on the phone with a real engineer. He cusses and yells and throws temper tantrums. But we accept this, for no reason other than this is just how he is.

Life goes on. I even take a vacation. On my first day back, I come in to catch up on email and what not. Buddy is all worked up. It’s early and he’s already cussing and yelling and freaking out about something or another.

“How do you assign admin rights to a new account? This doesn’t make any sense.”

Admin rights? I ask him needs admin rights. Chris does. I find out that his son, Chris has been hired to be the Help Desk guy. There are 3 other techs in the warehouse this morning. I look to my buddy and he gives me the same puzzled look.

“Helpdesk doesn’t get admin rights.” We both say.

Buddy loses it. His face gets all red, the chords in his neck jump out.

“YOU”RE A FUCKING ASSHOLE, JECKLES! A FUCKING ASSHOLE!”

Nice. Wow. As it turns out he was trying t figure out he get Chris Rights to the Help Desk, not Admin rights. But he flipped on me. What did I do?

I walked away. I got a cup of coffee. And when I came back, I simply asked him to please interact with me in professional manner. He proceeded to explain to me what a jerk I am, and I just tuned it out.

And life goes on. Interrupted occasionally by outburst from Buddy.

Until last month.

I was sick, and had been for a while. I was running a fever. I had my laptop set up on the work bench, since some other tech had hijacked ‘my desk.’ But since I don’t really have a desk, I can’t complain. I have my headphones in and I’m trying tto work while tuning out the idiocy around me. In other words, a pretty typical day.

Buddy keeps reaching right over my head for something. I ignore once, twice, but three time is too much. Three times of having his meaty arm in front of my face. Three time of having his disgusting gut right up next to me. It’s too much.

“Do you want me to move?” I ask, making no attempt to hide my displeasure.
“I’m just trying to do my fucking job!” He screams at me.

Too much. Too much Buddy. Too much working while sick. Too much not having a desk to work at.

“What do you think I trying to do. I don’t have anywhere else to fucking sit? Do you think I Sat to fucking inconvenience you? Jesus Fucking Christ. Don’t fucking worry about it. I’ll move out of your fucking way!”

I picked up my laptop and stomped off.

Not my most shining moment, I know. But given the environment and the history I didn’t think much of it… until my boss called me in her office.

I got warned. I was told that we don’t act like that. I was told the F-Bomb was inappropriate. Somehow, I managed to not point out that she had no problem dropping the ole F-Bomb.

She asked if this was an isolated incident, I told no it wasn’t and I gave her the history.

I didn’t get in trouble beyond that. And they managed to find me a desk back in the office.

Problem solved.

Except that it is not. This is where the problem begins. Word gets around. People joke about me losing my cool. Suddenly I have a reputation as a hot head. As some one who will lose his temper at the drop of a hat.

My boss doesn’t chat with me anymore. People are careful around me.

I can’t stand it. And I think my career path here will be affected by this. My boss doesn’t think of me as reliable tech with loads of knowledge about Active Directories and everything else. She sees me as a potential liability.

And every time I hear some one say something like, “Hey Jeckles, I know that user is a total idiot, try not to yell at him.” It knocks the wind out of me. And there are comments. Some obvious. Some subtle. It makes each and every work day hell.

I am so tired. Tired of the shit. Tired of shooting myself in the foot again and again. Tired of not being able to succeed.

And I don’t see any rest in sight.

My day didn’t start bad.

I got up, showered, enjoyed a cup of coffee. Went off to one of my sites and took care of a detail that was left over from the day before. I stopped and filled up the tank before heading back to the main office.

Parking is tight at the office. Our lot only holds a fraction of the cars that bring us there. So I parked in teh lot accroos the street as I usually do. And that was fine with me. The sunny was shining, it was practically warm. I grabbed my laptop and headed towards the office building.

