Diary of a Network Geek

So, another Thanksgiving has come and almost gone.

Another holiday.  Another celebration, though not what I’d planned, not what I’d expected.  Good, though.  Better.
Today, instead of the big Thanksgiving dinner I’d been imagining all year long, I had a much quieter, more intimate dinner.  It was better, really.  Tomorrow, I’ll have my big celebration.  Not with the family I was born into, but the family I’ve chosen, the family that I’ve gathered and that has chosen to gather around me.  Today, though, was a different celebration all together.  Rather than distract myself from a bitter anniversary with lots to do and a big crowd, filled with noise, I spent the afternoon and evening with three very dear people.  A friend who saw me through the confirmation of my diagnosis with cancer three years ago.  Who stayed with me when I was checked into the hospital unexpectedly, making sure I was settled, forever earning her a soft spot in my mother’s heart.  And her son, a young man I don’t know too well, but who’s quite something in his own right.  And another friend, who is hard to pin down.  One of the things I enjoy about her, actually, is that just when you think you have her figured out, she reveals some new facet, some new twist that shows you really haven’t figured her out at all.  She’s the riddle to which there is no answer.  And, surely, my readers know by now just how much I love those virtually impossible to solve puzzles, especially when they come in human form.

As always seems to happen during events like this, someone shares a secret with me.  Something intimate and private and not known to the greater mass of people.  I don’t know if it was the tryptophan or sugar-high of the Goode Company pecan pie or some weird vibe I give off, but, well, there it is.  And, outside of mentioning how amazed I am that such a diverse variety of people find me worthy of being trusted with such very intimate details of their lives, I do my best to keep those personal secrets.  In truth, I am honored to be trusted so, since I know so very well how I was not always so trustworthy.  It’s hard for me to remember that these people never knew me in that life, that they have only known me as I am today, not how I was when I was so deeply and painfully enmeshed with my ex-wife and that life we led together.

I’m proud of the fact that I made it through the entire day with out telling the story.  The story of how she left the Sunday before Thanksgiving.  How we’d had a discussion, a somewhat one-sided discussion, about how I knew she’d been cheating on me for months.  I stated it as a fact I knew, though, in truth, I only had circumstantial evidence and a feeling.  Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that I was right.
So, while I was in the shower, without any additional warning, she gathered up her daughter and a couple of suitcases, jumped into the only working car we had and left.  There was no note, no voice-mail.  I had to call her.  Since she didn’t answer her cell-phone, I had to call her parent’s house to find out where she was and find out what was really happening.  I knew, of course, but it was as if my mind refused to understand it, refused to take it all in.  I imagine it was a kind of shock, like what amputees feel when they wake up and find a limb has gone missing.
A week later, she was in Phoenix, Arizona with her lover, who’s become her fourth husband.  And, I’d gotten into her e-mail, where I read everything they’d been e-mailing back and forth for six months or more.  I read every last detail of what she’d told him about me.  Every lie and half-truth, spun to serve her particular purpose.  Worse still was seeing every intimate detail I’d ever shared with her, every embarrassing secret, every fear, every vulnerability vomited out and mocked to paint me as a particular sort of person, to color me through a very much not-rose-tinted lens as something small, dark and twisted.  Something I very much feared I really was and, in my worst moments, believe I still am or can become.

But, today, I was reminded that I am not that man.  Neither the man I was nor the man she tried to make me.  To be honest, I’m not entirely sure who or what I am today, this year, this moment, but I most certainly know what I am not.  I am not the man who was an empty, hollow shell when she left.  Nor am I the fool who was suicidal at the thought that of being left and getting a divorce.  Perhaps most importantly, I am not the man who was ready to stay married to a woman who obviously had grown to hate him nor am I the man who hated himself so much that he felt drawn to someone who never loved him and only wanted, well, wanted something from him.
No, today, people who didn’t even know me five years ago embraced me as part of the family that they chose to be with on this holiday.  They reminded me that I do have integrity and that I am worthy of trust.  That I’m safe.  Safe enough to be truly intimate with in the most important way possible.

