The Aerie
Whoo, another dizzying day. Met at 9:00 a.m. with the recruiter who has set me up with the hard-drive-restoration job tomorrow. We met at the Dunn Bros. that Lileks frequents near the Star Tribune, only to discover it is closed for remodeling til mid-February, so I had her follow me to a nearby Bruegger's to do business.
After that I zipped home and got ready for the 2006 tax accounting meeting. Unemployment means having the time to actually organize the files. Finished up with just enough time to eat some lunch before the meeting.
That took two hours, after which there was just time to zip home and get straightened up for my job interview at 4:00. Unfortunately when I got there, nobody had ever heard of me. Yup, stood up at my job interview.
The panicked agency that had placed me at the interview wanted me to wait in the parking lot for ten minutes while they tried to fix things so I could still interview today. While I was waiting I got the oddest text message, from some unknown person at my prior client, telling me I had been assigned to some kind of project team. Seeing as I'm not working there anymore, I found it a bit confusing. Finally the agency called back and sent me home with their copious apologies.
So I came home, where laundry waited to be sorted.
After dinner I would like to relax, but I have to look over the hard-drive-restoration tools recommended to me by my friend Ben. I'm really hoping tomorrow goes well, and I'm in and out of there in a timely fashion. Then I have a phone interview at 2:00, and somewhere in there today's interview will be rescheduled...
After this bout of unemployment, I'm going to need a vacation!
Oh, right, this is what winter feels like.
Of course, I'm still spoiled by global warming. I went out to run errands yesterday, and it felt horribly cold, especially in the wind. Yet the temperature was above zero, and I can recall clearly coming out of three weeks of persistently subzero weather to find a sunny five-degree day balmy.
Regardless of my comparative experience, I managed to pick up such a chill yesterday that it never seemed to leave my bones. Before dinner I climbed under the covers to warm up and promptly passed out. My nap was as restful as being slammed upside the head with a brick.
Meanwhile I remain insanely busy despite not having a job. Today I spent the day working on my friend Terry's website. I've got a bit of a prototype put together, although it's not what I want for the final version. Prior to that I was finishing up PIL homework, and biology homework. And of course looking for work. and there goes a week.
Tonight is writing group, and of course I don't have anything written - it's hard enough to blog and anyone reading this knows it hasn't got a plot to worry about. But I'm done half an hour early, so maybe I'll make a pass at working on my mystery novel. Or maybe I'll stare vaguely into space. Not sure.
Tomorrow, well, at least I'm getting ready to make money. I've got one situation where a hard drive got erased, and my pal Ben was very helpful in pointing out some useful utilities. I have to meet with someone about that tomorrow at 9:00 That's a one-shot. I have to go home and collect tax info in order to meet with the tax accountant at 1:00. Then I have a job interview at 4:00 tomorrow. I have another meeting at 9:00 on Thursday, which collides with a prior commitment that I'll have to move to later that day. Oy. If I get offered a job I'm halfway tempted to take a week off beforehand just to rest from being unemployed.
So I've got work lined up - three jobs in fact, of various sizes. I have to GET the jobs, but that doesn't intimidate me. It's doing the jobs, and not tipping over from exhaustion, that's what has me nervous.
If only I could earn big bucks to stay home and clean my office, that would be a fine trick...
Well yesterday was certainly an encouraging day. No work quite yet, but after ten days of nuthin', suddenly I got four opportunities in about as many hours. One was even a Director of Security position! Whoohoo!
Also, my textbook actually arrived - as advertised, I paid $9.99 for a book that's $99.99 at the U of M bookstore. I think maybe it was so cheap because it does not have the CD that's supposed to be inside the cover. I don't think that will matter, but I could always see if I have a classmate whose CD I can borrow.
With all the applications and customized resumes I had to assemble yesterday I didn't get much else done. Today I'm supposed to be working on college homework, but as usual I'm having a hard time getting motivated. Still I'm running out of things to procrastinate on, and I may accidentally start getting some work done soon.
