I haven't done one of these for ages, so I thought I would:
"Fuzzybutt", as Pie 'Oh' Pah is known to The Magic Midget - a university friend who stayed with me for several months from the end of last year while she was looking for an apartment here in Paris - enjoys eating plants. Apparently, his old owner, from whom I 'rescued' him, did not like this habit.
To begin with, I should point out that his old owner did not abuse him as such: he was more a dog-person and should not really have had a cat. When Pie was but a baby, he lived with a drug addict who, obviously, did not look after him very well. He was 'rescued' from this situation (voluntarily given away by the addict, to his credit, for the cat's own good) by his last owner who took great pains to nurse the poor little guy back to health. Suffering from "cat AIDS", he had little chance of survival, but the attention and care of this second owner brought him back to health.
Unfortunately, Pie then revealed his true self: he's very energetic, he loves long cuddles, to sleep on a lap, to play and to eat plants. His last owner could not handle this and was not particularly nice to the little guy. It's difficult to deal with a cat when one does not understand them and he did not want to understand. He wanted Pie to be trained like a dog (never gonna happen!) and got terribly upset when pusscat tried to get attention by shredding rolls of toilet paper, leaping all over the apartment or eating his plants (of which he was very fond). Of course, lots of animals eat plants. They just don't regurgitate them on the apartment floor afterwards...
I was lucky enough to be conceptually nearby (i.e. by telephone via his then-girlfriend) when he decided he couldn't handle the Plant-Eating Fuzzybutt Monster any more. I immediately said I'd take him and find him a new home: it's rather difficult to find a home for a fully-grown cat, as opposed to a kitten, and I never succeeded. Of course, this turned out even better than I could have hoped, since he now lives here and we're both very happy with that arrangement. Indeed, I sometimes wonder how I managed to be content without the furry guy around.
In the past, I've bought cat-grass for him to munch on, which he loves. However, he still enjoys wandering out into the stairwell and chewing on a few leaves of the plant which resides there. Every time he does this, he looks at me with these big, scared eyes, waiting for me to punish him for it. I laugh: as long as he doesn't destroy the plant (and to be honest, it's actually growing better since he arrived here!), I have no problem with it. Cleaning up cat-vomit is a part of ownership anyway, particularly since they always have fur balls.
More recently, I've wanted to get him a plant to chew on inside the apartment. He has a little window-ledge which is chicken-wired off so he can lie out there in the sun when he wants to. The wire is, in fact, to stop him jumping down onto the pharmacy's roof thingy and from there into the street - not through a desire to trap him, but because there would be no way back up.
Just a few weeks ago, I finally did it: he now has a sort of ivy plant (I have no idea what it is, since I bought it in French... and my knowledge of plants in my mother tongue of English isn't even that good!). So he now has a plant out on his balcony and he loves it. He's out there right now, settled in the shade, sniffing the leaves in an attempt to find a tasty one. What a little sweetie.
Beware! The Plant-Eating Fuzzybutt Monster is back!
I've stopped reading most blogs these days, due to a lack of time. Of course, I still visit those I personally enjoy. They know who they are, since they get comments every now and again - not that I consider my patronage of their sites that important to them! It's nice to see the goings-on in other places, to be a fly on the wall in a job or a life that I would never consider.
On the other hand, I've stopped reading others because they have either stopped posting, are manically posting absolute nonsense in a desperate bid to have content every day or have turned into mentally deranged idiots who have a desperate need for affirmation via blog comments.
I hope I never fall into the last category.
The expression "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" popped into my head last night while I was over at Psycho's place. I had made a blatant mistake during a conversation with her that not only proves I was very tired, but also goes to show that I'm sick to death of lying to her in order to protect her fragile sense of self-worth.
First off, the mistake: I don't remember exactly who we were talking about - I believe it was either an actress or a woman I had seen in the local supermarket (probably the former) - and Psycho asked me if she was prettier than her. I refused to lie, which is obviously an extremely bad move, as any male human will tell you.
