Ponderings and Musings

Earl, Jamie and I have been in Buffalo for a good part of the weekend. We were here to see the Buffalo Bandits take on the Philadelphia Wings in a lacrosse match at HSBC Arena. The cheering was divided last night as Earl was cheering on the Wings and Jamie was cheering on the Bandits. I would utter “go S U” from time to time because the orange clothing was confusing me. Buffalo lost and Earl ended up with a tub of popcorn turned upside down over his head. He found popcorn in his underwear this morning.

We stayed at the Embassy Suites in downtown Buffalo. Jamie stated that this is one of the nicest hotels in Buffalo. The suite was nice but the breakfast buffet was a little bit of an experience.

When there was food there were no plates, when there were plates there was no cutlery, when there was an omelette chef there was a line and when there was oatmeal and it was extra watery.

Oh, and there wasn’t a set of tongs to grab the bread to make toast. This sort of bugs me. Now, it’s not because I’m some sort of germophobe because that is hardly the case (though I have been known to douse people in Lysol if they seemed pukey to me), but I think that if one finds themselves in a buffet like environment without the appropriate utensils to grab food, you have two choices.

1. Ask for the appropriate utensils and use them when they arrive.

2. If you’re impatient (like me), grab a napkin and use that to grab the bread or the muffin or the fruit from the serving area. I don’t recommend this approach with salad items, soup or chili.

So there was a stack of bread in the little bread holder and this woman with really big hair in line in front of me. The smell of Aqua Net did not go unnoticed. Faced with the dilemma described above, she opted for her own approach.

With her bare hands, she grabbed a handful of bread slices, counted out how many she wanted, and then threw the rest back into the bread box.

Ewwww. Actually, I think I uttered a “Wow” that went relatively unnoticed. I don’t know where her hands as been but I certainly knew where they had just gone. I didn’t like that.

Not to be deterred, she jammed her pawed up bread onto the conveyor like toaster and watched it make it’s way through the little heater. I walked around her, grabbed a napkin and found some unpawed wheat bread (she predictably went for the white bread, noticed the snob in me) and loaded to pieces of wheat bread on the conveyor. Her toast plopped out the bottom of the machine at the same time and she heaved a sigh of disgust at the tanning of the bread so she put it through again and cranked the heat to high. I could see my wheat bread getting uncomfortably warm as it made it’s way through.

“I don’t think it’s charcoal season yet”, I said wryly, as I turned down the toaster to a reasonable level. I always have to interject a little humor before I fly into hysterics. Think of my humor as a warning shot across the bow. You can usually tell the difference between a true attempt of me being funny versus the use of humor to control my temper. She gave me an icy glare and blew some Aqua Net fumes at me.

My bread plopped out the bottom of the toaster a few moments later and I extended courtesy and cranked the heat back up.

“Bon appétit”, I shared with her, trying to be courteous.

The effort went unnoticed.

So today at 5:00 p.m. I shut my computer down, grabbed the belongings in the box that was sitting next to my desk, and walked out of the half of cubicle for the last time. My time at the job I have had for roughly the past five years has come to an end.

It was a bittersweet day for me. I was taken out to lunch by the manager of the group; I had a lengthy exit interview with one of the VPs and the President of the company shook my hand and visited with me a number of times throughout the day.

I think I did good for the company. I hope they enjoyed my stay as much as I did.

My new job begins Monday morning. It is finally sinking in that I have a new job and I will have a new cubicle and new co-workers in an entirely new environment.

I’m stoked.

The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Warning for our area. We are expected to get …

… drum roll please …

… six to 12 inches of snow before Wednesday morning.

I don’t know when half a foot of snow became such an urgent matter in Upstate New York but the warning has blared on the Emergency Alert System and has been blasted on radio and television stations in the area.

I get it if downstate gets that much snow, they’re not used to it. But up here? That’s what we are known for!

When did this region become so pussified?

My alarm clock is set to wake me to the local NPR station. Honestly, it’s a waste of the alarm clock to use the local NPR station as the station of choice because the alarm clock has HD radio built into it and the sound quality of our NPR station is anything but “HD”. Because of obsession with time, my alarm clock is set precisely to the atomic clock. When the alarm goes off at the top of the hour, NPR is firing off the national news. I usually listen to that, then the local weather forecast, before hopping out of bed and starting my day.

I’m not a huge fan of the weatherman on the local station. He tends to be overly dramatic whenever there’s anything more than a stray puffy cloud in the sky. I don’t want that. I want the forecast delivered in a calm, rational manner. If I want hysteria I can certainly find it elsewhere.