The spouse and I reviewed our finances and we look like we're probably good through March, if we pinch our pennies closely. Unfortunately some of these jobs I've been talking to have a 'net-30' payment schedule, so I need a job in six weeks just to survive til the first paycheck arrives.
Anyway, hopefully one of yesterday's slew of opportunities will come through and I can at least start earning money again. But it felt good to get a bunch of calls, makes employment seem less impossible...
Holy crap! In two days last week, two couples that we know announced their divorces. Late last year another of my friends announced he was getting a divorce - so this makes three in about as many months. What the HELL are they putting in the pastries around here?
This has proven a bit unnerving to the spouse and I, to say the least. Not that we have any plans along those lines, but I stood up for two of those three weddings, and when the people around you start dropping it's natural to be concerned about who might be next. Is divorce contagious? Do I at least get a red sports car?
On the other hand, I'm hoping to make a killing by demanding the wedding presents back from each of them. We were all married in the 1980's I believe, meaning the cheap gifts we gave them are now expensive collectibles, once I scrape the grime off.
In other news, job-hunting is picking up a little steam, but holy smokes am I busy for an unemployed guy. My schedule now includes homework for class A, homework for class B, writing a website for a friend, writing a business plan for a prospective employer, and various odds and sods thereafter.
Where the heck is my unemployment silver lining? The days spent watching soaps? The evenings spent on Xbox? Where's drinking beer in my pajamas at lunch? Dammit, I had to attend a 7 a.m. meeting today, and I've got a 7:30 a.m. meeting tomorrow, where's my unemployment-based-sleeping-in-til-noon? This ain't right!.
On the other hand, running out of money wouldn't be right either.
Speaking of class, I'm waiting to see if I've saved $90, or been ripped off $10. My work-at-home biology class required a $50 lab kit, and a two-editions-out-of-date textbook that still sells for $100, used, at the campus bookstore. I bought the lab kit, but I held off on the textbook til I could check the Internet - where I found a copy that claimed to be only $5, plus $5 shipping.
Okay, so that's nine-to-one odds that the deal ISN'T fake, on a $10 bet. I clicked the "Buy" button. What the hell, us unemployed guys have to save money. We'll see if I get anything in the mail...
Anyway it's noon and I have about half a dozen things I have to do before this evening, when my newly-divorcing buddy and I are due to go out and grab beers. I'm hoping he brings the receipt with the wedding gift.
Took my brother out electronics shopping last night for Christmas. Well, actually, for Christmas I gave him the latest Doctor Who on DVD. What's that you say? They have another new Doctor Who? Is it Tuesday already? Well how about that.
Unfortunately for my gift, I discovered that he did not have a DVD player yet. And then it turned out he only had a miserable little 20-inch television in the giant TV-hole in his entertainment center. His caseworker (my brother is developmentally disabled and has a social worker) had gotten him a TV, but hadn't measured the entertainment center first, so the tiny TV sat awkwardly in the entertainment center, to the umbrage and fury of our mother.
So at Christmas I promised to put things right.
Now, normally I do not shop at Best Buy for a variety of reasons, including the time they told me my warranty was 2/3rds up, or working at Best Buy corporate for six months and watching their management flail around like a fish on dry land. However, given my brother's circumstances, I felt it would be best to go with a nearby provider, easy to reach in case of problems, with a known service center.
So off we went to Best Buy. Then we drove back to measure the entertainment center. Then we drove back to Best Buy. There we located a number of tube-televisions, relegated to the Crusty Old Technology corner behind the plasma displays and the flat-panel rear-projection home-theater monstrosities. With a little input from a perky little salesperson we had narrowed the TV choice down to an 27" HDTV Digital tube. Then for the DVD player.
