Category: Uncategorized

Monday?

Did that weekend even happen?  How is it Monday already?

Saturday saw softball try outs, piano lessons, a trip to the mall, playing with the computer set up in the living room, two kids who are over 10 years old but still discovering a new (very silly) fascination with Disney Junior, the younger of the two kids finished reading the first Hunger Games book and later that night we watched the movie.  Just before the bloodbath (if you know the story, you know what I’m talking about) he came over and sat on the chair with me (his big sister has already read all three books and had already seen the movie) and later he was a little freaked out by the mutts (again, if you know the story you know of what I speak).

On Sunday I was on call.  As mentioned yesterday, I usually don’t get calls during update coverage, but the phone rang three times.  Fortunately only one required me to log in, and that was just to go in and look at something quick.  I didn’t actually have to do anything.  I feel fortunate, although each time the phone rings I die a little inside.  I’m not joking.  I panic, just a little.

Somehow the day blew past without making a blip on my radar.  There were baseball try outs, but dad had to take care of that as Jen was working and I couldn’t be away from a computer for that long.  Honestly, I was crushed by that.  I felt awful.  It was our weekend, and I was unable to be the baseball guy who showed the support for the baseball player.  I really feel terrible about that.

Now it is Monday.  My foot is starting to bother me again, but only a little so far.  I wonder if my sneakers are involved in the problem.  I have two pairs of shoes; sneakers and work shoes.  Because my feet are HUGE and oddly shaped, I have a difficult time finding shoes that fit well.  My work shoes do not fit well.  They are a touch too long, and slightly more than a touch too wide.  I also can’t seem to tie them tight enough to make them snug enough.  On the other hand, my sneakers fit perfectly.  They may be the best fitting shoes I’ve had since puberty.  Why then is it that when the foot pain starts it is always on a Monday morning, after two solid days worth of wearing the shoes that actually fit?  Next weekend I am going to try staying barefoot whenever I’m indoors.  Let’s see if that helps.

Musically I have beds down for three songs.  One is a Prime Meridian song from 1997, another was played by Prime Meridian but originated when Mike and I played with a drummer named Dan back in oh… 1994 or 1995, and the third goes all the way back to 1992 and is probably the one song I’ve monkeyed with the arrangement for more than any other song I’ve ever written.  It’s also the only song I’ve ever written about a Sports Illustrated swim suit calendar.  All three are ready for guitars and vocals, and one will get some sax as well.  Maybe I’ll have something to post to alonetone.com by next weekend.

If only this past weekend hadn’t come and gone in a blink, I might have gotten more done.  Where does the time go?

On Call

I’m on call as of 40 minutes ago. There are three on call scenarios. Lives, for when customers start using our software for real, updates for when customers who are already live take a new release, and off hours coverage for holidays and weekends where any customer who has a problem calls you. We get paid for updates and off hours, but we only get comp time for lives. Off hours is a living hell of pain and suffering. See most of my entries from January 1, 2013 for more. Lives almost never result in calls. We are there if we are needed, but we are rarely if ever needed. Updates are a relatively new thing for us. They are a shorter time span and they almost never result in calls.

I’m on update coverage starting at 10:00am Eastern time today, through start of business at 9:00am tomorrow. While the updates I’ve covered have generally been quiet and easy for me, the one exception was a very large customer in Canada who had a really rough go of their last update.

Guess who I’m covering today. Go on, guess…

Lets hope this time goes better for them, and me, than last time. Fingers crossed.

Softball

Last night I picked three more old songs to reinvent. I started playing around with one of them but didn’t get very far. I won’t have a chance to continue this morning because something that actually has meaning and importance is happening…

Softball try outs.

You know the happy good weather Spring time awesomeness is right around the corner when the try out season arrives.

Good luck to my amazing step daughter. I hope she makes the ass kickingest team.

Deer!

I walked into the bedroom to get my MacBook to maybe noodle some tunes.  I saw some motion through the window.

A Deer!

I called the kids in and leaned up to the window.  I saw a second, then a young third, then I looked over to the far side of the house and saw four more!  Seven deer in the yard!  Not in the woods, they were trudging through the snow in the back yard.  It was awesome!

Goal!

Martin Brodeur is the greatest goalie in the history of professional hockey.  Last night, he was also a goal scoring machine.