This morning this weatherman went on and on about storms moving into the area. He was quite concerned about snowstorms moving into the area, even though it is February here in Upstate New York and we have seen snow here as late as Mother’s Day.

As he went on and on and he got more and more excited. I pictured him jumping up and down with excitement in his little home studio from where he calls his forecast into the stations that contract him. I wondered if he was wearing sweatpants.

He then started talking about the “Grand Daddy of all storms” moving up from the Carolinas. There was something about Western New England and some swirling over the Hudson Valley, a retrograde and then some Atlantic moisture.

This “Grand Daddy Of All Storms” was going to dump … wait for it… “possibly as much as a foot of snow in some parts of the listening area.”

Big friggin’ whoopdie doo.

“Grand Daddy Of All Storms”? “Up to a foot”?

In 1994 our area had over four feet dumped on us in less than 12 hours.

In 2008 or 2009 (senile moment), parts of the listening area had nine feet dumped on them in 36 hours.

“Up to a foot?”

I had visions of having to contract a road snow plow to clean out our driveway before he announced expected accumulation. I had thoughts of 2012 coming early with this Grand Daddy Of All Storms bringing a white armageddon down upon us. I was ready for Judgement Day.

“Grand Daddy Of All Storms”. “Up to a foot.”

It was then that I jumped out of bed, slammed my finger down on the power button and then reprogrammed the radio to a different station for further alarm duties.

I don’t need unwarranted hysteria like that in the morning and especially from an NPR affiliate.

So yesterday it became official and I can now openly talk about this: I gave my resignation yesterday. My last day with my current employer is February 26, 2010.

I start my new job on March 1, 2010.

I am going to be working in a similar environment as the Network Operations Center that I currently work in, but on a much larger scale. I am very excited about the position as I will be a Tier II specialist. The salary bump is impressive and my commute has gone from 12 minutes to 55 minutes in each direction, but I am really excited about the opportunity. Honestly, I’m excited about the commute too because it will afford me the opportunity to gear up for and wind down from work.

I’m being vague about where I’m going to work because I tend to do that on my blog, being a tinfoil hat wearer and all. But the company I will now work for is publicly traded and is very large.

This is a really big step along my career path and I am most excited. I feel sad that I am leaving the group at my current job; I really like the folks I work with but I need to do what is best for me.

I should probably be upset but I’m not. I just got a speeding ticket whilst on my way from the office to home for lunch. I was driving 72 MPH in a 55 MPH. The freeway I was driving on is four lanes across at the point where I got stopped for speeding. He had a clear shot of me with the laser gun because no one else was on the road. The road was obviously designed to be posted 65 MPH but even it was I would still be exceeding the speed limit.

I wish I could say that I cared that I was stopped for speeding but I really don’t. I’ll just have to be a little more conscious of how fast I drive on open stretches of highway. It’s easier to be bunched up in traffic cruising along at 80. Then they have their pick of who to stop.

The trooper that stopped me is named Officer Geraldo Rivera. He probably has “G. RIVERA” on his name plate so he doesn’t catch shit for that. He looked younger than me, and the famous Geraldo Rivera wasn’t famous until well after my single digit years, so his parents probably didn’t know better. When I saw his name on the ticket I decided to not be snarky at him.

Since I was caught speeding in the left hand lane I pulled over to the left shoulder when he turned on his lights. This made him walk through a snowbank and a mud puddle.

Snark level achieved.

Like many folks I have been watching the Winter Olympics. I just finished watching a figure skating performance and found it quite impressive.

It made me remember 1979, the second winter in the house my father built for us. We had a hardwood floor in the family room (it’s still there as a matter of fact) and my sister and I were inspired by watching Randy Gardner and Tai Babilonia. Even though we lived in the great white north known as the Lake Ontario Snowbelt, we opted to ‘skate’ around the family room in our socks on the hardwood floor. With the furniture pushed aside and some 45 spinning on the GE Wildcat record player, we danced around like we were skating and did our best Randy and Tai impersonation. We were not as good as “Fire and Nice” from ‘Modern Family’ but we did our thing. Who needs ice. My mother was happy because it kept her from having to dust the floor.

I remember finally getting the nerve to lift my sister in the air during a slow motion, real estate limited routine when my mother immediately stopped the show. I think she was afraid we were going to knock the oddly placed, shaped and decorated chandelier that hung in front of the fireplace off the ceiling.

Randy and Tai were safe for another year.

I have spent the last hour or two downloading music and watching music videos of all time periods and a variety of genres. The trip around the virtual radio dial has been enjoyable tonight and has been a good little escape. My little projects around the house keep me sane and distract me from the stress of the workday.

