A "Good" Busy....

...uh, no.

Not a "good" busy; not a "bad" busy, either. (A "bad" busy, I guess, would be....what, heroin-related? That's the worst "busy" I can imagine for myself, right now, and it's definitely NOT the case; then again, the only "good" busy I could imagine would be a whole lot wilder and wackier than anything I'm currently experiencing. So...it's an AVERAGE "busy"--how's that?)

The job--which I still love--is driving me bat-crap bonkerellas--is that a word? If not, I hereby stick a flag in it and declare it to be one, 'cuz it's kinda cool--anyway. I know I've said this before, but I'm repeating it regardless: if I find myself sitting in a hugely-uncomfortable chair in Joe (El Boss)'s office, waiting for 15-25 minutes to ask him a work-related question, while meantime he yammers on through his PERSONAL FRIKKIN PHONE CALL about his kids' BOY SCOUT TROOP...There is no exaggeration anywhere within that sentence, incidentally. I have, in fact, sat for 20 minutes in his office listening to his personal call about the next campout. Generally my next comment has been something along the lines of, "you know, that thing we do here--you know, WORK????" In fact, today I actually said it out loud--for once he actually interrupted his call to ask me what it was I needed, and after I told him and as I left, he clicked back to his call with an "I'm sorry about that..." At which point I turned around, stuck my head back in the office and said: "Yeah...I'm sorry I had to interrupt this personal phone call to attend to WORK matters, while I'm at my JOB..." Fortunately, the environment is such that we can all get away with talking crap to Joe on a regular basis, so this was not seen as a transgression.

As much as I love the loose environment, the trash-talking, the verbal one-upmanship--and believe me, most of the time I can give as good as I get--I have a strong sense that the environment has changed for the worse within the last 3 months or so. And I can point, with a plus-or-minus-1% level of doubt, to the moment when the change began...

It was the moment we rolled out the first Windows Vista machine.

If you are (like me) a WinXP user, or even better (and God bless you, and she'll bless you even MORE if you buy one for ME) a Mac user--if, in short, the horror that is Vista has not touched your life...be grateful, dear reader, for you are Fate's own cherished tot. Windows Vista is, to computers, the equivalent of what would happen if you took bubonic plague germs, high-fructose corn syrup, the contents of the lint trap in the Chicago Sewage Treatment Plant, a 36-minute-long Michael Bolton vocal solo, the stuff at the bottom of the dumpster at a chicken shack, chili-farts, and that nightmare you have where you're running as fast as you can but you're not moving at all--if you took all those things, mixed them together with three pounds of Scotch Bonnet peppers, and reduced the whole concoction to a double-strength glaze, which you then poured into one ear through a large, sharp-pointed metal funnel. That, my friends, is called PAIN. There are simply no words on the planet Earth, nor in many of the better-known alien languages, for how very, very deeply I loathe Vista.

I am not alone.

Now, mind you, Vista by itself would be bad enough. Vista, coupled with our department's almost-phobic aversion to actually DOCUMENTING anything, has pretty much crippled our entire computer-building process. What took twenty to thirty minutes in the past--the installation and configuring of the necessary software for most of our clientele--now takes at least two days--and that's if you're LUCKY. If you're not lucky, you end up with a situation like the one I found myself in today--a pissed-off user waiting for her computer while I fiddle-faddled around trying to get one miserable, solitary, undocumented proprietary SQL-based program to act in Vista the way it always, reliably-as-the-seasons, acted under XP. At one point, both senior techs, a former senior tech, and a supervisor were all working with me to figure out what the hell this software fucking WANTED from us. "Database Error 556" was all it would tell us, and it was unGoogleable, completely opaque, utterly rage-inducing. Finally, Max the former-senior, who's been promoted to Systems, said "What if you re-create the folder it's looking for but can't find--you know, to fake it out?" I did, and it worked. Of course, that was after six hours of hair-pulling, head-desking, random Googling, reinstalling, and the rest...hours in which I could have been completing any of my OTHER ungodly number of work tickets.

