Category Archives: Self Absorbed Whining

Where I moan and groan about how awful my life is.

Being Where

So where have I been? I’ve been busy, and for some reason I haven’t had much inclination to update my journal of late. Here, then, is a brief summary of what’s been up with me.

Writing

I’ve revised a short story that I wrote about a month ago, something called "Ten Feet Tall, with Eyes of Flame". I am about as finished with this story as I’m going to get any time soon, and it’s time to send it off to find a paying home. I’ll let you know if I succeed with that. But the project that has really eaten my time has been my newest short story, "Burying Uncle Albert", which I think it one of the better ones that I’ve ever written. I’ve also been consistently fussing with The Troll King’s Daughter and "Mother Tsan-Chan". Lots of ideas rushing around in my brain, bumping into each other, trying to make sense out of each other.

Evilpheemy has said of my last two stories that they are a sort of "Prairie Home Companion" meets "Severn Valley". I’m not entirely sure what a Severn Valley is, but I appreciate the compliment.

Working

I guess it was inevitable that I would end up back in the Temporary Employment Pool at UC Davis. I put in my application a couple of weeks ago, dreading the notion that I’d be back at some desk, scheduling meetings and doing correspondence and such. The first assignment I was told about was one in Sacramento, at the UC Davis Medical Center, where I’d be doing transactions on the University’s Financial Information System. Accounting is not a thing that I go into ecstasy over, but I am used to the software and I’m good at making it work for me (every now and then I’m even reminded of the time that I’d just finished a long and complicated transaction that I made work right after two hours of slaving… I screamed at the computer, "You’re my bitch now!", much to the amusement of my coworkers and the annoyance of my boss). Working at the Med Center would have been truly ironic, though, since, specifically, I would have been working in the department that was the medical specialty that my old company tried to deliver to. Ironic? Yes.

But, you know, God had that sense of humor that every now and then makes you remember that He/She/It/They is/are watching. The position was canceled at the last minute, and instead of doing accounting in Sacramento, I’m doing marketing in downtown Davis. And not just any marketing; I’m helping to market the new inventions and discoveries that come out of the University and that need to make their way into the wide world. As a consequence of where I’m sitting, I get to see just about every cool new project, idea, research direction, and so on that comes out of the University. I get first crack at the various magazines that our department subscribes to — Science, Nature, and Issues, among others. I’ve been wanting to do some science writing; where would be a better place to actually get in touch with the cutting edge of research? Naturally there are confidentiality rules and rules about what can be revealed when, but even my supervisor — who I actually like very much — concedes that given what I want to do, this is probably a prime location for me. As an added bonus, it looks like I’ll be able to take over some of the department’s database and web development needs as well.

The downside, of course, is that the job represents a 33% pay cut for me from my last job. Still, it’s better than Unemployment Insurance.

Playing

Well, yes, I’ve been playing with my new grill a lot lately. Boy, that’s fun. If you haven’t tried taking pieces from a dead animal and putting them over fire, you ought to. Nothing like it. What, me savage?

And because I have spare time, I’ve been playing with our network at home as well. I’ve installed Apache on our little webserver, just because it’s so much more secure than Personal Web Server is, and now I can sleep better at night. I’ve been experimenting with port routing, FTP, TelNet, and SSH daemons, and now I can pretty much log in to our network from elsewhere and control things remotely… if I’m willing to put up with the timelag. For some reason, it’s all incredibly slow. Our DSL was down for a few days, and now it’s back up, better and badder than before. I hate to think what my SSH throughput would have been before the new modem.

And that’s about it, really. I feel better now. How about you?

Bad Poetry and Strange News

While sitting at Borders this afternoon, I scribbled out this drivel. I think it basically counts as prose poetry. At any rate, here it is:

I get scared of how fast the day speeds by. This morning went by in a fog of unremembrance, and I did nothing to mark the day. I read a few news articles, I wrote a few e-mails, bathed. But now the noon hour has passed, and what has come of it?

I get scared of the way these meaningless days telescope and drift into each other, like puddles of water in a growing storm, melding into each other, edges blending and then disappearing altogether.

The days grow shorter too; I do less and less, and the hours pass by with greater and greater speed.

And most of all I get scared of this big block inside of me, this sleeping, slow, stupid giant that pulls on my limbs and my midsection, that gnaws on something inside, that wills down the rain and longs for the permanent fluidity of days, when all awareness of passage is gone and the fog of unremembrance is as featureless and welcoming and cold as the fallen snow in deep winter.

Yes, it exaggerates my mood a bit, but what are you gonna do? Great art demands great hyperbole. So does bad art.

