Another one of THOSE weeks…

This is one of those weeks I shoulda taken vacation…

sigh…

Monday- Late in because I had to pick up a prescription that actually had a refill on it (gee what a novel concept). Get my ass chewed because I missed a meeting; said meeting was CALLED at 0800 and I didn’t get to work till 0900… Week is off to a great start, and oh by the way, I have to be in San Diego tomorrow.

Jump through hoops, get plane ticket, early flight, lousy seats; cheeeep hotel close to meeting.

Miss lunch, start meeting at noon which runs till 1600. Play catch up till 1700, go to lunch finally…

Tuesday- Zero dark 30 get up, haul ass to the airport, of course there is a wreck at the airport off ramp… FINALLY get to the airport, run through, get on just before they close the door, manage to finally find a place for the bag (10 rows behind my seat), get a ‘lovely’ middle seat between an over sized lady and some guy that had WAY too much garlic; why does this remind me of the joke about sardines in the can? Two hours of sitting like Jack Benny and I finally get a chance to get up, so I stroll back aft to get a cup of coffee- Flight attendant is NOT having a good day, so I basically get my cup of coffee and a ration of s**t…

Five plus hours later we finally get to San Diego, I find out I’m the default duty driver for all three of us; except that the car rental agency doesn’t have a car for me or the other 10 people in line. Finally get a car an hour later, so much for priority service.

Get t0 the 1230 meeting at 1300, boss is pissed I’ve made him late…

Engineers don’t understand they have to meet deadlines; get into three way pissing contest us, on site program manager and engineer.

Go sit in the corner before I say something I REALLY shouldn’t say…

Five hours later the three hour meeting STILL isn’t over. The boss is in a high hover, the rest of us are just trying to stay out of the frag pattern when he goes off. Decision is made to continue Wed am so tempers can calm down.

Wed- Wide awake at 0300, can’t get back to sleep, so get up handle work email, etc… Take co-worker back to airport at 0600 so he can get home for wife’s birthday, back to hotel, pickup boss, off to the meeting.

Meeting reconvenes at 0800 and off we go again…

I manage to piss off everybody including the boss by injecting reality into the meeting, it is NOT well received…

Note to self: Get tattoo on forehead- Engineers do not understand reality- engineering never ends, there is no requirement to actually produce anything!

sigh…

Meeting is stopped at 1700 to hold a “management” meeting. I lose the war, but at least I win one battle… okay, maybe a skirmish???

All the way to dinner the boss is gnawing on me, maybe if I get lucky I’ll get fired…

Nope, just get handed a tasker that has every chance to blow up in my face…

Well, at least I don’t have to go back to the meeting tomorrow, I get another sardine can back to the East Coast, no chance in hell of an upgrade, and a 0600 show time.

I get back, I’m gonna go find the masochistic sumbitch that told me I was going to have fun with this job and beat him within .00001 inch of his life…

sigh…

Dark of night musings…

Yawn… It’s 0230, I’m wide awake and bored to tears…

Finished the last of the book I was reading on the airplane, so here I sit, staring at a blank computer screen. This is not good…

Sigh…


Went out on the deck, and promptly came right back in- Shorts and 50 degrees do not mix! I did note how quiet and peaceful it was, not a dog barking anywhere, no lights on in the neighborhood, and a light breeze just rippling the leaves. In a word, peaceful!


Looked up actuarial tables, according to them, my life expectancy is ~80 years… Hmmm… means I’m 2/3 of the way there…


What have I done? Well, grew up, went in the Navy at 19, one failed marriage, retired at 41, got a real job, still working… Two daughters, they turned out pretty good in spite of me…

A few positives over the years, saved a few lives, been a pretty good listener, tried to live a good life, obeyed ‘most’ of the rules…


Still trying in my small way to make a difference, I ‘think’ the systems we are developing and testing are important to keeping the Sailors and Marines alive. I guess this offsets not having a life due to the constant travel and weird work hours, at least I hope so…


A few good friends scattered around the world, quite a few acquaintances also scattered far and wide; I think I have a pretty good professional reputation, other than a total lack of tact… what the hell, can’t win em all…


Called a buddy just now- he was still up, when he answered he said, “Figured it was you.” We talked for about 20 minutes just catching up. Nice to know I’m that predictable???


Lots of memories of different places and people, some good, some bad; I’ve known failure and success, believe me success is MUCH better!


Well, coffee is done, so I’m off to get a cup and try to go back to sleep, perchance to dream…Ha!

It’s HOT…

Well, the Beltway is melting today… It was 95 degrees at 1000 when we teed off this morning and it only got worse. By the 9th hole, it was 97, and when we finished at 1400, it was 99. Of course this is not ‘really’ hot, but the humidity is sitting on 60%, which makes for a nice sauna.

Three of us old farts played with a young gorilla (all shoulders, no waist) today, and he did something I have never seen. He it a drive and literally buried it in the side of an Oak tree about 60 yards off the tee box! Now granted, the ball hit a spot that was obviously a little rotten, but in 35 years of golf, I have never seen anything like that. Of course, we made him play it where it lay…

So I go to the range to try to cool off… Boy did I ever… You win Scully, you’re a better shot than I am!

But I still like my BHP– so there…

Anybody out there ever read S. M. Stirling? I’m reading one of his books called Dies the Fire, and it has some interesting twists including an EMP that also makes gunpowder unusable.

It’s interesting to note how much Mother Teresa still affects us today. I have seen a number of blogs commenting on her just released letters and how she questioned her faith. It was also interesting to note how many blogs admitted they too have questions about their faith. I think all of us do, but it takes someone like her admitting it to prompt us to open up about our own fears…

I think one reason we do open up, is the relative anonymity of the blog sphere; out here, for the most part, no one ‘really’ knows who you are. You can blabber away and never really face any repercussions like you would among friends and family, or worry about someone going it to work and saying, “Did you hear what (your name here) said?”

Now having said that… There is also a significant downside out here- I know what I mean when I type something. To me it may be perfectly innocuous, but to someone else, filtered through their eyes and lives, it can be everything from irritable to viscious depending on how they interpret it.

Also there are trolls, probably as bad or worse than on most of the forums. A troll can be bounced pretty easily from a forum, but out here, it’s not that easy as AD points out in his post On Courtesy I often wondered is it envy, do we have something they don’t? Is it fear, that they might be seen as less than us? Or is it just that they want to stir shit up? I dunno…

Ah well… I’m gonna go soak my head and get ready to be stoopid again tomorrow and go to the rifle range…