The Aerie
In search for something to tide me over lunch, I wandered this morning into the nearest cafe to work, a very unprepossessing place indeed. For some reason the group that I work with has decided that the best time to review network designs is from noon til two on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. So here I was at the unsnacklike hour of 10:30 (it's not quite breakfast, it's not quite lunch, but it comes with a slice of melon) trying to find something to tide me over until 2:00.
Anyway this little cafe had nothing. I mean, nothing. Well okay, it didn't have nothing, it had a couple of forlorn cellophane wrapped clots of flour and butter. Not appetizing.
So I got a cup of decaf from the fellow behind the counter and wandered on.
But you know what? That was a really good cup of coffee.
Addiction is an ugly thing. I'm here to confess.
I have lately succumbed to a fairly common addiction, one that I doubtless share with Rush Limbaugh and other hardened addicts. While you may be inclined to call the police, I assure you that I have seen with my own eyes that some police officers are addicted too, so forget it.
One way that we addicts can recognize each other is through our drug paraphernalia. And just as age defines value in the art world, so to does the passage of time convey to us addicts an enhanced status in the eyes of our peers.
Case in point, a police officer recently caught sight of mine while I was carelessly carrying it about in plain sight (what was I thinking?).
"You've had that for a while," he said, nodding to indicate the item.
Was I about to be busted? Trying to play it cool I replied, "Ah, yes. Yes I have. I think it's about thirteen years old. It's really more of a memento these days..."
His eyebrows rose, and he turned to pick up an item. Ticket sheet? Handcuffs? Was he about to pull a gun?
"Huh," he said, "I thought mine was old. I've had it since I joined the force about ten years ago."
Relief flooded my system. A fellow addict! I was saved!
"Yeah, I remember when I could fill it for under fifty cents."
He nodded, "Yeah, and now it's almost a dollar."
We shook our head at the cruelty of a world where the price of our addictions could climb so quickly.
Then it was my turn.
"Ah, I'll get a square sesame with PBJ," I said, using the vernacular of the streets.
"Sesame soft bagel with peanut butter and jelly," my dealer translated, "and in the mug?"
I held out my ancient plastic cup, its logos worn away by the passage of time. "Half hazelnut, half decaf, please." It's always good to remain on the favorable side of your dealer, otherwise the "java" (as we call it) comes back cold, or the toppings are spread more thinly than truth in the White House.
This time, however, things were about to turn strange. This time I was about to be handed a harsh cure.
The dealer behind the counter seized and hemisected my bagel, top from bottom. Then, grabbing a spatula, he scooped from a tin its entire contents of peanut butter, and spread them vigorously but unevenly on the surface. On one side the stuff was piled half an inch high, ont he other the bread was visible beneath a tan smear.
Excusing himself, he reached past another person, presumably for the jelly. Instead he brought back... more peanut butter.
GLOP. He spread an equal amount of peanut butter on the other side of the bagel. I could hear the little air pockets in the lower half popping like bubblewrap under a steamroller as the fellow reached for the jelly.
Now, I'm accustomed to the Religion of Jam, the counterworkers who live by both meanings of the word "preserves." Usually when making my sandwich they treat the jelly like a holy substance, blessing the bread with the palest pink film, just enough to convey sweet sanctity without squandering the blessed sacrament on a mere customer.
But this fellow must have been an initiate in the temple, with more enthusiasm than training. He didn't merely film the bagel with a sugary whisper of jam, he up-ended the tin and DUMPED about as much jelly as I eat in a year atop the already-thick layer of peanut butter.
Buried beneath toppings, the bagel bottom gave a plaintive whimper and expired. The jelly quivered nervously for balance atop a tower of peanut butter as the upper half of the bagel descended from the heavens.
As stunned as if John Ashcroft had turned up as the Horned King at a Solstice celebration, I stood slack jawed as my dealer struggled to wrap the waxed paper around the girth of this huge sandwich.
I hauled this treasure, along with my ancient mug of hot coffee, back to my office, where I unwrapped the sandwich.