It wasn’t a case of “he shoots he scores”, it was more like “he makes a save during a delayed penalty and some Whaler makes a crappy pass that banks off the boards in the New Jersey end and deflects all the way down to the Whaler’s end and goes right smack into the middle of the net”.

It was the third goal of his career.  100 years from now, some kid walking through the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto is going to see the Martin Brodeur display and it is going to list his career stats:
9 billion wins.
2 billion shutouts.
3 goals.

Note, I have watched this video but I have not listened to it.  I do not know if any hockey announcers say anything stupid or not.  You’ve been warned.

Staying with the hockey theme, as I posted yesterday, I got home from picking up the kids and put the game on the radio.  By radio, I mean the CBS radio iPhone app that streams 98.5 WBZ FM.  As soon as the stream reached my ear pods Ottawa scored.  I listened for a while feeling completely underwhelmed by the Bruins performance.  Before the second period ended I put the game on the TV.  With less than two minutes left in the second the Bruins tied the game.  Intermission started, I went to say good night to the first step child.  I then watched some of the third period and the Bruins were not the snooze inducing hockey boredom machines they had been in the second.  They had a little more life.  I had to go downstairs and do some laundry business, then say good night to the second step child, then turn out all the lights and lock the doors, then get into bed.  I had planned to listen to the end of the game while reading a little, but I was a little late.  I checked the score.  Bruins win 2-1.

This season’s shortened schedule really is an insult to hockey lovers everywhere.  The Bruins have played 29 games and we’re already nearly 75% of the way through the season.  That’s garbage.  The reason you play a long season is so that everyone can get the crap kicked out of them by life itself, and the really good teams separate themselves from the not so good teams.  That’s not going to happen this year.  I mean, the Leafs are in sixth in the East.  That’s all the proof you need!

Having said that, I don’t really see the Bruins contending for the Cup the way many in the press seem to.  They just don’t have the fire yet.  They don’t have the killer instinct.  They have lost four games in which they had the lead in the third period.  When they are good they are outstanding.  When they aren’t good they are maddeningly boring and mediocre.

The third period last night was a nice change from the recent snooze.  Let’s hope the momentum continues Saturday night in Toronto.

Go Bruins.

I’m Tired

I feel weird right now.  I’m very tired.  Sleeping doesn’t seem to help as much as it should.  How weird is that?  Jen and I both go to bed completely tired, and then wake up 6-7 hours later feeling just as tired as we did when we went to bed.

The weekend is upon us but it is probably not going to be a restful one.  There are softball try outs tomorrow along with piano class.  Some housework needs to be attended to.  Jen has work work and school work to do.

On Sunday I am on call for a major customer’s major software update.  These things normally do not require me to work, but the last time this customer went through an update I had to work quite a bit.

That’s bad, but what’s worse is that my step son has little league try outs on Sunday and I can’t be away from a computer.  I’m crushed.  I want so badly to support the kids in their baseball/softball careers.  In the last year my step son has become a fanatical baseball fan and he and I can gab about the game endlessly.  My step daughter doesn’t get nearly as wrapped up in things, but every coach she’s had has made it a point to tell me how good she is.  I know enough about the game to be able to tell that for myself, thank you, but it’s always great to hear it from coaches.  She’s good.  She’s really good.

I love baseball.  I loved playing when I was a kid even though I was always the worse kid on the team.  Just being around the game was so much fun.  I want my step kids to feel that way too, and I want to be there to encourage every little detail.  On Sunday, however, I am going to miss out on something for one of them.  I’m really disappointed in myself.  Don’t get me wrong, I know how good I have it schedule wise as far as my job is concerned.  The commute sucks, the money is low, and I get stressed out like mad at times, but I punch in at 9:00 and I punch out at 5:30 and the changes to that schedule, being on call or what not, are few and far between.  I have my weekends, and when my wife’s incredibly intense schedule comes into the equation I am able to get the kids where they need to be, or get the errands done.  It pleases me that I can do those things and I really shouldn’t bitch about the rare instance where work does get in the way of something on a weekend… but I’m still going to bitch and you just have to deal with it.

So I am tired right now.  I’ve been sleeping okay, it just hasn’t made much of a difference.  Now I’m annoyed too because I won’t be there for my step son on Sunday.  So I’m tired and annoyed.  Being annoyed makes me more tired.  Being tired makes me more annoyed.

Oh please, please let this be a quiet day at work.