The Time Sink

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

Well, I'm battened down as best I can be for the week. I still haven't graded the drainage on the north side of the house; but the drain lines are in and that should be Good Enough for the moment. ...and the dueling weather sites are now saying things may hit as early as this evening and be over by Wednesday. Or not... Both sites agree to a fifteen degree temperature drop; I think I'll just email Brian or JHR and ask them to look out the window. Regardless: the corporate Costco/Smart&Final/Office Depot and points N-S-E-W run will be occurring this morning rather than later in the week. Unless it's raining when I get into work...

Also now listed in the Good Enough Archives: A new cover for the wood rack, around 100 pounds of lump charcoal under cover, and all tools out of the reach of the moisture monster. Either way, I'm done until the weekend. ...and then I'll have moist soil to work with instead of this rock replacement I'm dealing with right now (chunks of hardpan interspersed within dug up clay from the pool construction and dried out over the entire summer).

...and you can just imagine my delight at going in to work this week<g>. I have to grin. ...and bear it. We're on quite a roll. ...and it's good to see everyone pulling together to make this work for the guy in charge of the new operation. It's just the intensity of it at the moment... Janeen and I are going to start on round two of "What did we not get in yet?" and open up the figurative envelope entitled "Three weeks and counting: do this stuff." Why the envelope? Actually, it's an entire set of tasks: last August we lined out our work through November 1st on this project. Each week we hit the list on Monday; that leaves us the rest of the week for the inevitable "Oh, my gosh" and "WT??" episodes.

The rain finally showed up. ...after the dust storm. ...and at the boy's bedtime. Oh; and with thunder and lightening. ...at the boy's bedtime. Sheesh.

Hey Jonathon! Welcome to the asylum. Just take your medication when the nice lady asks you to and you'll be fine<g>.

More here as the day progresses. I hope... Short shrift mode this week with a few too many candelabras in midair and a few too many balls underfoot...

Okay, I'm more than ready for this week to be over... I don't think the comedy of errors and omissions from Tuesday can be repeated, but I really do not want to take any chances.

The morning started off well enough; I came in early to miss the traffic problems that Monday night's rain would surely bring. Of course, my plate was full when I got in; but with no one else there, I could start chunking out things one at a time. You see, it's not the volume of the work right now; it's the blasted interruptions that are wearing me down. One interruption doesn't just cause its own problem, it ripples back through whatever I was working on at the time. ...and whatever I had on deck.

So life went well until mid-morning when a vendor called me. Now, Jon's a cool dude and knows not to call me (Interruptions; Remember? We do email like long lost cousins...); so his call must be important. And I need another problem like... Never mind. "Hey Dan, I sent you that quote you needed. Only I got this weird message about a fatal error." WT??? We don't do fatal errors here. So I bounce one to echo@psi. Nada. I bounce one to the WorldNet servers. Nada. I bounce into Erik's office. "Hey bro, you have issues!" "Do not!" "Do to!" Do NOT; I restarted the blasted thing an hour ago....", his voice trailing off into the WT??? void as he sees the error that advises him the service never started.

Of course it's his department with the afternoon overriding Cluster Ride from Hell as he is informed that he needs to get another machine up, running and programmed for voice mail for the new show. Pick a hoop. Any hoop. Heck the fair's in town; let's just bring a clown of two over and quit pretending it's a circus. Let's do this thing up right. ...and bring the Kettle Corn concession while you're at it!

I finally manage to make it home nearly on time for... Oh, that's right: they're doing indoor soccer practice tonight due to the rain. Okay! Peace. Peace and quiet... Quiet and peace... Savor the thought... Not. ...as they get done early and Daniel asks to be dropped off to be with me while Shelley and Bradley go find something to call dinner.

Okay, let's see... I have a schedule request for the second job to respond to. ...the budget to knock out to see who gets paid from this check. ...a class plan for Saturday to confirm to Lee. ...and a partridge in a pear tree. Oh. "...and Honey, make sure you have a shirt that fits and a tie to go with it for Friday night<g>." She's such a perky, happy lady...

Pooink! I think I spelled that correctly... That's the sound the UPS made as it took Athena, the monitor, and the KVM switch down as it decided to take leave of its senses, cycles per second, and battery. WT??? Turn off the power switch and cycle the UPS... Why looky here, a red light. Now where did that come from? ...and where was my warning? Cycle down Wolf (his UPS is stacked on top of Athena's and I know I'll yank something loose); kill both UPI (plural of UPSsssssss); find the spare battery (you do keep one as a doorstop don't you?); and find a dust rag 'cause the last time these things were checked was during the Crisis of '96 (shoot; that means Wolf's UPS is due also).

Okay, back on track. "Honey, what's it mean when it says <Save><Delete><Don't Fix it>?"    WT???^3    "All I did was press the <any> key..." WT???^^N+1...