I should pause here to explain something. I have two bad knees. I’ve had arthritis of some sort in one knee or the other (or Fun! Fun! sometimes both of them) since I was four years old. I guess backpacking is a funny hobby for a guy with bad knees, but that is not by accident. I sort of refuse to accept that my knees are shit. I hike, jog, do whatever I want. Maybe it helps, maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know, but I spent to much of my childhood being gimped up, I refuse to do that now. Sooner or later, I’ll probably be forced to slow down, but until then… I’ll keep trucking.

Why am I telling you about my knees, in the middle of a narration about my morning? Well you need to understand that my knees (and sometimes by extension my hips) sometimes rebel against me. And that is what happened this morning.

I stepped on to the curb, to look for traffic, before crossing, but I stepped a little forward throwing my balance ever so slightly off. I should have re-adjusted and not even noticed, but this was just enough to throw off my often useless knees. They gave way underneath of me, throwing me to the street. I put my hands out to break my fall and slammed into the asphalt.

My first reaction was embarrassment. I looked around and luckily there was only one witness and he was a stranger to me. I picked myself and headed towards the building. I inspected my hands as I walked, they were both scraped pretty good and beginning to bleed. My left knee felt as though it had been scraped. And even before I made to the door my left hand was beginning to throb.

I went to my desk and docked my laptop. I went to the bathroom and washed of my hands. Scraped, but not cut deep anywhere. Back to my desk and back to work.

But my left hand was killing me. A bruise was building deep in there somewhere and I was having trouble gripping things. Lifting anything with my left hand was painful enough to make me catch my breath.

I took a half dozen Advil and after a half hour or so the pain faded to a point I could work around it.

I smashed the shit out of the bone in heel of my hand, down near the thumb. I suppose there could be a hairline fracture. More likely, I just bruised the bone.

The only good news is that I have tomorrow off. And with any luck it will be feeling much better by Saturday. Cause I’m going backpacking.

Want to guess at the forecast?

I seem to be engaged in a turf war at work.

I hate that my life is as stupid as this.

My ‘office’ is located in a warehouse. The IT dept has a corner of the warehouse. It’s where we keep all the spare hard drives and computers that need work. The parts aren’t my problem. I’m here cause our main office is overcrowded. Most of the time this works out for me. It keeps me away from office politics and besides, mostly I’m a field tech. I just need to come back here to do paperwork and do repair work.

Of course, most of the building is occuppied by the Facilities People. That’s fine too. But, for some reason yesterday the Facilities Supervisor decided to pick a fight with me.

They keep at least one pot of coffee brewed up in their break room. Instead of brewing coffee back here, we just go up and drink theirs. And of course, every month or so, I give the lady who buys the coffee ten bucks to pitch in towards coffee.

Yesterday, Shutter and I brewed a pot of coffee, up in the break room. I must have made it a wee bit too full, because it spilled a little while I pouring my cup. Shutter grabbed a sponged, I grabbed a paper towel and we cleaned it up.

I went back to my desk and back to work. Five minutes later the Supervisor of Facilities strolls back. He laikes to come and visit us and pretend that he is in charge of us, since we are in ‘his building.’ Whatever. Usually it is benign.

He comes and starts shouting, no biggy, he always yells. I don’t know why.

“Hey Fellas! What’s this Music? Sounds Like someone being killed!”
Well, it was Rage against the Machine. But, what od you say to that, so we just kept doing what we doing. He looks right at me and says, “Hey Coffee Guy!”
I looked up at him.
“There’s plenty of Coffee Up There!.”
“I know. I just brewed it.”
“I Can Tell! I See Where You Spilled Coffee All Over the Floor!”
I look at Shutter and he looks at me. Before I can I ask if I missed something, he goes on.”
“Marcie Just Cleaned that Floor! Jay-Sus! This Music is Terrible! It Makes Me Want To Kill Myself.”
He walks over starts looking at my computer screen. I minimize the email I’m writing. He walks over and looks at Shutter’s monitor.
He says to Shutter, “Is This Music Coming From Your Computer? What’s Wrong with You? What Don’t you Play Some Sinatra? This Fucking Shit is Terrible.”