So, this was Thanksgiving.  And, this year, though the anniversary that I can’t seem to escape hit me harder this year than it has in several years, I was reminded just how much I have to be thankful for today.
I am thankful for my family, both the one I was born into and the one that has chosen each other.  I am thankful to be employed and reasonably solvent.  I’m thankful that I have a far deeper spirituality today than I did even five years ago.  I’m thankful that I have both the inspiration and means to be artistic, in my way, and have a hobby that I can pursue with as much relish and intensity as I care to put into it.  Most of all, and this has not always been true, I am thankful this year to simply be alive.

Tomorrow, I will have an unknown number of people over throughout the afternoon and evening, for a bit of fellowship and food.  Even though my house is not quite in the shape I’d like it before having people over, I still look forward to seeing everyone who makes it by, for however long they can be here.  I look forward to the celebration of who we are and our friendships.  Though I often feel very alone this time of year, being separated from my biological family and not in a relationship, tomorrow I will celebrate the amazing number and variety of friends who share my life today.  My life looks very different today than I expected it to, and, more importantly, than it did five years ago, but it’s good life, filled with good people, each of whom I treasure for who they are.

So, I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving this year.  I know I did, and I know why I’m thankful.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"When I look into the future, it's so bright it burns my eyes."
   --Oprah Winfrey

I have no time!

That’s what that German phrase means.  It’s also very true of me the past couple weeks.  I don’t have time.  Or, at least, not enough time.

First, I apologize, dear readers, for not posting more regularly.  As previously mentioned, I’ve been busy.  Two weeks ago, my parents were in town from Chicago, so I was all about spending quality time with them.  When I get a couple minutes to rub together, I’ll get the pictures processed from our trip to the San Jacinto Monument.  A very tourist thing to do, but cool, too, because the San Jacinto Monument was part of the symbol for my Dad’s military unit when he was in the Army back during the Korean War.  He was drafted and ended up in an activated reserve unit out of Houston.  Phone company guys, mostly, who were in a Combat Engineers unit.  So, it was sort of cool to take Mom and Dad to see this local icon which figured so prominently in his past.  He said he’d always meant to see it, but he never figured it would take 58 years to get here.  Maybe it’s never too late, eh?

Also, I’ve been trying to get ready to have people over the day after Thanksgiving.  Usually, I do something the day of Thanksgiving and had hoped to start a new tradition of hosting a Lost and Wandering Thanksgiving at my house.  (Gee that sort of sounds like the saddest Charlie Brown Speical ever, doesn’t it?)  But, due to unforseen circumstances, that’s been pushed back a day and been slightly transformed into a Black Friday Leftovers celebration.  It’ll be fun, though different.  And, yes, I am headed somewhere for Thanksgiving Day, which I’m very much looking forward to doing.  And, this year, I’ll send out invitations earlier.  Like January.

But, also, dear readers, I’ve hit another slump.
Yesterday, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, is an anniversary, of sorts, for me.  An anniversary that I wish I could forget.  It makes me question who I am and why I am.  How I got here both physically and metaphorically.  Some years it hits harder than others, and this year, much to my surprise, it hit harder than I was expecting.  Maybe it was seeing Mom and Dad and realizing that they may not be around too many more years.  Dad’s 80 and Mom’s not too far behind.  They act like people ten years younger, but, the fact is, time catches us all and is creeping up on some of us faster than others.
Some of it is just that my life doesn’t look like I thought it should at this point.  No wife, no kids, a stalled career that’s become just a job I’m good at doing.  I’m thankful, though, that I have the luxury of my existential pain.  I’m relatively healthy.  I’m losing weight and trimming down.  I have a hobby to obsess over and a surprising number of people who love me.  Outside of the lingering medical debt thanks to surviving cancer and wrestling with a little high blood pressure still, things are going better than I have any right to expect.  Still, I feel the lack.

And, all those things, along with a little dog who likes to bust out windows early in the morning, have left me with little time or inspiration to write.  Oh, make no mistake, dear readers, there’s plenty to write about, just a severe lack of motivation and focus to do so.

