Ponderings and Musings

I like writing code. It comes with the territory when you’re a big geek as I am. I’ve been called a “propeller head” in an endearing way by folks that I work with. Perhaps for Halloween I’ll wear one of those propeller hats and make neener neener neener noises. I don’t know what one has to do with the other but it’s always fun to make an odd sound. It’s better than an odd smell.

I have very few regrets in life but one thing that I wish I had done was to get through the computer classes I started when I went to college right out of high school. At 18 I thought I knew it all and I felt rather insulted that I had to start from square one when it came to computer courses, even though my high school had a rather progressive computer education program for it’s time and I had been using computers for several years before going to college after high school. (I make this distinction because I went to college twice during my life). As the professor of that first class showed us what a computer was and where the power button was and how the keyboard worked, I took it all as another sign that I was completely different from everyone else that was closely paying attention to his dreck and that I knew I was going to be bored out of my mind by the second week of the semester. I asked about a computer class placement test so I could prove myself to be worthy of something more than writing…


10 CLS
20 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!"
30 END


… for my first project, but the professor said that everyone had to start at the beginning (he didn’t sing “a very good place to start!”, which was a shame, now that I look back on the whole ordeal). Since I thought I had better things to do with my time, I dropped the course. I hear that by the end of the course students were expected to build a program that acted as a calculator, complete with memory registers. I never understood why we programmed a computer to do something that had already been accomplished by a device that was specific to that purpose. Seems like a waste of time.

The reason I look back and think that I should have stuck it out was because I would have learned patience and discipline a lot sooner than I ended up doing and I might have built a better foundation of fundamentals when it came to writing code. I have to admit that I’m a big of a renegade when it comes to doing what I love. Who knows, perhaps I’d have a degree in computer science instead of just a ton of experience under my belt. Some employers look at these things and weigh those letters next to a name quite heavily.

All I know is that I still enjoy writing code as much as I did when I wrote my first program in 1982 on one of the six Apple ][+ computers in high school. It was a cash register program that tracked inventory, printed receipts and accurately computed tax and change. Hey that was big stuff for 1982. I probably enjoy writing code even more these days, because it seems like the possibilities are endless when it comes to technology. I like seeing a user’s face light up when they accomplish something using a program that I wrote. I love the challenge of taking a corporate bureaucratic procedure and smoothing it out with just the addition of some bits and bytes. That’s wicked cool to me, and if someone were to ask me what I wanted to do for the rest of my life (as far as employment goes), I’d tell them that I’d be quite content in my dimly lit office writing code and making a user think that technology is awesome. Because it is.

I’m thinking about this stuff today because yesterday my group at work was told about some leadership changes (meaning my manager was let go, along with a couple of others in the organization, as part of some master plan). I don’t know where I’m going to be on the totem pole right now. I still have a job and I’ve had a couple of people tell me that “they’ve got my back” (and I have theirs) but it’s hard to be excited about working when someone that you significantly admire and respect is no longer on your team.

I just have to remember my love for writing code and solving the challenges presented to me. Losing myself in that avenue of productivity is where I can still smile.

I walked into the Dunkin’ Donuts near work today for my usual lunch hour routine. There have been several new additions to the staff of this particular store, but for the most part it is populated with the usual folk behind the counter. I made a pit stop in the wash room and then went to the counter to order my usual large, unsweetened iced tea with lemon. The girl that is the most attentive to my needs was working behind the counter.

Ok, now here’s a couple of things that tell me that working from home has distracted from my relationship with the Dunkin’ Donuts folks.

1. The girl behind the counter is now quite pregnant. I don’t know where that came from. Well, I know where it came from but how did it happen so quickly? Well, they probably hope it didn’t happen quickly, especially that night, because quick isn’t always good, but you know what I mean.

2. No one behind the corner could recall my order from memory. They knew it had something to do with iced tea but there was a controversy with lemon participation.

3. No one noticed my lack of facial hair.

This is my tragedy of the moment.

On the bright side, I refrained from offering congratulations on the girl’s pregnancy because sometimes the bump in the belly isn’t a baby but just an overindulgence of whoppers or something and I don’t want to repeat the mistake I made way back in 1990 when I congratulated a woman who wasn’t pregnant but instead had enjoyed too many large sandwiches from Papa Gino’s.

My dad had the habit of calling me up and starting the conversation with a complete random fact from days gone by.  I would answer the phone, “Hello?” and he would say something like, “Remember the time we were loading hay in the Four Story and your mother got caught in the manure and fell down when she forgot to let go of the hay bale when she threw it on the elevator?”

Yeah, he was funny like that.  He always referred to mom, who, of course, was his wife at the time, as “Your Mother”. The best part of these conversations is that I have completely and unabashedly inherited his memory for crazy details and the like. I could totally relate. And god help me, I can see me calling people up and having a similar conversation when I get old. 