In other news, it is a weird world after all. NPR’s "All Things Considered" broadcast a story (link forthcoming) about how some workers in a rest home in the Southeast somewhere are accusing labor organizers of using voodoo to frighten co-workers into forming a union. The chief labor organizer testifies that she knows nothing of voodoo, and that the "voodoo beads" she carries around with her are really a rosary. Sometimes, people are just too excitable for their own good.

And CNN is carrying this story about a "mysterious black blob" found floating in the waters off the coast of Florida.

Students of fiction writing are frequently told not to base their tales on real life events, because real life is sometimes far too unbelievable to make a good novel. I admit, though, that if I were to run a Call of Cthulhu game tonight, or write a modern day horror novel, both of these two news pieces would have a very prominent role.

Overheard Self-Talk

"Nothing has changed, you know."

"Huh?"

"I said, nothing’s changed."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, look at yourself. You’re trying to cop a new attitude. You’re trying to fix your thinking. You’re making a desperate attempt to get over yourself."

"What, like that’s not good?"

"It would be good if it meant something."

"Ah."

"I mean, so you’ve decided it’s okay to be who you are. Today you even went to the library to check out Chinese literature and Tibetan music, things you’ve never really explored before, right?"

"Uh huh."

"And so what? You’re still a failure, you know. But now you’re a failure with a positive attitude."

"I don’t know, that Tibetan music is pretty cool."

"Yes, but instead of being out playing around, you could have been back at home, learning new skills and figuring out how to program a JDBC-enabled JSP application to interface with your Linux box to make real-time connections between your website and your computer at home. The employers would LOVE you if you pulled that off!"

"Um…"

"Not to mention all that studying you should be doing to get your career in gear."

"I…"

"Oh, that’s right. You’ve decided to put your career hunt on hold because your obsession with it was taking over your life, right?"

"Yeah…"

"Hah! What a wuss. See these trees?"

"What about them?"

"Don’t they kind of remind you of when you were working in Portland and had a chance at getting a career because of some lucky break that your old boss decided to give you? You could have had a real career, you know, if you hadn’t frittered away your college years."

"How’s that again?"

"See? Loser! Loooooser! Having a better attitude about things doesn’t change the fact that you’re a LOSER!"

"Yeah, but it’s a nice day, the back roads between Dixon and Vacaville are beautiful… And I will hopefully be volunteering to do literacy tutoring again. And I’ve just started a new story this morning."

"So what? Get your ass in gear. Get a career! Get a life!"

"Shut up."

"Make me."

Sigh. See what I have to put up with?

My Name is Richard, and I'm a Thoughtaholic

Did I confuse you with the extracts from my diary? I’m so terribly sorry.

This past weekend I was at DunDraCon XIX in San Ramon, California. Unlike Dragon*Con, which Jennifer and I went to back in September (a week before It happened), DunDraCon is focused entirely on role-playing games. I started going regularly two years ago to be help market and playtest The Outer Darkness with Evilpheemy. That first time, I wasn’t able to actually play in any role-playing game sessions, because I actually had work to do (it really was quite annoying: I had my laptop computer with me and had to spend too much time logged in from my hotel room), and because my shoulder was in a lot of pain; last year I was sick, and spent much of the time in our hotel room covered with gross hives and sneezing my brains out. This year, though, I finally got to play in some actual games. Not only did I get to play in several board games and card games (my favorite is still Give Me the Brain! by Cheap Ass Games), but I got to play in some actual role-playing games as well. The Delta Green game that I played in was all right, but the Call of Cthulhu game that Evilpheemy ran was outstanding.

In August, Evilpheemy and his wife will be heading out to Wisconsin to attend GenCon to market The Outer Darkness and network out there. In September, I’m off to WorldCon in San Jose to make my own contribution. In truth, I actually prefer conventions that aren’t entirely devoted to role-playing games. I like a variety of panels and events. At science fiction conventions, you’ll meet artists and writers (at least two of my favorite writers, David Brin and Tad Williams, will be at WorldCon) as well as actors and even musicians. There were late night concerts at Dragon*Con, and those were fun. Jennifer and I probably won’t be going to Dragon*Con this year, but I think that WorldCon will be just as fun.

And I had a strange revelation while I was at DunDraCon. It was sparked by Evilpheemy, who has already been the source of at least one piece of major, life-changing advice in my own life (he spoke seven words to me a couple of years ago, which ultimately resulted in my marriage to Jennifer and many of the wonderful things that have happened along with that — I can’t reveal those seven words here, but chances are that if you need to know them, you already do). And it was sparked by something that happened while I was driving down to the con on Saturday morning.

