Category: Blog Page 128 of 141

Work Rant

On January 29, 2003

So I’ve just come in the door, getting set up and assessing the Issues of the Day, as I do every morning, when I have what seems to be a typical conversation on ICQ with someone in the Support office:

Support Tech:
Heya Rob……..Steve is waiting so give me the heads up when and if you want me to conference the call.

Rob:
am i supposed to just magically know what you’re talking about 🙂

Support Tech:
well [co-worker] told me you were aware of what was going on with [customer]

Rob:
well, that helps. [Tech’s name], I know approximately 4,512 people named “Steve”. I deal with multiple issues every day, every hour, often in bunches at once. please let me know exactly which issue you’re calling me about when you call, because I can’t keep all of them straight with shorthand. 🙂

—

I swear, it’s not enough to be a miracle worker, you gotta be psychic too.

Psychological Cluttergathering

By autographedcat

On January 27, 2003

In Blog

Two traveling monks reached a river where they met a young woman. Wary of the current, she asked if they could carry her across. One of the monks hesitated, but the other quickly picked her up onto his shoulders, transported her across the water, and put her down on the other bank. She thanked him and departed.

As the monks continued on their way, the one was brooding and preoccupied. Unable to hold his silence, he spoke out. “Brother, our spiritual training teaches us to avoid any contact with women, but you picked that one up on your shoulders and carried her!”

“Brother,” the second monk replied, “I set her down on the other side, while you are still carrying her.”

kitanzi and I had some fascinating discussions last night about fears and emotional triggers and learning from the past. And while she’s right that one must hold dear the lessons one learns from one’s experience, it’s also important to let go of the weight those experiences brought upon you in their time.

I left school and moved to Georgia when I was 19 years old, for reasons that at that time seemed important to me. I quickly found myself trying to hold together a household with all the financial burdens that entailed, and supporting another person who seemed to grow less and less enchanted in me, and less and less interested in the life I thought we’d lead together. Many of the things that I thought I would do as my 20s unfolded were never realized. I missed the opportunity to travel, to meet and experience new people, to explore myself, because I had voluntarily delivered myself into this service, and because of the fears and emotional triggers that are a fundamental part of what makes me me, I could not easily walk away from it. It took turning 30 and vowing not to waste another decade of my life as I’d wasted the one before to finally start seeking a path out, and another eighteen months before I’d finally realize that escape.

This is history. One the one hand, it’s no more relevant to my life today than the Hundred Years War is. On the other hand, these are the experiences that shaped me, and which shape my needs and desires.

It’s time to let go of the resentment and regret of those lost years. This is, of course, easy to say and harder to do. I cannot change the choices I made–in fact, I would not change those choices if there was any chance whatsoever that I would not end up where I am today. And if I spend my 30s trying to capture the lost opportunities of my 20s, all I end up doing is missing my 30s, and won’t find myself in any better position at 40 than I am today. Yesterday is for reflection, tomorrow is for hopes. Today is for living.

If the life I led was the one I had to lead to find myself where I am today, then it was all worth it, and all the what-might-have-beens are merely pleasant diversions to contemplate in an idle moment.

I’ve carried her across the river long enough. It’s time to put her down.

Because life is good. And I’m happy.

Adventures in Suburbia

By autographedcat

On January 27, 2003

In Blog

Got the cable bill paid today, after some mild frustration — I called them hoping to get the automated system to get directions ot the payment centre nearby. Instead, for some reason, I ended up talking to a person, who informed me the ONLY payment center in Fulton County was at Greenbriar Mall, which is down on the south side. Now, considering that a) I’d already checked with the automated system the other day, and b) Fulton County is approximately the size of Delaware, I didn’t really believe this could be true. The web page gave me better information and I found the place easily.

I hope this is just a result of Comcast’s amoeba-like absorption of AT&T Broadband, and that they get their customer service ducks in a row shortly.

Oh my sweet Aunt Clara….

By autographedcat

On January 26, 2003

In Blog

This would be funny if it wasn’t so serious. (Thanks to lothie for the link):

DoD offering admin privileges on .mil Web sites

As a sysadmin, I just don’t have words to describe my reaction to this. Simply mindboggling.

