Rant, Manifesto or Position Paper

Alright, before I get to the meat of the matter of today, a couple of housekeeping things:

I shaved off the soul patch. As an experiment, it was a success. However one of the variables I didn't consider was the fact while many men have their hair grow at an angle close to the curve of the jaw, my facial hair has the organization of a gorse bush. Grooming is all well and good but the 'product' I was using (and didn't work that well) was giving me zits.

So while giving myself the month buzz (hair cut, not inebriation), I chopped the chin-hedge off.

My chin is cold.

The weather (rain, more rain, humidity) is getting me down. I haven't taken a good bike ride in a week and it's driving me buggy. On teh other hand, I've gone from a two-on, one-off work out schedule to a three-on, one-off rate. I'm sore. And suddenly I'm pressed for time! Not sure I can keep this up. Maybe 3-on, 1-off, 2-on, 1-off? Nah, too complicated.

I now have one foot back on the no-smoking wagon, although I keep sneakin' 'em. As stated previously on many occassions, this is hard. I need a new job.

And I still can't get a hold of the guy to arrange my free beer!

Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!!

Ahem.

So on to the main topic. Which I have entitled:

Ivory in Shadow: How IT has Failed Business, Business has Failed IT and the How the IT Business has Failed Everyone

Yeah it's a mouthful.

It's basically a commentary on how IT is still failing to deliver on promises to business, how business forces these failures in many cases, and how technology companies exacerbate the problem by offering more technology to solve what ails technology.

This came about from yet another marketecture presentation today. In essence, it was to add more software layers (and therefore more hardware, more network and more complexity) to make things all work together.

I'm going to have to research this a bit, but I'm thinking that the roots of the problem are a fundamental misunderstanding of what technology can and cannot do (and surprisingly, its the techs who don't seem to understand the most), business practices that are directly opposed to how software is developed (and vice versa) and a lack of will to address the fundamental issue of change.

So instead of a blog rant, it probably will be a paper. And surprisingly, I have a kernel of an idea on how to possibly fix some of the problems.

So I'm going to read a few things, talk to some people and who knows, look at maybe getting it published as an article. May take a while.

Oh yeah, the title refers to the "Ivory Tower" being overshadowed and threatened by an office building. Yep, English degree. I can see the cover of my ground-breaking, paradigm shifting (sorry) study on real software in real business now. Amazon, here I come!

Or Slashdot. Either is good.

Weak Week

Eesh. Work just keeps getting better and better. I had one application back in a normal state (ie broken but those responsible for fixing it can actually fix it) and another one, which has much more impact, is busted.

Not busts, was busted. Since February. And for the same reasons as the first app. The guys who were supposed to notice, didn't. And they were the guys that busted it.

On top of that one of my (let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4, .... 7) managers tries to get me pulled off of a comittee that I refuse to leave because he thinks it's impacting my time. I don't see how 4 hours a week does that. It's the one thing I think I actually get progress on (albeit slowly). On top of that I get yet another project from a manager who thinks I can build a data warehouse in one day.

So I asploded.

Needless to say, whenever I asplode, I risk my job. And I know that. The consideration is that I either quit (which leaves people I actually like in a heap of trouble) or I risk getting punted.

And once again, I actually get the resources I need to get the job done. Playing nice just don't work at times.

So with all that, I fell of the wagon. Hard. Then got run over. Then while I had a cigarette to recover, the wagon-driver got out and kicked me inna nads.

I did have a job interview. Or rather, I talked to the guy who was going to give me the job interview. He wanted to reschedule because he was trying to leave early on his vacation. Not the best first impression. Not as bad as the time as the guy giving me an interview was drunk though. At 11 AM.

Let's see, women. They still exist, right? Actually that's not correct. I didn't get some sort of superpower making me invisible to the fairer sex, did I.

Hmmm, maybe that's what I need. A female boss. No, no, no. Not for that....

Well, maybe. I could use a sugar momma.

Game wise, Planetside has lost it's luster. just too frustrating. And I found out there's a ton of cheats. And no, I don't cheat, I just stop paying. I picked up Dawn of War and Winter Assault (Warhammer 40K RTS). Not bad, but I've never been an RTS fan, it's just there's nothing else to play. At least new to play. And I have a short attention span.

When is Spore coming out?

'Nuff Said. Beer time. No not free yet, the guy I need to make the arrangements isn't picking up his phone.

Looks like my usual luck/Karma is back.

Hung. Over.

Oh dear gods....

