New York

I only have one thing to say about New York . . . .

"You tell Bruce Leroy: Now he has to fight me!"

No T Like OT!

New assignments came out at work. Before I had three Chapters out of 19. Now I have 5, including:

Chapter 4: Reactor
Chapter 6: Engineered Safety Functions
Chapter 15: Accident Analysis
Chapter 17: Quality Assurance
Chapter 19: Severe Accident Analysis and Probabilistic Risk Assessment

Also, assigned as a backup for one of the COL applications. Have a rotation assigned to me full time starting next month.

Boss said to let him know if I'm drowning. Only thing I plan to drown myself in is OT!

Fun sanitized email thread

A fun thread from today . . . .

-----Original Message-----
From: Person 3
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 10:27AM
To: Person 2, Person 1, Person 4, Person 5
Subject: RE: I am requesting your feedback by Monday 4/19/2010

I concede that it is indeed a matter of scale, and that each individual has to scale it to suit their own needs.

Personally, I find it not only liberating, but in fact necessary to extend meaning to cosmic proportions, thereby making my own experiences go to zero in the equation in order to avoid howling madness. After all, depression is a medical term for seeing what is actually there. Look too closely and who knows where it will take you.

I suppose we've put more thought into this than Franklin-Covey originally intended. But thought is not their strong suit: they are business majors.

One thing is certain: Fridays rock.


-----Original Message-----
From: Person 2
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 10:06AM
To: Person 1, Person 3, Person 4, Person 5
Subject: RE: I am requesting your feedback by Monday 4/19/2010

Ok, so I assumed we were talking about an individual's sense of meaning in his/her own life, as opposed to the one, the only, "Meaning of Life" that I agree is a ridiculous concept, so much that it didn't even occur to me.

I do take issue with the pursuit of meaning (lower case!) being a fool's errand. There are those of us that need the crutch of some meaning to function in life. If you like who you are or you can weather life's storms without depression, then sure, you don't need the crutch and I can understand that would be liberating.


-----Original Message-----
From: Person 1
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 9:42AM
To: Person 2, Person 3, Person 4, Person 5
Subject: RE: I am requesting your feedback by Monday 4/19/2010

I took the question with an "or" in mind. And the majority of people do like to think there is meaning to life, and some even try to find it. Whatever works for them.

I have come to the conclusion that there is no real meaning to life. Perhaps a purpose, but no meaning. And liberating is a great way to describe the resulting feeling. Think of yourself as a tree. Who knows, after life has left your body you may be useful.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Person 3 Date: Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 9:35 AM
Subject: RE: I am requesting your feedback by Monday 4/19/2010
To: Person 2, Person 1
Cc: Person 4, Person 5


By your own admission, "Life has meaning" is not a logical progression from "Person 2 finds meaning in life." In addition, does the pursuit of pleasure qualify as having "meaning." If so, on what scale? And if being alive is good, that doesn't make it meaningful. The problem is, the pursuit of pleasure fits in with the enjoyment portion of the question, not the meaning part.

As I just conveyed to Person 1, I would have no problem with the question if it were re-worded to say "Takes time to find enjoyment OR meaning in life." That way one can find enjoyment in life and not necessarily find meaning. Conversely, someone can spend their life trying to find meaning, which is a fool's errand, and not find enjoyment. To suggest that the two are inseparable is pure hubris.

As for your last question, I am perfectly comfortable with the fact that my life nor anyone else's has any meaning whatsoever according to scale. And I don't see why people find this fact depressing either. If anything, it should be liberating.

-----Original Message-----
From: Person 2
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 9:18 AM
To: Person 3, Person 1
Cc: Person 4, Person 5

Subject: RE: I am requesting your feedback by Monday, 4/19/2010

Alright Person 2, lets do this.

"Life has no meaning" is not a logical progression from "Person 2 finds no meaning in life". The meaning in my life is the pursuit of pleasure. Granted, I'm not very good at it, but the pursuit keeps me alive. Why is being alive a good thing? I'm not sure, any help from the peanut gallery?

What is your excuse for continuing to live, if life has no meaning?

-----Original Message-----
From: Person 3
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 6:37
To: Person 1
Cc: Person 2, Person 4, Person 5
Subject: RE: I am requesting your feedback by Monday, 4/19/2010

I have a question on one of the ratings:

74.Takes time to find enjoyment and meaning in life.

How does one take time to find meaning in something that is so blatantly devoid of meaning? Unless, of course, the subject is prone to musing (wasting time).

I guess you can spend your whole life looking for something that isn't there . . .

-----Original Message-----
From: Person 1

Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2010 4:57 PM
To: Person 2, Person 3, Person 4, Person 5, and other non-consequential Persons
Subject: I am requesting your feedback by Monday, 4/19/2010

All,

Next week I will be participating in FranklinCovey's 7 Habits workshop.