By autographedcat

On January 24, 2003

In Blog

On the heels of reading all the polyrific fun happening at Arisia, today’s Sinfest gave kitanzi and me a chuckle:

Delayed plans

By autographedcat

On January 24, 2003

In Blog

I had really hoped that my mother would be coming to visit us sometime during the Christmas holidays. kitanzi still hasn’t met her, and is looking forward to it; for myself, I haven’t seen her in quite a long time, though we do speak on the telephone frequently. But with this thing and that thing and the other thing, it didn’t happen. Then the first week in January, I had houseguests, then came GaFilk, so Mom made plans to come down last weekend.

Well, last weekend there was winter weather, which, while not bad down here, was enough up in North Carolina that she decided to postpone her trip until this weekend. After all, there was no urgency attached to the visit, and this weekend was just as good as last.

Last night, she called to let me know they’d had four inches of snow dumped on them last night, and thus she was postponing again until next weekend.

Which is fine, really. I’m just struck by the fact that, living in the Southeast as I do, this is the first time I’ve ever had someone not be able to come and see me until “after the thaw”.

Welcome to Livejournal…

By autographedcat

On January 22, 2003

In Blog

…Sending out a welcome to one of one of my dearest friends, Teri W. Welcome to the timesink, teri945!

But I came here for a weekend

By autographedcat

On January 20, 2003

In Blog

I feel like the guy in the Monty Python “Argument Clinic” skit this morning:

“That was never a weekend just now!”
“I’m afraid it was.”
“But I was just getting interested…”
“I’m sorry, but if you want to go on having a weekend, you’re going to have to pay!”

And, not being able to afford to not work, back to work we go.

The weekend was good though. kitanzi and I were both a bit bummed about not being able to go to Arisia, where it appears a good time was being had. But we did have the consolation of a housefilk, this month at Daric Jackson’s. Daric is a local anime fan who doesn’t get to many filks, so it’s always good to see him. Small crowd showed up, but since it included Robert and Beth Cooke, neither of us were complaining. Lots of singing, even more talking (during most of which I’d have rather heard music, but that’s a danger of a small housefilk.) Kit and I did a couple of Dave Carter/Tracy Grammer tunes for Robert, who is only just becoming familiar with them (mostly through spiritdance and Filker0. I love spreading that vector. 🙂

Sunday was housework and laundry day, though we did break it up to run off for a lunchdate. I had a craving for meat, and the chili in the crockpot wasn’t going to be ready for hours, so we went to Loco’s for buffalo wings and salad and a big steak each. Suitably stuffed, we went back home, finished up with the stuff that needed to be done, and then sat down and watched Blazing Saddles which we’d just gotten on DVD. Fun movie, though I think Kit was more amused at how much of the movie I could recite from memory than the movie itself *G*

But today is Monday, so back to work with me. Hope everyone else had a great weekend.

GaFilk Memories

By autographedcat

On January 19, 2003

In Blog

Well, I’d been meaning to post since this time last week, but I’ve just been busy at work and neglecting the journal. Also, it seems that the reason I never seem to get around to trip reports and convention reports is that it’s just too much bother pulling what amount to a lot of random thoughts into coherent paragraphs, so I’m going to steal a page from sdorn and just post some random thoughts.

Having dinner at Maggiano’s Italian restaurant on Thursday night before the con. For those of you who are wondering, no, you can’t eat there easily while on a low-carb diet. We made a more or less conscious decision to just go “off-plan” for the duration of the weekend. And boy was it good! We can only afford to eat there about once a year anyway, so it’s not a HUGE temptation to stray…

The Friday afternoon adventure of driving jhitchin up to a Japanese bookstore which turned out to be more complex than we’d realized. See, when he first asked about it, and we looked at where it was, I said “Oh, I know exactly where that is, no problem!” When we arrived at the shopping centre, though, it was nowhere to be found. They still had a sign on the big sign out front, but they weren’t in the centre directory, and no one had heard of them. So I called directory assistance, got their phone number, and called. “Oh, no, we’ve moved”, they said. Now, I can understand a Yellow Pages entry being out of date, but a website? Good grief! Luckily, their new location was only about 15-20 minutes away, so we still made it there, but the delay meant we had to drive back down to the con hotel in rush hour traffic.

The Great Con Suite Migration of 2003 — Friday evening, it suddenly occurred to the hotel that when we said we were going to be up making noise all night, what we actually meant was that we would be up all night, making noise. The problem was that the consuite was located in a place where it was not entirely surrounded by con attendees, but partially by airline pilots who weren’t going to be happy about loud conversation and laughter at one in the morning. In all fairness, the hotel handled it very well, apologized profusely, and after a bit of checking, offered to move our con suite to the suite around the corner, on the same floor, which *was* totally surrounded by our people,and even gave us a giant tray of fruit on Saturday morning for free. I’m sure the dealers were a bit unhappy about not having the consuite right next to them, but at least it was still on the same floor.

