Back to work. Finally! I’m sure Teresa was getting sick and tired of me hanging around the house. I’m in Miami this week and next week looks like a trip to JFK in New York. Just to show what a lousy judge I can be of “how the job market is” you should know that last Monday, just a few days after posting that I thought that the new project was finally picking up and that I would start getting back to work, we all got the call that our new project was flat busted and dissolved as of Monday morning. Just when I thought things were starting to look good, they were at their worst. So don’t ask me for career advice, I’m oblivious. But the program director shuffled the cards and put us each on new projects. I landed in the Department of Homeland Security. Today is my first day in the new project but it looks like I’m getting back into the design/engineering side of the house. It’s painful to watch the slow gears of beurocracy working here. Government agency politics mixed in with engineers that have never been in the trenches… I’m only in this for one day so far and I’ve already witnessed four hours wasted making plans for meetings, pre-meeting-meetings and briefings. Scheduling conflicts for these meetings will mean we have to push out the deadline. All about something that I could fix in twenty minutes with a basic screwdriver and a trip to Home Depot. I won’t last long in this kind of atmosphere. We’ll see where this one takes us but for now, I’m still working and things really ARE looking up this time.
Last week I had a GREAT idea that got me thinking and I wanted to write it all down but I was driving. It was topical and insightful. More than the simple posts I’ve been putting up now and then, this one was worthy of its own post. It was colossal! By the time I got somewhere to write it all down, I forgot what it was. Such are the perils of allowing all my best ideas to come when I am on the road. So, I’ll leave a few blank lines and you can imagine some genius commentary here…
Nothing has popped into my head yet. I really wish it would come back to me, it really was a good thought.
No, really, it WAS!!
Ok, it’s gone…
So as long as I can’t come up with something good, here’s something awful. I have noticed something and I have narrowed it down to three possible choices.
Is the news media racist?
Am I imagining it and therefore I am the racist?
Or is it just true?
Whenever they show a murder on the news you get one of two camera responses (sometimes both). You either get the neighbor talking about the killer saying, “He was just a regular quiet neighbor. I’m shocked that this happened.” Or, you get the family response to the victim. And my question is about the women who are caught responding on camera. Is it my imagination or is it that most of the women who sob into their husband’s shoulder are white and the women who scream and lose their mind are black? Am I noticing a cultural difference or am I displaying my bigotry for all to see? In my mind I can’t recall seeing anyone other than a black woman screaming and crying in front of the camera.
That’s all, I just had that thought and I figured I’d throw it out there for you to think about too. It’s not the amazing showstopper I had in my head from earlier but this one will have to do.
We’re moved in to the new house and things are going well but for a few things. The dogs haven’t learned to lay nice with others yet. Every time the neighbor dogs come out they go nuts. We walk over to the fence and they all get along nicely and quiet down. Then, the next time the neighbor dogs come out again it’s like our dogs forgot all about them and the barking starts up again. This better stop soon or I’ll get tired of it real fast.
My garage ( I LOVE saying that, MY garage…cool!) My garage is full of crap. Boxes that will likely never be unpacked full of Teresa’s crap and my stuff as well. Yes, her stuff is crap, my crap is stuff… But there’s a lot of it and we need to go through it before bringing it into the house. But there’s just SO much of it! The longer it takes to clean that all up, the longer it takes me to set up my workbench and drum set! I need space to play around in my garage!
The only real problem in the house is the doorbell. We have two of them, on regular doorbell and the other is the intercom system. I can hear both of them when I am sitting at my computer upstairs but they are real faint in the bedroom. If the TV is on (which it almost ALWAYS is when we are in the bedroom) you can’t hear the doorbell. This will be nice for sleeping in late on Saturday mornings but it sucks when your neighbor comes next door at 8pm to tell you the dome light is on in your car.
I’ve been toying with the idea of cutting off the mop on top of my head for a few months now. I threatened to shave it down to the skin but T said I’d have to live somewhere else until it grows back out. Becca said she wants me to keep the hair because I look stupid with short hair… Thanks. I mentioned it this weekend and I got told to keep it long for whole other reasons. So I don’t know what I’ll do for now. The summer is coming up and I’m not looking forward to being all sweaty and hot again. Of course, the new job (if it holds out) is more of an air-conditioned type of job, maybe it won’t hurt to wait and see…
Summing up; all is well. We are in the new house and I am back on the job facilitating the deployment of the machines that make your life a living hell at the airports. When do the machines take over? Terminator, I Robot, BSG, The Matrix, all of them paint a world where we have allowed the machines to take over. And that world is not too far away from where we are now. We create the machines to make our lives easier and then we spend all that free time as slaves to the machines. Repairs, upgrades, games, surfing… Hours spent in front of a screen worshipping the computer that was meant to make our lives easier and more free. Now we are chained to them even more. It is already irreversible. There is no way we can wean ourselves off or our dependency. Business would shut down without e-mail, people would lose their minds without being in constant contact with each other. Just twenty years ago you could go for a walk in the woods and be alone. You’d come home and maybe find a nice letter from Grandma in the mailbox. Now you can text message Grandma from the woods. And what about cars? Think you can fix your car if something breaks? You’d better think again. There’s more computer than engine under that hood now. So when do we get time away from the high and mighty technology gods? Never, that’s when. I’ll spend hours in front of the screen playing a game, then I’ll check my e-mail. Maybe I’ll get around to writing for a couple of hours, then I’ll surf the net for “cool stuff”. And that’s just down time. Work is spent in front of the screen and on the phone. No time for getting outdoors man, I’ve got to get back in front of that computer… And on that note, I’ll close down the screen and go for a walk. Of course it might help a little that I’m in Miami Beach and the scenery is a little prettier here…
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