Ponderings and Musings

Today was a relatively quiet day at work. A couple of my colleagues had the day off, but those of us at the office today worked together well and collaborated. The spirit of teamwork I felt today was a good bit of rejuvenation.

The phones weren’t especially crazy today, in fact, I expected to be a little busier than we were. As everyone said goodbye at the end of the regular 8 to 5 shift, I wished them off with a “have a good weekend” and began finalising the few things that needed tending to as I was scheduled to work until 6. While I enjoy the folks in my department very much, I revel when I’m in the center alone between 5 and 6 during my on-call weeks. I like the peace and quiet and the opportunity to embrace my tendency of being a loner.

That’s when all hell broke loose.

Mother Nature must have been tricked with Chiffon because several storms passed through the area. The phones started ringing like crazy and because of the time of day, I was working solo. No worries, really, just work my way through it and do the best I can do.

That’s when Todd, a DSL customer, decided to read me the riot back because he couldn’t send an e-mail that had over 50 full-sized pictures attached to it. He was clocking in around 60 MB on the e-mail attachment, something that is a bit of a no-no in the tech world. He didn’t like my answers to his questions, he couldn’t really understand what I was trying to explain to him and he was just not a happy camper. As other phones were ringing, I politely asked if he could hold for just a moment; he said he didn’t need my help anyway, proceeded to tell me why the company I work for is deficient and then slammed the phone down.

Have a nice day.

I shrugged it off; life in a Network Operations Center sometimes goes that way and that’s just the way it is. I learned not too long ago not to let it bother me, I did the best I could do and that was that.

Before I knew it, it was six o’clock. I finished up the loose ends, powered down the laptop and packed up to head home.

The phone rang.

I wondered if I should let it go to the service and let them page me in 20 minutes or should I just deal with the issue right then and there.

I answered the phone.

Her name was Judy and she had a new computer. She couldn’t get her Outlook Express to work.

Sigh. I hate the Outlook Express calls. You see, like the parody of tech support people from SNL, I find dealing with Outlook Express to be a little degrading. It’s not a good e-mail program, it was never a good e-mail program and unfortunately much of the world is still using it.

Judy explained her problem to me and was very vague in the error messages. Worse yet, she was using Outlook Express’ evil cousin, “Windows Mail”, the default program in Windows Vista.

Double ugh.

I walked Judy through the steps of troubleshooting when it turned out her problem was a simple typo in her configuration; we fixed it and presto she was up and running.

Judy thanked me over and over again for my assistance, called me by my name without mangling the letters and then told me to “Have a nice weekend! You’ve been very helpful.”

“You have a nice weekend too, Judy. Thanks for calling.”

The ying and yang of the callers. I needed the kind voice of Judy to end my work day.

Today has been one of those days that I attribute to a “learning experience”. I might go so far as to say a “challenging learning experience.”

Work was a little rocky. I was very verbal about a few of the interactions at work which ended up in a private meeting with my supervisor, which when all is said and done, I really needed to have. I went in angry as a hornet, I came out feeling much better.

A very dear friend is hurting today and I have been trying to be there for him; his pain is our pain here at The Manor. Sometimes it’s hard to hug a loved one over IM.

On call has been moderately busy this evening. I decided to take matter into my own hands and instead of speculating as to whether a customer’s location lost power (resulting in loss of phone and internet service), I just drove my ass down there to discover that my hunch was correct, the power was out. It made my on-call existence that much easier and I think the customer appreciated it.

I haven’t been on-call in eight weeks. I’m only on-call until Monday 8 a.m. and then I am off-call for another four weeks. I should probably stop being cranky about and just get on with it. Everyone involved would probably be happier.

I was reading a blog entry on the first moon walk. The author included this line:

Some people say that September 11, 2001 was the moment America best defined itself. I respectfully disagree. On the evening of July 20, 1969 we defined ourselves not by our fear of what could happen, but our dreams of what would happen, if we only dared to dream.

That is one of the best things I have read in a very long time.

It has been a busy week. It’s only Wednesday (or to put a positive spin on it, it’s Wednesday already!) and I have to admit that I’m ready for some rest and relaxation. This week has been go go go.

Monday kicked off what I think as the “birthday streak”. Dad’s birthday was on Monday, Dave’s birthday is today, my birthday is coming up on Monday, Greg’s birthday is next Thursday and then my sister’s birthday is next Saturday. Monday night it was dinner with my Dad and stepmom in Syracuse, tonight it was dinner with my Mom, aunt, uncle and cousin in Syracuse for an early celebration for me (which I appreciated very much).

I took half of the day off from work today so I could get some medical appointments out of the way. I had my last cleaning with the dental hygienist today: I received an official clean bill of dental health and don’t have to go back until my routine cleaning and exam in six months. Yay for that! Then it was a visit to “Chirp”, whom the rest of the world knows as my chiropractor. This was the longest I’ve been between visits, two weeks, and it seemed to work out well. I go back for some snap, crackle and pop in two weeks. I feel the best I have felt in years.

