Just a quick lunch-time entry here. Work is pretty intense right now, so much so that my weekend might be shot. Still, I hope to do at least ONE fun thing with Cheryl, like go to a party or carve pumpkins or something. Apart from that I will be stuck at work. If I have free time, the first thing I will be doing is hanging curtains. I still have lots to do on my own personal at-home-projects. Things go so slowly.
I'm not sure of the purpose of these blog things... If I use mine as a diary, I can't leave it accessible to the general public. Even if the people in my life were cool about my saying things that might embarrass them, I would be embarrassed to have my personal feelings out there for all to read. Publishing personal information can come back to haunt you some day. Suppose some future employer finds my blog contents in an archive? It follows that the only things I can put here are things which are relatively unimportant. Controversial stuff would have to remain private. I could let Cheryl read it, but nobody else, unless I posted things under a pseudonym. Hmmmm.... I might create a new blog to do that.
I could write each day's entry with the things that went wrong, the things that make me less productive, or the things which worry me the most. It might be enjoyable to vent... to relieve stress and to pass on the blame to things external to myself. There is really nothing wrong with ithat as long as I acknowledge that I do have influence on many of the things which bother me and that merely griping about issues does nothing to make them better.
That being said, I want to say that I absolutely hate dealing with overly complicated things like medical insurance. The rules about whom you can and cannot see, and when you can change your policy seem to be in place solely to confuse people. Most people who are part of that system are victims too. Listening to their soulless voices droning about co-payments and coverage limits elicits nearly equal amounts of revulsion and compassion from me. I only hope they can leave their work behind them at the end of the day, otherwise they would probably appear to be night-time shambling wrecks stumbling from place to place, not unlike zombies or some homeless people.
The former paragraph described something that really is somewhat out of my control. I can't be a responsible husband and father without taking care of such things. As an example of something I do have influence over, there is a certain co-worker, let us call him "Eric", who seems hell-bent on destroying my sanity. Ask him to summarize how his work is going and he will give you some information about his progress. The problem is that he leaves so much necessary information out of his reports that you cannot really use any of the information he has provided. He has not isolated the cause of a problem or at least not reported enough information to convince you that he has. When you ask him to clarify anything, one of two things happen. The new information directly conflicts with the original information, or the new information is inherently self-contradictory. His deductive processes are erratic and not well thought out. If I had to give a real world analogy, I'd say he is like someone whom upon finding their car won't start, tries pumping up the tires. After that fails to fix the problem, he calls you, the tire supplier, and complains about the defective tires you gave him. Agggh.
I've tried my best to patiently explain my thought processes to him... How you need to reduce the number of variables to pinpoint which one is causative. I tell him which experiments I would perform. It does not seem to help. Perhaps he is attempting to avoid work by seeming incompetent, hoping others will do his work for him? A very dangerous tactic in today's economy... My best and perhaps only recourse is to just report that what he has for me isn't suitable, and let his direct boss deal with him. I'll set criteria and if they haven't been satisfied, I shouldn't even talk to the guy. There! I feel better!
There are a lot of features I will have to learn about in order to make this thing work O.K. What about deleting posts? What about adding new material to an existing post? I'll start trying out these features...
Wow... I now have a blog! This is something new. I hope to use this software to keep events in my life from being forgotten. A sort of backup memory. If it also amuses my wife, then so be it. My life has gone through so many changes lately. I'm recently married. We (Cheryl and I) have a child on the way. (March 21st is the due date!) Too much to talk about right now. I am going to play with the settings and the URLs and stuff. Can I keep some stuff here private or is all info public? I can make one of these for Cheryl too.
