Playing Hookie

Yesterday, the alarm went off at 5:00 AM - just as it always does. And, just like I always do, I got out of bed and silenced it. Then, with a headache, cotton mouth, and churning stomach, I set the timer for another 20 minutes and fell back in bed.

After 20 minutes, my head still hurt, my tummy still turned, and my mouth was still dry. I fell back into bed and held an internal debate over whether to call in sick.

Two hours later......

The Fortune 500 Company sent out message last week reminding its multitude of minions not to come into work if displaying symptoms of the flu. I rationalized that this applied as well to Swine Flu as to Brown Bottle Flu. I called in sick. I then showered and dressed and asked myself a question: "What do I need to get done today?"

Three things came to mind. The first was to clean up a wax spill in the Temple of Wombat. (What is it with pagans and candles?) So I set to this task, then decided the entire temple needed to be cleaned out and re-assembled. I hauled out boxes and folders and totes and stacks. I cleaned and dusted and sorted and filed and cursed and banished and repaired and eliminated. I then put the Temple of Wombat back together. Finally, when the floor cover was back in place, I performed the lesser hexagram ritual to re-establish the working space.

So far so good.

The other two task I planned for the day went undone. Cleaning the temple took all day. But when it was all done, I felt good. I was motivated again.

Work Sucks

It seems as if management at work has embarked on a program of protracted and constant demoralization. Three rounds of layoffs are at the core of it. For me, moving between jobs is a part of this, along with having work thrown at me with no training or instruction on how the hell to do it. In some cases, being free to make up your own job is a blessing. This is not one of those cases. Then – obviously disappointed that they weren’t important enough to be laid off - a small number of people quit. There are no signs they will be replaced.

On top of all this, a further blow is being administered. By the end of June – so the rumors say – development will have moved back to the main building. Our current arrangement is pretty sweet. We are in space that offers plenty of elbow room and some amenities. Being across the street from the mother ship, we are close enough to communicate with the rest of the company when we need to, but far enough away to be buffered from constant interruption. (When development was previously in the main building, interruptions became bad enough that they finally had to lock the door during business hours and appoint one person as a gatekeeper to handle communications with sales, support and training.) I am already conjuring up visions of the extreme measures we may have to make to buffer ourselves.

Another factor is just the physical space. We will be losing the elbow room, our own lunch room, the conference rooms, etc. We will be pressed together cheek and jowl. And – worse still – there is a rumor that my team, the NXT developers and QA, will actually be sharing space with four trainers. I am not looking forward to this at all.

Getting traction, losing sanity

I am understanding now why they moved me to QA at work. I was finally able to latch onto something that allows me to build and run detailed reports, suck the results into a spreadsheet, then hunch over and examine the numbers while mumbling profane words and phrases. I have found my calling.

My first task in QA is to help develop reports our customers use to analyze sales and to compare against national averages. So far I have found the causes for damn near every discrepancy between the new reports we are building and the older reports we are basing them on. Better yet, some of the problems I found are problems with the OLD reports that no one else ever caught. It feels good to finally feel useful.

In other news, Horus Oasis also is gaining traction, but that isn't all good. The demands on my time are increasing, and I have no time to spare in the first place. Also, some of the increased demands are wonderful for the other people involved, but are doing nothing for me. I put energy in, I get nothing back out. (Instead of the O.T.O., I could be talking about a woman.) I think I am doing more from a sense of obligation and plain inertia than from desire. This is not good. I must spend time thinking about this.

On the other hand, with new people coming on board, they could be in a position to take some of the load in a reasonable time - assuming they don't get scared or bored before we carry their limp bodies out of their First Degree initiations and carefully nurse them back to health.

Killing the Joy

So here I was, moving into the new job. I got the news on Thursday, made plans on Friday, and moved to the new desk (in another building, across the street) on Monday.

Tuesday was starting to learn the ropes: getting to know the tools, the procedures and the personalities. So far so good. I even ripped a few tasks off the waiting list and did something useful with them.

Wednesday was setting up the new PC. This is nearly as fun as a physical move. Then I started into yet more testing, running parts of the new GUI through the paces. I was actually feeling productive.

Then came Thursday, and some news. One of the guys on the other QA team gave his two weeks notice. This left that team much shorter on resources than my team. How to plug the hole? Hire someone? No way. Move someone over from support? Not even. Wait! Let's move Andy!

