Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

Today’s magic number is 10 percent. Back in the day they used to write “10 per cent”, with “per cent” as two separate words, because it really is just that if you think about it. 10 per cent means 10 per one hundred.

I wonder if they still write “per cent” in other English speaking countries. I’ll have to look into that when I finish this blog entry.

10 per cent. That’s the other shoe that dropped today. Yesterday it was a workforce reduction. For those that remain, it’s 10 per cent. Not a reduction in pay, mind you, but a reduction in the number of hours per week. And yes, I am paid an hourly rate (which is a very good thing when it comes to on-call!)

It’s not as bad as the rumour mill predicted. But then again, rumours are usually wildly inaccurate. So in that sense it could have been worse.

Am I happy about it? Nope. But it could have been worse.

We do what we have to do.

People all over the world are losing their jobs, their investments, their homes and the security of their future because of mistakes that have been made. A select number of greedy individuals have impacted the lives of millions. I believe the line from “Angels in America” is “Life will be unbearable for a long time before it becomes impossible”.

It’s a good thing I’m a survivor.

Well today has certainly been a Monday. While I am quite happy to be off-call (at least for the next two weeks), my glee of being off-call was deterred by what many of us are facing these days.

“Workforce Reduction”.

Many Americans (and people across the world, for the matter) are working for companies that are cutting back their workforce in these turbulent economic times. The company I work for is no different. There was hope that we could weather out the storm without layoffs but apparently those that make these decisions decided it couldn’t be helped, so today there were meetings with selected individuals, followed by empty boxes being filled, passwords being changed and a few tears flowing.

I did not get laid off. This was a bright spot in an otherwise bleak day.

Today I shook the hand of a man who had a technical prowess that I admired very much and then, along with my co-workers, wished him well as he made his way to exit the building. He was a good teacher. I hope I learned enough from him.

And the bumpy ride continues.

So it’s Friday and there is much rejoicing across the land. It is a nearly picture perfect day here in Central New York, it’s sunny, breezy and 61 degrees Fahrenheit. Naturally I am sitting indoors at a cubicle doing my best to be friendly on the phone helping customers with their technically related issues.

Technically I don’t offer much more than technical support. I thought it would be fun to write that sentence. I don’t know why.

I don’t have a lot on my plate for the weekend that lies ahead; Earl is out of town with his family and I am on call. I might make it to a birthday party for my nephew if the on call gods cooperate, but I won’t be able to determine that until the very last minute.

Looking over my blog I realised that I haven’t many entries this week. I think part of this can be due to my participation on Twitter and the like; when I am constantly updating tweets and such it seems redundant to type a longer entry here. Part of me wants to fight against this trend and sit back, think and ponder about my words and then write something that has some meaning and is longer than 140 characters. Twitter was fun, and still is for the most part, but now that it’s becoming as popular as AOL was in it’s day I’m starting to lose interest in the service.

And don’t even get me started on Facebook.  Love the concept, hate the new interface. It’s just the way it is.

I have been writing in this blog since August 2001. It is my intent to continue to do so, regardless of how many services try to sway me to their sexy alternatives.