So, at least you’ve gotten an update.  Now you all know I’m not dead, or run off with the circus, or abducted by aliens.  Just busy and suffering from a bout of Weltschmerz, or, as John D. MacDonald had, I believe, Travis McGee say, “homesickness for a place I’ve never been”.
Maybe it’s just the melancholy German in me that longs for a kind of fantasy life that I never managed to realize.  Who knows?  All I know is that I feel empty, and lonely, and restless, like I do most years about this time, and it makes it hard to write well and honestly and true and not be depressing.  So I haven’t been.
Maybe I’ll go hide behind my camera for a bit longer after all.

More will come.
Eventually.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
   --Susan Ertz

It sounds corny, like a line from a Country song, but it’s true.

If I were a superstitious man, I’d be a little worried about the fact that my last two relationships have driven women from the state.  Thankfully, I’m not.  Actually, in a way, it’s convenient.  After all, I never have to worry about accidentally bumping into one of them while I’m out and about.  That’s comforting, in a strange way.
But, I was more or less friendly with the most recent one after the breakup.  Obviously, I’m not talking about the Queen of the Damned here.  And, no, it’s not that I miss the home-made, from scratch, mind you, apple pie.  Oh, I do miss it, but that’s not the point!  With that one, I’d sort of hoped I could finally have one ex-girlfriend that I actually was on speaking terms with and not some kind of blood feud.  (And, yes, I was talking about the Queen of the Damned there, in case she’s reading this.)

So, if you’re reading this, sweet, adorable, Super-Fancy-Dog-Cookie-Business-Owner-Girl-Who-Baked-Me-That-Wonderful-Apple-Pie, know that when I sent that friend request on Facebook, it wasn’t with the hope of a booty-call.  No, it wasn’t even in hopes of getting an other delicious pie out of you.  Rather, it was about having one person who had been in a relationship with me that didn’t spit and curse me under her breath when she heard my name now that it’s over.  It was about a little hope for me as a human-being, that maybe, just maybe, someone, somewhere has a fond memory or two of me.
(Okay, it also may have been a little about the pie.  But, c’mon, that was fantastic pie and it had stars and big bits of raw sugar all over the top of it!)

And, if any of my other exes find me through this blog post, just assume I miss you terribly, too, and I’d send you a friend request on Facebook if I knew you were there.
You can trust me on that.
Honest.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why."
   --Bernard Baruch

No, not a movie review, but a book review.

So, I’ve been reading more lately, which is great.  And, I’ve been doing my best to read fiction and non-fiction.
Sadly, I haven’t been quite able to review it all, thanks to a brutal personal schedule that often has me out late several days in a row, just to try and squeeze in all the work and personal things to make me feel less alone.  So, while I intended to review this over the weekend, I’m just getting to it now.

In any case, I got The Dip by Seth Godin some time ago and read it just recently.  I got it because I wanted to read a book by the famous Seth Godin and, frankly, this one was the shortest.  No, seriously, I wanted to get one of his books, because I’d read about him, but I didn’t want a huge investment in either money or time.  This book fit the bill.
But, also, it turned out to be good timing for me.  In a way, The Dip is an inspirational book, a book about the power of positive thinking.  It’s certainly a motivational book and would fall under the broad category of “self-help books”, in my opinion.

The premise is simple, really.  Godin says that effort in any worth endeavor, espcially those in the business world, has a curve.  Sort of like a learning curve, but it goes deeper than that.  The curve, which he calls the Dip, is what separates those who are successful and those who aren’t.
When we start something new, whether it’s a new business or a new hobby, we throw a bit of effort into it and we see some small results.  At first, a very little effort produces significant improvements and results.  But, eventually every endeavor hits a point where added efforts produce fewer or no apparent changes in skill or improvement of any kind.  This is the Dip.  Many people quit here and don’t push through the Dip to get to the rest of the curve where additional efforts produce increasing results and result in mastery, eventually getting to a very high-level of performance.  The problem is, we start many, many things and can’t possibly pursue them all through the Dip and on to mastery.  Also, we don’t always have the skill, resources or simple ability to follow through sometimes, but we chase after these things anyway, thus wasting precious time and effort on things that won’t pan out, leaving us not enough time and resources to pour into the few things we might truly follow through the Dip into mastery.

