The Tattered Day in the Work Life

Today I spent the first two hours of my morning typing out a massive email missive to my current manager at work. As is typical for me it was a bit on the irreverent side (if not completely insubordinate), pried deeply into managerial corners that are completely not my concern as a mere grunt employee and contained the sorts of things that just don’t generally endear employees to their employers.

With that little bit of fun behind me I couldn’t help thinking back over my work history at all the amusing things I’d done in the past to make a buck. If I go really far back it seems I’ve always had a way of seeking out and doing the shittiest jobs I could find. I remember when I was working in ye olde Terry Courts kitchen at Purdue. Most of the kitchen staff avoided cleaning duties like the plague but if I was around I’d happily take the industrial abrasives to the old grill cook top after a night of cooking up 250 cheeseburgers. There was something inexplicably appealing to me in doing the work that everyone else hated.

After college of course things changed mightily. I remember working Tech Support at a software company and the phone system let you see who was waiting in the old phone queue. It didn’t take long to figure out who the problem customers were since they’d inevitably sit on hold for 20 minutes while half the staff who were supposed to be on duty got up and walked around the office ‘not noticing’ while poor Steve Morgan sat in the queue for what must have seemed like forever. I never really seemed to mind the problem customers so much though. At best, they had an interesting problem to be resolved and at worst they made a damn funny story. Sadly though that couldn’t last forever. Eventually the software company closed; we made a 10-foot-long curtain from paperclips, put together a 1000-piece puzzle and then the office was no more.

Then came the fun of interviewing again. I’ve always said that I interview like a sack of wet potatoes but I really think that’s unfair to the potatoes in a way. I distinctly recall having said unfortunate things like, “Then I’m probably not the person you want to hire. Unless there is nobody else.” But then, I’m all about honesty in the interview process because frankly, who wants a job they’re not qualified for? If you take the sum total of all interview questions I’ve ever been asked, my most popular response has probably been, “I have no clue but I’m sure I can find out.”

Any rate, interviewing skills aside, it wasn’t long before I landed a sweet gig at Corporate Systems Engineering. I’m sure you can tell from their name that they do electrical grid load management devices. These people introduced me to such winning concepts as the 26-hour workday. It would have been less infuriating if I’d actually had something to DO during these 26 hours but I was there ‘just in case they needed something.’ I was there for a year and I recall one especially amusing directive. My boss asked me to write 15 test programs for their hardware device. My first and obvious question was simply, “Why don’t we just write one test program that’s flexible enough to do all 15 tests?” He looked at me like a cow looks at an oncoming train and responded that it would be impossible and too complicated. Luckily, he left for Florida for a week immediately afterwards so I had time to finish the ‘impossible’ task before he got back to complain about it.

I worked at that bastion of intellect for about a year and got the next job I interviewed for. It just so happened that on the day I had the 26-hour workday I also had a job interview. So I left work at 10am after having been there for 26 straight hours (they were gracious enough to give me half a day off) and went to sleep for about 3 hours until I had to get up for my 2pm job interview. When I rolled into the IT manager’s office for the interview I was quite a sight. But let me tell you when the interviewer asked that inevitable question, “Why are you leaving your current job?” the bleary-eyed response of “Because I just got off at 10 this morning after working 26 hours straight” probably left a pretty stark impression because I got the job.

Needless to say, I left Corporate Systems after the obligatory 2-weeks notice. I often wonder how they’re getting along as during my year there I basically rewrote every bit of software they had. I can’t imagine how much cursing and general yelling must have gone on in that office trying to unravel an entire company’s worth of software that nobody understands. But, as the owner always said, he could hire ‘any $50,000 a year programmer’ to do my job so I’m sure he replaced me practically the next day with an equivalent employee. Ass.

The next job was relatively uneventful as it was pretty short lived. I was only there for a few months and only managed to become partially convinced that the whole place was a disaster. My manager there also got a huge earful of my opinion about every topic possible. I recall one day I went into his office and railed bitterly about the contractors we had in the office. My argument was simply that we shouldn’t have all these contractors in positions of architecting our systems as they have absolutely no motivation to do a good job. In fact, the worse job they do the longer they get to stay. My thesis was a determined one and I stated it without hesitation. It wasn’t until later that I realized that my manager himself was a contractor. He seemed to take it pretty well all in all.