I could tell Shutter was getting pissed. Any one could tell. His back was getting stiff and his face was gettign a little red. Even this assclown could tell.
“You Know I’m Just Kidding With You! Right? I would Kid You If I Didn’t Like You! You Know I Like You. If I Didn’t I wouldn’t let you drink MY COFFEE!”

I almost lost it. His coffee? His Coffee! I gave ole what’s her face ten bucks not 3 day ago, but it’s his coffee? To hell with that. I paid for it. It’s my coffee. I couldn’t stand anymore.

I finished my coffee and started to pack my shit up. Shutter asked where I was headed and I told him. He offered to lend me a hand. I stood up and started to out my coffee cup away. Mr. Facilities Supervisor sees me walking with the empty cup.

“GOING FOR MORE COFFEE?”
“no. i’ve had enough. thanks.”
“OK. SON. Did You Hear That? He’s Actually Had ENOUGH Coffee!”

Shutter and I walked out of the Office.

I will not drink anymore of His Coffee. I don’t know what that was about. And I don’t care. I’ll either brew it in my office or I’ll bring it in with me. But I will not drink His Coffee anymore.

I hate this shit.

Maybe I need one of those jobs where I don’t have to deal with people.

Like a developer.
Just let me sit in a cube and write code all day.
I could live with that.
Except that I don’t know much in the way coding.

I could be a writer.
I could sit at a desk and write for hours at a time each day.
Write until a novel happened.
Think I can get an advance on that plan?

Maybe I should be a hermit.
Go live in some shack in Montana.
Line the walls with foil and hide from the world.

The funny thing is, despite what you guys think, I’m very good at dealing with people.

I smile. I say the right things to the right people.
Usually I can get things accomplished.
That’s the trick. I’m in no position to demand anything of anyone.
So I talk. And talk. And talk.
I talk to all kinds of people. And I listen to what they say, I hear their concerns and explain to them why and how it should be.
And they listen. Usually.

But it is frustrating. Very.
Especially when I get to those who will not listen.

Don’t you know who I am?

So what do I do about it.
I blow off steam.
I shout and yell and cuss.
(Speaking of venting, listen to SBR tonight at 9 PM EST to hear what I’m talking about.)
Later when they cannot hear me.

So that later, when I have to deal with them again, I can smile and talk. And Talk.

I woke her up.
Nicely.

I think I hear noises in the kitchen.
I’m hopeful that this will result in an egg sandwich.
And coffee.

I need coffee, but not before I get something solid in my stomach.

I’m not going to get in to things that I don’t know the details of…
but I can safely say, once again, people suck.

Given a chance to be small, narrow minded and short sighted, they will.
Stupid people.

Wow. This is much easier when I’m not trying to do a Radio Show.

Those of you who listened…
You rock!

The rest of you…
well do I need to spell it out?

I’ll keep you posted about breakfast. I know that you are on the edge of your seat about this.

The kids are in bed.
The wife is too.

2 distractions taken care of.

I’m more than halfway there.

So far so good…

But (yes another but)

But this blogathon thing has brought over a hundred different people to this site.
Most of them will never come back after today. I’m cool with that.
But you would think that more than one of them would be able to make a pledge!

grrrr

It’s a blogathon!
It’s for charity!

You are supposed to make pledges!

Sponsor me. Dammit.

Step up to the plate.
It’s good for you.

My Blogathon monitor think I need a break…

What she doesn’t realize is that I’m always like this.

Like I said…
I suck.

But look, I’ve been talking to Mango Radio People.
I’ve been emailing.
And I haven’t been writing.

Once again, I suck.

So shitty useless post.

Deal with it.

Want to be amused…

Go listen to Utopia, she is angrier than me. (well almost.)

She is currently representing Mango Radio.

I feel like I should be saying nice things right now…
but I don’t have it in me right now.

Deal with that also.

Yeah… I’m a bundle of inspiration.

It’s true.

I’ve been blogging for over 2 years. I’ve posted hundreds of bits of me on the Internet here and elsewhere.