I just tried to call it a night. I got into bed, kissed the husbear who was already walking through the dreamscape and then I laid down and stared at the ceiling. I tossed and turned a few times, counted a few dozen sheep and went through my other ritual of boring myself to sleep: counting the classrooms in my high school 25 years ago and remembering which teacher went where. (Yeah, I’m strange, I know.). I can’t fall asleep, though. My mind is processing the days events. I hear folks born around the same time as me do the same thing; they process things. They take an event, think upon it, turn it into an obsession and process it a little more. And then when a resolution is near, they process some more.

The funny thing is, my mind doesn’t want to shut down tonight because I feel good. I think I’m actually excited about going to work tomorrow. I can’t even begin to fathom why I feel this way (no offense to the company I work for); we’ll have half the staffing we’ve had throughout the rest of the week in the tech center and we have three times the number of trouble tickets we usually have. Only the universe knows what lies in the queue for tomorrow but I have to admit that I right now I really don’t mind what tomorrow entails.

Not to sound all corporate shilly and silly but I remarked today to one of my co-workers that the reason I get up and go to work in the morning is because of the people I work with. My co-workers are quite varied in skill set and personality and thankfully have gotten used to me but when things get tough we pull together and do what we can do to keep the chaos at a dull roar. That’s a good thing. Whilst getting through some technical troubles this week I’ve really discovered that my co-workers have my back and vice-versa. I don’t know why I’m having this surge of energy or sudden realisation of this at 11:30 on a Thursday night, and I’ll probably have to re-read this blog entry in the morning to remind me that I enjoy going to work (since I’m not a morning person) but I consider myself to be pretty lucky to work with the group of people that I work with. They’re good people.

With the constant cutting of costs and homogenization of job descriptions in a very diverse tech center, the stress level often runs high and tempers flare. What was once sweet tastes a little more bitter these days. I’m happy that I can sling back a few drinks with my co-workers after a hard day’s work and swallow that pill along with them.

Tomorrow is going to be a good day and that is because I said so.

I am just getting around to blogging this but you have probably heard the uproar about some of the performances at least week’s Grammy Awards; more specifically the pairing of Taylor Swift and Stevie Nicks.

Wow. Now there’s a train wreck on live television.

Stevie Nicks looks as if to be saying ‘What The Fuck Was That?’

Here’s the thing. I don’t know much about Taylor Swift. I know that Kanye West came out during her moment to shine at the Video Music Awards a while back and I’ve read that she’s a really sweet woman who writes beautiful country songs. I have heard her on the radio once or twice and found it odd to hear the use of auto-tune on a country song (though it’s becoming too common these days), but I had never heard her sing live.

Wow.

I’ll preface this by saying I couldn’t do better and I know that. But I’m not paid millions of dollars to sing in front of people nor am I winning Grammy awards. Taylor should have never, ever sang “Rhiannon” with Steve Nicks. There was some really bad karaoke vibes going on during that live performance. Stevie looked mortified a couple of times.

Reports say that Taylor’s earpiece was malfunctioning and she couldn’t hear herself. I have issue with this. First of all, not being able to hear yourself because of an earpiece isn’t working is like saying you can’t hear yourself talk if you’re not wearing headphones. Secondly, though they try to convince us to the contrary, the instruments and the singers on stage are actually making noise outside of what is being piped through the headphones and honestly, I’m sure there were some Really Big Speakers pointed at the audience and I’m also certain that there were speakers pointed at the musicians on-stage. If the earpiece wasn’t working she could have simply taken it out. Thirdly, as a person that sings from time to time and actually went to school to teach others how to do it, I can attest that when you sing you know what each note feels like in your throat. It’s an instinct thing – you know when you’re on key or not, especially if you’re a singer that is considered to be award-winning. You just know it and you hear it. Yes, the earpiece will help you hear things better and possibly hear the backing singers on the other side of a Really Big Stage but you can still hear your own voice in your own head without needing to rely on technology.

I have read that this isn’t the first time that Taylor Swift has been less than impressive in a live performance. This is unfortunate because it seems like she’s a really nice person and she writes really good songs and she is a positive influence in an increasingly wonky world, but for the love of the gods, if you’re going to win awards for singing, then please be able to sing in key.

And Stevie, you dear goddess, what the hell were you thinking when you agreed to do this?

Even though I still DJ from time to time I have been resistant to learn about or listen to Lady Gaga because I thought she was just another manufactured pop entity polluting our airwaves.

Boy was I wrong.

Courtesy of a Facebook friend I followed a link to the video I have included below. Lady Gaga actually has real talent! So I did some reading up on her and I will openly admit right here and now that I was completely wrong when it comes to all things Lady Gaga.

She impresses me.