And I'm just ONE person. There are FOUR of us who are doing builds, on and off; one, in particular--remember Erwin, the crank?--who does nothing BUT builds. At least we're not short-staffed anymore, thank heavens; we now have Johnny, the new Mac guy, and Dante, the new senior tech, who shares my cube. Dante seems to know his stuff; Johnny, a little less so, but both of them are still new. So now, in order of tenure, it's Alex, Erwin, me, Johnny, and Dante; Max has been promoted, and since the new guys are still...you know, new...the bulk of everything has fallen on Alex and on me. Erwin does builds. Erwin ONLY does builds. I found this out from Kevin, the helpdesk guy, when he joined Missy and I for lunch one day. (Missy...I haven't talked about her, because she makes me nervous. On the surface, she'd be the first guess of who I would pick for a friend--she's a fat white chick, like me; obnoxious and abrasive, like me; divorced, hard-headed, devil-may-care--again, like me. Unlike me, however, I wouldn't trust her farther than I could throw her. She's fun to talk to, but I'm constantly watching what I say because she seems SO very snaky and SO very two-faced--even Joe, Mr. Gullible-Isn't-In-The-Dictionary, warned me to stay away from Missy. The next day she asked me if I wanted to go for lunch. What could I do? Kevin walked out with us and she invited him along too; the newest of the help-deskers, he's already disillusioned with the place.) We were sitting at Eduardo's eating reheated nasty pizza when Kevin said "yeah, we can't give Erwin tickets anymore, just builds." I nearly spewed my Pepsi; "exCUSE me?" I squeaked. "You didn't hear that from me!" he said; "I'm tired of everything I say getting back to Joe with MY name on it!" "I won't breathe a word of where it came from," I said. And I didn't; I simply sat down in Joe's visitor-chair, waited for him to finish his personal call, and said, "So am I right in understanding that Erwin won't be doing any faculty or staff calls anymore, just builds?"

Joe, who'd been to some "leadership" seminar a few days back, said, "Well, that was a mutual decision, between The Crazy and Erwin and I, that Erwin should be focusing his energies on doing builds for a while--so he's not distracted, so he can just set them up like an assembly-line and one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, and so on til they're done."

"That's fine," I said. "I would just add, though, that if Erwin is doing all builds and no tickets, then the rest of us should be doing all tickets, and no builds."

"Yeah, well, that's the ideal, but sometimes Erwin gets snowed under, and...."

Yeah. Sometimes Erwin gets snowed under. It might help if he cut back his 90-minute lunches to the approved 60--or if, like the rest of us, he once-in-a-while worked THROUGH his lunch--you know, take a bite, click a mouse, tap a keyboard, take a bite...Anyway. Net result: Erwin does builds, no tickets; the rest of us do tickets AND builds. Thanks, Erwin. Thanks, Joe.

I can't hate TOO much on Erwin, though; he gets four times more Vista than the rest of us, so he's got his punishment already. Fucking Vista. I kid you not, my peeps--it's absolutely the WORST operating system ever created. It has, without question, poisoned the mood at my job, I'll tell you that much--and there's no chance of changing anyone's mind now. The techs hate it; more importantly, the users hate it--and let's not even TALK about Office 2007, which....oh, god, the STOOPID!--but because they're "progress", and because eventually Microfuckingsoft will stop supporting XP and Office 2003, despite the fact that they're FAR superior products to their descendents--because of that, the higher-ups have dictated that The Way Forward will include these two monstrosities--and that will happen regardless of how far behind we, the users and the techs, might happen to fall as we pursue this glittering, attractive Forward Way.

(My dearest, most beloved Microsoft. Have I told you lately that you SUCK? Oh...I have. Very well, then. But you SUCK.)

Short Form

I am well.
More to follow.
Really, I'm fine; just been busy.

All is well, though.

Okay, So.

Do you think people can change?
(Do -I- think people can change?)

If people can't change, then what does that say about the things I've done?
If people can change, what does that say for anyone who believes they can't?
If I believe they can't, what does that say for me?

Maybe -some- people can change, and others can't.
If that's true, which one am I?
And how do I know?
By my past actions?
But my past actions are...inconclusive.
Yes, I was a faithful girlfriend to one guy for years.
Then I got married, and a year later, suddenly I...wasn't.
And then, because I was with someone I truly cared about, then I was.

Or--example two:
Yes, I quit heroin for five years.
Then I un-quit for six weeks.

