As a person with ADD, living amongst the noise, conversations and interruptions is not real easy, especially if I am supposed to Get Things Done along with the occupying of space. I persevere, but I'm not nearly as productive as I would be if I were screened off from this noise. Also, out here I cannot play my music unless I use a headset - and I can't use a headset unless I don't mind getting bitched at for not paying attention to someone who came up to my area and started to talk without regard to the fact that I was not hearing anything but the music. Information Technology is just overrun with bright people, but along with bright seems to come an extra load of pathology.
My middle child went on a date this past weekend. This is something new, and her son did not appreciate it. By the time she returned, neither her mother nor I appreciated it. We are no longer young, and by the time midnight rolls around we aren't all that interested in being awake - indeed, I have already gone to sleep three or four times in my chair in the living room. Sometimes Phyllis lets me sleep when she goes to bed, and I wake up beween 2:00 and 4:00 wondering just what that noise was (I have yet to figure it out - maybe it's my computer falling on the floor or something like that) and then get up and go to bed, put on my CPAP mask, turn the machine on, and go to sleep. Fortunately getting to sleep is not hard, even if I've had coffee just before I go to sleep. I think I've reached the age where my sleeping ability has reached its peak - and I sure hope that that lasts a while - it's a new thing for me, at least within recent years, and I like it that way.
Here at the office I'm occupied with making some stuff I did better. Or at least making it different - better is something best judged by me, and some days it's not better, just a little different. I'm trying to modify the major systems that go elsewhere to get data and then load it up into our Oracle to make it easy for someone other than myself to troubleshoot. If is kinda hard, because it very seldom fails, and when it does it is usually some outside influence (like a power failure in the server room) that causes it, and there's no way to script that recovery process, since servers as a generic class of device hate having their plugs pulled, and will do all kinds of miserable things to keep from restarting clean.
One small victory tody, however - there's a bit of mainframe stuff that has been "taught" to write directly to network storage instead of needing to write to itself so an operator can download the data onto the network for processing. Part of this involves some chatting back and forth between a server that manages virtual tapes (that is, tapes that really are not tapes but the mainframe thinks that they are tapes) in order for the server to tell the mainframe which tape drive that does not exist "owns" the tape that does not exist but is to be used anyhow. There was a bit of a problem with adata area not being cleaned out before sending a message to the mainframe console that I grabbed off and parsed to answer a different mainframe question so a human would not have to do this. The fact that the area was not being cleared occasionally caused the piece of the answer I needed to put elsewhere not to be where I thought it would be - but today I finally found that there was a way to find it always with about four more lines of program code, so that made me happy, at least for a while. I love automating things, particularly when some bozo tells me that it can't be automated - which is part of the backstory about this virtual tape server that we are using.
The only thing I have ever found that I could not do (aside from not using my hands to put things in my mouth to accumulate calories in quantity that I could not burn if I lived to be 352) is be unemotional in trying times, although I prefer to present the facade of being so. Then, when nobody is looking I go downstairs into my workshop and throw hammers in a corner. I used to shoot targets down there as well, but now that my grandson lives with us I have to keep the guns locked up. Probably just as well, I guess - my .357 was getting hard on the concrete wall when I missed the phone book backstops....
When I dropped my grandson at school this morning, it looked like snow. I just looked out the window, and it still looks like snow. I'd like for it not to snow, but if it is going to snow, I don't think it will ask me. I'm hoping for a couple more motorcycle days before the cruelty of winter sets in and sits on us - but I dunno; it is looking less and less likely.
My wife schimpfed at me the other day about the fact that there are two motorcycles parked in the carport and I haven't ridden one in some time, and asked me what I planned to do with it - and I told her I thought I'd put a sidecar on it. Now, a sidecar has only one thing going for it - it won't fall over on your knees - but I've heard it can me a real hoot to drive, and my grandson is forever bugging me to go along - so maybe it will come to fruition. The other motorcycle is an old Honda CB900 Custom hat has a two-speed transfer case before the 5 speed gearbox - and the lower range of the transfer case would be ideal for hauling the extra weight of a sidecar.
At least, that's the theory, and what I told Phyllis. Maybe after the new year a sidecar will come my way and I can get going on that little project. I've been told that a sidecar rig embodies all of the vices of automobile and motorcycle, and none of the virtues of either, but I think it might be kinda neat - and I'm getting too old to enjoy picking up motorcycles, especially when they're mine.
Well, I guess I have to get back to coding. I'd recommend folks visit http://dooce.com - it is an interesting blog, Heather is a real hoot to read, open, honest and funny, and some days she makes me feel really good.
Happy Monday, everyone.
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