On the one hand, it’s inspirational to realize that if I manage to stay faithful to the things I really find enjoyable and worth pursueing to their end, I might make it through that inevitable slump that everyone always hits.  If I can maintain my enthusiasm when things seem to be all working against me or keeping me from moving from dabbling hobbiest to skilled practitioner.  For instance, it gives me hope that my photography will hit that level where I suddenly start getting it and start seeing better and better photographs.  Sometimes, I feel like I’m on the cusp of that already.  An example of how the Dip works, for instance, is the 365 Days project on Flickr.  The goal is to take a self-portrait every day for one year.  Most people hit a creativity wall at three months or less.  Many bail out at that point, and, in fact, I almost did myself.  But some carry on through the slump, fighting the urge to just throw in the towel, waiting for the creativity to spark again.  Even then, some of us never get that creative spark back and our photographs never improve or we drop out later, midway into the Dip itself.  Quitting in the middle of the Dip, incidentally, is something Godin warns about.  Better to quit sooner, and not waste the resources to get further along only to quite later.  Or, better still, to perservere and make it through the Dip to the other side, thus achieving a new level of skill and competence.  I haven’t given up on my 365 Days Project yet, so I’m hoping I’m not the only one who’s seen improvements in my photographs.
And, The Dip also helped me realize that I need to waste less time on things that I know I won’t follow through on and drain my resources, thusly preventing me from pouring more effort into the things I really want to do well.  Now, I’m having to look at what I’m going to “quit” to make room for more effort for my photography and my writing.  I’m a little afraid that it will be sleep I give up to make room!  But, no matter, this book pointed out some deficiencies in how and where I spend my effort.
That needs to change.

I have to admit, I was skeptical about the hype associated with Seth Godin.  I mean, how good and brilliant can one man be, especially when it comes to sounding off about business and management?  But, this book really helped me see some of what’s been going wrong in my life much more clearly.
It’s already motivated me to workout more and more regularly, in an effort to improve my over-all health and appearance.  And, it’s provided considerable encouragement to keep working at my photography.  So, for those two things alone, it was worth getting.
I recommend The Dip for anyone who feels “stuck” or frustrated that they’re not moving ahead in their personal projects.  I’m sure it’s great for business, too, but I got plenty out of it for myself.
I think you will, too.  Trust me, it really is worth the read.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Justice may be blind, but she has very sophisticated listening devices."
   --Edgar Argo

Ever wonder what I did before my blog devolved into what it is today?

Well, I uses write Perl code for fun. Yeah, that’s right, I used to code for fun. I mostly started with super geeky constructed language scripts and then moved on to other stuff. But, you know, I used to let people use them for free, just because it was fun and people seemed to really enjoy the scripts. Hey, there are a lot of geeky people out there! Anyway, it didn’t take long for these scripts, which used to reside at the Fantasist.net conlang page, to become very popular. It took even less time for them to become problematic for me and my series of webhosts. Well, they’ve finally become so much of a problem that I had to take them down this week.

Honestly, I can’t tell you how sad and angry and frustrated that makes me. I really wish I could keep offering them up, but people have abused them for too long and now they’ve caused me more trouble than they’re worth to me, so they’re gone for the forseesble future.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"'One of these days' is none of these days."
   --English Proverb

“Forgive me, blog, it’s been…  Well, a long time.”

Wow, my blogging has been really sketchy here the past couple of months.  There are reasons.  Lots and lots of reasons.  First, of course, would be my no-longer-pregnant-friend’s-wife being, uh, no longer pregnant.  Did I tell you they named the baby after me?  Well, his middle name is my first name.  And, he’s an angel.  Also, I heard yesterday, he was circumcised, which means statistically he’ll be more likely to recieve oral sex as an adult.  So, you know, he’s got that going for him.