It squatted toad-like upon the desk, challenging me to try to eat it. I attempted to lift a corner, and it belched jam onto my fingers. I took out my pocket knife and tried to slice a chunk out: the wound gushed jelly like blood.
The sandwich disappeared with my dignity. By the time it was gone, I was as messy as a toddler in a pan of frosting.
So now the sandwich squats, toadlike, in my guts. The thought of any food, much less another such sandwich, makes my vision turn green.
I think the guy behind the counter wasn't a priest of Brueggers. I think he was a social worker from one of these anti-addiction organizations. By subjecting me to an overdose of PB&J he may have successfully broken me of my addiction.
We'll see. If I start jonesing for a PBJ sometime tomorrow morning, we'll see if the giant toad gives a croak and reminds me of the damaging side effects of my addiction.
This is your brain. This is your brain on jelly. Any questions?
Since picking up this downtown contract one of my to-do's has been to put saddlebags on my bike so that I could ride to and from work with my laptop. Unfortunately that was going to take about $100 I didn't have (at least for new -- I hadn't gotten around to looking into used equipment yet).
Also, I recently managed to lose the VCR remote control. I think I was the last person to use it, but I have no idea where it is now.
So the other day my kids' school has a garage sale.
You see, ongoing Republican efforts to completely dismantle the public school system have resulted in my kids school being so short of cash that they're having to discontinue practically everything. Band. Gifted programs. Recess. Everything. Teachers with more than five years of tenure are being laid off, class sizes are going way way up. It's a wet dream for the ideologues, thugs and morons who run this state.
[Rant off]
Anyway the garage sale was to raise funds to simply help balance the books, and it was stocked with donations from all sorts of people in the community.
My youngest had walked through the sale before it was underway and spotted something he just had to have: a Star Wars lightsaber. Well, actually just the handle: apparently even the Bush-diluted FTC recognized that letting children play with superheated plasma rods wouldn't fly with the voters. At least not middle class children. Anyway, despite the fact that our basement is choked with similar toys, he wanted this one. So we stopped by the sale.
He got his toy, and I was wandering around when I saw a backpack in a silent auction. It was a laptop backpack, specifically designed for exactly what I needed. Nonplussed, I walked over to the bidding sheet. $30, $5 bid increments. Okay, well then. I signed up at $35.
Suddenly the school principal stepped in front of me and took down the sign.
"What?" I asked.
"Oh, the bidding just ended."
"It did?"
A couple of minutes later I wrote the check and took the bag.
So the boy and I get home and he shows me his light saber: it's arrayed with recessed buttons.
It's a universal remote.
I went to the Internet, located and printed out the instruction manual, and lo and behold, it worked. It was exactly what I needed.
While I was on the Internet, I looked up the backpack. I got it for about 20% of its cost. Like new.
And since they don't make them anymore, the only way I could have gotten one was used.
Exactly what I needed. And like the light saber remote, like the new contract, entirely out of the blue.
I rode in early to work today, for a variety of reasons. As a result I am here for a rare occasion: there is sunlight slanting into my cubicle.
Since all the streets in Minneapolis are at an angle to parallel or intersect the diagonal river, the windows on my side of the building face northeast. The sun can only potentially come in for a few minutes in the morning, and then only into a few cubicles.
I think this is the first time I've sat in a cubicle and had sunlight coming in.
Okay, this makes no sense to me. My new employer has a very restrictive firewall -- I can't ssh to my own home computer, for example, no gopher protocol transactions, and not-unexpected restrictions on access to Yahoo Groups (I can read, but not post).
So why is it that I can access Launchcast music videos?
I mean, I'm not complaining, mind you. It's probably been five years since I could watch Launchcast videos on a regular basis (my home DSL line just isn't up to it). So I'll happily watch them.
Just strikes me as odd that I can.
Sat and did my mending yesterday. It's odd how much of it had piled up. Star Trek Voyager, a show I've long neglected, was due to be on, and I had to be home in the evening in order to prod the kids through their homework paces, so I figured I might as well watch it.