I have been doing some meditation exercises over the past several days; more so than usual. I have been using the practices I learned during a course I took back in ’97 plus I’ve done a few electronically assisted meditations using binaural beats programs on my iPhone. Both have had satisfactory results, though over the past 48 hours or so I’ve been purging some negative stuff from my psyche. I feel the better for it all so I guess it’s all good. Tomorrow I work the early shift for my co-worker that’s taking some comp time; I should be in bed right now.

Earl and I leave for vacation on Saturday morning. We are traveling through the Canadian provinces of Québec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. I am _really_ looking forward to the trip.

So last night after an unsuccessful attempt at going to sleep, I sat up for a couple of hours doing research on wind turbines. Inspired by our trip through the Maple Ridge Wind Farm north of us, I decided to learn all I could about the pros and cons of wind farms, their effectiveness on the environment and the benefits and detriments associated with their existence.

It’s no secret to just about anyone that we need to find a source (or sources) of clean, renewable energy. We have been hearing that song and dance since the mid 1970s when the speed limit was forced down to 55 because we were going to run out of oil by 1980. Of course, we found more oil and the speed limit went back up and people became über-dependent on fossil fuels once again. Emissions from coal burning plants and waste from nuclear facilities (amongst many other things) are nasty to the environment; harnessing the power of the wind and the sun are renewable, clean ways of providing some of the power that we need to fuel our increasingly electric-hungry society.

Here’s the thing with wind farms. There are many people in favour of them, as long as they are somewhere else. Naturally wind farms have to be located where it’s windy, after all, something needs to turn the turbines which generates the electricity that is contributed to that big grid¹ thing that we have. Unfortunately, the windier places are up on top of hills where it tends to be more scenic and people don’t like the way the turbines look as they dot these areas.

One of the concerns with the Maple Ridge Wind Farm was the chemicals used to control dust during the construction phase of the project. This is unfortunate. If you’re building an environmentally-friendly, renewable, ‘green’ energy source then you probably should do it as environmentally-friendly/’green’ as possible, yes?

Opponents of the wind farm project tout the benefits of nuclear power and how there is a substantial increase in the number of kilowatts generated per square foot used with a nuclear facility versus a wind farm. But what do we do with the nuclear waste? Burying it deep into the earth is not a solution; the “out of sight, out of mind” approach doesn’t make the problem go away. I grew up not that far from a site with three nuclear reactors and I watched the cooling tower of the third be built during my teenage years. I heard the sirens (for drills) and I read all the posters on how we were suppose to save ourselves should a catastrophe occur. Sorry, but I didn’t feel any safer knowing that I could be crammed down into the basement of my high school with 700 other students as the fireball incinerated the school above us. It just wasn’t my idea of a good time. Life comes with risk, I’ll give you that, but mass annihilation shouldn’t be one of them.

As I read more and more about the technology used and the mechanics and engineering involved with the construction of Maple Ridge, and other wind farms throughout the United States, the civil engineer in me kicked in. I have lamented before that I have a really big need to make a contribution to society to leave the world better than the way it was when I got here. While I enjoy what I do for a living now, I don’t feel that what I do really improves anything for anyone. To _maintain_ is a waste of talent, to _improve_ is where one really soars.

I sometimes wonder if I started figuring all this stuff out too late in life. I have read about folks that got a PhD at age 55 or started a completely new career after retiring from their first at 62. While I suspect that perhaps lottery winnings were involved, I can’t say that I have figured out how they did it.

Perhaps that should be the first step.

¹ Contrary to popular belief, the United States doesn’t really have a power grid, but rather a bunch of interconnected networks that are dependent on one another. If it were a true grid, then a major line failure wouldn’t bring the entire system down as it has in the past (1965, 2003, etc).

The New York State Public Commission recently announced that the planned overlay or splitting of the 315 area code, originally slated for autumn 2010, has now been pushed off until 2013. Area codes are often split or overlayed with a new area code when the number of available telephone numbers in the original area code is close to exhaustion.

Media outlets report that the change in the projected exhaustion date is due to a decline in the demand for new telephone numbers in this area, mostly due to a faltering recession and a failure to meet the projected demand for numbers.

Let’s put this into perspective. In today’s world many individuals have multiple telephone numbers; there is their traditional landline number in addition to any number of cell phones within a household, not to mention fax machines, dedicated internet circuits and the like. So with the unprecedented explosion of technology currently underway, the folks in the 315 area code are not grabbing up the numbers as quickly as originally projected.

I will say that steps have been taken to use as many possible telephone number combinations in this area as possible before embarking on the task of adding an additional area code to the area. However, if you think about it, we are not gobbling up existing numbers because industry and business is not moving into this area and as a result people are leaving the area in droves in search of employment.

To run out of available telephone numbers in 315, while an inconvenience to many, is an indicator that the area is thriving and that we can’t keep up with the demand being placed on our telecommunications infrastructure. Quite frankly (and unfortunately, predictably) the complete opposite is true. Our area is not thriving. Not as many people as originally projected want a 315 telephone number. There is no demand from new people here because there are no new people moving here.