But, I’ve had a few other things that have kept me from blogging as much, or being as personal, too.
For one thing, I’ve been depressed.  Not in the “holy-jeebus-I-can’t-stand-living-anymore” way, but a kind of low-level, unmotivated, anti-social, why-can’t-I-ever-get-enough-sleep sort of way that makes doing more than day-to-day living a little difficult.  Funny thing about that, though, is a couple of weeks ago I finally broke down and saw the therapist who got me through my divorce a couple years back.  Well, I suppose that’s not funny, but what he said was.  After talking to him for about 20 minutes, he suggested I go see my cardiologist about changing my high-blood-pressure medication.  After listening to some of the symptoms of my depression, like insomnia, mood-swings, irritibility, a general anti-social bent, terrible short-term memory, among others, and connecting that with new medication I started taking while I was getting chemotherapy, he related a tale of personal woe to me that had me covinced in no time that I needed to make a cardiologist appoinitment.  So, I have one Thursday afternoon.  It took more than two weeks to get in to see this guy, because he’s got that good a reputation.  Hopefully, that will bode well for changing my meds.  Can you imagine, though?  Two years of insomnia may have all been caused by side-effects of medication that I was ignoring.  Amazing.

Of course, some of my depression and what not is due to other things, but I think a lot of it is a side-effect of that insomnia.  The funny thing is, it all starts to reinforce itself.  So my messy house that I never have the energy to clean, makes me even more depressed and makes it harder for me to get the energy to clean.  All the projects that I want to start, including that other mystery blog, take more energy than I feel I have, which makes me more depressed and hard on myself, which, in turn, saps more energy away on useless recriminations and feelings of depression.  It’s a viscious circle.

But, I hope that will change soon.
Of course, staying up late to write this probably hasn’t helped, so now I’m off to bed.  Ciao!

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Being right too soon is socially unacceptable."
   --Robert A. Heinlein

RoughNight

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

A funny thing happened on the way to the rest of my life.

Yesterday morning at 12:58am, my best friend and his wife gave birth to a son. Rumor has it that she did most of the work. I served merely as a pre-marital counselor and general life-coach to the male half of the dynamic duo who created the angel you see in the picture which accompanies this post. However, in the future, I expect I’ll be babysitting, possibly the odd stint of spilling the secrets to life that the little guy’s father might be reluctant to disclose.

I have no idea where they came up with Grant’s first name, but he got his middle name from me. Yeah, I know, right? It sounds all crazy, but his father told me that his middle name was, in fact, after me. I’m pretty sure I started saying stupid things right about then and, let me assure you, not just because it was 1:30 in the morning and I’d been up so late it was early. I have a slightly hard time with precisely what motivated that, but I don’t think I’ve ever been more flattered or honored.
I hope they don’t think it’s going to keep me from spoiling this kid rotten, though, because, if anything, it’s going to make it that much easier to justify in my head.

I sort of have a funny relationship with other people’s babies these days.
You see, there was a time that I was a de facto father. I was on the lease-to-own program with my ex-wife’s kid. But, I did hope to one day make my own replacement from scratch. Unfortunately, one of the quirky side-effects of my chemotherapy was sterility. Now, I’ll grant you that the strangely optimistic oncologist who broke that news to me also allowed that, as I was “young”, I might eventually recover enough from that to be a viable agent of reproductive biology. Of course, that would generally require a partner, which I’m currently lacking, but that actually seems like the least of my problems with that whole process.
In any case, all those things have led me to, well, to get a little funny around other people’s kids, especially the freshly decanted ones.

Most of the people I hang with these days don’t know me as a father. I was one, though, and, I’d like to think, a pretty good one, in spite of how things seem to have worked out. I suspect they thought I was somewhat terrified of breaking the adorable, little monster, and, I suppose I was. I generally have started with kids after they were verbal and learning to stumble around their surroundings like a veteran drunk. Though, I do have to admit, I was gratified when someone asked if Uncle Jim wanted to hold Grant today and my friend replied immediately, without any hesitation or visible trepidation whatsoever, that “of course he would!”, which was, of course, quite true.

I’ll have you know Grant drifted off to sleep in my arms as I cooed to him in a very manly and macho fashion. In fact, I would not be surprised one bit if we set a precedent with that, since the men in my family do have the most oddly soothing voices, especially when we slide gently into middle age.
Apparently, the women in the room all decided that I was quite adorable with little Grant James. That may be something I use later, by the way. I’m not above volunteering to take my namesake for a walk in the park or a ride in the car as an excuse to troll for available women. For that kind of bait, I’d even change diapers. Really.