This is, to be honest, something I have never really understood with women. I mean, I can understand being offended if someone were to say "You're an ugly old cow and I'd rather spend time smashing my head against broken glass while listening to the Spice Girls than look at your putrid fizzog", for example. What I have greater difficulty comprehending is taking offense when someone says something along the lines of "You are not, objectively speaking, the most beautiful creature ever to exist on the face of this Earth (or any other planet, for that matter) since the dawn of time itself".
If someone were to say that a person they had seen were more attractive than me, I would accept it - yes, even from a girlfriend, wife, mistress or other such person with whom I might be in a relationship (unlikely as that idea may seem, of course, Scary Ross). I'm not exactly Brad Pitt, after all (or Johnny Depp or Keanu Reeves or whoever your favourite actor is). I can be objective: OK, so it's not the nicest thing in the entire universe to tell me this truth, but if I ask you, then I expect to hear it. Women, apparently, do not subscribe to this point of view.
So anyway, I ended up in this awful, no-win discussion with Psycho about the relativity and objectivity of beauty. This discussion, of course, is otherwise known as the "You have no hope of getting out alive unless you bow down before me as the Goddess of Beauty" debate.
Well, she lost. So there. Score one for logic, reason and being a stubborn old bugger.
Of course, this started me thinking about the whole beauty thing. I have to admit that I do not recall ever meeting an ugly woman in my life. Every woman, I believe, has something yummy about them: some obviously have a whole load of yummy things (Winona Ryder springs to mind, as does that woman from the supermarket), while others have fewer, but absolutely no one is truly and completely ugly.
In fact, this point of view springs from an old UK TV series called Brush Strokes about a painter who's a total womaniser. It was something he said in an episode to his non-womanising friend and it struck a chord in me as describing the way I think: "every woman has something beautiful about them".
That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. This could, come to think of it, be because I'm not exactly pretty: sort of a forlorn hope reflected into my view of others. That's just speculation, though...
Good grief... I hate meetings with more than one manager in them... why, why, why, why, why, why, why do these people feel a psychotic need to hijack everything and go off talking about global focus or some other nonsense instead of what the meeting is about? Grrrrrr.
Talk about a complete opposite to the last meeting I had on this same subject, with four other IT guys: twenty minutes, all questions answered, completely focussed on what the meeting was about.
And people wonder why I don't want to be a manager. Pah!
The last two days have flown by. I think it must be because last week was such a nightmare of stress, decisions, new projects and new managers, but I feel like I've slept four hours since Friday night. The days have whizzed past in a blur of continued anguish and failed attempts at relaxation. The fact that the company bonus hasn't appeared at the bank yet doesn't help (apparently it goes in with the monthly salary, which means I have to maintain food payments for a few more days on the pitiful dregs of cash that remain). Most annoying.
On the up-side, I spent the last two days playing Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy [web site Flash animations warning!] from Lucasarts and must say it's excellent. It's rather short in some ways, admittedly (I finished it last night), but I've not had that much fun with a PC game for ages. The variety of silly things to do, the beautiful animation and an excellent story all make up for great gameplay.
The best things are the slo-mo kills when you slice someone up with the light saber, charging at Jedi speed into a room full of a dozen Stormtroopers and hacking them all up, armed only with twin sabers and my personal favourite: using the Force to choke a Dark Jedi, lifting him off the ground, then chucking him off the top of a building to hear him fall, screaming, into the lava pit below.
OK, so I'm twisted and evil. At least I'm enjoying myself.
It's been one of those weeks. What with the new style of work, the massive project that comes with it, the "several" other projects I still have to work on and a manager (one of the three I currently have!) becoming a tad flaky in recent times, I need a break. Pity I just came back from a holiday, really.
Yesterday was another part of the insanity that I could have done without. The gateway machine at home (by the way, that's "gateway" as in "a machine providing a bridge to access the Internet" and not "Gateway" as in "I don't know doodlysquat about computers so I'll buy one from these nice folks who will screw me totally") has been acting up recently: the virus scanner and firewall seem unwilling to install their latest updates. Given the current climate of MSBlast and SoBig attacks that shows no sign of relenting, this is a bad thing.