Evilpheemy had read my last self-pity post last week, and called me on my cell phone while I was working at the lab, and make a career suggestion for me, one that made a lot of sense. More on it at some point in the future. He mentioned to me that he had been following my career "lamentations" for quite some time on line, and that sparked a chain of thought in my mind which culminated with me realizing, on Saturday morning, the following:

That in the past ten years, at least, I probably haven’t spent more than a single day obsessing over the issue.

That can’t be healthy… Can it?

Well, certainly, it’s important to consider your contributions to the world, how you’re going to live your life, what you want to contribute to make the world a better place. But I realized I’ve let this obsession of mine get to the point, at times, where, ironically, I couldn’t work… because I was too busy worrying about how I was going to work, and what I was going to do. And that’s just nuts.

The worst part of it, though, was when I realized that I’d also thought a couple of times to myself, "Well, if nothing else, my life insurance will pay for the house, so Jennifer will be fine…" And that’s when I really decided that I needed to make a change.

"Hi. I’m Richard C., and I’m a thoughtaholic."

So, maybe I should just kind of quit whining now. Quit obsessing over it. Quit focusing on what I’m going to be when I grow up, and focus instead on just living my life: staying open to new ideas and new experiences, seeing what comes along, and trying out new things and taking joy in learning new things. Perhaps I can spend less time being angry about how things aren’t turning out the way I think that they should be, and having fun in seeing what comes along.

There’s still the matter of the bills that need to be paid, of course… But, actually, I’ve never been worried about that. What I’ve been worried about was finding a job which I can feel like a grown up doing, and taking pride in. And that’s what I need to stop doing for now.

And I can refocus on the things that really are important. I know that I am one of the luckiest men in the world; I have a great family, I have the most incredible wife I could possibly imagine (honestly, how many men have wives — or fiancee’s, technically, I suppose — who would have let them wander around Ireland for a month?); I have good and honorable friends that I’m blessed to have and that I’m proud to claim as friends; and the standard list of blessings including shelter, a car, good access to edible food, and so on.

And so this morning, Jennifer and I drove out to Home Depot to pick up some lights for our office and some parts for the shelves that we’re working on. I glanced at a book of landscaping and deck ideas and got really excited by some of the pictures and diagrams that I saw. And I realized that defocusing my "what’ll-I-do-when-I-grow-up?" obsession gave me energy to be excited about working in our yard, on the shelves, on our house. It was a good feeling. A great feeling.

And driving home, we passed by fields where the fog was rising from plough lines in the ground. I was enchanted. When we got home, I installed the light on my side of the office and decided that I wanted to go back to the field and take a picture. The fog had burned off by then, but I drove around on some of the back roads, even managed to get a bit lost in the southern reaches of Solano County for a few minutes (Dixon has some marvelous back roads in the agricultural areas) and saw some great old barns, some great landscaping, and the old Dixon cemetary. One of the elementary schools in Dixon is called Tremont, which is the same name as one of the back roads several miles from here, which you can take to get to Davis. I wondered if there was a connection.

The lesson being, I suppose, that sometimes you can find some really amazing things… if you’re willing to keep an eye open, to accept that some wrong turns are inevitable, and accept that the things you wanted to find — like the field of fog that I wanted to take a picture of, or some idealistic notion of a One True Calling that I’ve been desperately trying to find for at least the past ten years — just might not be there.

Carburetor Mechanic

A carburetor mixes air and fuel in a car engine in order to provide just the right mix to make the fuel ignitable so that the engine can work. It’s a very important part of the whole internal combustion thing. But in newer cars, the carburetor has been replaced by the fuel injection system; in fact, these days, the fuel injection system is mostly universal. Even my cheap old Geo Metro had a fuel injection system.

Now imagine the guy who has discovered that he has a talent for building and repairing carburetors and decides to make a career out of it; unfortunately for him, his talents come at the time when the carburetor is on its way out. One day he loses his job as a carburetor mechanic and finds that there simply aren’t any jobs for his talents anymore. The world has moved on, and the language of fuel injection systems is simply alien to him. He can pick it up just fine, of course, but service departments don’t want someone who knows a lot about carburetors and a little about fuel injection systems. They want people who know everything about fuel injection systems.

So last week, I got this call from a recruiter:

Recruiter: I’ve got a contract web development job that would be great for you. It’s working for <insert Big Prestigious Company Name here>, only about six months, pays quite a bit. I was wondering if I could send your resume in.

Richard: Sounds good. Would you like me to send you an updated resume?

Recruiter: Well, let’s see what I have here.

She rattles off my resume… I know it’s the most current one, and I tell her.

Recruiter: Perfect. The job involves quite a bit of HTML and some SQL. How are your skills at those?