The “My Filk” game was especially good this year. Lots of laughs, especially when one of the teams was actually outscored by the audience. Everyone was a good sport about the whole thing.

bardiclug‘s concert. We don’t do a lot of concerts at GaFilk. Only four are scheduled every year: The GoH, the Toastmaster, the Interfilk guests, and one special performer that we choose. This year, we chose Scott, and he was incredible. I especially loved his cycle of D&D songs.

Talking in the consuite with S & P and their daughter T.

I got to hear about half of jhitchin‘s concert, whilst running around doing other things. Quite a lot of fun.

The 2×10’s are perhaps my favourite part of GaFilk. The format is essentially 2 shots, with a maximum of 10 minutes total for each performer. We schedule three hours of these on Saturday afternoon, and it’s always fun to see a whole bunch of people get stage time. (Note to my British readers: yeah, we did sorta steal this from you. Thanks. <G>). We did try an experiment this year, though. Rather than doing the list in the order they were signed, we drew the names randomly, about 3 performers in advance. There were varied reasons for this, most of which had to do with too many people stressing over not just getting a slot, but wanting a particular slot in the order. I think next year, we’ll modify this a bit, but it didn’t work out horribly. Despite a long set up for one performer, and another performer going over time by a bit, we still finished the entire set of 18 performers only 5 minutes over schedule.

The banquet was a ton of fun, in large part because of The Mary Crowell Trio (consisting of quadrivium on the piano, weirdsister‘s husband G. on the standup bass, and local percussionist B. on the drums.) doing the entertainment. It was, if anything, more impressive than last year, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

GoH Bob Asprin’s concert. Wow. Just…..wow. Bob was very nervous, he told me later, because he hadn’t performed music in public in at least 15 years. It didn’t show. He did a tremendous set, all off-book, including a cycle of Kipling songs that he hadn’t planned to do but which were requested from the audience.

Pulling off a conspiracy. nrivkis had mentioned some days before that it was her birthday just after GaFilk, and expressed the desire to do something at the con to commemorate it. Well, it just so happened that we were serving cake for our Saturday evening social. I made sure to have our con suite crew pick me up some birthday candles when they did the shopping. As soon as I was able to get hold of one and find out where N. was sitting, I selected a piece of cake (with the aid of mnemex ), lit the candle I’d stuck in it, and then presented it to her. The entire room joined in a chorus of Happy Birthday, followed immediately by the Birthday Dirge. The look on N’s face was worth any effort I may have expended to do this small thing.

Hearing Diana Gallagher play and sing at the dead dog. I had asked Diana if she wanted a performance slot on the program, and she had replied that it had been so long since she picked up a guitar that she wouldn’t be able to do any performing. Well, a weekend at GaFilk changed her mind, and she borrowed a guitar from someone and did several songs. Diana G. was one of my favourite filk artists Back When, and getting to meet her and her husband Marty, who was also a fine performer before his tragic illness, was not just a highpoint of this weekend, but of the last year — and the last year has had a lot more highpoints than low points for me! They are both wonderful people, and if you get a chance to meet them, take it!

Seeing all my friends and family who are much too far away. There’s just too many of you to name and too great a chance I’ll leave someone out if I do, but it was just wonderful to see all of you. Yes, even you. And *especially* you!

Of course, the biggest highlight of all was getting to spend the weekend at a filkcon among all those friends and family and around all that music with my sweetie, kitanzi She really does make everything just that much more fun.

Next year is going to be a LOT of fun!

GaFilk 2004
Atlanta, GA
January 9-11, 2004

Guest of Honor: Mich Sampson (callylevy)
Toastmaster: Mary Crowell (quadrivium)
Interfilk Guests: Rand Bellavia and Adam English

And of course, another Super Secret Guest, plus more fun than you can shake a stick at. Y’all come…

The latest version of the Me-me meme :)

By autographedcat

On January 4, 2003

In Blog

First of all, I’m not going to do the “100 things about myself” one, because, as I noted way back in the very first or second entry in this journal, I HATE talking about myself. But I thought this was an interesting idea, from mangosteen, by way of tigerbright

In comments, list 5 things that you would tell to someone who didn’t know me, if they asked you about me..