This department was much shabbier and the DVDs were not all connected to screens: some DVD players were not connected, some screens were blank. I had brought a DVD with several different video formats on it in order to ensure that burned DVDs would work. When I found the DVD player I wanted to check, I disconnected a cable from one of the blank monitors and connected it to the DVD player.
"Uh, sir," came a surly voice, "did Ken authorize you to do that?"
I looked around to see a young man in a blue Best Buy T-shirt.
"No," I said, "I don't need authorization, I'm a customer."
"Sir, you can't do that."
"I seem to be doing it. My brother an I are planning on buying a DVD player tonight, and I want to see it work on this DVD first."
"You can't reconnect equipment sir."
As he spoke the screen flicked to life. He glowered and stalked away. I checked and managed to determine that yes, indeed, the DVD would work in the player. Hooray!
About that time blue-shirt returned with a maroon-shirted middle-aged guy who I assumed to be Ken.
"Can I help you sir?"
"We'd like to buy this DVD player."
"I understand you've been reconnecting the equipment."
"Yes, but I'd like to buy this DVD player."
"You can't reconnect the equipment sir."
"Where's the sign?" I asked.
"What sign?"
"The sign that says 'Please do not reconnect the equipment.' When I walked up this monitor was blank, and there's no sign saying I couldn't reconnect the monitor, so I did. My brother and I are going to buy a new TV and DVD player tonight, should I buy it somewhere else?"
"You can't reconnect the equipment sir."
Meanwhile Blue Boy had been rooting around, and approached with a box. "Here's the DVD player you wanted." I inspected the box: the product number didn't correspond with the product number on the shelf, and when I looked closer, the image on the box didn't look like the DVD player we were considering. I looked around: Ken and the Blue Boy were gone. I searched the shelves under the display, found the model I was looking for, and returned to the TV section.
Perky Miss Sunshine was gone - in her place we found some odd squashed-nosed fellow who sniffed and stammered and told us to wait ten minutes while he went out back to get the TV we wanted. We waited, and as we did so I looked overhead, and there was a box labelled with the image and product number of the TV we wanted. Finally after about 15 minutes of watching the promotional videos, Sniffy returned.
"We're out of stock in those."
"How about that one," I asked, pointing.
He looked up, "Oh, that's not the same model."
"Yes it is, I can see the code, it's right on the box."
"Just a minute."
Sniffy disappeared, and ten minutes later returned with a guy driving a forklift. Forklift guy raised himself up on the fork, slid the box into place, and lowered it to our level.
"Oh, there's a problem," he said, "This box has been opened."
"Is it the right model?" I asked, pointing at the TV we wanted.
He inspected both, "Yeah, but this box has been opened."
"Well, let's check it out, is everything there?"
We opened the box and checked the parts inventory. All present and accounted for.
"Great, well, we'll take it."
"Prob'm is, we'll have to give you the open-box discount. They'll give you a $45 gift card when you buy this."
Best Buy started to make more sense to me when I realized that what they called a 'problem' I called a 'discount.' Pleased to have gotten a break, I started to wheel our trolley away when Sniffy returned. "Do you have a cable?"
"A cable?"
"Yeah, to get the *sniff* full HDTV quality, you have to have an HDMI cable."
"What about these that come with it?" I asked, referring to the standard red, white, and yellow RCA cables I had seen in the box.
"Those are just good for standard TV quality, you'll lose the HD."
"Well, how much are these cables?"
He led me over to a display: HDMI cable, four feet in length... one... hundred... dollars!?
"Are these braided from the hair of Hollywood virgins?" I asked.
Sniffy looked at me as if I'd just made a completely incomprehensible statement, which considering the audience, I probably had. Eventually with some hunting we found an off-brand three-foot length for $45 dollars. Considering it a break-even with the gift card, we took the three-footer.