You can expect to see and hear more about Grant James Fordham as the years go by and we get to know him.
I don’t know how you all feel about all that, but I’m looking forward to it.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed."
   --Cavett Robert

I’ve always been a survivor.

I usually try to save these soul-searching posts for a weekend, and, as often as not, I’ve been simply deleting them or not even writing them these days.  But, yesterday, I went to see my oncologist to get the results of the CT scan I had last week that I didn’t mention here, either.  I guess it was part of my rationalization and hiding from something that still scares me, to not write about it.  As if somehow not acknowleging it here would make it not matter to me or less frightening.  Of course, that rationalization and avoidance cocktail did nothing to help me sleep for the past week.  Nor, did it make me any less certain that I’ll die alone.

“That moment changes the way you see the world for the rest of your life.”
-Sheryl Crowe, on being diagnosed with cancer.

Cancer changed my life.
Cancer taught me both not to worry quite so much, but, at the same time, to be afraid.  I’m terrified of missing something.  Of not getting to participate in some vital experience that I absolutely need to feel or see or do.  I don’t worry quite so much about my own life and my own needs, but, sadly, that’s often to my detriment.  This entire week while waiting for both the scan and the results I’ve felt as if I’ve been missing something.  As if there were something that I desperately needed to get done, but I was forgetting to do.  I still don’t know what that might be.

One way that things have changed, in part, thanks to my cancer, is how much attention I pay to art and my creative side.  Now, I’ve always loved art, but it always seemed like something that other people did.
When I was in treatment, an acquaintance of mine, Mark Flood, started coming to visit me in the hospital.  We started talking and discovered that we had a lot in common, much to our mutual surprise.  That led to spending more time hanging out, and more time getting to know Mark and his art.  That led to weekly lunches and a rediscovery of my childhood desire to make art.
But, you see, I was told that you couldn’t make a living as an artist.  Or a writer.  I was encouraged to find more lucrative pursuits.  That’s how I ended up with a degree in Marketing and getting into computers professionally.  Both seemed like better career moves at the time.  But, as I spent more and more time becoming a real network geek, I spent less and less time doing anything creative.  And, I made money.  Good money, actually.  But, I wasn’t happy.  Not really, not for long.  These days, I’m mostly happy when I’m chasing one of the photographs I “see” in my head and trying to make it real.  It’s just not enough, anymore, to simply survive.

“[Man] cannot remake himself without suffering.  For he is both the marble and the sculptor.”
– Dr. Alexis Carret

But, thanks to Mark and some other things, I know you can do more than survive as a creative.  I worry that I may be a little late coming to the realization that I’ve been lied to all these years by my family.  For the best of reasons, to be sure, but a lie is still a lie and it tore a small hole in who I was when I didn’t pursue those creative urges back then.  In fact, I can think of several people who we knew when I was growing up who made their living as a creative and did just fine.
But, the process of unmaking who I had become before treatment and creating a life that will let me become the person I want to become is difficult.  Of course, it beats the alternative, which is not changing, staying the same forever, essentially, death.  But it’s not easy unlearning everything your family taught you about life to reinvent yourself and become something new, especially if you want to keep a relationship with that family.  And, all this change, in my perspective, in my priorities, in my very direction and mode of travel, was all brought about by that simple diagnosis of first, an unidentified mass, which later became cancer.

“It isn’t important to come out on top, what matters is to be the one who comes out alive.”
– Bertolt Brecht, Jungle of Cities

After spending almost eight months constantly wreslting with the possiblity of my own death, or, as I like to put it, French-kissing the Grim Reaper, has left me almost entirely unafraid of my own death.  Oh, sure, the pain leading up to it might suck hard, but, when the lights finally go out for me, well, it’s beyond my control.  And, don’t take that to mean that I wouldn’t fight for my life, because I would.  In fact, I think I’d fight harder for it now than I would have ever before, because there are things that I want to do, things I need to acomplish before I finally leave and “shuffle off this mortal coil”.
In fact, you’d think I’d be fearless about everything, but that’s just not been the case.
Mostly, I’m afraid of the things I was afraid of as a kid.  Social situations are especially terrifying.  I get all caught up in appearing right to other people.  Sometimes my ideas are, well, a little different.  Different thinking frightens most folks and, by extension, people who think differently are sometimes frightening.  I sometimes feel the burden of that social pressure to fit in and not make waves.  My working at odd angles to the world makes people occasionally uncomfortable and I don’t like that, so I get hesitant about being open and honest and, sometimes, just being with people.  It’s like regressing back to the Seventh Grade and all the social humiliation that goes along with that.  It’s not a pretty picture in my head.

“Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.”
– Daniel Dafoe, Robinson Crusoe

So, with almost entirely good news from my scan results yesterday, I’m trying to overcome my smaller fears that have begun to rule me.  I’m sure it will be a slow, ponderous process, and likely filled with fear and setbacks and imperfection, but that’s okay.  Hell, that’s just life.  But, in the end, I think I have to change.  I don’t plan on dying any time soon, so change will happen eventually, but it’s time to do more than survive.  I think it’s time I started steering my life more and improving and changing and truly living, not just surviving.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"You can't go back and have a brand new start, but anybody can start now and have a brand new end."

No, seriously, don’t quit your day job.

Right, so most of you regular network geekophiles know that I’m a mildly repressed, slightly frustrated writer, among other things.  Many have been the day that I sat and dreamed of making a full-time living as a science-fiction or fantasy writer, setting my own schedule, free from the pressures of endless demands for instant service.  Well, it turns out that may not be the best idea.  For one thing, it’s hard to make a living at the fiction writing thing.  Certainly, a down economy is not the best time to roll dice that big.  Also, there’s the question of things like health insurance and retirement savings.  So, while I try to figure out some other creative ways to enrich my professional life, I’ll be thankful that my job really isn’t that bad.

And when I feel like it is, at least I know I’m not alone. So, if you’re feeling oppressed by the Man, know that you’re not the only one and check out some Science Fiction Writer’s Cruddiest Day Jobs.
I don’t know about you, but it gives me hope that, if they could do it with those day jobs, well, maybe I can do it with mine.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why."
   --Bernard Baruch

It seems like this comes around on a regular basis.

Server names and naming conventions are a constant source of argument and irritation in big IT departments.  Everyone has their own idea of just what naming schema should be used for the servers and workstations and such on the network.  And, since it hasn’t shown up recently on Slashdot, we were about due for an article on it.  There is; Why do we name servers the way we do?  The comments, if you can be bothered to dig down deep into them and wade past some of the worst attempts at humor, are quite telling.  It doesn’t take long before the relative merits of using quirky, easy to remember names is being quite hotly debated.

The original article  over at IT World, titled Would a server by any other name be as functional?, seems to weigh in on the side of the more creative names.
I’ve worked both kinds of places, actually.  In one job, we used a very precise naming convention that had been put in place after some, apparently, very intense debate.  There, we used the LocationFunctionOperatingSystemNumber kind of naming system.  So that the first Accounting server in Houston running Novell Netware would be HOUACTNW01.  Perfectly clear to me, actually, because of that job.  It’s a logical system and works well enough, though it does lack a certain “zing”.
At most other jobs, though, we tended toward the other way.  Once, I worked with a guy who named his servers after dead musicians and actors, but that was only so he could ping his favorite router and see “Hendrix is alive” come back to him.  Another place, we used various things and it was, well, far less themed and much more confusing.  I think it’s best to choose from a very, very large mythology or naming pool so that you don’t have to switch themes mid-stream.  We had some servers named for “gods of the underworld” and others that were named after space shuttles at the same company.  There was no rhyme or reason to it, really, just what the last guy felt like doing.

I’m not sure what naming convention I’ll finally use when I finally get around to redoing my network at home.  It’s hard to get motivated, you know?  When you do it at work all day?  Makes you feel sorry for sex workers and gynaecologists, not to mention urologists, doesn’t it?
(Yeah, this is what happens when I stay up way too late.  Or is it too early?)

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"A friend of mine told me once that they don't lock you up for being crazy, only for acting crazy."