Richard (feeling more optimistic): Pretty good. I used those skills extensively at my last job.

Recruiter: That was at <insert last company here>, right? And you were there for a year?

Richard: That’s right.

Recruiter: Hm, they’re looking for someone with more experience than that, but I’ll send this in anyway. How’s your Java programming skill? They want someone with two years’ worth of Java.

I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. I don’t like to lie about my job qualifications, but sometimes you have to stretch the truth a bit.

Richard: I’ve got about six months’ worth. Richard doesn’t mention that it was a six-month class in Java, not a six-month long period of time spent programming in Java.

Recruiter (already sounding distant and unimpressed now): I see. Well, I’ll send your resume in anyway. Thanks for taking the time to talk with me, Mr. Crawford.

The recruiter hangs up the phone quickly. And, of course, the Big Prestigious Company never calls.

It’s quite a familiar dialogue for me. I’ve played it out something like three times over the past four or five months. It would be a bit more encouraging if this kind of dialogue were being played out with actual employers, instead of corporate recruiters; but I suppose the actual employers have a better sense of who’s employable and who isn’t.

Cue awkward segue.

Two weeks ago, classes started. I sat in the General Chemistry class I was taking, listened as the instructor explained that pre-calculus was a prerequisite for the class. For a moment I was nervous, because I knew that without the right prerequisites, I’d be dropped from the class. Then she explained that it was okay to take pre-calculus concurrently with the chemistry class; and since that’s what I was doing, I knew I was fine.

The next day my pre-calculus class started. The teacher explained the prerequisites for that class, and I only half-listened, because the counselor I’d spoken to at the college office had told me that my high school transcript from 1986 was sufficient for getting into pre-calculus. But when the teacher explained that high-school diplomas were not sufficient for prerequisites, my ears perked up. I discovered, through conversations with the teacher and a staff member at the college, that I’d gotten some bad information. Not only was my high school diploma not sufficient for meeting the prerequisite for pre-calculus, there was no other way of meeting the prerequisite for me without taking an assessment test… and the counselor I’d spoken to had told me, beyond any doubt, that no assessment test was required.

I hope that counselor has been fired. I don’t usually wish ill for other people who make mistakes, but this was a pretty bad one.

So, that day I drove out to Sacramento to take the math placement test; annoying, because I’d hoped to work out that afternoon. So there I was, merrily taking the test, breezing through answers I knew, guessing on answers I didn’t. I finished the test, and sat down to await the results.

And when the exam room administrator called me forward, she explained that my results placed me in Intermediate Algebra.

Yep. Intermediate Algebra. After that comes geometry, then trigonometry, and, finally, pre-calculus after that. When I could take chemistry as well.

So I went to the counseling office again, noted that the counselor I’d spoken to before wasn’t there that day, which was a good thing, and filled out a slip for a drop-in appointment. An hour later I spoke with another counselor, who explained to me the following:

  • I’d have to drop pre-calculus
  • I’d also have to drop chemistry
  • I’d have to enroll in intermediate algebra in fall, which is the next time that they offer it
  • I could look forward to taking pre-calculus and chemistry in fall of 2004.

Ugh.

So I went ahead and dropped all of my classes, got a refund for the registration fee, and sold back my textbooks. I wasn’t able to get the full price back, of course, because I’d opened the books on the silly assumption that I’d have a chance to study them. I’ve taken a loss on the books.

Any possible entry into graduate school for me has been effectively pushed back a year or two, and it was already pretty far in the future anyway. After all, in addition to catching up on things academically, I still need to figure out how to get the proper letters of recommendation, study for and take the GRE, figure out financing, and so on. None of the professors I worked with before are at the University anymore, which is fine since they would probably remember very little of my academic career anyway. So my letters of recommendation would have to come from professors who would get to know me through my participation in various research projects and that sort of thing over the next couple of years.

I don’t know; perhaps ecosystem engineering was just a pipe dream anyway. I could, given luck, get a master’s in the field by the time I’m 40, but the job market is very uncertain for the field. It’s a major commitment of time and money, and may not have any payback at all.

So. There it is.

There are plenty of things I would have enjoyed doing with my life. There is a program in Wales which is building massive "arks", domes which recreate various ecosystems from around the world. That feels right up my alley. There are organizations which send IT volunteers around the world to help develop IT infrastructure, in order to reduce the "digital divide". The most important of these, in my opinion, is SatelLife, which builds and maintains global networks and communications for doctors in developing countries. Alas, I’m just not qualified to do any of those things; their representatives that I’ve spoken with always end our conversations with, "Well, perhaps you have some money that you can donate?" I at one time considered teaching English in Japan, but found that I didn’t have the skills necessary to do that.

