What I’m Blogging

I like my bed. Of course I mean on those occasions when I can get into it. Typically I’m at odds with the pack over sleeping space. If I get there late, I usually have to evict the Rotweiller and the German Sheppard. The Australian is smaller and more clever; she can usually find a way to remain sleeping in comfort.

…comfortable and completely without care or responsibility…

Once I’m in bed, I like to stay there. It’s warm, comfortable and completely without care or responsibility. In bed is safe. Getting up is fraught with the peril of the corporate day. As I discussed a little earlier the morning didn’t go well… into the full blown day that is Gigantic Concrete the wellness worsened.

The onslaught - phone calls, voice mails, action items, incidents, change requests, e-mail, status reports, staff issues, vendor delays, executive updates - in short, mayhem. Yes we all experience it, I’ve even seen you at some of the Mayhem Anonymous meetings. What I’m wondering is, where the heck did my sponsor go? I’ve got eleven steps more to go and I’ve lost my way.

Darkness falls. Bed beckons. It’s safe there… at least until tomorrow.

It was on this day in 1991 that a body was found frozen in a glacier in the Alps between Austria and Italy. A German tourist found the body and called the Austrian police. They tried to free the body from the ice with a jackhammer. It was only when an anthropologist showed up to examine the body that they realized it was a very, very old corpse—5,300 years old, in fact—of a man between 25 and 35 years old. He was five feet, two inches tall, with hair about three inches long. He had tattoos. He wore an unlined fur robe, a woven grass cape, and size six shoes stuffed with grass for warmth.

…he died while he was out walking on an ordinary day…

He came to be called the Iceman, and what made him such a remarkable discovery for anthropologists was the fact that he died while he was out walking on an ordinary day wearing ordinary clothing. He carried a copper axe and a fur quiver for his arrows, the only quiver from the Neolithic period that has ever been found. His arrows had sharp flint points and feathers that were affixed at an angle that would cause the arrows to spin. And he carried mushrooms in his bag that scientists speculate were used for medicine.

It was not until ten years later that a forensics expert noticed in an x-ray that the Iceman had an arrowhead lodged in his back. He had been murdered.

From the Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Further chilling reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

It’s an early morning with Gigantic Concrete today. I was sleeping peacefully; dreaming dreams. Then came the ringing. A cacaphone of bells and ring tunes. Cell phone; home phone; dogs running everywhere. It was chaos - my job, fix it. On the other end of the line was my manager who had been woken up himself, and as is the case in business, decided that the crap needed to roll down hill. One of our sites was down. Applications did not work. Rock was not flowing, and as we all know, the rock must flow.

I woke up. Got out of bed. Dragged the comb accross my head. Made my way downstairs and had a cup… Wait isn’t this a Beatles song? Started the computer, connected to the NET, tunneled through to Giant Concrete.Net. Guess what? The emergency was already over. It had been over since before the phone call came in. I called the site and the conversation went like this; (sort of)

Me: Hi, it’s Network support calling, you guys have an issue?

Him: Nope

Me: your network isn’t down?

Him: Nope.

Me: didn’t you open a ticket?

Him: Oh that.. It’s fixed.. I called back and told them to close the call..

Me: Oh, OK then.

Him: You have a nice day now. Gott go.

click

The rock must flow.

(Also available from Amazon Canada, and UK)

I picked up this book in the Winnipeg airport 2 weeks ago. It was there on the shelf as I cleared the security check. I have always been a student of philosophy and religion. Between the beers, philosophy is something I actually got a degree in. In any event, there it was and there I was, so I picked it up and decided on a little “enlightened” reading on the plane ride home.

The book has a lengthy introduction that I thought was quite dry. In fact it can be dry and technical about different schools of Buddhist thought in places. The book assumes you have some knowledge of Buddhism. The chapters of the book are a series of lectures given by the Dali Lama and so use of Buddhist terms is understandable. For the untrained I would recommend the same strategy for reading Russian novels like the Brothers Karamazov; rename the main characters with short English names like Fred and Bob.

The best part of each chapter for me is the recorded questions from and answers to the Dali Lama. In these passages we see his personality. His grace, wisdom, honesty and humour all blend together in a unique and interesting man that the reader cannot help but be more interested in finding out about.

A good read if you are in the state of mind to enjoy it.