Checkout went well - the girl behind the counter didn't mind us doing two transactions (one to buy the TV and get the gift-card, the second to use the gift-card to buy the cable and DVD). She rolled her eyes in a conpiratorial fashion when I asked why it was necessary to do two transactions and generate and discard a gift card, rather than just issuing a credit and debit on a single transaction. She didn't even ask us if we wanted the extended warranty.,. YAY!
Finally we rolled the TV out to the car... and the box was too big for my sedan. I could have taken the minivan, but noooo.... While I was kicking myself, their helpful door-warden stepped up.
"No problem," he said, "We'll take it out of the box."
'Taking it out of the box' was accomplished by, literally, kicking the box to pieces. They opened the flaps, handed us the loose contents, and then hooked their legs INSIDE the box and crushed and kicked the cardboard off of the styrofoam TV bumpers. Finally they lifted the TV and with great difficulty fit it inside the back seat.
Door-guy tipped my brother's seat back, "You're gonna have to ride gangsta'," he said apparently referring to the posture, "so your seat can hold it in place."
The new TV, sans box, made its careful way to my brother's apartment, with my brother staring disconsolately at the roof of the car and getting rapped on the head by the TV case at every stoplight.
Once there we ran up against the next obstacle: my 40-year-old brother is 'way out of shape. I thought I was out of shape, but this kid, oh my. By the time we lifted the TV up to his third-floor apartment he was wheezing and squeaking, and as soon as a corner of the TV's weight was resting on the floor he collaped, panting like a bellows.
But eventually we wrestled it into the apartment, and I hooked it together in true Engineer fashion - sans instructions.
Not only did it work, but when I put my DVD of test videos into the player they showed up with crystal clarity on the new digital high-definition screen. Hooray!
There will be obstacles ahead. I'm not sure the complexities of DVD-plus-VCR-plus cable on a single remote control will be easy for him to grasp. Still, I've taught old Professor Barker how to use his DVD-VCR-TV combo, I suppose I can handle my brother.
Headed home feeling like I'd accomplished something in the day. Despite all the obstacles I'd managed to get my brother set up with his new entertainment system, and I was once again reminded why I don't shop at Best Buy when I can avoid it. The TV commercials make it look like you're going to have a slick, professional, exciting experience - the reality, with the exception of the two female clerks, was like being waited on by hostile, knuckle-dragging proto-hominids.
Meanwhile the job front is gloomy - there's no chance of my getting into the other department at my client site that I'd been recommended for. So I'm dead in the water job-hunt wise. Hopefully I can come up with something before we go totally broke...
As far as I can tell, my hat cost me my job.
Now, to be fair, my now-former manager has been making very positive noises about how she's going to see that I'm picked up by another department at the-place-where-I-worked. So I don't want to risk alienating her...if that's actually what she's doing, which, if it is, would be good.
On the other hand, like I've said, I've worked with her before. Making someone feel good about her knife in their back is her speciality.
But the end began when we all met at a downtown building for a meeting. Normally my desk was at a building in an outlying area, but this meeting was in the downtown headquarters, so I had parked at a meter and planned to drive back to the regular building afterwards.
It was raining sleet when I arrived, so as I prepared to leave I donned my jacket and put on my hat. While everyone else at the meeting was standing and getting ready to go, my then-manager started waving her hand in a dismissive manner and saying "Bob, Bob..." while shaking her head.
"What?"
"The hat, Bob." she said, waving her hand and shaking her head.
"My hat?"
"There's a dress code. No hats are allowed."
"But I'm..."
"No hats."
So, bemusedly, I took my hat off, carried it to the door, and then put it back on. Along the way I had to put up with ribbing from my coworkers.
I didn't think anything of it until a couple of days ago, when I talked to my manager's boss prior to leaving. I wanted to tell him that my manager had delivered the news of my contract's termination in public, in front of my colleagues. That had struck me as inappropriate - personnel matters are private.
He shook his head. "You know, I heard about the other time."
"What other time?"
"With the hat."