No I didn't get my free beer yet. But I did consume quite a bit of vodka with my little brother last night. We went to the peelers and the little schmuck ended up with 2 phone numbers from the wait staff.

Then he tried to give me lessons on how to pick up women.

Suicide is still a mortal sin right? Not that it matters, as I'm in enough pain as it is....

Gah.

Free Beer

Finally, some return on my Karmic investment!

Some friends and myself buy season tickets to Alberta Theatre Projects every year. I like to make a donation as well.

Turns out this year they had a draw. I got a phone call from them this morning saying I had a choice between appearing on-stage as an extra for their Christmas performances of Peter Pan, or beer for the summer.

What do you think I picked?

So I get, home-delivered, a 12 pack of my choice of Big Rock Brewery's finest. For fifteen weeks.

Now I'm a cheap date, but that's not an issue. I've had three invites to weekend barbeques since I won...

Looks like I have friends after all!

Spring Cleaning

So the City is doing it's usual spring thing: cleaning the streets of all the crud and salt that was dumped on it in the winter. Of course in order to do so, they need the streets clear so they post signs the day before.

Last night, tow trucks started showing up on my street (at 2 AM) and started carting cars away.

Now this is loud enough. Add to that, the local residents making death threats etc. against the truck drivers.

You see, no notices were posted on my block that it was being cleaned. So there was a whole street of cars. And angry car owners.

The cops showed up about 3 AM to try and settle everyone down. Needless to say I'm a bit of a zombie today.

Fell Off and Run Over

Argh, went and bought a pack of smokes again today.

Why the hell is this so damn hard? So now in addition to smoking, I've been inhaling about 4000 calories an hour. So I'll be a fat bastard with cancer instead of a skinny geek.

May have to patch it....

Back Again

So I go into work this morning and the first thing I hear before I even turn on my computer is that my project got cancelled. Again.

I'm never sure if that's a good or a bad thing. It does mean I was bored though.

And I was past the livid rage stage in the non-smoking progression. It ,will be back though. I was in an almost Nirvanic (is that a word?) state: I would stop in the middle of a sentence, would forget what the heck I was doing in the middle of a task. All with a blissful grin on my face.

Of course, that may have been brought about due to lack of sleep last night. I was still on 'holiday time', where I don't go to bed before 1am.

It was tough not smoking, so tough that I had one after work (dammit!). Ah well, I'm glad it was just one. And that was due to an issue that I had resolved, passed along to those whose responsibility it was in the first place, and it wound up back at me. Louisville time.

And the internet dating thing. Well, lets just put it this way. There's a pattern that emerges, those that I contact ignore me, and the few who make first contact, I have no interest in.

Mind you, I wound up being geek-in-shining-armor yesterday for someone who wanted to know if their ex-bf got ahold of their password. After the crisis had passed, we had an email conversation over the course of 4 hours. Naturally, she lives on the other side of the country....

I swear to gods, there a screenplay, tentatively titled "Geek mating Rituals" in all of this.

Vacation: Terminated

So, back to work tomrrow.

Just in time time. I'm now in the "pick a fight" phase of quitting smoking. Which should prove interesting.

Hope the weather is nice at least, I haven't been on the bike in 3 days and miss it already. Not the ride, the view.

Anyway, for those of you who I work with are reading this, you may want to avoid the eleventh floor tomorrow. Or all week.

Review and Return

Well, just came back from X-Men 3 (and I only had to shut up one group of kids twice, but the crying infant wouldn't respond to threats).

I don't want to give it away, but a basic impression should do.

First, it's very obvious that this was not directed by the same person as the first two films: it's very action driven rather than character drive. Not that's necessarily a bad thing, but concerning the subject matter, I would have referred the original hand on the helm.

It really reminds me of the days when I read more comic books. I loved such series as The New Mutants, eXcalibur, Alpha Flight etc. At least for a while. Back in the day (and still now apparently) once Marvel had a best seller (usually after a year) they would move the creative team to a book that wasn't doing so well. What usually happened was the new team would take the story in a completely different direction, getting rid of characters and story ideas in the space of panel or two.

The movie was a lot like that. So not bad, decent actually but handled (jarringly) different than the two previous film. I give it 3 tophats (out of five).

Oh, and I reactivated my profiles on a couple of dating sites.

Sucker for punishment I tells ya....

Day .... er, 6?

Quitting smoking sucks. Hands down.

There are times when I am perfectly fine: I can functional as normal human being and not want to crawl into a dark corner, curl up into the foetal position, and whimper.