But I always end up disappointed.
Stupid blog clubs irritate me.
Even my own stupid blog club.

It seems that every time I find a blog I love, the writer quits writing.

I hate that for the most part that only bloggers read blogs.
I hate that it tends to be reciprocal.
I’ll read yours if you read mine.

I hate a lot of things actually. (It’s part of my charm.)

So why do you blog if it bugs you so much?

Good Question.

I’ve been asking myself that for quite some time now.
I’ll probably ask again before this ‘thon thing is over.

That’s OK. You’ll be sick of me before this over. Trust me.
Happens to everyone.

Well almost everyone.

I’m blogging at work again. I am a bad employee. Of course, we are playing the name that tune game on my iPod right now, so why not blog.

Shutter really sucks at name that tune.

Tonight, I need to pack for my three day backpacking trip, then do the stupid radio show. Any packing that does not get done before the show, will happen afterwards. I probably won’t get much sleep.

Sleep is overrated.

OK. I’m home now. I goofed off long enough that my work day week is finally over.

This week started like shit, and really it didn’t end any better. Maybe the heat is getting to people. I know that I’m not happy about having to work with this douche that screamed at me. He keeps trying to nice up to me. Fuck that. I am a patient person (really… I am) and I’m a pretty nice person. This moron is getting top pay because he’s been there forever and they don’t know what else to do with him, so they promote up and out of the way. What do I care, that’s not my problem.

It wasn’t. Then he screamed at me. Now every time he starts with the, Jeckles, I’m not sure what this error means. Jeckles, why isn’t this working. Jeckles, how can they expect us to do this without step by step documentation written at a level a simple child could read.

I want to scream at him:

Dude. You have a College Degree. You are a fucking Level III Engineer (compared to my measly Level II Technician.) Dude you make 30% more than I do. Figure it out. That’s we do. We figure it out.

I’m done with that guy. You don’t scream at me like that and then expect me to just forget that it happened,

I’m sick of other people too. Little people. Not Midgets. Small minded assholes, who think that they know oh-so-much about the world. They know what is right and what is wrong. And have no problem telling me all about it. And when I make it clear I don’t want to hear it. Then I’m the asshole.

I need to go pack. I’ll be on the stupid Radio show at nine. Tune in if you want.

Two days till vacation. Twos days till vacation. Two days till vacation.

It’s not helping.

Why does everything have to be so frustrating. I guess its me. It must be.

I went to re-image a bunch of old computers. The image failed. The fucking hard drives were too small. So…
First thing tomorrow I’ll be re-imaging the same computers. Which is great, cause it was so much fun the first time.

< Broken record>

I hate people. And unfortunately that extends to Internet people too. Cause they are just real people. Except for teh ones in the chat rooms that want to show you theit webcams. They are not real. Sometiems it harder for me gage to tehinternet people. But in the long run the break donw is always the same: msot people suck, a few are pretty good.

Lousy odds if you aske me.

</beating a dead horse>

I’m busy as hell, with all my little projects. But it seems like I make remarkably little progress. I hate this.

And so You know. I’m not joking when I say I’m paranoid. I really am. It is so crippling some days.
You can go ahead and make fun of me now. (and no, I’m not trying to be ironic.)

I’ve been reading my old blog entries. And I’ve come to a number of conclusions.

I am a boring dude.
I whine alot.
I don’t really do anything.
I am boring dude.

My blog (This blog) will turn 2 years old soon. I’m thinking of putting decorations and baking a cake. Then no one will show up and I’ll eat my cake. It will be a very fitting way to celebrate this blog.

Two More Days. Just Two More.

I have a head ache.

Lack of sleep will do that to you.

I’m grumpy I want to lash out at people. Which sucks. I’m not upset at people, I’m upset at person. But lashing out at person will get me no where.

So I’m stuck.

Stay back.
I may lash.

At what point do I give up.
Do I resign myself to the fact that I’m I’m just another nobody.

I wanted to be great. To do something great. To be different. To be true to myself.