It turns out that someone at that meeting, the meeting where I was publicly scolded for donning a hat indoors, was offended enough on my behalf to contact my manager's boss and complain.
He apparently dressed her down for this. "Did she apologize to you?" he asked. I shook my head. "She was supposed to apologize," he said disgustedly.
Suddenly things started to make sense. First, she finds herself managing someone who knows her and her methods. That made me a threat in the first place. So she vents that hostility by dressing me down in public. That gets her in trouble, which REALLY gets her ticked off at me. So the first opportunity she gets, she cans me.
Maybe.
Or maybe she thinks that she's doing me a big favor, helping me transfer to a different department. By cancelling my contract. And wishing me luck. Maybe.
I don't know, it's hard to tell. Were she acting out of kind but hopelessly inept motives that would be one thing. But I know this lady, I've seen her operate. It's easier to believe that she knows exactly what she's doing by getting rid of me, than that she thinks she's doing me a favor by unemploying me and promising to get me picked up by a different department.
I don't want to be a scoundrel, thinking ill of good intentions, and I don't want to be a fool shaking someone's hand for backstabbing me. So I've decided to blame my hat, instead. Damned hat!
Anyway it's done, and I'm out of a job. Maybe the other department will call me, but I can't count on that, so starting Monday I hit the ground with both feet running, looking for another lucrative contract, somewhere.
Meanwhile, I've got a wedding to attend up in Hinkley, so I'm off to warm up the van...
Okay, so that wasn't the outcome I expected.
As you may know, I'm an information security contractor. As a result I have to be very chary of what I post about, so forgive me if this is circumspect to the point of ambiguity.
At my present client, I followed my old supervisor as she relocated into a new department hoping to keep working for her. She's a great boss. Unfortunately my duties were changed and I was given her colleague as a new boss... interestingly, a woman I had worked with several years ago on another job.
My current task is the onerous and painstaking process of writing things. Unfortunately, I've never quite written things-like-this before. I have three other colleagues under the same boss, doing the same thing. They have all worked together on this very task at other locations - one brought the other two on boad here. As a result I've been kind of the odd-man-out, but learning to write these things could be a good skillset, so I really hoped to gain guidance from my colleagues.
Unfortunately, we are under a very tight schedule to have these things done by tomorrow, and last Friday I was getting frustrated. Because of my inexperience my written things kept getting rejected when the four of us got together to do a review, and my hopes of guidance were dashed because my colleagues were never present. Faced with the possibility of blowing my deadline, I talked to my former manager. She suggested the best thing would be to talk to my current manager, which seemed reasonable.
I approached my manager, first asking her if I could be cleared to work some extra hours over the weekend. She consented, but asked why it was necessary. I explained my frustration to her briefly: writing things under a deadline, no prior experience at this, little available assistance from rarely-present colleagues.
She suggested that she could maybe find me some work closer to my skillset. I agreed, since that sounded like a good idea, and told her I'd do my best writing the things.
So I worked extra hours and got my things written on time, and yesterday was feeling pretty good about overcoming that hump. Then suddenly my manager appeared at my cube.
"Following our discussion last week, I've decided not to renew your contract on Monday."
My brain kind of locked up. She explained that there was a fellow in a different department who might be interested in using my skills. I spoke to him, and we arranged a meeting tomorrow.
So for the next 18 hours or so, I don't know what my status is. And I might not find out tomorrow, either. He might say "Start Monday," he might hold off deciding, he might say "Well, we can use you but you're too expensive." He might just say "No."
Ah, the pleasures of the Independent Contractor.
So, best case outcome, I get picked up immediately with a little bump in pay.
Worst case outcome, I have LOTS of time to blog next week.
The best case is pretty good, actually. Contractors are required to periodically redo their contracts, so maybe this could cover that requirement and get me a little bump in pay. Then I could be working in a group more attuned to my skills, with a brand new shiny contract good for 18 months or even just 6.
