January Is Almost Done

I just realized (and today is the day of my annual performance review) that I have no expectation of retiring from this company.

This is glaringly obvious, and yet it is something that I have overlooked until now, perhaps due to the glaring quality of its obviousness1. Many people in my business think the same way, although few of us talk about it.

For one thing, we have to keep current. For another, companies come and go. I’ve worked in this field since 1993, and in that time I have only worked for one company that hasn’t either ceased to exist or been radically changed, and that one company isn’t a place I’d work again unless I was desperate.

It’s a measure of how much the world has changed in my lifetime. The company I work for right now is a solid, profitable company, but I just don’t see it being around in 15 years, at least not doing what it is doing now. It’s a rather sobering realization.  If I follow the previous pattern, I will have at least five more jobs before I retire, and I don’t want that.

It’s a bit of a puzzle – where do  I go from here? If I settle into what I consider a long-term job, I run the considerable risk of being unemployable if that job should ever disappear. If I keep doing what I have been, I run the risk of being virtually unemployable as a 60 year old competing against 25 year olds.

Maybe I need to start using some of that Grecian formula for facial hair. Discreetly, of course.


  1. I think I will name a new particle that is responsible for the flow of obviousness – the obvion. Obvion flux gives an object or concept high obviousity. Obvions are big and make a loud buzzing sound when they move. They have the intriguing property of always being a colour straight across the colour wheel from the background.

Sometimes I Am At A Loss For Words

Hard to believe, I know.

I have never known exactly what to say when I inherit some code and design and everybody thinks that the person who created it was really brilliant, but when I look at it it’s actually kind of retarded.

Then someone comes over to talk about the code and notes that the cool part is where there’s a nested set of cursors to parse this one column where the connection history is stored as a comma-delimited string.

I have never known how to handle that other than with a sort of stunned silence. Which I suppose is better than a burst of incredulous laughter, or, were I less charitable and (only a little) meaner, some righteous crotch-kicking.

Overdue Update

I suppose I’ve been reluctant to post an update because I feel a little foolish.

The stress test showed that my heart is as healthy as I could want. This means that the discomfort was almost certainly from my stomach. I mentioned feeling foolish to the doctor (a rather attractive young woman of probably 35) and she said “Well, probably 60% of the men I get in here are similar. Trouble is, without running this test, I can’t tell for sure whether it’s your heart or your gut. And if I can’t tell, you sure can’t. And seeing as the consequence of ignoring a heart event is often death (and here she opened her eyes wide and emphasized the word comically), you did the right thing.”

I am left with a number of thoughts on this. First, I feel a bit foolish because men are supposed to be strong and ignore pain and walk through danger and laugh in the face of peril. That works when you need men to do things like join armies and kill encroaching bears. It doesn’t work so well in a modern society, where walking through danger looks more stupid than adaptive. Still, I am a creature of my upbringing, and so I feel foolish for having wasted people’s time and worried them. I am, however, enough of a man of the 21st century to acknowledge that I am ok looking foolish – if my family needs me to look foolish in order to be sure I won’t drop dead, I’ll feel like a clown for a while.

The other thought is that the feeling I had in the car on the way to the hospital is real. It is mid-life. I have accepted my own mortality. If I were a younger man, I would have been wondering what it was that was making me feel so odd. I would not have been confronting, cold and square, the fact that I have not updated my will to reflect my minor daughter’s wishes. I would not have had a moment of sharp, real regret that I had not done so, because the possibility of my own death was not real.

We all come to it at some point. I (as do most people) acknowledged my impending death intellectually but it was never real, never more than a mental exercise. From this I will try to hold onto the feeling I had in the interminable time we drove – I put my hand out and touched Christine, afraid that I was not going to be able to do so for much longer. Afraid that I had failed her, worried about how she would cope without me.

The danger was not real. The fear sure was.

Sunday Morning Flickr Babe

 

Mildly NSFW – bum crack.

Read the rest of this entry »

Happy New Year

2011 went out and 2012 came in with a bang. Or a thud, depending on how you look at it.

