Apr 07

Deer in the headlights

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Yikes! Thanks to InstaPundit, my name and the URL of this blog are now posted on a site that gets tens of thousands of hits per day. This probably means that some InstaPundit readers will come here looking for distinguished commentary on a par with Dropscan Digest, Inappropriate Response, or Libertarian Samizdata. Boy, are they going to be disappointed. In my defense, I can only say that I never expected to find my name listed in such august company. Glenn Reynolds asked for e-mail from people who were inspired by him to start blogs of their own, and I responded just because I wanted him to know, not necessarily the whole world.
I started this blog as an outlet for random musings, and perhaps to amuse the few friends and family members who knew about it. Unlike most of the other blogs in Reynolds’s list, Scribings has been almost completely devoid of political commentary. This is not because I have no political opinions, but because I’m not sure anyone really cares what they are, and also because Reynolds and many other political bloggers (such as Virginia Postrel and Steven den Beste) are much better commentators than I could ever hope to be, and I despair of having anything worthwhile to add to their wisdom.
There are political issues I feel strongly about, though, and perhaps it’s time I started letting a little of that bleed into what I post here. I don’t have to make this blog a full-time political rant, but neither do I have to hide my politics as if they’re something to be ashamed of. I need to think about this.
Update: Now there’s a version of the list with hypertext links, including one that points straight here.

Apr 05

Friday Five: Day after day

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This week’s Friday Five is about daily routines.
1. What are the first things that you do in the morning to start your day? Well, that’s changed in recent weeks. During my recent deadline crunch, I really needed to put in longer hours, and getting to work earlier seemed like a good idea. So I attempted to speed up my morning routine by resequencing it. I am not a morning person, and I tend to be very bleary and slow-moving until I’ve had my shower. After that I’m wide awake. My previous tendency was to put off the shower until after breakfast, which I did not eat quickly because it’s hard to prepare and eat food that you can’t see because your eyes are not, technically, open. As a result, I was often late for work.
The obvious solution: shower first thing in the morning. Once I’ve done that, I’m “over the hump” of my morning routine and ready to face the day. So now, when I hear Marie taking her shower, instead of rolling over and going back to sleep, I get up, make use of the other bathroom facilities, and step into the shower the moment she steps out, without the water ever being turned off. I know what you’re thinking: seeing as how we’re married and all, why don’t I save time and water by getting in the shower with her? Because my agonized screaming tends to upset the children. Marie takes HOT showers. If you could somehow convince her to take a live lobster in there with her, it would be ready to serve when she got out. (And very clean.)
2. What are the last things that you do at night before going to bed? Reading, typically. Even if I have no time for leisure reading during the rest of the day (which, sadly, is the case lately), I always pick up my current book-in-progress for at least a few minutes before turning off the bedside lamp.
3. What daily routine have you recently added to your day? Actually, I’ve been trying to make posting something to this blog (even if it’s only an interesting quote I’ve stumbled across) a daily occurrence. I haven’t perfectly achieved that goal, but I’m getting closer.
4. What routine do you wish you get rid of? Staying up too late surfing the Web. I really need to get more sleep.
5. What’s the one thing that makes you feel like something is missing if you don’t do it some point within your day? Breathing.

Apr 02

Letting go

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One year ago today, I was laid off from my job at Alcatel. As I’ve mentioned here before, that turned out to be just about the best thing that could have happened. It freed me up at precisely the right moment to take a much better job at IBM, and it got me out of an environment that had been deteriorating for some time and was about to get much worse.
The prospect of being unemployed can be daunting, but sometimes it’s the first step toward much better employment. Before April 2 of last year, I was reflexively clinging to a job that I no longer enjoyed and that had become a dead end, just because I was afraid of the unknown. I shouldn’t have needed a layoff to shake me loose. Sometimes, the best thing to do is to admit that you’re not happy with what you have, and let go of it.

Apr 02

Rising star

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I just checked my eBay feedback for the first time in a week or so, and discovered that my rating has passed 100, turning my Feedback Star from yellow to turquoise. I always wondered what it feels like when a D&D character gains a level — now I know!
Historical note: eBay later modified its hierarchy of Feedback Stars, adding a blue star (50-99 points) that comes between yellow and turquoise. So it’s no longer possible for a user’s star to turn from yellow to turquoise.

Posted in Me
Apr 01

Signs of spring

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What a difference a three-day weekend makes. This afternoon, I stepped out of my office and saw, framed in the window at the far end of the hallway, a riot of color that wasn’t there on Thursday. Someone has parked a couple of extra chairs in front of that window to be moved to storage, and those chairs were silhouetted against a cloud of pink flowers: a tree in full bloom.

Later, as I walked out to the parking lot at the end of the day, I encountered daffodils blooming beside the walkway, and trees laden with white flowers among the parked cars.

Did all this happen over the weekend? Or have I just not been paying attention?

