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.

Tomorrow is “Talk Like a Pirate Day”… Yes, that’s what I said. For more information make sure you drop by the official web site. In order to get yourselves ready for this event, You will need to get a Pirate name. The link below can help.

This is a great summarization of my University years. I studied at the University of Western Ontario and at the University of Toronto. Mind you I should have said that I consumed my fair share of beer, for studying was the least of my concerns. I took a break in the middle to join the church, leave the church, and drink more beer. As a result I recall little of my univeristy daze, save the gleam from the rail at the bar.

Poem: “Philosophy” by Daniel Hoffman, from Makes you Stop and Think © George Braziller Publishers.

Philosophy

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

Sunday off; a day free from labour; ordained rest by the Divine on high. Unfortunately, someone forgot to read the memo. My Sunday off is a little different.

…Sunday has really gone to the dogs…

Let’s start with the dogs. If God had wanted Sunday to be a day of rest, you’d think he would have informed the dogs. But they still want out or the house early in the morning. There are neighbours to wake, cats to chase, and let’s not forget nature’s call. No, dogs definitely missed the memo on the whole day of rest thing. Mind you they are very well informed on the afternoon of rest, usually in my favourite spot on the sofa, but I digress.

Next is my day job. The place where I’m expected to be, 9 - 5, Monday to Friday. They missed the memo too. I don’t think they were ever copied on the original. Instead of Sunday being a time of rest and time spent with family, for the best and brightest at Gigantic Concrete (and everywhere else I’ve worked too) Sunday is a change window. It is an opportunity to do all the computer and system work you need to do so that other people can be uninterrupted during their 9-5 work week. “The rocks must flow”. It sounds like a Frank Herbert novel waiting to happen. This Sunday morning I had a telco on the phone with a manufacturer of fine network equipment trying to recreate a problem we solved over a month ago to ensure that we really solved it.

To really top off My Sunday Off we need to look at the home front. There’s the grass to cut, the hedge to trim, the car to wash, and groceries to buy. Worst of all there ’s the calls of nature from my canine friends to scoop. Sunday has really gone to the dogs.