Oh, a small aside: thank you all those complete and utter imbeciles who have forced the computer world to accept that one does not have to understand computers to use them. You are the drunk-drivers of the information age, and I hate you for your incompetence. The little firewall notifications every ten seconds from different IPs are visual proof that you all need to be unplugged. Now.
Thankfully, I managed to get both programs uninstalled and back on again in little time and without too much effort (and yes, I remembered to go offline to do it). Unfortunately, the firewall was kind enough to forget absolutely everything I had taught it, so I then spent the next 90 minutes trying to get my VPN connection (to work) to stay up for more than about three minutes at a time. It finally started working properly just before a really important conference call with some folks in the US, which is nice since I didn't really want an hour-long international call on my home phone bill and was able to use my USB IP SoftPhone!
Of course, days like this don't just go away, either. Over at Psycho's place in the evening, I had to do the whole lot again. Yes, she got infected by MSBlast. I never thought she'd actually go on-line, since her knowledge of computers is limited to what I have had time to teach her: obviously a horrible oversight on my part. Incidentally, that virus is a total nightmare. Disappearing icons, no connection, no folder contents visible... and her PC even tried to dial out and connect without being asked! (Unless, of course, she asked it to and didn't realise she had, which is entirely possible.)
So I spent the evening installing the same programs on her machine and doing all the updates... over a 56kbps line. Oh joy.
After yesterday's great big long blabby nonsense, today should be a touch shorter. Thanks to The Experiment and Jackie for their comments, by the way: hearing other people air their views is always helpful and sometimes spots something that I would otherwise overlook.
I thought that today, I should clarify a certain small matter: I don't ever want to be a manager. The company deciding to convert me to management would, in fact, be one of the only reasons I would seriously consider leaving and finding a new job. I mean, it's bad enough that what I do has no impact on the world in general (I just make it easier for other folks to sell stuff and make money) and doesn't change anyone's life... but to be doing that and to be in management?
Managers are, as a whole, the dregs of human society. They create no end product, no tangible results and spend their time in a million stupid meetings with (other) people who talk out of their posteriors. It's an exercise in petty empire building, in office politics and various other matters of which I would never wish to partake.
Don't get me wrong: there are, of course, some very good managers. I have been fortunate enough to work with some and, in fact, will be back under the direction of my first (and best) manager for this change in job. She even seems pleased, which surprised me. I just don't believe that one or two good managers can make up for the puerile office dictators I have to deal with on a much more regular basis - those who dislike me because of my blunt honesty and my demand that they earn my respect.
I will not kowtow to anyone who will not prove their worth.
The KFC is back again. No, I don't mean the Colonel's secret recipe, chicken fillet burgers or greasy-stick-to-your-finger-lickin'-good-southern-fried food restaurants. I mean the Karma F*@!ing Comedian.
About a week ago, I had a sudden urge. This wasn't the kind of urge that Scary Ross or Psycho would imagine (and if you really want to know what those kind of urges are, I think you should probably seek help... quickly), but an urge to clean my apartment. This happens every few years: I'm talking about a serious clean-out here, a Feng Shui style removal of unneeded clutter, the discarding of an old life before starting a new one. So I started cleaning: scary amounts of utter crap (including a birthday card from five years ago with £10 in the envelope... d'oh!) were found and removed, filling three bin bags. Since I have only cleaned about 10% of the apartment so far, that's quite disconcerting.
While I was still in this mindset of throwing away an old life, my boss suddenly contacted me on Monday. Apparently, the way the company works is changing from a skill-based setup to a process-based setup. I have no idea what this means: it sounds like management gibberish to me, but whatever. In practical terms, it means that I am to move away from learning new skills/applications and being an expert in certain things. I am now to learn processes and do more analysis of development requirements and other such analytical things. Given that this company moves at the speed of light, I had until yesterday afternoon to decide if I liked this idea or would not be interested.
Now, this is one of those 'crossroads' decisions (no, I don't mean 'whether to watch an awful movie with Britney Spears in it'): if I say no, they won't fire me but will consider my response a resistance to new ideas and tag me as an aging techie hippy who is probably becoming less useful to keep around. If I accept, I have to change everything I've worked on in the last ten years - and the way I worked on it - for a new set of skills, ideas and work processes. In other words, I have to completely change my job.