In other words: I’ve always been starting at square one. Just once, I’d like to be able stick with something long enough to build up some expertise, to have someone else interested in what I’ve done because they know I’ve done it well.

So, that’s it. At this point, I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do with myself. I’m reluctant to re-join the Temporary Employment Pool at the University — there’s a part of me which thinks, "I’m 34 — I ought to be established in some sort of career by now" — but putting it off seems like delaying the inevitable.

While I was waiting in line at the college to drop my classes, I overheard a pair of students behind me talking about their future plans. Neither of them really had any idea what they wanted to do, but they felt comfortable with that. It was all I could do to avoid spinning around and saying something like, "Figure out when you’re young what you want to do, and start working for it; if you wait too long, you’re just going to be screwed."

I guess the ultimate question, then, is how to make up for the 34 years I’ve wasted so far, when I really don’t have anything to start with?

There’s no point in brooding on these issues, I know. Next time I update this journal, I’ll have something positive to say.

Final Exam

There’s really no excuse for this at all. I started this class back in June, so it’s been nearly seven months. Granted, there was a period of time when it looked like I wasn’t going to be able to reach the instructor at all, and there was confusion over who, exactly, was going to be teaching the class at all. But, honestly, that down time probably only lasted a month or so, if that.

And yes, there was a wedding in there. That occupied some time. But there were only a couple of weeks when I was unable to work on this class at all.

It’s an on-line class in Java programming that I’ve been taking through UC Davis. The final exam is due tomorrow, and I’m completely stumped. At this point, I’m very likely the only person who hasn’t completed the class, and I can’t come up with a good reason for why I haven’t finished it at this point. Honestly, I could have finished this class months ago. Perhaps I was lulled by the fact that it was so easy for so long. The basic elements of programming in Java were amazingly simple for me to pick up. Once the class moved into GUI’s, it became harder, but not impossible. I received an A+ on the last lesson assignment, and an A- on the midterm (in all honesty, I was a bit disappointed by that, though I know I shouldn’t be). And I’ve completed each assignment and done very well on them.

And so here is the final, and I can’t figure it out to save my life. It shouldn’t be that hard: display a graph of different functions on the screen based on two values input by the user and a function selected by clicking on a button. It isn’t that hard. And if I had another week, I could figure it out.

Problem is, I don’t have another week. I have less than 24 hours. And I can’t find any reason for this situation except my own lack of discipline, my own laziness, my own inability to follow through. Those same qualities have dogged me all of my life, and probably explain to some degree why I’m the 34-year-old unemployed web developer with minimal skills that I am now. (Honestly, there are times when I wonder how it is that I managed to pull off getting a Bachelor’s degree at all.)

And this bothers me. Earlier this week I enrolled at a local community college in a math class and a chemistry class. Bonehead level, both of them; I did rather poorly in both subjects when I was an undergraduate at UC Davis, so I hope that by starting at a basic level I might be able to make a better showing for myself this time around. Though I worry that my own inability to follow thorugh will dog me again, and I’ll wind up in the same sort of situation all over again; and then what? I suppose that then I will simply accept that I’m not meant for any sort of challenging career, that this computer programming thing should just remain a hobby for me, that this whole ecosystem engineer thing is a pipe dream, that I should simply be looking for full-time work that I at least won’t suck at. I’m a good driver. I could do delivery work, and UPS pays fairly decently. Honestly, education costs too much money to waste if I don’t have the discipline or ability to follow through with it; and I can’t help wondering if at this point in my life it’s a little late to try to instill the skills of follow through and discipline that I’d need.

In the meantime, though, I’ll finish up as much of this final exam as I can, and then submit what I’ve got done when the deadline is here. I know that I’ll get a passing grade; but knowing that if I’d gotten my ass in gear long ago I could done much better will be painful.

Storm

The storms in the Greater Central Valley of California never get that impressive, at least not in Yolo and Solano Counties. True, there are floods and worse in this area every few years, but, on the whole, the weather around here is very mild. Today, the air has smelled like rain all day; I went to the Borders about a mile from my office for lunch today to have a light sandwich and work on some math problems, and when I came back to the office, the rain had started. It never got heavy, but it kept up for the rest of the day.

After driving home to drop off some books and change, I went back to Davis to have some dinner and coffee and to go to Evilpheemy’s house for some beer and to watch Dune. With Jennifer gone during the week these days on a project for the Big Evil Fish (hereinafter in these documents referred to as BEF), I find myself spending lots of evenings with friends, watching comedy and science fiction movies, or just spending evenings at cafes; anything to distract me from the fact that I’m alone in this big empty house that my wife and I built together while we were still just dating.

