Tag: flashback

Flashback

I watched a video on youtube tonight of a band playing in a bar in DC back in the late 90’s. I saw the band play in a bar in Cambridge at around the same time… maybe about a year earlier. Whatever. That’s not the point of the post.

The point of the post was that I had what seemed like almost a full sensory flashback. I could smell the cigarette smoke, I could feel my ears ringing from the volume, I could feel the heat of the room and the crush of the people packed into the tiny space… it was weird and also kinda wonderful. The video was 26 years old and I almost felt like I was there.

How weird was that?

Seriously, underground bands playing live in the 90’s was the absolute best musical thing ever. EVER.

In an unrelated note, I have three guitar pedals in my amazon cart right now. If I pull the trigger on it, I hope I’ll have a band to use them with. We’re looking at trying to start up again next month, and next month is the day after tomorrow. Cross those fingers, kids.

Flashback

Picture it: 2010, sitting at my desk in Framingham. I went through a stretch at work that was probably the most frustrating and difficult and stressful couple of months of my whole 18 years at this company. There were two customers. One was really tough on us and found a lot of issues that were tough to solve and fix. They were good people, and when they found out the two of us who were supporting them were hockey fans they actually gave us each a little souvenir miniature jersey for their local hockey team. The other customer was the nicest folks you’d ever want to meet, but their entire system blew up on them when they switched everything on in their live environment and keeping them afloat was just awful. I joke that I still have nightmares about it… but am I joking?

This morning I spent some time working in the first customer’s system. Nothing special. I just delivered a couple of snippets of custom code. It was all straightforward and simple, but I did have a minute where I thought back to how tough they were 12 years ago and felt glad things aren’t that way anymore.

This afternoon the nice folks reported an issue that was similar to something that happened when everything went bad for them and now I know what trauma flashbacks feel like. Oh my goodness. I started sweating and my heart rate shot up. It turned out to be a simple issue with a very simple fix, but damn if I wasn’t stressing out like mad for a few minutes there.

Woah, man. 2010 all over again. How weird was that?

Flashback

I just had an unsettling parent sitting flashback. It probably has more to do with being really tired than anything else, but here’s the story…

There are exactly two drinks that I chose to drink at home. One is Diet Pepsi because regular Coca~Cola (my personal drug of choice) is the primary reason why I am as grotesquely fat as I currently am. The other is grape flavored water. We have a Poland Springs cooler which is amazing. I fill up a water bottle with spring water and then poor some of that liquid flavoring stuff into it. Fruit Punch is good. Lemonade is all right if you get the right brand. Grape flavoring rules all. Unfortunately it’s expensive and I am trying to cut down on how quickly I blow through bottles of it by just sometimes drinking plain old, boring spring water.

That’s the first back story. Here’s the second. During the parent sitting adventure I would take a water bottle full of the delicious grape flavored water. I would also bring a second water bottle, but it would not be drinking water. It would be distilled water for my CPAP machine.

(Pause for a second to check on work. I’m still working. We were supposed to start around 4:00pm on Saturday. We instead kicked off our piece of the puzzle at 11:00pm. It’s 2:10am on Sunday and I’m still going strong.)

Here’s the flashback moment. Since dinner time I have had two 32 ounce water bottles full of the delicious grape flavored spring water. I don’t think I am going to bed any time soon and I was dealing with a little dry mouth so it was time for more water. I decided to go without the grape goop this time and just have boring plain water. I wanted to use a clean bottle though so that I didn’t get that little hint of flavoring left over from the last go-round.

I went out to the kitchen and opened up the cabinet to get a new water bottle. The first one I saw is the one I used to keep the distilled water in on parent sitting nights. I saw it there on the shelf and thought that I can’t drink out of that, it’s for the CPAP machine. Woah, wait a tick. I’m not parent sitting tonight. Sure, I am overly tired and my brain is starting to slip into autopilot, but that was weird. I was 100% positive that I could not use that particular bottle because it wasn’t for drinking.

In protest against the way that the parent sitting experience made me feel I took that bottle, filled it up with clear, clean Poland Springs water, and then chugged the fucker.

(Pause to check on work again. The two current utilities are still cranking along. Good good good)

On a totally unrelated note: I finished Saturday’s 30 minutes of exercise before work took off at about 11:00. Knowing that a lot of what I am doing tonight involves kicking off programs and then waiting for them to finish, and knowing that some of them would likely run for an hour or so, I decided to start Sunday’s exercise as soon after midnight as I could. I’m already up to 21 of my 30 minutes. When one of the two programs running completes I am going to kick off another one, and after I do that I am going to walk that last nine minutes. Well, some of it at least. It would be cool to have my 30 minutes in before the sun comes up. It would not be cool to make that a regular thing, but just this once? Groovy.

New York Flashback

1 gig card 030 by robj_1971
1 gig card 030, a photo by robj_1971 on Flickr.

The first time my wife and I went to New York was in September of 2007. As soon as we parked the car we found a tiny little Italian Restaurant that was out of this world. Last weekend we were trying to remember where it was and what it was called.

It was Ralph’s Ristorante Italiano and it was near 9th and 56th.

My obsession with vacation photography pays off at last!