I noticed, while stressing my poor little brain cells about said decision, that there is nothing I am passionate about these days. That's not to say I don't like my job - I love it and enjoy it very much - nor that there is nothing I want to do, simply that there's nothing I am passionate about. Everything's much of a muchness. It's all the same when it comes down to it: be it Siebel, Business Objects, web servers, Unix administration... it's all just the same thing with a different front end. While this is comfortable, it's not the best situation: hence, I find myself at the crisis crossroads.
Do I continue as I am? Do I change for something new? Do I leave entirely and start from scratch? Do do be doo?
These thoughts went round in my head for a long time. It's an important decision, after all. Then, slowly, I started noticing all the little pointers and signs. Now, I'm not one for "Signs And Portents" (Scary Ross reference that others won't understand!), but this just all seems to be the flow leading to a certain place at a certain time.
Firstly, there was the cleaning urge. Then there was the job question. Then I noticed that the episode of the TV series I was watching at that exact time was called "Into The Fire" and concerned the final confrontation of opposing sides, difficult choices and new beginnings. Then there was Psycho being 99.9% certain of having a job in two weeks. The little hairs on the back of my neck went "wooooo" and I started to think that, maybe, life was giving me a kick in the butt.
"Who are you?"
"What do you want?"
I think my decision is made. Now I just have to kick-start my brain and dig into the pile of work that's waiting.
I'm a stress-puppy. You wouldn't believe it to see me, since I tend to look fairly calm all the time, but I actually suffer a great deal from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (wooo, literary reference). I do, however, believe that whatever we put into life comes back three times over, so all my worrying is often (thankfully) for naught.
Today is an excellent example of this. I was just beginning to really panic for my finances: big overdraft at the bank (I paid out about $5,000 in the first few months of the year to cover debt and other difficulties for Psycho and myself), taxes to be paid, business taxes in the UK still hanging over my head from when I had my own company, daily bills to pay, charges from the bank for the overdraft and a couple of loans I made to friends which won't be coming back as soon as I had expected had put me in a difficult spot. Psycho is not any help in this situation: since I am effectively supporting her, the only thing she spends money on is herself.
Actually, that sounds harsh: she would help if she could, I imagine. I wouldn't ask, however. Pride, the killer of bank accounts.
Anyway, I was looking at my account this morning, wondering how the hell I was going to pay for food for the rest of the month - or, for that matter, the weekend. It was all getting a bit too much, so I went and read my email. It seems the Karma Comedian is back in town, waiting until the moment I start to get really nervous about things before paying back that which life owes me. I received an email today from my boss, detailing the end-of-year bonus.
Phew. Just in time to save my skinny butt.
Having ordered a bunch of stuff to finish up my pointless escapade into home networking last week, I was stupid enough to leave the box under my desk at work. I always ask to have stuff delivered there since it's more likely I will be around during daylight hours and, if not, there is a mail room which will kindly store and secure the package until I can pick it up. The company doesn't even mind, as long as we understand that they're not responsible for our personal stuff if someone decides to 'permanently borrow' it.
I brought the box home on Monday night and, yesterday, finally plugged everything in. The most astounding thing happened: it worked. I didn't have to rebuild, reconfigure or otherwise tweak anything at all... now that's a minor miracle! So I was able to work from home and have my main PC online at the same time yesterday, as well as the gateway with FTP and suchlike on it running. Cool!
Of course, in adding a new 80Gb drive to the gateway PC, I managed to destroy my old one with the FTP setup and directories on it. Something had to go wrong. D'oh.
Recently, I ordered some DVDs through an online service. Normally, I expect to run into problems with ordering online, simply because I live in a different country to that in which my debit card is registered: it's a card from the UK (if I'm buying in Sterling) and of course I'm in France. Consequently, companies often can't pass the card number through their automated systems and I will have to contact them and ask them to do it manually. This is not a huge problem, but can be annoying, especially since it's all in Europe and the banks should really be sharing such information.