Mar 29

Friday Five: Famous people

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This week’s Friday Five is about fame.
1. If you could eat dinner with and “get to know” one famous person (living or dead), who would you choose? J. Michael Straczynski.
2. Has the death of a famous person ever had an effect on you? Who was it and how did you feel? Sure, many times. I remember being particularly bummed in 1989 because Graham Chapman and Mel Blanc both died that year. But the death that probably affected me the most was that of my favorite science fiction author, Isaac Asimov, in 1992. I was sitting in my office at IBM when I read the news on the company’s internal network. Asimov had been very ill for months, too ill to write, so I had known this was coming, but I was still saddened to hear the news.
3. If you could BE a famous person for 24 hours, who would you choose? At this point, I think I would have to say President Bush, because there are some people I’d like to drop daisy cutters on.
4. Do people ever tell you that you look like someone famous? A few years ago, when I had much more hair and a longer beard, someone told me I looked like Abraham Lincoln. Personally, I think she was nuts.
5. Have you ever met anyone famous? I go to science fiction conventions, so I’ve met a number of well-known authors, actors, and artists. (I’ve met most of the original Star Trek cast, for example.) I even had dinner with Forrest J. Ackerman once. He invited me to join him because I had recognized him and greeted him in Esperanto.

Mar 28

Closing time

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Bob and I had our monthly dinner tonight and (following our usual practice) went walking afterward. It was chilly outside, so we did our walking inside a shopping mall. We were at Southpoint in Durham, which is an excellent place for that sort of thing. Until the armed guards ordered us to leave.
No, we weren’t in any kind of trouble. But it was after 9:00, and while we were absorbed in conversation, the mall had closed. This usually happens to us. Our postprandial walks tend to last for hours, and by 9:00 p.m. we are just getting started. But in Mall Time, that’s the end of the evening. Time to go home.
Outside of malls, nobody seems to think that 9:00 is time to call it a night. Stores like Target and Wal-Mart are open until 10:00 or 11:00. So are bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble. Movie theaters don’t shut down until midnight, and many restaurants stay open until 10:00 or later. And why not? People are still shopping, eating, and lining up to see movies.
Everyone but the malls seems to understand this. If people leave work at 5:00, it’s close to 6:00 when they get home, and 7:00 by the time they finish supper and get started shopping. From 7:00 to 9:00 is only two hours, which isn’t very long if you have a lot of shopping to do, or need to visit multiple stores. By staying open until 10:00 or 11:00, the Wal-Marts of the world not only make our lives easier, but also increase their business. But the malls think you should be at home in bed by then.
What’s particularly strange is the utter uniformity of it. Every mall I’ve even been to closes at 9:00 or 9:30. Is there some kind of federal law requiring this? They must know they’re driving business to Wal-Mart, but apparently they don’t care. 9:00 is the Official Mall Closing Time, so they chase the customers out and lock the doors.
And the next morning, the malls open at 10:00, when everyone is at work. You can’t go shopping during the day, but the malls are open anyhow, because those are mall hours. Why?

Mar 25

Welcome back from the abyss

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The beta crunch is finally over. On Friday, my documentation team finally delivered our help files and manuals for the beta release of the product. And I went home and went to bed. I slept for the entire weekend, except when I was away from home on previously scheduled engagements (Diversions on Saturday, and the memorial service for Miles’s stepfather on Sunday).
Now it’s Monday, and time for my life to get back to normal. Last week was a remarkable experience — I’ve always said that I do some of my best work under extreme pressure at the last minute, and this was no exception — but one can only live for so long on adrenaline, coffee, and three to four hours of sleep per night. I’m proud of what we accomplished, but I think I’ve had enough white-knuckle technical writing for a while.

Mar 11

Friday Five: Home

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A combination of Blogger outages and an insane workload prevented me from tackling the Friday Five last week, and although I kept meaning to do it over the weekend, somehow I never did. Rather than let it slide completely, I’m going to pretend it’s still Friday and do it anyway.
1. What makes you homesick? As I mentioned last week, I haven’t been on an extended trip in a very long time, so I really haven’t had the opportunity to experience homesickness.
2. Where is “home” for you? Is it where you are living now, or somewhere else (ie: Mom & Dad’s house, particular state/city)? Home is the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. Marie and I lived in Columbia for most of a decade, but it never felt permanent; as students living in dorms, and then as a married couple living in various apartments, it always had a transient feeling, as if we were just passing through. After we moved here in 1987, I finally started to feel that I had put down roots.
Home used to be Rock Hill, but that town has changed so much since I left for college that I barely recognize it any more. The Triangle has changed just as much, of course, but I’ve watched it happen. Rock Hill transformed while I wasn’t looking, and on some unconscious level I still expect it to look the way it did in 1981.
3. What makes it home for you? People? Things? People. Specifically, GNO. Moving to North Carolina was made much easier by the fact that Virgil and Denise were already here. And gradually, over the next decade or so, the four of us managed to accumulate a group of like-minded people that defies description, except to say that I never get tired of spending time with them. This place is home because they are here. (Although, in point of fact, some of them aren’t physically here any more.)
4. Where is the furthest you’ve been from home, miles-wise? In 1968, my family (which lived in Monroe, Louisiana at the time) set out on a summer vacation across the southwestern USA. We got as far as Nevada before turning back. That’s definitely as far as I’ve ever been from my current home, and probably farther from Monroe than I ever get from Holly Springs these days.
5. What are your plans for this weekend? Well, the weekend in question is already over, but most of it was taken up with the final installment of Ben’s 13th birthday celebration. (When I was a kid, you got one party, on the actual anniversary of your birth. When did birthday celebrations become multipart affairs than last in excess of a week? Somewhere along the line, I got cheated.) We took Ben and a bunch of his friends bowling on Saturday, and they stayed at our house overnight and well into Sunday, playing video and computer games and trying out Ben’s new paintball equipment. (Now you know why I didn’t post anything over the weekend: I couldn’t get near the computer!)