And yes, since then, I've quit for nearly-three years now..
But: once I quit for FIVE years...
...before I UN-quit.

Just how do I know I've changed?
And how would I, if I needed to, convince another?

But--fortunate child, I--never have I needed to convince another.
I have been lucky enough that when I've said,
"I've changed..."
I have been believed.
And I have been right.

But: again.
I was right.
For nearly five years...and then, for six weeks, all that "change" was a lie.
For six weeks, and then it was the truth again, for so-far three years, and hopefully longer--much, MUCH longer.
BUT: for six weeks, I had no longer "changed".
For six weeks, I was a hypocrite, judging others
because they did the same as me.
(Not the "same" same, but the same not-changing.)

Who, then, am I,
to say
that someone else may not have changed?
Even for a while--for a few years, maybe,
but SOMETHING?

(You know, of course, where this is going.)

I talked to him tonight.
He has three sides, mostly:
1. macho-bullshit blustering shithead (but oh, quite seductive, he is);
2. perfectly normal, more-intelligent-than-he-knows (the piece I miss most of all);
3. heartbroken emo-guy, inconsolable (but oh-so-lovable, so very needful)...

...tonight, I talked to Version #3.
just SAD, just angry, fed-up, lonely, broke...
asking nothing but an ear
to pour his exhaustion into.
He yawned as he spoke, pushing a grocery cart
through some Southern-Indiana store
asking for two packs of Kool 100's
("two?" I said. "You tryin' to smoke yourself to death, baby?")
the wind in the cell-phone receiver as he crossed the parking-lot
the radio as he started up the car,
sleepy still, counting on my voice to ride home beside him.

"I don't want anyone else to get hurt," he told me,
one night after some drunken e-mail
escaped my "draft" file
into the realm of "sent".

That, alone, spoke volumes:
when you offer something
and it is declined
out of concern for someone else,
their nobility
(real or imagined)
is all you have to cling to.
(That, and the fact that in the past, he blatantly SAID he didn't care if someone else got wounded, somewhere in the rifle-spray of his existence.
Or, as he used to phrase it:
"When you pick up a snake, you can't be surprised when you get bit.")

But tonight...

tonight, just a sad, exhausted boy, really,
tired of work,
of life,
of bills,
of worry.

"Hey, thanks for the letters," he said, as we said goodbye. "Keep writing to me...No, they don't annoy me, I LOVE the way you write."
I smiled. "Thanks," I said.
"Try to have a good day tomorrow, okay?"
"Yeah," he said. "I'll try."

It's not so much that I need someone to need me.
It's more that it's so much easier to be with someone who feels the same things I feel--
the tiredness, the worry, the outrage
at music, the media, the TV talking heads,
at politics and fakes and phonies,
at sellouts,
at growing older.

("Don't you hate it?" he said, one of the first times we spoke again. "Everything we liked? is OLD now. It's all past." How many times have I said or written those same words?)

And yes, I know:
there are others who feel this way.
There are others who feel this way
who have never hurt me
who have never lied
who have never left me
who have never said a cutting word
much less the words he said,
the ones that have followed me for nearly seven years now...

Yes, I know.
There are others.
And yes, I'm sure
that I should go and find them.

But I'm a bit too old to start again at kissing frogs,
at hoping for stray and random princes.
Old, and other things,
not least of which is "disinclined".
I'm everlastingly tired
of the taste of frog-skin.

So:
here I am again.
But this is the last,
the last, last, last, last, last, last time
(last time was just the last last last last last)
that I will even pretend
to think about considering the possibility to wonder if perhaps I might one day believe again.)

I know:
I'm stupid.
I know:
This will end in tears.
It's not like I was doing anything better in the first place.
We shall see
what happens.
Maybe it will even
spur me to make art. Who knows?

JP and I
had many, many mottoes
but one of them:
"there is no such thing
as a bad experience"...

...hard as it is,
I still believe.
I wouldn't trade
anything that's happened--
even the things I hate the most.
So many times I've wondered
who I'd be
if I'd had a softer life.

I imagine her
and I don't like her much.
She cries less
because she knows less
and I'd rather know more
and smile less
than the other way around.
Tears always dry.

So...yeah
off the edge I go
and I hope
for a soft landing.