Of course everyone wants that. That’s why teenagers are so endearing, they really believe that they will be different. That the rules won’t apply to them.

But the rules do apply. And life happens. And one day you wake up and you are over 30 with kids and a mortgage and a minivan. And you aren’t cool. You aren’t changing the world. You aren’t special.

And you scream inside your skull,”This is NOT what I wanted.” While you pass the time at your nice, but meaningless job.
I haven’t given up yet. Not quite.

But you begin to wonder if you are not just whining.

Maybe it’s time to join the sheep.
To line up with the lemmings and head for the cliff.
Shut the fuck up and keep walking.

that I hate people?

I took the day off work.

I feel a little… cough, cough … ill.

And besides, my employer gives me 12 sick days a year. And I ‘m a fairly healthy guy. So why not take mental health day, here or there?

I decided that what I needed to cure what ails me was a nice relaxing morning at my favorite coffee house.

So here I am sipping on some sort of fair trade Guatemalan coffee, writing Part 4 to the backpacking story, listening to my iPod and generally enjoying myself. And poof the wireless connection disappears. I look over to where the access point is… and I see this hammerhead unplugging it. I look around there are 4 or 5 other people on laptops.

I watch this egghead fucking around with the wireless access point, and I realize that he must be a consultant that the coffee house had hired to do something with their network. By consultant, I mean some asshole who thinks he knows everything about computers and went in to business for himself, in order to take money from those who nothing about business. He sees me watching him and comes over.

“Your connection might go down. Actually, you probably not connected right now.”

No shit Sherlock, you disconnected the access point from the network.
“I see that.” Somehow he missed the sarcasm.

“Well, yea it will be down for a few minutes.”

Great. I hope I didn’t lose everything i just typed you assclown. Did you ever think to mention this shit before you rudely disconnect me and all the other customers from our work?
“Great!”

He did whatever it is he was doing, and now I’m back up.

If you’ll excuse me… I have to talk the owner about his wireless network, and educate him about “consultants.”

I hate people.

I don’t want to. I want to be a people person. I can imagine me talking and having fun with all of these people, but they aren’t real people. They are interesting people who want to talk about things not just pratter on about TV or the weather. People who have opinions and are willing to defed them, but who also are looking to expand their horizons and therefore are willing to listen to different points of view. Me and my imaginary people would have such a great time.

Too bad they are not real.

Take tonight for example. My wife is having some sort of stupid candle party. Whatever. I know it wasn’t designed for me, I just planned to lay low and stay out of the way.

Of course I didn’t get out of work until after 6. Then my wife asked me to stop by the grocery store to pick a few last minute items for the party. I didn’t get home till just before 7, which is when the part started. All I wanted to do was change, grab something to eat and retreat to the geek cave.

Well that’s not going to happen. The party ladies are already showing up. To hell with it, I think, who needs to change. I’ll just grab some food and take the kids and retreat. Too late.

Lady I barely know: This is Jeckles.
Lady I’ve never fucking seen before: You’re Jeckles! I though you were Mrs Jeckles’ brother you two look alike!
Lady I barely know: Well Married people start to like a like!
Lady I’ve never fucking seen before: he he he
Lady I barely know:Jeckles look at hard I’ve slaving to prepare for your wife’s party.

I guess anyone who reads this will think it is no big deal…

Who fucking cares right? I do. What gives you the right to walk into my house and start babbling at me. If you have nothing to say, Shut Up! Why do you feel the need to flap your jaws and joke with me like we’ve been friends for ages.

At some point I had the Audacity to try to leave the Geek Cave. I just wanted some coffee. The door to the Geek Cave was barricaded with Candles. Once they got those clear, some person I don’t know yells out, Jeckles, you can’t just barge in to a room of women with out knocking.

Oh yea, you stupid cow, it’s my house. I own it. An why the fuck are you talking to me.

I really wish I could have some coffee.

So maybe it’s been a while since I updated this space.