Sadly, the secret rantings of the current job cannot be shared. But do check back later when I’ve shuffled off this current mortal coil and perhaps I’ll have some more happy anecdotes to share.

Project: Child's Growth Chart

I have to say that I like the outcome of this little project but sadly it's only about 30% my doing. The concept and final preparation was my wife's.

Atheist As&holes

So as part of my isolation rehabilitation I’ve gone out looking for some random online conversation. For the most part, this has been in the form of a few carelessly selected yahoo groups. One of these was some group of ‘Freethinker Atheists’ who claimed their group was a place where “[doubters] can become comfortable with those doubts.” I consider that goal in itself to be a little suspect but let’s put that aside at least.

In general, the group seems to practice simple hatred. The members clearly blame religion for all the world’s ills and they say so, often and in just so many words. While I don’t profess any religion myself and tend to look at most of them with at least a seed of suspicion I can’t say that I can in lay mankind’s woes completely at the feet of religion. Obviously religion has contributed significantly to the causes of human ignorance and given people newer and more perverse reasons to hate and kill each other but in general I think that lacking religion they’d find some other reason to do the same things.

Worse perhaps than their hatred is their pompous attitude about the whole topic. It is clear from their language and tone that they see absolutely NO possibility that they could be wrong about anything. Their approach to atheism is as rigid and dogmatic as the most conservative of modern religions that they argue against. They completely fail to acknowledge that they dabble in the realm of the unproveable and the ill-defined.

On a personal level I don’t really see what the big argument is about. If a person chooses to be Christian then so be it and the same with any other religion. All I ask is that you practice in a manner that’s self-consistent. If you choose to worship Satan then worship Satan all the time and not merely when convenient. Religion is a personal choice and one has to choose what serves best but one must do so without hypocrisy. The atheists seem to make their stand on the platform of reason and freedom but then give advice to new members that they should ‘pretend to be religious’ so they don’t draw attention to themselves. If there is a God, I can imagine no greater sin than such fundamental dishonesty with oneself and others.

Finally, I’m not really certain how a truly honest and intelligent person can completely discount ANY theory about the universe around us. Despite time-worn arguments to the contrary, it is entirely possible that the Earth is only a few thousand years old and all the evidence we see around us to the contrary is a mere sham meant to condemn us all to hell. It’s possible. Now, it doesn’t make any SENSE (at least from a human’s limited perspective on the issue) but it doesn’t HAVE to make sense to be true. In the past when things that didn’t make sense turned out to actually be true we changed our thinking to match. That’s called science. On a most fundamental level, everything is still possible. Everything. We could be all part of some God’s dream and not really exist at all. The Bible may be literally true. Life could have been seeded here from another planet by aliens who occasionally visit us and were interpreted by primitive peoples as Gods. All these are well within the realm of possibility. I can’t disprove yours and you can’t disprove mine. As I often amuse myself by saying:

“Everything susceptible to mathematical proof has no application to the real world and everything in the real world is too complex to be represented mathematically. So you can’t prove anything of any real relevance.”

New Reading Strategy & Purple Hibiscus

In the interest of finding some random book chitchat, I’ve interrupted my regular reading list to take on something from one of the infinite number of online book clubs. Selected primarily because it was reading something fairly modern and seemed well populated I popped into booksamonth on yahoo groups. They happen to be reading ‘Purple Hibiscus’ by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and therefore, in accordance with the purpose of the group, so did I. The actual speaking members of the group seem to be comprised entirely of women. I’ve been lurking for at least a week and I’ve yet to see an obvious male post. While the book was one that leaned toward the more feminine gender I’d expect at least one man to be present in the club. Perhaps someone will suggest some Tolstoy next; that’ll awaken the male perspective.