It’s not that I’m unused to goodbyes; much of the relationship that Jennifer and I have had has been marked with goodbye. Up until now, with one two-week exception where she went down to the Bay Area to train on some BEF product, I’ve been the one to go away; spending months at a time commuting up to the Pacific Northwest to my own company’s development office to replicate our development environment or develop a new product; or traveling for a month in Ireland and the UK, without even coming home on the weekends. This time, she’s the one leaving; and this time, we don’t even know how long it’s going to be. It could be just a couple more days, or it could be a couple of months, depending on how her job interview turns out.

Jennifer’s dad travels a lot for his job as well. Last week, I wanted to ask her mother if it gets any easier, seeing your spouse off on a trip like this. On Sunday, Jennifer’s left immediately after church to fly out to Chicago for a 2.5 month project for the same BEF that Jennifer works for. After church, Jennifer and I invited her mother to come along with us. We asked her if there was any place in particular that she wanted to go; she said, a bit mournfully, "Chicago". I knew then what the answer to my question would be, and I haven’t needed to ask it.

It’s selfish of me to feel like this, I suppose. After all, I’ve done a lot more time away from home over the past year than she has (probably at least 50% of the time, now that I think about it). And I know that she doesn’t want to be gone, any more than I want her gone. So I commisserate with her and I do my best to be supportive and understanding, but I still miss her.

By the time I left Evilpheemy’s apartment, the storm was getting pretty heavy. The rain was falling hard, and the lightning was right overhead, making the sky as bright as day at times. Driving down I-80 I can see the big empty fields to the south, and over them the lightning sparks gigantically, almost from one horizon to the other. The sounds of the road and the car stereo drown out the thunder, but I know that it’s there.

And it’s short-lived; by the time I get home the rains have already dwindled to a mere sprinkle, barely noticeable when I step out of my car briefly to check the mail. Behind the clouds, the moon is shining; it’s a half-moon, according to the calendar above Jennifer’s desk, but it’s almost bright enough to be a full-moon. The rain has stopped by the time I get back into my car, and I’m glad for it; I wanted to have Jennifer here with me the first time that we listen to the rain falling on our house.

The clouds above Dixon are breaking apart. Through them, I can see a single star.

At Square One. Still.

Back on March 7, I referred to a project I’d taken on at work: re-engineering a large piece of open-source software, Phorum, which is written in a hypertext processing language called PHP (a scripting language similar to ASP or Cold Fusion), to operate against our in-house database schema. Phorum typically comes with its own database and is designed to be run in conjunction with an open-source database program called MySQL, and although ports to other database programs are available, it really only works best when compiled with MySQL. Our company uses Oracle as our database backend, and our platform engineering manager decided that he wasn’t at all pleased with the way Phorum builds and creates new tables, willy-nilly — we don’t want a third-party application, he told us, to build new tables at will in our database. So our senior database programmer built us a new schema and one of the Portland developers and I spent two months re-engineering Phorum to work with a new database schema built in Oracle instead of its native schema built in MySQL.

The project was finished, more or less, shortly before I left for Ireland and the UK. I was never quite happy with the way it turned out; there were major bugs in the program, and certain elements of its functionality were never thoroughly implemented. But QA gave our re-engineered version of Phorum a formal write-off and we implemented it and it went live and our customers used it (more or less, though I don’t believe utilization was ever very high). The other developer and I created a long list of known issues that we intended to work on and fix when I returned from my trip.

Of course, while I was gone, the axe fell, and the other developer that I’d been working with was laid off. I was told by one of the managers in the Sacramento office that I would be inheriting the whole of the Phorum re-engineering project when I returned, and I looked forward to that. There was a lot left to do, and with a whole new piece of functionality being implemented on our customer website, there was going to be a need for an entirely new set of code. Phase II of the Phorum Re-engineering Project would be kicked off around about mid-August.

And here it is, mid-August. And the other day, B–, the other developer in the Sacramento office, sent me an instant message telling me that he had been assigned to this project. He knew that I’d been anticipating this project and looking forward to it, and he knew that I would be upset that I wasn’t assigned to it. He was right. I was upset. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that upset at work since my days working at Pizza Hut when I nearly got into a fight with an assistant manager who threatened to shove my glasses down my throat.

The reason B– was assigned and not me? Based on an IM conversation I glanced at over someone’s shoulder (not actually the way it happened, but I promised certain parties that I wouldn’t reveal how it actually happened), it was because the Production Manager wanted someone more competent to handle the project. "No offense [to Richard]", he said, "but we need someone to clean up the mess that he made."