I was thinking about this whole thing this morning as I was out for my pre-sunrise walk. As I trucked my body up the steep hill that our road winds up, all of a sudden I had a flash of memory of being in fifth grade and thinking I was so smart because I figured out why two classrooms in our elementary school had two doors instead of one. I don’t know why this random factoid popped into my head but there it was. By the way, said rooms were Rooms 209 and 211, which used to be part of the high school. The part of the room with a “back door” used to be a separate departmental chair office. And that’s why they had a separate light switch and extra clocks in the store room.)

Yep, complete geek even in elementary school.

Anyways, remembering this made me a little sad because I miss those random facts from my father and when I remember this sort of thing, I have no one to confirm these facts with.  I guess the fact that I even remember these sort of things means that he’s still hanging around somehow.

Earl is in Memphis for the week for work-related stuff. He left very early on Monday morning and is scheduled to return on Thursday evening.

Even though we have been doing this sort of thing for over 16 years, there is a large part of me that will never get used to not having my husband around for days on end. It’s a necessary part of his job, and undoubtedly I’ll be traveling for work next year, so I get that it just comes with the territory. But with that being said, I’ll never get used to it.

Thank goodness for technology. We can Skype and text and talk and chat, but only during his breaks!

Le sigh.

I hate to admit this but I start feeling a little achy in my shoulders when there’s rain on the way. I know that makes me sound incredibly old, and at 44 I don’t think my warranty has expired yet, but nevertheless, when it’s looking like it’s going to rain I can feel it in my bones. Earl says it’s because I try to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. He could be right. He almost always is.

For those reading this from the Central New York region, there’s rain on the way. At least I’m not like Mrs. Ziffel, claiming that lumbago means we need to plant corn this year.

My sister and I always knew when dad wasn’t happy with us. He never showed his anger by yelling or raving or anything like that. His approach would be more subtle. He would get very quiet. It wasn’t his usual quiet nature, you could tell these instances were different. Conversation would be reduced to the essentials and he would spend time alone in the basement building a bookshelf or an airplane or something. He’d come up for meals and sleeping and other required family interaction, but otherwise he’d retreat to his own space, be quiet for a while and get his head where he needed it to be, coming to his own terms via his own space. We would rarely talk about whatever he was upset afterwards. This has probably made me ask folks on their current well being a lot over the years.

I inherited this quiet approach from him, but to keep it all interesting, I also inherited my mother’s more demonstrative ways. I kind of have this hybrid approach. If something upsets me and it’s something fairly trivial or minor on the hysteria scale, I’ll rant and rave about it, slam a few doors, throw a boot and consider the matter resolved. It’s out of my system and let’s move on to the next thing. But if something really disappoints me or bothers me, I’ll take like dad and go quiet and build a computer or edit music or something. And because I analyze the crap out of stuff, I compare, contrast, weigh symbols and scrutinize between every line to the point of what may seem trivial to someone else ends up being a big deal to me. I believe that most everything means something even if it falls into the nature of a Freudian Slip.

Did I ever mention that I was complicated?

These traits of mine are not something that I am proud of. Earl keeps telling me that I shouldn’t have expectations when it comes to people because folks rarely live up to our own expectations. My rosy view of the world is often clouded by reality and that’s because it’s MY rosy view. I know I have control issues and I know I have expectations but even after 44 years I’m still learning to let these things go and once in a while something disappoints me and I can’t help but go silent and figure my own way through my feelings. This is how I get through it.

I guess one of the days I might get it all figured out.

So last night, as I drifted off to sleep, as my mind went into that weird in-between sleep mode, I started thinking about books that I have read in the past. I don’t know why my head went there, but the thoughts triggered some memories of these novels I read as a young adult. This got me to wondering as to why these particular books influenced me in some way to be remembered 30 years later, but it made my head hurt so I stopped trying to figure out the reason.

The first book I remembered was “Killing Mr. Griffin” by Lois Duncan. I don’t remember when I read this book but I’m pretty certain that I read it more than once, though I don’t know that I would have chosen to read this book on my own. It had to have been a reading assignment for a high school class. I’m guessing that the assignment may have come along in my sophomore year, but I have no way to be certain. I remember being able to visualize the story very well while I was reading it. A little searching this morning made me realize that it was made into a TV movie in the 90s. I’ll have to see if the movie matches what I visualized.

Another book I remembered was “Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy”. This book was about a young man who could make himself invisible through the use of a robotic dragonfly that he controlled through a helmet and other sensory providing hardware. He wasn’t literally invisible, but rather, he was able to be in a room through the senses of this robotic dragonfly. I remember the story involving espionage, an organization called the ISIT and that the Russians were definitely the bad guys. I must have read this earlier on and I’m guessing I might have chosen this for myself because it’s definitely the type of book I would have read as a kid. Danny Dunn had his own series of books, but this is the only one I think I read.

There is a third book that I vaguely remember but the title and author’s name escape me. It had something to do with two identical houses in the woods; one was fully renovated and wonderful, the other was dilapidated and used as a hangout or hideout by a group of teenage kids. Other than that, the plot escapes me.