I’ve never been much of a New Year’s Eve sort of guy – I dislike being told that I have to have a good time and of all days of the year, New Year’s is the day where you’re supposed to have Fun! and Party! I can count the number of big New Year’s Eve parties I’ve been to on the fingers of one hand. I’d be able to do so even if I’d had a horrible industrial accident. Most New Year’s Eves have been quiet for me – we usually spend it with friends with kids, or at home.

I have never spent a New Year’s Eve like I did this year’s, though.

About 10:30 on New Year’s Eve, Chris, HouseApes 1.0 and 3.0 and I were home. We were in the rec room, doing rec room stuff, when I felt what at first I thought was indigestion. This was no major surprise – we’d had three kinds of fondue for dinner: surf n turf, cheese, and chocolate. I took some antacid.

But the indigestion didn’t go away, and in fact it felt rather higher – not pain, but a pressure like someone was squeezing. I noticed that my palms were sweating, and my hairline was damp.

That scared me, and I told Chris I needed to go the hospital. She took one look at my face and asked whether we needed an ambulance. I said no. It was a strange trip – I was starting to feel ill, and while I was in a definitely altered state, there was a horrible clarity to the thoughts that were running through my head -what about Chris? What about HouseApe 1.0? How would Chris cope if I came out of this incapacitated or dead? What would this mean for HouseApe 1.0 in my custody fight with her mother?

For anyone with doubts about the Canadian medical system: I gave them my medical number. I told them I was having chest distress, and I was in, triaged, and hooked up to an EKG within 10 minutes. I had blood drawn and chest xrays within a half hour. Chris stayed with me for a while – we celebrated New Year’s with a kiss as timed by the heart monitor I was connected to, and then she left to care for our children.

I was released at 5 AM New Year’s Day after a monumentally unrestful night. I had a bed in the ER, and there were head injuries and people wanting a little reassurance and another guy with chest pain and a contentious second or third wife and foul-mouthed daughter in attendance, and further down there was an abusive drunk screaming obscenities.

Both EKGs were clear, and two sets of blood showed no signs of damage. I have a followup set of tests to be scheduled. I assume from the relative leisure of the appointment (within two weeks) that either this was a minor event, or it was nothing, just a little gas from rich food. I chose to walk home, both in an attempt to let Chris get as much sleep as possible, and as recognition that my lifestyle has to change.

Because even if this turns out to have been an attack of gas (and I don’t think it was) the experience in the car, that of really seriously regretting not getting your will changed to protect your oldest daughter is a sobering fucking moment, people.

Happy New Year. Love a lot, people. The world’s got enough envy and shame and greed to go round.

 

 

Favourites III

This was shot in June of this year, as I remember. Next year, the recital will be held in a different venue and I don’t know if I am going to be able to find such a good vantage point.

Favourites II

I really like this one. The shallow depth of focus is intentional – I wanted your eye to go to the top group of blossoms while leaving you aware that it was one group of several.

I don’t have many black-and-white florals – they’re hard to do. People expect colour in florals. I’ve done a number of black-and-white images of things like cherry blossoms, but I’ve not been happy with them. This one, I’m happy with.

Thematic Photographic 177

Carmi’s Thematic Photographic 177 – Your Favourites.

I have so many…

I like this one a lot.

 

The Aftermath

Christmas has, until the last couple of years, been a time of heavy stress at Chez Entropez. I was always in Campbell River the days before Christmas and I’d be on the 6:30 ferry from Nanaimo on Christmas morning. That meant leaving around 4:30 AM after 3 or 4 days spent with HouseApe 1.0 and her mother, who is an exhausting person to deal with.

I’d get to Aldergrove around 9:00 AM – I’d sometimes have some dinner prep to do depending on what we’d arranged that year, and then Chris would arrive with HouseApes 2.0 and 3.0. We’d open presents, and then Chris would send me upstairs for a nap before we had to leave at 1:00 or 2:00 for wherever we were going for Christmas dinner.

Chris and I seldom fight, but Christmas Day was often good for one.