So I collected together all the things which had lost or were about to lose buttons and enshrined myself in front of the toob. My daughter joined me, pasting together a class project on the floor in front of the TV, and by the end of the evening all the kids were there.
The odd thing was trying to find the buttons. I'm not the best at keeping track of small things like buttons. I looked upstairs. I looked downstairs. Finally I figured I'd get started and do what I could and not worry about what was missing. As I headed back to star sewing I reached in my pocket.
All the buttons were there. How did they get there? It's not as if I found them and put them in my pocket, because I was still looking for them. No, they simply appeared in my pocket after I'd been wearing the pants all day. I have no idea, but I'm not complaining - usually my life works the other way around.
A while back my friend Speedy embroidered some shirts with my company logo. So of all the shirts I own, which one did the washing machine decide was the tastiest? That's right, my best logo shirt. It not only tore a button loose from the shirt, but it carved a small square of the shirt fabric from underneath the button like the tax man coring out a pound of flesh. Sewing the button in place was a combination of tailoring and cosmetic surgery, but it seems to have worked out, I'm wearing the shirt today.
The stitching made me wonder how many people mend shirts anymore. I know they don't mend socks. Even I don't mend socks. My youngest tears through socks the way that I used to, and I simply pull them off his feet and toss them in the trash. I wonder how many people sew buttons back on, and how many just pitch the shirt in the rag bag or the trash and buy another.
After that I had another shirt to mend. As I worked on this shirt I realized that the top two buttons were held on with only one loop of thread instead of two. What!? The bottom buttons had four-square thread X's, but the top two had just one diagonal loop.
How could this be! An outrage! No doubt this was why I had lost the first button. I could picture the ten-year-old girl in the east Asian sweatshop, chuckling to herself. "Ha! I will sew the button on insecurely! Take THAT, American pig-dog world exploiters! I have earned today's nickle for only HALF the work!"
I added thread to sew the extra loops on myself.
After Enterprise ended my daughter loaded up "The Princess Bride." What a movie. More quotable lines per frame than anything since "Holy Grail," and only half as silly.
"Who are you?"
"No one of consequence."
"I must know."
"Get used to disappointment."
"'Kay."
They just don't write 'em like that anymore, especially not during fencing scenes.
Next I sewed the button onto the waistband of a pair of pants. I can't imagine why my waistband button would find themselves coming loose... it's not like their job is getting harder every month... (sucking in gut)
Finally I had a button to secure on my overcoat -- it wasn't off yet, but it was coming loose, so I tightened it up. Since I didn't have heavy button thread I just added regular thread to the existing button. It will tear loose, but then the button won't fall off, it will just be back to where it was before.
Finished up around ten o'clock, with all the kids watching the end of Princess Bride. An oddly domestic, cozy little event - stitching buttons, doing homework, my youngest dawdling through his piano practice.
Kind of nice.
Amidst the Easter rituals our $300 rat died, her life extended at $20/day. I guess one lives and learns: next time let the rat die.
It was both strange and mundane: the rat went from alive to not-alive just after we finished coloring eggs. One moment she was in so much pain we couldn't touch her: the next she was a warm, limp object that could be touched and nudged with impunity.
Ah, so here I sit. My new client is a major national organization which rushed to hire me, skipping over even the necessity of an interview. With that kind of urgency you know what that means.
I'm doing nothing.
I was asked to bring my own laptop, there is no computer. My desk phone won't be in until Friday. My putative boss -- the person who hired me at least -- has managed to shoehorn a half hour today at 3:30 to actually meet me. If I were a younger man I would be fretting about this, but I guess I'm old and cynical because I think it's just great.
I actually found the lunchroom today (the room downstairs that my co-consultant and I found yesterday is about 1/10th the size of this place). The room not only had a pot of hot fresh decaf on, but it's stocked with decaffeinated Lipton's tea. It's like they built the place just for me.