As to the book, it’s a pretty straightforward one. The narrator, 15-year-old Kambili, lives in Nigeria with her extraordinarily rich Catholic father and mother and her older brother Jaja. Because of his own strict religious upbringing Kambili’s father is strict with the children and his wife to the point of outright abuse in the name of keeping them on the straight and narrow. Like all children, Kambili and Jaja accept that their lives are normal ones until they visit their aunt in a neighboring town. There they see normal family interactions (though colored by the ravages of poverty) and when they return home they find they can no longer behave in accordance with father’s idea of perfection. Quickly matters come to a head and Kambili is beaten nearly to death by her father and spends several weeks in hospital. The near loss of her daughter is finally enough to spur Kambili’s mother from her terrified stupor and she poisons the father to release them all from his iron will. When the police discover the cause of the father’s death they come to the house to ask question but Jaja takes the rap for the murder and goes to jail in his mother’s place. The ‘Purple Hibiscus’ of the title refers to a hybrid of the plants given to Jaja by his aunt on their first visit. These plants represent the ‘knowledge of good and evil’ if you will that the children brought back from their aunt’s home.

Overall, I’d say the book was satisfactory but not great. The storyline was relatively unsurprising but the setting and details of the whole thing were rather amusing. The portrait of everyday Nigerian life was enlightening. The book was on the Long List for the Booker prize in 2003 so I’ve added a sprinkling of the 2006 Booker Prize nominees [Okay, I’ll be honest, I’ve added every Booker nominee ever] to my ‘to be read’ pile. I think this will add a bit of something more modern to the queue and lighten things up a significantly. If one thing can be said it’s that this was much lighter fare than the Conrad I’m working on at the moment.

Project: Laundry Room Cabinets

Anyone who's been to our laundry room knows that for almost the entire time we've lived in the house the cabinets there have been... well, somewhat sad. When we installed them, my wife wanted them painted white and we did that in the sloppiest manner possible. Then my wife decided she'd like pictures painted on them so she painted a rather lop-sided blue dress on one and then promptly decided she didn't like it and it's been sadly sitting there ever since. One door with a crazy blue border, one door with a poor-looking blue dress painted on it and one door just stock white.

This weekend as her valentines day gift I've finished my wife's laundry-room project by cutting some flowers out of some plywood and applying appropriate paint.

The Bible - Matthew: Chapter 2: The Visit of the Magi

Jesus is born in Bethlehem of Judea during the reign of Herod (37-4 B.C.). Not long after, some unspecified number of gentiles show up in Jerusalem looking for the ‘King of the Jews’ who was recently born. They’ve been following a star from the east. This of course troubles Herod who fancies himself the King. He consults the scholars who refer to Micah 5:2 which correctly pins Jesus in Bethlehem. Herod sends the gentiles (magi) to Bethlehem with instructions to report back when they find their king. The magi continue on following the star and finding the child they seek present him with gold and various tree saps. God warns them not to go back to Herod so they take the long way home around Jerusalem.

After the gentiles leave, an angel appears to Joseph in another dream and warns him to flee to Egypt as Herod has plans to find Jesus and dispose of him. Herod, finding the magi aren’t about to report back with any juicy Jesus gossip, orders all the male children under two be slain in Bethlehem. After some uncounted number of years, Herod dies and an angel again appears to Joseph ordering him back to Israel. On the way, Joseph learns that the cruel Archelaus was ruling in Israel and is terrified to return. With a most un-Godlike manner, God appears to change his mind and comes to Joseph in a dream and orders him instead to Galilee. Jesus arrives in the city of Nazareth.

The Bible - Matthew: Chapter 1: The Genealogy of Jesus the Messiah

Reminiscent of Genesis Chapter 10, Matthew opens with a genealogy. In summary, Abraham was the father of Isaac; Isaac was the father of Jacob, etc, etc through King David who was father to Solomon, etc, etc through Jehoshaphat to Jacob, father of Joseph. Joseph is husband to Mary to whom Jesus is born.

But we get ahead of ourselves… Joseph and Mary are betrothed but before they can complete their marriage Mary is found to be pregnant. Under Jewish law at the time, a betrothal was binding and could only be broken by a divorce. But Joseph, being just, resolves to take care of the issue quietly. Before the divorce can proceed and much to Mary’s relief, an angel appears to Joseph in a dream and tells him that Mary is carrying the son of the Holy Spirit and that he shall be named Jesus. The angel declares that the child will save His people from their sins and that his birth is a fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14 which foretells the birth of a son to a virgin who shall be named Immanuel.