Worst case isn't too bad. The market is very hot right now, so I'd probablypick something up in fairly short order. But would it be for more money? Could I ride my bike there? Maybe we won't have to find out.
Meanwhile, in the words of Inigo Montoya, "I hate waiting." But it's good that this happened in any event, because it's getting me off my complacent butt regarding my job search. In fact, I'm due to talk to a recruiter any minute, so I better save this and go...
It's a quick weekend going by this time. Work has been kicking my butt recently, so on Monday I have to try to arrive at work as early as possible - 6 a.m. maybe? - in order to finish my current tasks before the 9 a.m. review meeting. I got the big, huge subtask done right at the end of the day Friday, so hopefully I can wrap up the two smaller subtasks in short order. The work is painstaking and tedious, as well as being boring! Yay!
Meanwhile the spouse and I made the most of our weekend by going for dinner at Bar Abilene, a "trendy local nightspot" as the kids might say, featuring inauthentic Mexican cuisine. We got the taco assortment platter, including shrimp, pork, steak, and other varieties of taco. The place was a noisy barn, with TVs hung all over the ceiling, and featured a chill draft. The food was okay, and our server was very good - I never had to wonder where she was, and she didn't barge up to the table in the midst of an earnest discussion to bark "How's everything taste?!" I tipped her well, but we won't be going back there soon.
The other fun yesterday was getting into an argument (a debate?) with my birthmother regarding illegal immigration. Her perspective is that she's living in a small southern community where the population has turned over to become largely Mexican. The population seems to be largely young men, meaning that she hears cars with loud stereos rumbling by all hours of the day, and lots of them. She's not happy with illegal immigration. Meanwhile I'm up here in Minneapolis where, while we have our share of Mexican immigrants (and I can't say which are legal and which are not), I am certainly not in her situation.
Meanwhile, I hold that the whole problem of illegal immigration is a result of NAFTA and other trade policies that favor the über-wealthy, and arguing that every illegal immigrant be immediately deported makes no sense since the economic pressures driving them across the border are of our making. What should they do, go sit and starve to death in Mexico City because Wal-Mart wants to offer low-low prices in the United States? So if you don't like illegal immigration, work to get corporate lobbyists out of D.C.
I'd say both approaches are equally unlikely to succeed.
I've had this argument before in other venues, but I've noticed a really disturbing thing. In trying to research actual facts about the effects of illegal immigration, I'm having trouble finding anything but the same propaganda messages repeated all over the Internet.
Nine months ago when I debated this topic on a local forum, I was able to Google up information about how certain anti-immigration myths used today go back to Nineteenth-century tactics used against Italians and Irish. Now when I search on the same terms, I get page after page and blog after blog repeating the same vicious anti-immigration article, to the point where I can no longer find the factual reference on the Nineteenth century that I found nine months ago. It's Big Lie theory applied to the blogosphere: get enough wingnuts to post the same things, and the search engines will be overwhelmed.
It's creepy and disturbing. The Internet is supposed to (as much as such an anarchic thing can be 'supposed to' be anything) be a medium for the free exchange of information: instead it's being perverted as a tool to figuratively shout down any but a single point of view. How long till searches on abortion turn up only anti-abortion viewpoints, and searches on Iraq turn up only references to 9/11?
Anyway so I'm having that pointless argument with my birthmother. I can't see where I'm going to change her mind when her messages to me are undoubtedly typed to a background noise of loud traffic and Tejano music, particularly if I can't find any factual information to back up my point of view.
Today I have to iron shirts (yes, I iron my own shirts - a fact that astonishes women from Minnesota to Germany), sign up for my next quarter of classes at the U, and pay my payroll taxes. On top of that I'm converting a batch of CDs to mp3 files, and trying to work on my mystery novel a little bit. All this activitiy in order to stave off my fierce loathing of January.
But that's another topic for another day.