Being jerked out of the new job just as I am feeling productive is demoralizing. Having to wait a few weeks for the guy I am replacing to actually go away is even worse.

Quick Math

Let's do some quick math...

Start with 100 Billion dollars. If you slice that up into chunks of $50,000 each, how many slices do you get?

Two million.

In big round numbers, how many Americans lost jobs in the last quarter?

Two million.

How about this for a stimulus plan: Put every person who loses a job on a $50,000 personal bailout. Assign an expiration to the bailout, where it pays full for a year, then decreases to nothing through the second year. Pay a $10 to $20 grand 'buy-out' bonus for each person who trades the bailout for a real job, then keeps it for a year.

So right when I finish the previous paragraph, the boss pulls us aside for a quick conversation. We laid off a few people today, in response to a small decrease in our customer base and revenue. That's the bad news. The good news - I still have my job.

Tear it all apart...

I've been tearing things apart lately.

Melinda moved all of her stuff into my basement for the summer. My god, how much stuff does a college student need? I needed to make room for it so I started - naturally - at the opposite end of the house. I realized the messes in all the rooms are so connected and dense, that I knew I needed to start cleaning there in order for the bit of open space to roll through the house and make a place for her shit. So I tore certain parts of the house apart, and her stuff is in place. Now I get to put the other rooms back together.

A project at work was being a bit vexing, so I tore it apart. Killed the old tools - burning bridges is great incentive to move forward - then scrapped my day to day duties to make room for it. So far, so good. It will all be in place and beautiful by noon tomorrow. Just in time for the end of the fiscal year.

The eave rebuilding project at Kat's - now on summer number four - is 5 sessions from ending. To make that happen, I tore apart my workout and reading schedules. It sill be done next weekend, then I can turn my attention to repairing concrete and mortar. Long story.

I am tearing apart my alcohol habit. I live in a county that is dry on Sundays. This is a good thing, even though I want a beer so bad I could scream. But I am enjoy knowing that I will be alert and able to work every morning, so I think I'll stay dry for a while.

I am weening myself from Caffeine. Some mountains (booze) are best descended by jumping the cliff. Others (coffee) are best dealt with via a gentle sloping path. Just ask Heather.

Death by Four Tens

I switched to a 4-10 work week starting June 1. It is killing me.

The day starts at 4:30 instead of 5:00 with the typical work day going from 6:00 to 4:30. An hour commute home and a bedtime of 8:30 leaves three whole hours of life at the end of the day.

But then there is the day off. Between the 4-10 work week and couch surfing after my usual Tuesday with The Grrrls, I am only making three round-trips between home and work. With current gas prices, this is saving me up to $80 a month.

Did I mention I am getting up each day at 4:30?

So what about that day off?

I spent one of those days doing weekend things because the previous week was living hell and I was massively behind on 'stuff'. I spent another of those days kicking off The Grand Cleaning Project at my mom's house. I spent the third day off painting at Kathleen's house.

4:30 is too early to get up. It would be better if 8:30 wasn't so early to go to bed. Today (Thursday) is the first day this week I haven't been in a haze from lack of sleep. That haze is more the rule in my life than the exception. I wonder if it is really worth it.

Up periscope

Too damn busy to make a meaningful entry. Mostly "good busy", so no whining allowed. Maybe I'll do a brain dump this weekend. In the mean time...

Some friends are back in town.
Lisa is re-arranging my anatomy (Structural Integration).
Kathleen is - finally - jumping from the sinking ship that is her current employer and getting a new job.
My job is getting interesting.
Green tomato relish.

In other news

I took the morning off yesterday to attend court. A sentencing hearing. Four hours of boredom just to have The Creep called next to last, then the hearing continued two weeks because the prosecution and the public defender were looking at different sets of paperwork. The final indignity being the 8 bucks for parking. My consolation is that during the next two weeks, I get to live my life: The Creep gets to stay in jail (something about skipping out, a 40,000 warrant, and no friends in the state). On the other hand, I enjoyed watching Judge Skanchy do his job. It reminded my a bit of my father when he was on the bench. The day was a mixed pleasure.

I am in new digs at work. Downstairs with IS and plenty of elbow room. I also have two 19 inch LCD monitors. I set them up portrait mode and it is proving to be quite the trip. But it brought out an interesting program bug. I set one of my programs to open on the secondary monitor. No problem. But when I would try to open a child window from it, the program froze. I didn't see the connection between the problem and the location. So a rebuilt data, reinstalled, manually cleared the registry and reinstalled, etc. I finally figured out the link to moving it, and pushed it back to the primary monitor. Interesting, but an hour of work lost.