It’s a little uncomfortable.  Like seeing an ex-girlfriend.  You don’t really know what to say.  This is so ironic, because you knew each other so well and now it seems like there is nothing to talk about.  Or perhaps it is nothing like that.

I could give you all of the usual excuses: work, sick with the never ending cold, busy with the Radio Show.  But it doesn’t really matter.

I yelled at an intern at work this week.  I guess I should feel bad about that, but actually I feel good about it.  Great even.  The little brat deserved it and I guess I had some pent up angry in me.  The whole thing was very refreshing for me.  The intern won’t look my in the eye yet.  But he’ll be ok.  I guess every one needs to learn at some point that there is a pecking order.  And when people at the bottom of the pecking order try to tell people who are a wrung on two up what to do, it doesn’t work well.  Do it too many times and you might get yelled at.  Or maybe I’m just a jerk.

The good news is that I get to go backpacking this weekend.  If the weather holds it should be incredible.  And I really need a good camping fix.  

Wow.  That wasn’t so hard.  I should do this blogging thing more often.

I’ve been busy.  Mostly with work.  I looked at my over time for September.  I worked something like 80 hours of OT last month.  Or to look at it another way, I worked an extra two weeks.  That would explain why I feel like I haven’t had any free time.

Why so much OT?  I’ve been swamped with calls and projects.  Take Friday for example.  I had to set up 25 computers with several CAD and CAM packages installed.  IT had taken some time to work out all the kinks and to get the licensing square.  But by Friday afternoon, I had everything working one workstation.  All I had to do was to image the other 24 Workstations.

Now, having said that, it is still a big chore — not hard but time consuming.  I had to pull the image of off the workstation that was correctly configured.  I then had to boot the other 24 workstation to a Ghost session.  On each workstation, I had to point it to my laptop to get the new image.  I hit send and wait…

The ‘GhostCast’ session was going to take about 15 minutes.  I stood there talking the tech I had roped in to helping me finish up the imaging process.  At 68% percent of the way through the ‘GhostCast’ session, we noticed a flicker.

I looked behind me 12 of the 24 computers were shut down.  The circuit that they were plugged in to had blown.  We found a maintenance guy to unlock the box housing the circuit breakers for us.  Sure enough one of them was blown.  All parties agreed that it was a fluke.    We went back to booted all the computers to the Ghost session.  And then we started the GhostCast session… again.

Guess what happened next.  That’s right, 68% of the way through the circuit blew.  What in the world happens at 68 percent that causes that to happen in a great mystery.  I set it up to ghost the computers that were not on the questionable circuit and once they were done, we ran the rest of them.  For what ever reason, that worked.  We ran through ‘Mini-Setup’ on each one.

The job got done.  But instead of finishing up around five like I planned, we were there until eight.  It seems like that has just been the way it has been working for me.

The good news is… this job pays for overtime.

I’m not having a very good week.  

It has been busy.  Stupid Busy.

My wife was out of town Saturday till Wednesday.  This made me a Single dad for a few days.  It was fun in some ways. But mostly it just wore me out.  And Tuesday after a shitty day at work, I really missed not having my best friend around to tell all about it.

Work.  Work has been … stressful.  I am in the business of Tech Support.  And there are times when it is a very thankless job.  Times like this month.  I do onsite support.  If your computer stops working, and you call the help desk, and the help desk can’t resolve your issue over the phone; I’m the guy who will show up and fix it.  

Most of the time it’s great.  I show up, do my thing and everyone’s happy.  People are so happy to get this stuff fixed.  It makes me feel good.  When I’m not closing calls, I’m working on projects: setting up servers, trying new technology, and brainstorming with the other engineers.  For me it is the perfect job.  I get to plenty of interesting and smart work, but I also have an excuse to get out of the office and avoiding the politics.

But sometimes, like now, the call volume gets high.  People wait times go up.  Then it’s harder.  I try to make the best of it.  I challenge myself to get the calls closed.  I work longer hours.  But the users… the users can make the job hell.