I read a lot as a kid. I loved the third incarnation of the “Tom Swift” series that took place in space. That version of space travel seemed very plausible to me. My favorite novel of all time is a space novel called “The Demu Trilogy” by F M Busby. Lots of sex, lots of action and it was alien enough to make it seem real. I reread that book from time to time.

The internet and technology in general has kind of taken me away from reading novels and the like. I think I need to make a shift back to reading for the enjoyment of reading. I loved escaping into a good book. Perhaps my sanity would be easier to find if I allowed myself that luxury again.

When I got up this morning I saw a waving motion standing in the corner of the room. All I could see was a hand going “wave, wave, wave” in my direction. It was a gentle, yet effective way for my husband to say “good morning” to me. Saying anything to me at six in the morning can be a dicey proposition, so it’s best to proceed cautiously.

The waves of “good morning” were also appropriate because my husband was standing behind the mound of clothes that have accumulated around the clothes hamper in the Master Suite. Long gone are the days when clothes would actually fit in the hamper, so we have resorted to piling clothes up around the hamper. Earl has been living out of the dryer for the past few days when getting ready for work; said clothes have been in the dryer since the beginning of the month.

We are a little behind on laundry.

I always have high hopes of ending a weekend with all of the laundry neatly folded and put away and the hampers empty, but this didn’t happen last weekend because of my idea to wash all the bedding on our bed. Most would think that might be two or three loads of laundry, tops, but in reality, we like a LOT of blankets on the bed. We like to be pinned right down tight by a sheet, four blankets, the ripped up remains of a comforter from 1996, another blanket and then our fancy looking comforter on top of it all. Sometimes Tom helps out by laying across the bed and adding an extra 10 or so pounds. It’s all quite comfortable though admittedly it can be rather stifling when it’s 90 degrees outside and there’s only a fan blowing hot air around.

Washing all of the bedding turned out to be a bigger chore than I wanted it to be because I had to beg and plead the washing machine to actually spin again. If there is a chance that not everything is in complete alignment when it’s time to ramp up to 1,100 RPM, the expensive piece of electronic infused plastic will refuse to do anything than toss the contents of the drum around a few times and run it’s pump. It’ll do this for hours on end. I miss the days when the washing machine would just walk across the floor, reach the end of it’s cords and hoses and bang against the wall until someone intervened. We should have never put brains in a washing machine. It’s too smart for its own good.

Since it took ten hours to wash six loads of blankets on Sunday, we didn’t get a chance to finish the rest of our clothes and when you’re a power couple like we are (we like to talk big so that people think we have a big ego), there’s just no time to wash clothes after a long day’s work. We are too busy wining, whining and dining. Power couples seriously need a houseboy.

So today I washed some laundry before starting my day at the office and then I just folded a couple of loads for the frivolity of the first half of my lunch hour. We are going to go into the weekend with empty hampers, at least until Jamie gets back from his camping trip and then we’ll try to wrap up everything on Sunday night so we can wine, whine and dine again on Monday.

In the meantime, I am hoping and praying that the washer is in a good mood.

I can be an emotionally responsive person. I usually don’t realize how emotionally responsive I can seem because it comes naturally to me. I don’t know that I fly off the handle at the drop of a hat, but when my mood is in a certain space and the circumstances are in a certain place, I can get loud. I usually try to restrict this sort of behavior to my alone time but my family occasionally gets to see the best of it. It’s not something I’m proud of.

I never used to swear. I don’t remember my father swearing that much; I think my mom would occasionally swear around us kids. I didn’t really pick up the habit until I worked at the radio station where you needed to drop a few f-bombs to get anyone’s attention. Screaming and yelling and swearing was the normal course of action for speaking at any sort of meeting while I was working there, so I adopted the tendency as a matter of survival. When you work at a place where people throw knives (wish I was making that up), you sometimes need get rowdy. Again, not something that I’m proud of.

As I was going through my work email this morning, I found myself yelling out loud in my office. “What the F^!K did you think, numb nuts?” Now I don’t know if this person has numb nuts. Since the email in question was from a woman, I kind of hope that she doesn’t have nuts, period, but that’s her business. To each their own. I started firing off a snappy email when I decided to just close my eyes, count to 10 and then reassess the situation.

It really wasn’t worth raising my blood pressure over. You see, after I counted to 10, I realized that the world was still spinning and that nothing had changed, other than my blood pressure subsiding a bit. This prompted me to send out a simple tweet this morning:

I should probably stop calling other drivers “flea-bitten whores.”

Now I wasn’t driving at the time and actually the thought was completely random (that happens a lot with me), but it is something that I am going to remember via a sticky on the dashboard of my Jeep.

Since counting to 10 worked so well for me this morning (and my day has been just fine since), I decided to see if there was a way to remind myself that I should just take a deep breath. Of course, there’s an app for that.

Introducing CalmDown. Now when I get a bit riled up, I have the little ying-yang symbol in my menu bar to click on and remind me to calm down just a little bit. Yeah, it costs a buck but sometimes you have to invest in yourself. If this will help me lower my blood pressure and be a little more rational about things, then it’s worth it.

Now, if I could just stop the fucking swearing. Jumpin’ Mice.