Of course, when I asked the production manager directly why I wasn’t assigned to the project, he replied, "I’d forgotten that you’d worked on Phase I, and when [the other developer] left, all of his knowledge base was transferred to C–, and it was natural to assign this project to him." B–, to his credit, had declined to work on the project (which I told him was appreciated but really unnecessary — though B– told me that the Production Manager knew I’d be upset that B– was working on this and not me). So the project team for the project is composed entirely of developers up in Portland.

Of course, I knew that the Production Manager’s response to my own query was bullshit, but there’s no easy way to call a manager on that, so I let it drop. He told me that he’d assign me to technological projects in the future, but I honestly don’t believe him at this point. I’ve been hearing this sort of promise for nearly a year now and nothing, really, has come of it.

What this has all really made clear to me is the enormity of the error I made in taking this job, and how badly I’ve screwed my career up. I was eager to leave the University, but I can’t remember why at this point, if it was for anything besides the income. If I’d remained at my last position with the University, in Information Technology: Communications Resources, I’d have, by now, over a year of solid Cold Fusion programming experience under my belt, not to mention formal training in Oracle, XML, SQL, C++, and Java. And while my pay would not be as high as it is now, I would certainly be in a much better position to move forward in a career in programming than I am now.

And so I find myself taking stock of my situation. I know HTML — but that’s no major accomplishment any more. HTML is startlingly easy to pick up. I have a miniscule amount of experience with Cold Fusion. I pretend to know Java, but I really have very little experience with it, none of it paid; same with C, Perl, and Unix/Linux. I thought that I knew PHP and SQL.

It’s hard to accept that I am still far away from a decent career in the field, and I’m feeling overwhelmed and intimidated. I did major damage to my career by taking this job, and I have no idea how to go about fixing it. And I’m beginning to wonder if it’s really worth it.

Mind you, I’m not mad at the company, or the Production Manager, or anyone in particular, except for myself. This is rather typical of me. At the risk of sounding like someone who is deep in the throes of a typical midlife crisis, I’m looking back over my life and trying to find some accomplishment that I can really point to with pride and finding very little. I’ve never been very good at disciplined approaches to anything, nor at committing myself to anything. What I describe as "intellectual vagabondism", my tendency to expose myself to a wide array of fields, is not so much a broad range of knowledge as it is an inability to focus my efforts on one thing in particular. My degree in philosophy isn’t due to any noble commitment to learning as it is to laziness; I found that I could do well at philosophy with very little effort, but I could also do well at other fields, such as physiology or biology or chemistry, by applying myself. I just didn’t feel like it.

I hate feeling like I’m at square one, and I hate knowing that if I’d ever been able to approach anything with discipline I would not be at square one, that I might be able to point at something I’ve accomplished honestly, without having to fake or exaggerate its importance. I hate knowing that my college years were a waste and that I lack any sort of discipline or concentration that would allow me to move forward.

At least I have a job, which pays decently even if it is a dead-end job. And right now there are few projects that are pure HTML, and I’m simply not being assigned to other projects (and it’s not through a lack of my volunteering). So right now my workload is light, and my work load next week will be light as well. So I have plenty of time to crack open my books on C and Java and pretend that I have the discipline to learn something new.

I suppose that this might be a good thing.

Angry Candy

One morning, in cold blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; — hung it with tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; — hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; — hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin — a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it — if such a thing were possible — even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.

Edgar Allen Poe, "The Black Cat"

Tuesday.

After a long day at work I drove nearly a full hour to the hospital in Davis to work out. When I entered the cardiac rehab room, where those who participate in the Healthy Weight Program work out, I told the trainer that my gout was flaring up pretty badly and that I would not feel comfortable on the treadmill that day. I wanted to stay on the elliptical walker and possibly the stepmill and stationary bicycles. The trainer agreed that it was a good plan, so after ten minutes of stretching and chatting with the other members of the program, I got on to the elliptical walker and began to do my routine.

Twenty-five minutes into it, I had to stop. One of the trainers was telling an amusing story about something that had happened to him in San Diego, but I could not concentrate; I had become overwhelmingly nauseous. I excused myself, and went into the bathroom and kneeled over the toilet for a good five minutes, my stomach trying to heave up its contents but not quite making it. When at last I gave up, I went back out. My blood pressure was taken — it was low, normal numbers for a normal person, but alarmingly low for someone who tends to run a little hypertensive like me. The trainer told me to rest and to head home when I felt more steady. I agreed.