Joseph awakes from the dream and takes Mary as his wife and kept his hands off her until after the birth of Jesus. The Bible remains quiet (thusfar anyway) on how society views Joseph for either taking someone who appears to be an adulteress as a wife or despoiling his bride before their wedding night.

The Bible - Matthew: Introduction

The following entry represents my notes and observations as I read ‘Zondervan’s NASB Study Bible’. The text of the entry is my best attempt to summarize a large volume of text for easier reference in the future. As I go, I will compare and contrast the text of the NASB with ‘The New Oxford Annotated Bible’ by Oxford University Press. If a passage is not specified as referring to either the Oxford or NASB version of the Bible then it can be assumed that it applies to both works. Passages specific to one or the other will be marked with either [NASB] or [OXF] as appropriate. Any person who differs with any detail of interpretation is invited to comment and include specifics and I’ll be happy to reexamine the passage(s) at issue.

Introduction

Much as we found in the Old Testament, our two texts seem to disagree greatly on who exactly wrote this bit of ancient literature. Oxford attributes it to an anonymous author who used some collected writings of Matthew as a guide. The NASB seems to gently suggest that Matthew wrote the text using the writings of Mark as a guide.

Our author in name at least is Matthew, a reformed tax collector. Matthew goes by the name Levi in Mark and Luke. Opinions on a date for the work vary but seem to settle around a period from 50 to 100 A.D. The purpose of the text was a simple one: to prove to the Jews of the time that Jesus was indeed their messiah and demonstrate that he fulfilled the predictions set forth in the Old Testament. In 28 chapters the life, ministry and death of Jesus are laid out for us…

Best Friends Forever

Friendship… such a funny word. Merriam-Webster defines friendship as “the state of being friends.” Gee, thanks, very helpful. It goes on to define a friend as “one attached to another by affection or esteem” or “one that is not hostile.” So basically, according to our friends at the dictionary company, anyone with whom you are not currently at all-out war is your friend. That seems a very broad definition but not really all that factual. By that definition, I’m friends with the entire world.

Personally, I have to say that the requirements of friendship are a wee bit more stringent. Let me put on my lexicographical hat on for a moment and give it a shot.

Friend: One with whom a person has regular and meaningful social interaction across bounds of convenience.

Boy, looking back at it, that’s pretty opaque. The best way to do this may be by example. So that guy that you see at work every day and exchange break room chit chat with, he’s not your friend unless you have some interaction with him outside that convenient little box of just happening to meet in the break room. The girl across the hall that you work with on that project for six months and then never speak to again, she’s not your friend either until you ask her out. It’s not until you break through the limits of ‘just happen to be pushed together by fate’ that you move from acquaintanceship into real friendship.

Silly definitions aside, I’ve always had a bit of a personal issue with the concept of friendship. It’s like any term of esteem; when you call someone ‘my friend’ there’s an implied request for reciprocation on the friend’s behalf. If I say, “Yes, this is my friend, Jay” then it’s incumbent upon Jay to reciprocate. Personally, that seems like a lot of pressure to put on someone so I tend to refer to everyone as ‘acquaintances’. Nice and safe, nobody minds being acquainted.

From Plastic Monkeys to Axe-wielding Maniacs

At the end of this month, it will be 15 months that I’ve been working at home and to be quite honest, there are some days when I just want to get my daughter on the bus and sit quietly staring out the window for 8 hours until she gets back home. I remember having this exact same feeling in school as a lad because I suffered from basically the exact same conditions. Despite the fact that there were people all around me I was more or less completely isolated socially. The reasons are relatively varied and no doubt already documented somewhere in this long and semi-periodic exposition of a blog but the effect was largely the same. I spent the first 18 years of my life interacting with the same 2-3 people and here again I find myself in the same situation. Except for the Christmas Eve out with The Boss and his Wife, my sphere of meaningful and non-work conversation has been exactly four people, two face-to-face and two electronic for the last year or more. Somehow, ‘speaking’ to someone electronically just doesn’t quite cut it.