So I'm sitting here reading websites -- once again Lileks has an obtuse rant about how incomprehensible it is that people can disagree with him -- listening to the Indigo Girls, eating a chocolate muffin and drinking decaf. Two weeks ago I was digesting my own stomach lining wondering where if I had a future.
Maybe they'll cancel my contract tomorrow. Maybe they'll get their act together and pile me up with tons of work. Who knows. But for today I have a job, some prospects, a snack, and every second they hand me two pennies to browse the web.
I think I'll enjoy it while it lasts.
Well tomorrow's the big day. Hopefully I can make Spring of 2004 the first day of a new year. I'm starting a long-term consulting assignment with a big client, I can commute by bicycle, and I'm hoping to write and exercise more often.
And I'm hoping to journal regularly. I know, I know, once again I hold out promises as weak as an addict's oath, but all I can do is try.
Lots of cultures celebrate their New Year in the Spring, I guess I can give it a try.
The opportunity was a big surprise. Back in early March I got Yet Another Opportunity call: would I like a long-term security assignment, and can my resume be submitted. Sure, sure, no problem, whatever I thought. At the time I was standing in the abandoned offices of a company that had lost a big court case, and my mind was on securing their data, not on this thin chance of a job.
I thought nothing of it until a week ago Friday. I was still numb from the stress of buying out one of my business partners when the phone rang. It was the placement agent.
"You know that client we put you in for? Well they've decided not to go with an interview..."
No problem, I thought, I hadn't expected to get it.
"...They've decided to hire you without an interview."
I was surprised. So was he: he'd never seen anyone hired without an interview before.
All this week it has seemed rather unreal - without the ritual of the interview and the handshakes and the anxious hoping, it has seemed rather fictional.
But on Friday I met with the fellow who will be my colleague under the same supervisor - we'll essentially be the assistants to the Chief Security Officer of a major national bank - and that put a little meat on the bones of this opportunity. Then yesterday I rode my bike to my new workplace in order to get a feel for the route, and it sank in a little more.
Today I've been getting my rebuilt laptop ready (Thanks Speedy!) and I've got to go now and get my clothes lined up for work. Then to sleep, and awake, and off I go, without a firm idea of what I'll be doing but a real good sense of what a big chance this is.
If my sleep schedule survives this latest abuse, it's going to doubtless demand compensation.
First off, I passed out on the evening of the 30th at 7:00 p.m., right after dinner. Told the wife I was feeling a bit off, wandered up to bed, and the next thing I knew it was the next morning. Twelve hours of sleep, and who knew it was coming? Not me.
Fast forward through today. After several weeks of doing what I felt I absolutely had to do, I was provided with choice: do what I thought should be done, or do what I wanted to do.
It's a sad commentary on my character that I ended up trying to build a dual-boot laptop.
Am I a slave to duty? No. But it's a sadder commentary that building a dual-boot laptop was what I wanted to do.
To be sure, it's a fairly unique opportunity -- my computer has just been rescued from oblivion by my ex-girlfriend (I'll leave that story for another day) -- and I actually have the time on my hands to plan and configure it for future use. Worth taking advantage of, especially since I'm going to need it to be working on Monday (yet another story). [If I'm really cool, I'll come back and hotlink those parentheticals to their stories. If I'm lame, I won't. Time will tell.]
Unfortunately, building a dual-boot laptop is a time-consuming process -- at least, it is if you don't know what you're doing, like me. Every attempt takes about 90 minutes.
So after sleeping 12 hours last night, I find myself sitting here at 2:20 a.m., trying one more time to perform the Ritual of Dual Boot Configuration in the proper manner so as to appease the gods of technology.
I got it right once. One time I booted up and was faced with a choice: did I want to boot Linux, or did I want to boot Windows?
But then I went and tried to "fix" something, and Pflooey, the whole house of cards collapsed.
So now I'm sitting here, watching the latest iteration draw to a close, knowing full well that I'm going to have to initiate One More Install in order to get the whole thing working. And if that one doesn't work, One More after That.
So I'll wrap this up, start One More Install going, and then head up to bed.
Promise!