Deal with it and move onward toward bedtime. Close the blind's in the boy's room and end up with the cord in my hand. ...both ends of it. ...same hand.

Oh, my. What to do; what to do? Beer? Nope, likely I'll cut my hand on the twist off. ...and Shelley got rid of all the church keys after she heard me call them that. TV? Nah, radiation hazard... Bed? Dunno, maybe later. Post?

Doo-Dah. Doo-Dah. The Camptown races continue... But so far we're holding our own. Every "What's the status on this?" had an acceptable answer, generally within a few minutes. Sometimes the planning thing works...

...and Janeen and I are happy with our vendors; they are responding very well. Much as I believe in Just-In-Time inventory control, this is not the best time to demonstrate its benefits; just get us our product and we'll let Fleet Services figure out how to store it in the interim.

On the home front, the weather cleared for much of the day; then it clouded up again in time for dinner and the rain started up again. It turns out we had 0.96 inches on Tuesday. That's enough to set the cotton farmers back several days on their harvest plans. ...and the pomegranate growers are worried about fruit damage. Man, you need the water to grow the crops; but too much and you're in trouble. Like the raisin farmers who still have crop on the ground... A rough business at best.

IT managed to stay on my good side today, but that's because one minion was off and the boss stayed in his hole all day<g>. He did get his product in for the voice mail computer. ...and his tool kits. ...and some additional PC Power and Cooling base systems that we didn't order??? How'd he pull that one off?

Well, the weekend is finally here and it looks as though I've made it with my mind more or less intact. The weather is clearing and after a dinner party this evening, the weekend will be here at long last.

What dinner party? ...and yes, you do remember correctly: I am not the social butterfly that my darling wife was raised to be. But this one is on me; it seems the local Emergency Nurses Association needed a theme for this year's dinner dance and someone remembered that EMS in this county more or less got off the ground in 1975. Okay, you have one chance: Which Daynoter was in the inaugural paramedic class in Fresno County in 1975? Got it in one! So I'm going partly from duty and partly to see some of the gang from the old days. A lot of the people I worked with when I was in the fire service are retired now, and there are only one or two others from the private sector even associated with the business anymore. I'm really hoping my old partner from my fire days is there...

At any rate, my company bought a table at the event and the general manager gave Shelley and me a pair of tickets... So on with the tie and off to the event.

But not without a rant first<g>. There's been occasional backchannel talk about predatory practices on the part of the larger ISPs. ...and some pretty up-front posts on some of the Daynotes sites about companies forcing their idea of how business or even your computer should run. How about this little gem? Motorola has told its independent dealers to turn over all customer data or lose their ability to sell the Motorola product line... My data. ...all my data. Information on what I've bought and what I've paid for it and how I use it (from the frequencies programmed). Oh, and they're going to send it off to a third party to pull our Dun and Bradstreet information and meld the two... Just a flipping moment, please.

Now, please understand: I may gain a little cost savings when the Big M salesmen (the resurrected group of people laid off in the late '80s when Motorola cut their throats and cast them overboard) come around to deal with me direct. ...and that's okay from the straight financial end. But what about the independent dealers? The ones bypassed when Motorola starts selling to me over the net. I sure hope my guy knows how to bake pizza.

Sure, I'll take the cost savings; I'll have to. ...for as long as it lasts. ...like long enough to raise the prices past where they were when they had independents marketing product in a competitive marketplace. ...a competitive marketplace that allowed for RFPs and RFQs and some real decent pricing for the first time in twenty years.

Bah! We arrived home last night from the dinner to find a message from Lee saying he couldn't teach today... The way overtime fill works in his fire department, it was his turn (based on a formula involving seniority, hours already worked, and confirmed days off) to pick up a Captain's shift at another station. Which means he gets off duty tomorrow morning, reports to the station near the college, turns another twenty four, and goes back to his home station on Sunday for another shift. That's a long seventy-two hours on duty. ...and a torqued wife. ...and he had two tickets to the college game this evening. ...and Oh! I get to teach today. Sheesh.

No biggie... I just had the day un-planned out for puttering. ...and going to the boys' soccer games. ...and having a beer. ...and doing not much. ...except de-toxing from the week.

Alas, 'tis not to be. Pity the poor students though; they're coming in this morning prepared for Lee and a lecture on fractures and splinting. Instead, I'll be there leading off with the childbirth film<g>

Well now... A Happy Day of Rest to those of you who can actually comprehend and take advantage of such a thing. Please note this excludes many of the Daynotes gang; the demands of authoring being such as they are...

Yesterday went well enough at the college: I told the gang we were rescheduling the day (to include a thirty minute lunch); and we zipped through things and were gone early enough for me to come home and pass out for a few hours. The trick now is to keep today low key and not try to accomplish any Great Tasks. Just relax, read the paper, maybe put out the pumpkin patch for the kids to enjoy...