I’m told, oddly, that this is just the way it is. Modern men just don’t have friends. If this is the case, then that completely sucks. So while my wife is chattering away with her friends for hours on end, going out for ‘coffee’ and throwing baby showers for people I’m just supposed to sit here in my stew of whatever it is I happen to be doing this month? Or perhaps just answer an email or two? What a hollow life society bestows upon us.

It is useful to note though that it was not always this way. When I worked in Customer Support at a software company we were a very tightly-knit group. I actually still talk to some of those people. It is this act of communicating with someone across such barriers of inconvenience that form my primary definition of friendship. In no job since that one though, have I come even remotely close to ‘making a friend.’ I can’t imagine for a moment that the Customer Support people were any more or less compatible with me than my subsequent co-workers but clearly the environment is different enough to keep a considerable distance between me and the person working next to me. Working at home though I don’t even have a ‘next to me’ so whatever hope there may have been for crossing those barriers is long gone.

Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m simply poorly suited to socialize at any level. I read a study once about baby monkeys who were taken from their mothers and instead fed by plastic ‘mothers’ made up to look like adult monkeys. The ‘mothers’ were basically just food dispensers. The baby could go to its ‘mother’ and suckle and were fed as well as normal monkeys but never had any social interaction with an adult, just a plastic doll. When these monkeys grew up they just sat in the corner terrified to move. It’s hard not to cry when you think about those poor monkeys especially when in many ways you ARE one of those monkeys. My mother was just about as much like a plastic mannequin as a person can get. I always had plenty to eat and suitable clothing but on an emotional level it was clear I was merely in the way. Family lore even has it that when my father saw my mother in the hospital after I had been taken off to the nursery her first words to him were, “How are the dogs?” I was a mere afterthought, a mere biological inconvenience, an exceptional bit of afterbirth not so easily disposed of.

Penultimately, it’s worth writing down a few of the theoretical solutions to this little “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” conundrum. The first and most obvious is to simply ‘go back to the office’. This is a doomed proposition though in my mind. First and foremost, I worked in the office for 2 years and didn’t manage to make even an iota of progress. I spent the first year sitting literally thrust into a corner by myself. I ticked off whole WEEKS on my calendar when I spoke to nobody in the whole company except for my own boss (amusingly an acquaintance from the Customer Support job). I was as good as a remote employee even when I was in the office. By the time the office had expanded enough that I had immediate neighbors I was already established as the ‘hermit in the corner’ and had a personality poorly equipped to overcome such an image. Add to that the fact that the last time I was in the office I felt like a downright disruption rather than a visitor and I think we can safely conclude that going back to work in the office isn’t the way to break out of my bubble. If anything, it’s more likely to deepen my existing cynicism.

It has also been proposed that I should go take a class at one of the many local colleges. While I don’t disagree with this proposal, the timing couldn’t be worse. I’d happily go take a writing class at U of I and probably will if I think about it at the right time but classes just started so one can’t simply break in in the middle of a semester. I’ll file that away for later consideration.

The third and crappiest option that occurs to me is to simply increase my online chattering. There is no end of random lonely people on the internet which may share enough of my interests to be interesting to talk to. Perhaps there’s a book club out there that reads literature rather than whatever the current Oprah selection is.

One thing that I can take from this with certainty is that most of the isolation I feel is completely my own fault. My current company prides itself on a sense of cohesiveness and to look at those outside my bubble that does indeed seem to be the case. They get along perfectly (at least from my perspective in the bubble) and seem to have a lot of ‘fun’. The conclusion one is forced to is that I’m the one screwing up. Perhaps it’s leftover from the schoolyards of my boyhood but whenever I approach someone to interact I can’t get over the thought that it’s probable that I’m disturbing them in some way. That they would just as soon roll along in whatever track they were traveling than be diverted by any of my inane babblings. I’m sure that attitude, though born of benevolence on my part, makes me look like an ass to the outside world. In some twisted way, I think I have to be less considerate of others (at least from my viewpoint) in order to be seen as friendly or approachable. I suspect this is how the baby monkeys feel too.