With this last order, though, I ran into a new face of the same problem, apparently caused by anti-fraud measures. The company refused to send the DVDs to France because it's not the UK. I find this somewhat bizarre. Their reasoning was that I had ordered goods from France on a UK card: the card number is fine and is verified without difficulty, but because it's a non-UK address, they won't send the DVDs.
Despite the fact that the card has my French address registered to it and that this address is the same as the invoicing/delivery address, their anti-fraud checks mean they cannot send the goods unless it is within the UK. Am I the only one that thinks that asking them to send the goods to a UK address that is not the one on the card, not my current address and not even someone with the same name is more likely to be fraud?
Stupid people.
What's worse than coming in to the office on the day you would normally work from home?
Massive traffic jams on the way in to work?
The fact that the person you came in to meet with isn't here?
The fact that the other person you came in to meet with isn't here either?
The whiny phone call from Psycho?
Or, quite simply, all of the above?
Actually, I hate that expression. "Sup, man?" meaning "What's up?", which in turn is some kind of greeting, even though it sounds more like a query regarding someone's mental state, to be honest.
Regardless, I thought I'd do a quick recap of what's going on, partly because it might keep your eyes open for a couple more seconds (or alternatively lull you off to sleep) and partly because I can't remember everything I should be doing unless I write it down!
Firstly, I should explain the awful mess that is my flat. As you can see from the webcam pic (which actually isn't too out of date, for once), there's stuff all over the place. Beyond the blue square, which is the top of Pie's cat-tree, is a huge box in which the 'new' server was sent. On top of that is another box which had... er... something in it. I can't remember for the life of me what it was, but I'm sure it was useful.
The black thing on the left there is my computer chair, upon which much fur is deposited by Pie when he steals my place. He enjoys doing that: he waits until I get up to go to the kitchen or somewhere, then nips in quick and settles down to sleep. Cheeky monkey!
Over on the right, you might just be able to see an edge of my second monitor: this one is currently being shared between the 'new' server and my 'old' PC, which I now have set up as a gateway server. After months (or more) of not being able to get it to work for more than a few minutes, I sat and dismantled most of it at the weekend, read the motherboard manual and set it back up again. Surprisingly, it works and is still running after three or four days, non-stop. I hadn't set the BIOS stuff properly before: it's a Duron 800MHz and was running at 533, which was making it terribly unstable. Switching the dodgy HDD out of its primary position also helped.
On Thursday or Friday, I should receive some network cables to connect the two server PCs to the hub at the same time as my primary PC and also to connect my work laptop if it's at home. Finally, a working network. There will also be an 80Gb HDD to go in the gateway server, since it's rather tight for space at the moment. I decided to treat myself, since I'm usually paying for everyone else.
At work, I'm currently in the middle of a career crossroads. The old application that I have been running for the last four or five years is on the way out, so I shall be working on new things. The problem is I'm not passionate about any of those new things: they're vaguely interesting and I'll happily work on them to the best of my limited abilities... but they're just not my thing. Trouble is, I don't know what is my thing (and no, Scary Ross, I don't need your suggestions on that one, thank you!). Ah, well. It'll sort itself out in the end.
Psycho also appears to be fast approaching a junction in her life: from what I can gather, something major is coming soon (emotionally, not physically) and everything's going to hell in a handbasket. Or some other such cliché that describes how my days are going to feel like I'm being drawn and quartered.
I think that covers most of what's going on right now. Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my taking a permanent position here (no, I wouldn't have noticed - my boss sent an email to congratulate me and thank me for the 'first year' of service). Woooo.
As Janice from Friends would say if she saw the mountain of emails waiting for me this morning: "Oh. My. God."
I'm used to receiving a lot of email, especially if I go away on holiday, but coming back to almost 4,000 of them is a little excessive. I'm grateful I have a decent spam-spotter, as that removed about 1,800 of them immediately (allowing me to simply scan through rather than individually open them), but it still leaves me with a couple of thousand to check through before I can even do anything. Insane.
Ah, well... I know what I'll be doing for the rest of the day!