Last year I was here, of course, but HouseApe 1.0 went to Campbell River and returned on the 26th. This year HouseApe 1.0 decided that she wanted to spend Christmas with us and so I retrieved her from the ferry on the 23rd.

This meant a much more relaxed and enjoyable Christmas. There were still the usual Christmas stresses – stores jammed, lines for everything, entertaining and being entertained, lists and remembering things and going places and doing things, but it was just much easier and more laid back and I wasn’t absolutely exhausted on Christmas Day.

HouseApe 2.0 spends Christmas Eve with her dad, and then comes over Christmas morning. So we got up in our usual order, me, then HouseApe 3.0. I made Chris a latte, then 1.0 got up about 8. We went through our stockings and then I cleaned the aftermath of Christmas Eve while Chris and 1.0 made monkey bread and baked bacon. I made cafe-au-lait and we had breakfast. At 10:30 HA 2.0 arrived and the gifting commenced.

Highlights include two knives (one assembled, one not – I got a knife in kit form!) and two cookbooks for me, sheepskin slippers for Chris-of-the-perpetually-cold-feet, the new Zelda game and a magic wand for 1.0, two see-through model people with guts and a GIANT makeup box for 2.0, and a really big Nerf gun and a Lego Technics truck for 3.0. The Family were gifted with an Xbox 360 and a board game called Small World.

Today, the 26th, is Boxing Day in Canada, and we will spend it doing not much – eating too much and checking out our new loot, mostly. I will probably play some Forza 4, the girl children will go to the mall, and we’ll all just chill.

The Last Friday Before Christmas

I think I need a holiday. For some reason I have often found the sound of people typing irritating. I don’t always find it so, but one of the first signs that I am irritable is that I grit my teeth when someone near me starts typing a long email. Not all typing bothers me – Chris’ typing doesn’t – but a lot does. Part of it is sharpness and general volume – some people stroke the keys, others hammer them. I am irritated by hammering.

I mention this only because it is a sign that I need a break, and the marketing dweeb an aisle-o-cubicles over has been typing some dipshittery-or-other for the last fifteen minutes. He is a hammerer1.

I feel thin, fragile, in these days before Christmas. The days are short and I find the lack of light affects me – I’d like to see the sky above the Arctic Circle at this time of year, see what 24 hours of darkness is like, but I couldn’t live there, no.

Anyway, the days are getting longer now, even if imperceptibly, and I have a week of non-work to look forward to. I pick HouseApe 1.0 up from the ferry this afternoon, and tomorrow night we will have our first ever Christmas Eve with 2/3 (66.6666…%) of our children. The best either of us has ever managed before is 1, so this year, while we are and will remain short of the full complement, we are 100% better than last year.

I suppose that an end of the year post is due at some point, a wrapup of the year’s events, and possibly a forecasting of what is to come for 2012. Such a post might include:

  • the work done on the house this year, which, if I am realistic, was quite a lot considering that the bulk of it was done by one fat guy.
  • the fact that a full year after filing for child support, I have received a grand total of $300.
  • the accomplishments of various children.
  • the work still to do on the house which, if I am realistic, is still a lot.

I have been toying with dumping this blog again. It doesn’t really serve any purpose – barely anyone reads it, and there are no prizes to be won. Every time I think of it, though, I realize that I occasionally read back through it – it’s a sort of fragmented social history of me and various aspects of Chez Entropez. I think it’s worth keeping for that reason alone. I do, however, need to spend some time on it – I’d like to move it to a more photo-friendly look-n-feel.


  1. Long ago, long, long ago, I worked across a cubicle wall from a major hammerer. I called him Art the Annoying Typist (as imaginative as that sounds). He wasn’t a hunt-n-pecker, but he sounded like one, and an angry one that that. He had a particular hatred for the space bar. BAP-BAB-BAM!-BAP-BAP-BAP-BAM!BAM! (Art was one of those who had been told once to put two spaces after a sentence and so that’s what he did.) Ah, the good old days, Art typing, me emailing Christine to rant about Art the Annoying Typist…