It’s Skydiving Saturday at Logos con carne! I’m working on the upcoming TV Tuesday, so this weekend I’m going to coast a bit with some easy posts and archive excavations.
It’s also a good time to enjoy the end of lazy summer before we go back to school. After all, Logos CC is also about philosophy and computers and science (oh, my).
There are many meaty topics on the grill for later, but for now it’s free fall time!
This is a companion piece to yesterday’s post about my high school English teacher, Mr. Wilson (which may—or may not—be his real name). This piece concerns something that happened in high school that changed my life. It’s one of those moments when you turn onto a new road that ends up becoming a permanent part of your path. As we say these days, it rebooted my life.
The road turn took place in 1970, but the first real seed was planted the year before. It was my first year of high school, and I went to see a play, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, put on by the high school. The play was staged in the school’s auditorium, a 1000-seat genuine theatre complete with fly galleries, lighting positions, and a booth at the back for projectors and the main spotlight.
It was the first time I’d seen a live play or a theatre like that.
(Not Mr. Wilson)
I’ve spent so much time today reading and commenting on other people’s blogs (and a few on my own) that now I’m feeling a bit weary of writing. Still, we’ll see how this one goes. It’s a combination bone to pick (albeit a small and arguable one) and remembrance of things past. Distant, dim past. High school past. Nearly forty years past.
I’ve been remembering the past for a variety of reasons. A high school friend, one of the very few I’m still in touch with, is also facing looming job elimination.
And just yesterday, someone else from high school sent a message to my Facebook page (which I maintain for the purpose of old friends finding me, and only for that purpose).
This is actually a comment response that ran so long I decided to post it as a new article. It’s in response to a comment from wakemenow on my Venus & Mars post yesterday.
I’ve heard many a tale about the competition among women. There have even been some articles published in work-related blogs about women in business being far harder on other women than on men. I’ve long assumed it was primarily based on competition for a resource (position, power, money) that was viewed as scarce, but I have come to wonder if there isn’t something else at work as well.
This is a fairly fresh line of thought, so bear with me if it seems poorly thought out (or just flat-out wrong).
Had a pair of interesting dreams I want to record. They were odd enough to stay with me once I awoke, and interesting enough (at least to me) that I want to record them. They seem possibly related to my current job situation.
(NOTE: This post is intended more for me — a true web log — than for any putative readership, so you may not find it very interesting. This is your one and only warning!
Continued reading may lead to a why am I reading this syndrome!)
Before the age of blogs (or even web pages), those of us on the internet had other places to hang out and exchange thoughts.
In fact, in many regards, the “Bulletin Board Systems” (BBS) and “internet news groups” (USENET) were more conversational than blog or Facebook comments. They were more like chat rooms where conversations took place over days and weeks (and months).
Like chat rooms, they involved a group of people having a conversation. I miss those days… blog comments are too brief and passing to be a conversation. At best, brief remarks are exchanged for a half-dozen rounds or so, and then the river flows on.
There are things you can’t unsee. I don’t mean the walking in on your parents kind of sights. And I also don’t mean certain movies, such as Cop Out or MacGruber (two movies I had to stop watching after about 15-20 minutes least my brain melt; oh, Bruce, what were you thinking).
I mean things that, once you know they’re there, you can’t look at that same context ever again without seeing it.
This post was triggered by a, what I believe was a tongue-in-cheek, post on (if I recall correctly) io9. [The qualifications here come from not being able to find said post anywhere, even though I know I saw it this year. Even paging deep into Google results digs up nothing.]
This is a piece I started almost a year ago, set aside for polishing and never returned to. It started as a rant and morphed into a looking back at what, now, might be the fullness of a career.
It seemed like it might be a good companion piece to the recent post, Ground Rush, so here it is for your dining and dancing pleasure.
The original title was…
Things have been changing recently at work. In fact, for two years or so, lots of things have been changing at work; you’ve probably noticed.
The awkward Supreme Court ruling, known as “Citizens United,” has generated a lot of discussion about corporations being people. Note that this 2010 ruling did not establish corporations as people: that’s been on the books since the early 1800s.
The Citizens United ruling allowed them to spend vast sums of money as “free speech.”
Anyone not terribly alarmed by this and what it implies for our political future isn’t paying attention.
It’s Monday, but for me it’s the middle of week two (weak, too?) of six in the, “oh, crap, they eliminated my job, now what,” fun-filled fun fest. If you’re tuning in late, here’s chapter one of the story. So far, I’ve applied for a dozen different positions, had two interviews, and have another one scheduled tomorrow.
Given that The Company seems fine with the idea of losing my 33 years of experience (and over 35 years of software expertise), I’m very tempted to just consider the retirement options. They aren’t what I’d hoped for, but… well, we’ll see.
I mentioned before that, if the clock does run out on this, it would be just in time for my birthday. Turns out, if I don’t find another position within TC, my last day at work would, in fact, be my birthday.
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