And so my week of "recharging" is almost done, now it's just another weekend. I got most of what I wanted to do, well, done. I do find that any actual creative endeavors (such as writing, drawing etc) are really unaccomplishable until I've had a full week off. It's at that point (today) that my left-hemisphere has had a chance to unclench and allow some right-brain activity. So I may try some stuff over the next 48 hours.

This week was also a time for reflection on the whole dating thing. Am I ready to date? Do I actually want to enter another relationship? If so, how do I go about actually meeting women?

So I think I am ready to meet someone. But no internet dating (urgh, not going through that again). That means I'll have to actually, you know, leave the house. So what activities should I try? There's the gym of course, but I see so many goombahs trying to chat up girls who look like they want to be anywhere but on the treadmill. I don't want to be one of those guys.

Classes are a possibility. There's yoga, which I really should get back into, for nothing else that getting stretchy again. Don't think I'll ever be actually limber. Then there's things like taking a cooking class, but I highly suspect that it would be a sausage fest (pun intended); a class full of guys trying to meet women.

There's also the whole professional development issues. Work is dragging a bit on the whole educational professional development thing, but it looks like I should be able to get some cash out of them for taking some tech courses. And those are notoriously gender-biased (and all the really cool geek-girls are taken, in my experience).

So what to do? While there's more than a couple lovelies at the office, I swore I would never date a co-worker again. There's always the introduction of singles by mutual friends, but I would have to actually have friends to do that.

Maybe I need to get a social life of some sort....

Ah well, being single isn't all that bad.

Tracking

So I finally got a tracking number for my book order. Looks like it's ben sitting in a sorting station for the past two days. So unless Canada Post has some new fangled teleportation device, I won't be seeing anything until Tuesday. One to three day shipping indeed....

Finally got all the cleaning done. Was going to go for a nice long bike ride, but the thunder and lightning is sort of putting me off. No idea what to do, man am I bored.

I actually attempted to write. After staring at my new Word document for twenty minutes without writing more than two words, I gave up. Just not inspired. Maybe tonight, the right-side of my brain only fires up in the evening. Too used to having the left side have complete and total control during working hours.

Also ran out of all the snacks I got (healthy stuff) on the weekend, I should probably go get some more.

Slippage

Damn, went out and bough cigarettes last night. The old "just one" excuse.
They're in the bin now, but a part of me still wants to go dumpster diving and have "just one more".

So why do I keep paying for "Priority Delivery"? You know, supposedly delivered the next day. I ordered some books Monday and the tracking says they are still out East. Just some light reading, but still I have the week off and would like to get them before I go back to work next week.

I guess there is one born every minute, and they are still around 37 years later....

Day 2

One of the key things in quitting smoking is to keep busy.

By 3pm today I have:

Cleaned out my closet and storage room

Cleaned the Bathroom

Repotted all of my house plants

Cleaned the bathroom

Cleaned and detailed my car exterior and interior

I'm gonna run outta things to do around here by Thursday at this rate.

Anyone need any housework done? French Maid's uniform will not be worn. Unless you pay me enough.

At least I'm getting a contact high from all the solvents. Wheeeee!

PC Gaming is Shelved

Oh yeah forgot to mention yesterday.

Dropped by EB games yesterday. Remember a while back I lamented the shrinking shelf space that PC games have at such establishments?

Well, it gets worse.

There were no PC games (except the top 10 releases) on the wall shelves. They were relegated to the floor shelves, along with the strategy guides and lame gadgets and accessories.

So my question is, how do they establish a "Top 10" when they only have 10 games to sell? Easy or hard, depending on your POV.

Sad, my friends; now is the winter of our discount bin.

D Day

Uhgh.

This may not work. The damn nicotine gum won't stay lit.

Conspiracy Theory

I've never been a conspiracy theory nut, but the whole 9/11 thing always seemed to be too convienient.
There may be some justification for that....

Withheld to Protect the Author

Somebody, who shall remain nameless but is my little brother, asked me if I ever hold anything back from this blog: it's pretty boring.

Since the bastard is in Mexico, I'll answer that question. Yes, there's some stuff that happens in my life, thoughts, actions and rich internal life that simply doesn't make it here.

Some stuff is just plain boring (yes, even more so that the little nuggets o' wisdom that makes these virtual pages) and I don't think anyone would be truly interested.

An example: I started shopping at Co-op instead of Safeway because the quality of their products is much higher. Oh wait, did I talk about that here? That and the Co-op I go to has alot more cute women. Yes that's my prime motivating factor in any life-shaking decision.