The users, who can’t be bothered to use the helpdesk, yet want you to take a look at their problem.  They have no appreciation for how badly that sets me back and for how much it screws things up for people who actually follow procedure and use the Help Desk.  I have calls that are almost a month old, but you want me to drop everything at look at your new problem ‘while I’m here.’  

The users, who have an axe to grind with their boss, because the boss hasn’t given them the computer or software they want.  Or because they Hate the IT department.  They are angry because when they started their career they didn’t use computers but computers have been thrust on them.  And they are sure that every time the computer doesn’t do what they expect it to it’s because we did something to mess with it.

The users, who did something stupid to their computer and expect you to fix it, ‘I     know we’re no supposed to download games from the Internet but… can you get all the spyware off of my PC with out removing my games?’

The thing that brings me down is the rudeness.  I’ve been yelled out, accused of preventing people from doing their jobs, and treated just generally like shit.  Just for showing up to fix the problem.

I could tell you tales of the crap I have had to endure, but I don’t really feel like it.  I will tell you this: If your computer gives you a hard time and someone comes to fix it, say ‘thank you’ to him (or her!)  Even if the last tech that came, screwed things up worse.  Even if you think you should get a better computer or that the computer has just made your job harder.  Even if you had to wait too long for them to show up.  Even if the help desk was terrible and the people you spoke to on the phone were idiots.  When the onsite tech shows up and fixes it; smile, be glad they came at all, be glad it’s now fixed, and say thank you.  It makes a difference.  Trust me, on this one.    

Do you want to know a secret? My oldest son isn’t actually my son. He isn’t related to me in any way. He’s my step son. He lives in my house. I provide him a home, food, help with homework, the occasional game of catch. I teach him how to make a campfire, I talk to him about things he can’t talk about with his mother, like comic books and girls.

I instill in him my morals. I teach him right from wrong. I show him the world as I see it. I love him with all of my heart. I love him as though he were my ‘real’ son. I know that this is true. My younger son is my son. And I love him. My heart feels no asterisk when I love the older one. My heart doesn’t understand that I’m not his real Dad.

His ‘real’ dad is unemployed. His real dad is too disabled to work, yet no one has seen him use his cane outside of a courtroom. His real dad thinks computers are OK for some people, but he ‘just doesn’t understand those computers.’ His real dad’s world extends less than 20 miles in any direction. His real dad can’t read. His real dad lives in a dingy trailer in a dingy trailer park. When my son goes to his real dad’s ‘house,’ he plays video games by himself and plays with the girl next door. A girl who’s older sister is now a mother at age 16. His real dad says he would like to support his son, but he can’t work. His real dad says he would like to do things with him, but he’s too weak.

My son comes home angry. He hates it there. He knows that he is supposed to like this guy, (the real dad’s girlfriend and the real dad’s mother tell him so all the time,) but his real dad doesn’t even talk to him about anything. His real dad asks every time, ‘How’s school?’ ‘Are you staying out of trouble?’ but he never seems to remember what my son has told him. My son doesn’t want to be there. If that place was the home of one of his friends, I would not allow him to spend the night there. (I would have the friend come to my house.) Sometimes, especially when there are family gatherings, weekend trips, and the like, my son asks if he can not go to his real dad’s house. Sometimes my wife says that he doesn’t have to.

His real dad gets angry. He says we are keeping his son from him. His real dad once went over 10 months with out contacting my son. My son’s real dad can’t hold a job and has been excused from paying child support. My son’s real dad, however, can afford a lawyer. My son’s real dad’s lawyer says that my wife is in contempt of court for disobeying the court ordered visitation agreement. The lawyer did not mention the fact that sometimes my son’s real dad is unavailable to get him for the weekend. He did mention that the real dad did not get the two non-consecutive weeks of visitation that is his court ordered right. The lawyer did not mention that the real dad did not provide my wife with the dates of the two non-consecutive weeks by May 31 (as stipulated in the agreement.)

The courts think fathers must care for their sons. The courts are horrified because of the number of fatherless children in this country. The courts will go to great lengths to make sure that fathers and children ha