Mindy spent the day being a greeter at WalMart. I'm not sure how I feel about that. She is visiting this weekend and plans to go to Salt Lake and get a tattoo. I'm not sure how I feel about THAT. Gotta love it when the children are adults and you just have to smile and make agreeable noises. At least she hasn't seen fit to bless my with a grandchild.

The pumpkin patch is on a quest for world domination. One of the vines slipped over the fence and there is a 12 inch diameter orb suspended over the neighbor's yard. I think I'll point it out to them and tell them they can have it if they want. Lisa got the last good cob of corn - and it was a beauty. I am about to turn into a squash, I have cooked, eaten and frozen enough of it. And we'll see if the late tomato patch has time to produce before the snow flies.

Life is good. Crazy, but good.

Finally, it is the second day in a row I have worked out and spent my time doing Wombat things instead of Other People things. If it goes well, my next post may speak of the return of Thelema to my life.

Triggers

First let me report on the mundane happenings in my universe. ADP informed us all last month that we are moving to a common review date for yearly raises. April 1st for the raise, so the reviews get done during March. My last review was in November, so this one will be prorated for the short number of months. The money part of it has the potential to be rather nice, but I'm not sure this makes up for what a pain in the ass it was to do the review, especially when I have barely recovered from the trauma of my last review. But it was nice to be dealing with Johnny this time instead of Kris. I also found that my classification is Tech 3 - top for my department (but likely lower than reality). This is better than the Tech 2 they pasted on me after the acquisition.

The last several weeks I have been attending a 'Thelemic Magick and Mysticism' class at Amber's place, taught by Mark Anthony. While the quality of the 'class' is nothing to strike fear into the hearts of college instructors, the actual flow and results have been great. Every week turns into a pretty good discussion, even when it veers wildly off topic. But most important, the class has got me (and a few others) started on doing a daily practice. We started out with the first leg of Yoga and tried to progress though them one each week. This is an absurdly fast pace for true practice, but there really is no other way to teach it in a group such as ours. I have settled on a version of yoga that emphasizes observing body and mind, while not trying to control the mind. I'll move to that later. I'm up to 30 minutes of asana (admittedly it is sloppy asana), 3 to 4 times a week. It feels good.

Last weekend I made myself a white robe. I had two aims in mind. First, I needed to learn and practice for making a black robe for my first degree initiation. Second, I need a white robe for my confirmation into the ECG. The project took me most of the weekend. It looks pretty good on me, has no major flaws, but would make a real seamstress swoon in dismay. Among other things, I learned the black robe will have to have the edges all sewed up to keep end threads from unraveling in the wash. I'm hoping to purchase black material tomorrow and get started this weekend, then finish next weekend. Also next weekend, I'll be asking for my first degree application.

But all that stuff above is just bookkeeping. The real issues right now are depression and anger. It is odd that one of the results of the yoga has been to increase self awareness and observation - seeing the bullshit for what it is and separating from it. I would expect this self awareness to be good for me, but it isn't working out that way this time. It seems that the self awareness is only having an influence on the level of the intellect - the "thinking" Andy. On the level of emotion, the "feeling" Andy, I am - to quote Trent Reznor, "Down in it." It's an odd feeling, sort of like the ego-dystonic state that an OCD victim finds herself in. Here I am getting all wrapped up in bad reactions and feelings, while a part of me is watching it all happen, detached and separate, with a sort of shock and amazement.

The stage for this was set last week when Kate e-mailed her first play in our Scrabble by Mail game. She used all seven letters to rack up a hefty opening score, but with a word that she essentially made up. She confessed that it isn't in the dictionary, but that it was still valid for some bullshit reason or another. I plugged it into Google and found that Microsoft uses it as some sort of private geek term, but only in the same way half a million other non-words flash in and out of existence in sheltered settings. "Isobits." Whatever. So this put me in the position where I can either call her on it and be the asshole, or roll over and accept it, losing the game while allowing her to push my ass around. Great - I can lose, or I can lose.