Okay, these blog post things? They work better if one hits the SAVE button. I wrote a stellar entry the other day - moving, funny, profound, and erotic - and then I logged off my computer without saving it. I'm sure you're crushed, especially regarding the whole erotic thing, but it's gone, sorry. You'll have to settle for this nonsense instead.
My friend Ellis has come up with a novel idea to help fund her next album: patrons! If you act quickly, you can be one of Ellis' investors on her new album! Sign up now!
Meanwhile the unseasonably warm weather continues here in Minneapolis. This is good for my biking and my waistline, but had in almost every other way. And it's disturbing in a very creepy things-aren't-supposed-to-be-like-this way.
Meanwhile I'm on a deadline at work and lunch is over, so I should get back to it. I'm SO FREAKIN' TIRED I don't know what I'd do if I had to work tomorrow. Next week is a miserable five-day week, hopefully I will survive...
Well 2007 is off to a pleasant start. Last night we attended R's New Year's party, which was held in an art gallery. It was, in a word, "very nice." Okay, that's two.
My wife and I didn't know anybody but R, but we introduced ourselves to her friends and chatted about each other's occupations and had a "nice" time. It probably would have been different if we had known these people - we would have had history with them; we would have known who-dated-who-and-broke-up; we would have known So-and-so is an angry drunk, while Such-and-such is a flirty one.
But as it was we didn't know anyone, so the evening was a pleasant exchange of introductions and searches for mutual acquaintance.
Today we continued and completed watching the Lord of the Rings extended edition as part of D's annual ritual. She has studied the films extensively, and knows lots of background: for example in one scene Gandalf inexplicably rides out of Minas Tirith to battle Nazgul, with Pippin on his saddle. He would have had to find Pippin, first, and then bring him out into peril for no particular reason. Why? Because the scene was initially shot to take place just as Gandalf arrives at Minas Tirith with Pippin on his saddle, before having a chance to drop the hobbit off in the city. Little interesting details like that.
We watched the last two DVDs for about ten hours, interrupted by breaks and meals. During that entire time, I attended to one of my self-assigned chores: tagging all my MP3 files. Because I've found so much music lying on the ground (literally), I have a lot of songs that only come up "Track 1 - Unknown Album" if you load them into an MP3 player. Most of those songs I already went through and identified, but I didn't have a good way to put the information into the file tags - little internal labels saved right inside the file next to the music. Those tags are what things like iTunes and Windows Media Player use to manage your files, as well as the aforementioned MP3 players.
So it's important to get the tags filled out properly - otherwise its very hard to, say, avoid playing Holiday Music in July, or decide to play only Holiday Music in December. Well, it's "important" only on the very generous scale of things- that- are- important- only- to- well- fed- middle- class- Western- geeks. Starving African children do not find my MP3 tags at all important, and rightly so.
Nonetheless it's something I've wanted to do, and the LOTR seemed like a good time to do it. So for about 10 hours I tagged MP3 files.
I only got up to the "F"s
The problem is, the process is tedious, even with the very good editor I found (EasyTag). Usually you can only work on one album at a time, because different albums tend to get ripped (copied to MP3) in different formats: you put the CD in, you rip, and two weeks later you buy another CD, and you rip it a slightly different way. Maybe you use a comma here, where you used a colon there, to separate album name and song. All that makes it necessary and tedious to mass-tag the files.
So what with this and that, and the "C"s ending up containing all the "classical" music, I only got to F's. And I only got that far because I didn't have many files that started with F, otherwise I'd've only gotten to "E".
So that was a pleasant, mind-emptying way to spend the weekend and start the year. Tomorrow it's back to the slog at work. A four day week, but it will seem longer because the work is presently SO boring....
Of course, the starving African children would be happy to have a job this good. Or at least access to the cafeteria. So I oughtn't complain, and ought to keep perspective. Hm. Maybe "Keep perspective" would make for a good Resolution for 2007...