Archives, eh
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# Links for 2005-11-10
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# I've been writing this post on and off since Monday!
Monday I forgot to grab my train ticket as I left the house for work. It was in my wallet which was under a book and at that time of morning it is very much a case of out of sight, out of mind. Not sure why I thought of it when I reached Central station, but I suddenly patted my back pocket to check for my wallet and did that comical flashing back 40 kilometers to the location of the ticket that you see in all the poorest quality Disney Channel pre-teen comedies.
I suppose I should see the silver lining; that is it didn’t happen Tuesday when the multiverse would have arranged for ticket inspectors to be trolling about the carriage like the squatter’s troopers, 1-2-3. Just to be clear though, I wouldn’t have taken the billabong option.
D is having extreme back pain, particularly at night so she wakes during the early morning hours in agony. Which means I wake up as well. I love my wife and all so I am happy to nuke a heat pack and fetch painkillers. And it really wasn’t a surprise that I was awake at 3.30am on Tuesday – I distinctly remember being awake at that time the previous year as well, and I’d bet good money that I have been awake at a similar time at least twoy years out of five.
I was supposed to make a presentation on Tuesday on where I see the IT department going – actually, it was supposed to be my utopia for how we should be doing development. I forgot about it until Tuesday morning. I brain dumped a delta of “Us” and “Us while scoring Twelve On the Joel Spolsky Test” and was appalled by how little effort it would require to it would to get us from 1 to 8. Appalled in a “why are we still a 1?!?” kind of way. Didn’t really matter anyway, because the meeting got a little hijacked by a 90 minute discussion on some process crap that I didn’t really care about. In a way I didn’t mind because it gave me time to go away and do more thinking, but it was ninety minutes that I’ll never get back.
Of course, immediately after that meeting, I went and had lunch with Cameron, SSR editor and avocadia.net commenter, and his wife. It had originally been planned as a dinner but tWMs extensive social calendar nixed that, and anyway Ds back was giving her agony, so we made it lunch. I was exhausted and thus incoherent, but it was great; he’s a sharp guy so he carried the conversation well. I explained the sum total of my knowledge of cane farming, which didn’t actually take long given I am a two minute expert. I mean, sure, I grew up in a town surrounded by cane farms, but I was a townie.
He amused the hell out of me at one point – he asked me a question and used my given name. He then started on this apology routine for using my given name. I don’t really mind, generally, cause I know people feel weird calling me gil or avocadia, but he thought I was a privacy nut. No, I just don’t use my given name online and prefer not to link it back to any online identity.
I should have dragged phronima along as well, seeing as how she sits at the next desk, but I wasn’t even thinking.
The day was looking up until I got back to the office and was flooded with requests from the clients. I ended up closing Outlook, proving that it isn’t just at 6.30 that out of sight, out of mind works for me.
At least I was able to go home, make dinner (burgers) and start putting music onto my iPod. Mind you, I must have the only computer sold in the last six months with USB 1.0. I’ll buy a USB 2.0 card on the weekend – they’re $25 which makes its absence from my machine just that little more annoying.