But that’s when I started having chest pains. The trainer was alarmed and walked me to the emergency room. The doctors looked at me, prodded my sternum, took a chest X-Ray, did an EKG. My chest X-Ray looked normal (though the doctor expressed concern over some patches she found on my lungs near my heart, then suggested that it was probably just scar tissue left over from thirty years of asthma — it didn’t look serious, certainly nothing like pneumonia), and my EKG was normal. The doctor said it was Reflux and sent me home to a Jennifer who was worried that I was an hour later than I had said I would be.

Wednesday.

A pretty normal day. My gout is still flaring up but not overwhelmingly so. I thought that maybe I’d go work out again that night. Circumstances being as they sometimes are, I couldn’t find time that night, and I went home to Jennifer, who was sick with a cold. We had visited the house and observed its progress. I had slight nausea during the day and didn’t eat much, but I didn’t worry about it.

This morning.

I woke up with a migraine. Not a killer one, not painful enough to keep my home, but bad. But on top of the migraine, the gout in my right foot was flaring badly, to the point where I nearly cried out whenever I stepped on it. Jennifer and I drove to Starbuck’s in separate cars, as we often do before work, and the pain was enough to make me cry out every time I stepped on the brake pedal at every stop sign and red light. After our breakfast, a latté and a scone, I decided that I’d better work from home today and try to get an appointment with my doctor.

Throughout the day, things got worse. My head continued to throb, my foot continued to pain me. I called the doctor’s office and made an appointment for this evening at 5:40. I also called the pharmacy and refilled a number of prescriptions.

This evening.

The doctor looks at my foot and says, "Yep, that’s gout." She prescribed some medication for me, something that apparently has some nasty side effects. I told her about what had happened at the workout room on Tuesday night, and she expressed concern that my heart rate slows down and my blood pressure drops whenever I work out. "It’s not normal," she said, and told me that she thought I might have a blockage near my heart. We scheduled an appointment for a treadmill test in early May, just to make sure.

I drove from the doctor’s office to meet Jennifer at our weekly Weight Watcher’s meeting. I’d lost ten pounds over the past month; good news. Then I told Jennifer what the doctor had told me. "Did you ask about biofeedback?" she asked, reminding me that I had thought to do that to help my migraines and my gout and my blood pressure. "No," I told her. "I was too busy freaking out."

After the meeting, I drove to choir practice in Dixon, meeting Jennifer’s parents. Her father agreed to assist me in purchasing Jennifer’s wedding gift, and her mother complimented me on my weight loss — more good news. But during practice I began to feel faint and nauseous. My asthma began to flare, and my foot began to throb.

I wished for one day when I wasn’t dealing with asthma, hypertension, migraine, gout… or anything else.

After choir practice, I left the church, shivering. I’d started having chills. I turned the heater in my car up to full blast, and that helped. Then I drove to the pharmacy and spent sixty-five dollars on medications to keep me breathing, medications to keep my head pains low, medications to keep my heart pumping at normal pressure. The gout medication was new, and the pharmacist needed to do a consultation.

"Look at the instructions," he said. "Take two tablets now, and one tablet every one to two hours thereafter until you experience relief of pain or until you start vomiting. Hopefully," he added with a wry grin, "you’ll experience relief before you experience vomiting."

I thanked the pharmacist. Then I made one more purchase and I left and headed out to my car.

Inside my car, I unwrapped the candy bar I’d bought and ate it. It had chocolate, coconut, and a cherry filling; three of my favorite flavors. I have no idea how many calories were in it, nor how many grams of fat, nor whether it had any dietary fiber — I crumpled up the wrapper and threw it away before even looking at the label. I couldn’t calculate the points on it, so I had no idea if it would be detrimental to my weight loss. I didn’t care.

Poe’s Imp of the Perverse took over. I bought the candy and ate it for no other reason than because I knew it was bad for me, because it was loaded with calories and fat and probably bad for my heart, if I do indeed have a blockage.

That’s why I ate it.

Candy never tasted so sweet.

Sick

I am sick of having asthma.

I am sick of getting migraines.

I am sick of hypertension.

I am sick of being allergic to everything.

I am sick of having a body which manages to have some serious pain or attack of something at least once a month.

I am sick of being incompetent.

I am sick of making the same mistakes over and over again.

I am sick of explaining myself.

I am sick of saying the wrong things to the wrong people.

I am sick of walking on the razor’s edge.

I am sick of doing what I think is appropriate and finding that it is another mistake.

I am sick of being lazy.

I am sick of being thirty-three and still having no direction.

I am sick of not having accomplished anything with my life.

I am sick of screwing up.

I am sick of stress.

I am sick of responding to stress with asthma or migraines or high blood pressure.

I am sick of being unable to fulfill the commitments that I make.

I am sick of having to break promises.

I am sick of not having the time to take care of what’s important.

I am sick of procrastinating.

I am sick of being sick.