So rest assured fine citizens that you needn’t worry about the labourious task of dialing all 10 digits because of the overlay of a new area code or you won’t have to remember that half of 315 suddenly became 938 (totally random number made up by me) and you have to remember which half you’re in, because you can squarely remain a “315er”.

Earl and I had pretty much decided that we weren’t going to go to Saranac Thursdays for the most part this summer. While the activity is enjoyable, it also chews up a Thursday night and quite a few brain cells at the same time. The supper afterwards invariably is too big and then we end up feeling lethargic the next day.

Guess where we ended up last night.

Rumour had it that a former co-worker was in town for the weekend and would be out and about so we decided to head down and join the fun. Moderation is the key. I cut my beer consumption in half (and still had whacky dreams during the night) and we cut our food consumption down at Zebb’s afterwards. Hopefully I was only half as silly and/or obnoxious.

I also got to chat with my friend Christine (another former co-worker), who is now making a go at it with an internet based business: On Location Vacations. I find this to be wicked cool. She’s writing for other sites as well; quite impressive. I have always been impressed with Christine.

Earl took a couple of photos using our friend Shirley’s camera, but I don’t know that I’ll get to see them. Apparently one of the photos made Shirley blush. I’ll see if I can convince her to share with the class.

I think we’ll end up at Saranac Thursdays again during the summer, but judging by the way I feel today I’ll probably stick to bottled water while hanging out with my friends.

All in all it was a good night with a little lesson thrown in for good measure: moderation is the key.

Once in a while I use my blog as a therapy session. Okay, maybe more than once in a while I indulge myself this way but it’s a lot cheaper than paying someone, so instead of chewing about it I invite you to sit down on the couch with me. If you’re bored with this entry (which is kind of random in it’s construct) then I invite you to use a search engine to find something more engaging. There’s plenty out there.

At nearly 41 years old you’d think that by now I have this whole life thing pretty much down pat and I’d be enjoying myself. The latter is true, I’m enjoying life very much these days but as far as life goes, I still feel like a kid that’s trying to find his groove from time to time. There will be times that I see something, anything in a person and I ponder it and perhaps try it on for a bit, incorporating whatever it was I saw in that person into my own life to see if it works for me. I think this is due to the fact that I am always looking for approval of some sort and I figure that if the original person carries that trait or whatever off successfully then I should be able to do that as well. As far as I can tell, this carries about an 80 percent success rate. I can do better.

That’s one thing that I’m always trying to do: do better. I am always looking to better myself and better my situation. I figure if you sit stagnant then quite frankly why bother living at all.

If anyone were to identify a superpower in me it would probably be mimicry. That’s how I learned my broadcasting skills in radio, I’d listen to other stations, hear how they did it and then do the same. That is how I’ve made technology decisions in the past: if program X works well on Mac Y for user Z, then it’s going to work well for me. I’ve adapted the skill to all sorts of situations: if bozo B is fired up about subject A, then there must be something to it and perhaps I should be fired up too. Though my personality trait is to be a loner and hardly a follower, this approach is exactly what I’ve been doing. It was during my drive home from Toronto this past weekend that I realised that’s what’s wrong: I’m trying to use the skills of a follower in concert with the personality traits of a loner and more importantly I’ve been doing that a lot in the past 18 to 24 months.

Once I came to this realisation, as I watched the trees go by and the black pavement pass underneath me, I felt like a great weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. It was a defining moment in my life and I have felt immensely better ever since.

When I returned to work yesterday I sat down and cheerfully went about my duties and I was more productive yesterday (and today) than I have been in weeks. My feelings on various topics ranging from politics to interpersonal relationships to money to being gay to being out to health care all suddenly felt _aligned_. I have commented before that I don’t fit in the crowd that’s looking at the big picture. I’m not looking at a particular corner, I’m not looking at a particular colour in the big picture, I’m often not even looking at the same picture that everyone else is.

I have been trying to take photographs as I brush up and improve upon my photography skills. I go to post them and become hesitant as I realise that people may find them boring. Folks take pictures of cityscapes and flowers and people and all sorts of things and the crowd oohs and aahs over the display of an amazing talent. I worry that my pictures of powerlines and road signs and lake shores and men shaving and just random moments of life are going to bore people, so I invariably end up not posting them. I enjoy them but who else would? Well, I don’t care anymore, probably just as much as I don’t care about the amount of readers I have of my blog. Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that I have made many friends and connected with many people through my blog. I cherish my readers and value what they have to say. But am I trying to amp up readership? Nah. There’s others in _that_ big picture that are doing that.

For the first time in a long time, I feel a sense of identity. MY identity. And quite frankly, I don’t feel that I’m all that different from the happy-go-lucky guy I was five, ten or twenty years ago. But now I’m happier than before because of one simple fact.

I’m just me.