This and other incidents set the stage for the depression, but I was still barely above it. The trigger point for down in it came a few days later, and was the most stupid and embarrassing incident. On the way back from the track on Wednesday, I made the mistake of swinging by the H.H. residence and trying to say hello to H.H.'s whelp. I was soundly ignored. So I just went away. But it really bugged me - more than it should have for anyone, and far more than it should have for an inbred shit like her.

[Redacted gripe and moan centered on wenches]

I must make one thing very clear at this point. The events above are not causes for depression. The causes are several and varied and tied up in all aspects of who I am and the little universe I live in. The events above are triggers. As such, they aren't the problem and really don't matter. If there is a problem to be addressed, it is to change how I respond to the triggers, not to make the triggers go away.

Despite my complaining, there is a good side to things. The discussion at the seminar was good, and the only thing better than a good group discussion is good one-on-one brain sex. I also finished my white robe last weekend, and it actually looks pretty good (as long as you don't look too closely). This clears on hurdle for confirmation into the EGC and I'm ready to make the black robe for my first degree initiation. And, to leave of this feel good fest, we bring up my favorite obsession - my weight has been staying down.

To betray the Bread and Salt

The Web Migration project at work is ahead of schedule and is really being a turn-on for the left lobe of The Wombat’s brain. It has been ages since something at work has really reached out and grabbed my interest. Part of why I like this project is that it is coming together so well - better than I had hoped, and better than what I told the boss to expect. On Friday it want live for Alpha testing. Most of the HTML conversion worked as planned, and it looks sweet as hell. There is still some work to do on it, if fact there is a lot of work to do on it, but so far the conversion program has things over 80% of the way to where I want them. If I wanted to, I could take support live on it within another week. But then the bosses would expect that kind of action all the time. So I’m going to stick with the February 28 date and get it as pretty as I can before that. At least this way I don’t run the risk of being late, it will look like a good job, and I get time to do the shit I know I need to (but the bosses never see as important).

There is other news at work that isn’t really good in itself, but has nice timing. We are all moving to a common review date in April and I need to do the whole PMF process again, even though I did it just last November. It is a pain in the ass and I never enjoy it, but this time it will come right on the heels of my completing the Web Migration. Even better, we may be integrating the web search into Vision (our call logging software) and I have already figured out how to enable importing the solution from the Knowledge Base entry into the Case (call log) in Vision. I am seriously thinking this might justify having Denos reclassify my designation so I get paid more.

I was thinking a few days ago about my decision not to write too much about my Minerval, and especially about the content of the ritual itself. I used to look at stuff like this as being no big deal, laughing at the seriousness of the Occult Initiation thing. I laughed (or at least scratched my head) at the way people take it all so seriously and pretend it is all so secret (and that there is something to be had from playing the secrecy game). But something happened after my own Minerval. I think I am beginning to understand. The fact is that the ritual was no big deal, at least when taken from my old position described above. But in the study materials I got from my sponsor a few weeks ago there was mention of the fact that you get more from it if you treat initiation with respect, as if it really does mean something. Expectation forms reality.

Before the ritual, I had trolled the internet looking for the text of the ritual, but didn’t find it. The O.T.O. must do a good job of chasing down the copies posted on the web and getting people to take them down. Either that or there just isn’t much interest in the topic. Then about a week ago I was looking for instructions on making a Tau robe for my first degree (something that is surprisingly scarce) and stumbled on a file claiming to have the texts of all the O.T.O. rituals. So I downloaded it and took a look. The table of contents listed them all, right up through the degrees that a schmuck like I could ever dream of. As The Wombat sat there looking at the screen, something happened in his fuzzy little psyche. First he had to see if it was the real thing, so he ventured into the text of the Minerval ritual. It was the real deal. Now the dilemma had teeth. On the one hand I could just read the scripts and it would be no big deal (this coming from the pre-Minerval Andy). On the other hand, it would be cheating. To look at the rituals, to learn the secrets he had not yet earned, would be to betray the bread and salt. So I made my choice. I printed up the Minerval as a study aid, then carefully closed the file and vowed not to look at it again.

I suppose printing up the Minerval was hedging, but my initiator hasn’t been available for questioning. G. has also been a bit scarce. So I’ll use this as a resource until I can dredge up a teacher or two. Another reason for not looking at the other rituals is that I know how initiation is supposed to work and what it is supposed to do. If you go into it armed with the script, it is all lost on you. I don’t want to do this to myself. I want to get the full bang for my buck and let the rituals work with me as designed.