Other stuff is just way too personal for public consumption. There's stuff that I can joke about, but there are some topics and situations where I'm not comfortable in broadcasting them to the general public (okay the three people who read this site anyway). Some things are just private.

No, no examples forthcoming.

I realize of course that the last verboten topical genre is probably ,the most interesting, the meat on this digital bone if you will.

Maybe someday.

In other news, I have been taking on the long and arduous task of burning all my CDs. It's been a surprising enterprise. On one hand, I'm finding disks that I swore that I had and cherished missing from the collection, some others I never knew I had ever acquired and even a couple I had thought lost forever.

Another pleasant surprise is how much I am enjoying this little device. There was a time where music was the center of my life and existence: when I was a DJ and concert promoter. There was music everywhere, and everything was music.

Somewhere along the line, I lost that. Not just when the business fell over (although that is certainly related) but I think at some point I decided music just isn't important.

What a fool I was.

Certainly now there is the danger that I will spend far too much trying to recapture that time and the associated feeling. Not there is nothing inherently wrong with the exercise itself, it's just that I tend to hyper-focus on these sorts of things. Examples are my $3000 worth of Lego, about half as much on original comic-book sketch art on eBay, and an unknown amount on games (not video games, honest to goodness miniature and paper RPGs).

So I will continue to burn what I have before I even consider purchasing any more. However I am compiling a list of must haves for later.

Project: Stop Smoking

Yes, yes, cryin' wolf and all that. But the plan for this week is to stop smoking. The morning cough is getting a bit worrisome, not to mention I need to save money to cover my rent hikes.....

I did manage to cut down to just over half-a-pack a day. So Monday, I'm going to go smoke free. For those who have not quit smoking (or never started) this is tough. There's actually three addictions to quit.

Nicotine

This is the bio-chemical addition, and is actually the easiest to take care of (although it has the most obvious effects). For that, I have nicotine gum, 4mg of niccy goodness per piece. Take as needed.

I still also have the patches from new-years, although that will be a last resort. I get nasty reactions to then, not to mention the aches and pains. Mind you, the dreams you have on these things rock!

Oral and Digital Fixation

No, not speaking too much and playing video games. It's the habit of something to put in your month and fiddle with. Okay, this subject is leaving me vulnerable to many, many single-entendres.

Regardless, it's still an issue. So for that, I have licorice root and will be buying many, many lolipops. Besides, with the new 'do, I can be all Kojak. Who loves ya, baby? Only problem with the licorice root is the slivers in the lips. On the bright side, it is a mild stimulant.

Time-Based Habit

One of the keys to breaking the habit is to deal with the 'regular times' you smoke. For me, that's when I'm stressed, after I have a meal, play video games and driving.

So with the week off, my stress factor will be greatly reduced (although the boredom thing escalates a tad). Meals actually are easy: constant eating. So I'm getting plenty of snacks. And steak. And beef jerky, peanuts, carrots, crystallized ginger. Oh, and beer.

Video games will be difficult. But as long as I have all the other stuff around I should be okay. Driving on the other hand will be tough. Not sure how I'll handle that.

So I am going smoke-free on Monday. Looking forward to it. Really. If I can stay clean through to Wednesday, I should be good.

No Beach For You!

Nope, all full.

Kinda amazin' really. I called a couple of travel agents and they said there's more poeple in the waiting list to go to Mexico for next week than there are going.

So, looks like a week of doing chores. Slowly. That, and the writing thing, should at least get one chapter drafted.

Maybe a day or two in Banff when the weather is good.

In short a slow, meandering 9 days of slack.

Slide.

Undue Care and Attention

Uhhhhhh. Wow.

So because I'm bored and it's far too hot to consider sleeping, I started to go back to the beginning of this blog and review my life so far.

Now the actual events portrayed here were no surprise, however my elocution of those events seems to have suffered with time. If this trend progresses, I might as well be publishing this on MySpace.

And of course one of the purposes of this endeavor was to hone my writing skills. Instead, it seems to have been blunted.

And the bitterness... oh, the bitterness.

I really do need a vacation.

And yeah, Project:Rocket Surgeon has been shelved. Once again, my apathy wins the day! Or would, if it could be bothered. That's not to say that it won't be revived in some shape or form, but don't bet on it. I'm assembling various theories on why I was so gung-ho: most of them revolving about being single and focusing my energies on "other matters". Or that I go to the gym on a very regular basis and have no energy. Or just disillusioned with gaming in general.

So since it seems I will be beachless next week, maybe I'll give that fiction thing a shot. No promises.