Please help me by taking 10 - 15 minutes to give me your honest assessment of my personal effectiveness. To participate, copy and paste the Web address below into your Web browser and respond to the questionnaire.

Questionnaire Web Address: [WEB LINK DELETED TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT]

Thank you for your time.

v/r,
Person 1

2010 on the move

Getting started on 2010 running. Been running 10 days straight. Gotta keep it up until I reach the weight goal of 225. Shown on the graph is the current progress, overlay of last year's actual mileage as a comparison, and a current trendline if I can keep the mileage up. As long as I hit 650 I'll be happy.

Running Results - 2009

To answer inquiries, I reached 502 miles running distance for calendar year 2009 on December 31, 2009. This year I hope to make 650, but I’ll be satisfied with another 500. I also hop to drop a lot more trees this year and make that paper.

Decision Point

So few choices, so much time laid out in front of you. We only change at the precipice. Like when you're staring down the barrel of an endless, unflinching destiny, and you're not sure you like what you see.

I tend to believe you can just will your way through it. But this takes enormous effort, and more energy than can be sustained for long. But I keep on going. You've got to keep moving. If you stop swimming you die.

How close do you let yourself get to the ground before you pull the ripcord?

Behavioral Patterns

Sometimes I miss doing technical work. Then I remember that I hated every minute of it.

Finding a solution to a problem was (temporarily) fun, but none of the actual work, turning wrenches, writing code, or performing experiments was worth the effort. It didn't help that the technical work I was exposed to served little other than the self-gratification of the purveyors of some antiquated science, one that would probably serve the world better if it went the way of Latin. That and cost the American taxpayer a truly exorbitant amount of money under the guise of "serving the warfighter" while accomplishing, in fact, the exact opposite.

To my unending surprise I left the technical world and entered the world of project management, fully expecting to hate this world more than anything that came before. What can I say, I'm a masochist? For some reason taking everything you've worked on for a long time and burning it to the ground appeals to me. Something about seeing all those years of school, all that time spent building up your technical expertise, and all that sweat poured out of your skin to do a good job go up in smoke just makes me smile. Charges at the base of the Burj Khalifa would have been my personal finishing touch. Good thing I'm not an architect.

What I discovered is that people are much more interesting to work with than machines and computers. I've come to realize that people operate in an eerily similar manner to those machines I used to program. They all follow a set of behavioral patterns that have been ingrained into their psyche. All you have to do is get in there and see what gears are turning. By and large, people follow a shockingly predictable path. However, people can adapt and surprise you. People you think are hopeless can step up and unexpectedly impress you. People that seem rock solid can crumble like tinfoil. It makes your job a lot more interesting when you don't know what's going to happen next. That very uncertainty has gotten under my skin, and I have come to enjoy being forced to react to situations on a daily basis.

This is all highly irregular. I used to hate talking to people and would do pretty much anything to avoid it. Now it's the cornerstone of what I do. I never thought of myself as a leader either, but that seems to be where the tide is taking me now. Life is strange indeed. When I think about going back to technical work, at least for now, it's like thinking about returning to a slow-paced, uninteresting drudgery. Like voluntarily stepping into quicksand. Maybe this is the reason it felt so good to leave that all behind, and means that I was never meant to do technical work in the first place. After all, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. If that's the case, I'm glad I finally saw the light and got out when I could.

I wonder what turns await in the future . . . .

Back from the Brink

Total comp time hours earned since November: 80
Total overtime hours earned since January 1: 30
ND-V for Vendetta? Priceless . . . . . . at least when it finally comes

Been away from the blog for a while, so I haven't thought of anything particular to rant about. I guess since it's Snowmaggedon and I drove up 95 two days after the storm on a sea of slush/ice I could go into a long discussion of how poorly protected we are from natural disasters. I spent my time while driving on 95N at a whopping 5 mph to think about how amazingly crippled Washington D.C. was when it snowed 26" in a day and a half. Then I wondered what I would do if something big went down in D.C. while I was stuck in the traffic and the city was pretty much shut down. At least I had my dive knife and plenty of water. I suppose I would have had to hoof it back to Ashland along the railroad tracks. Such are the places my mind wanders when I get bored. This track of thought lasted until I found myself debating the lethality of a dive-knife tipped spear. But I digress. . . .

I've been working too much. 15 hours a week of OT gets pretty tiring when you're actually working the whole time. Pulled an 18 hour day last Tuesday to get a product out the door in time to meet a deadline. Repeat for a while and you'll lose your mind. I've got to get back to some hobbies. Maybe kill a tree or two. Get back into swimming or some other form of cardio. Running tears up the knees too much.

Also, this little experiment in continued destabilization of our climate has shown that Katy and I really need to put together an emergency plan. Get our rally points planned out. Contact methods, challenge-reply phrases, all that good stuff.

Guess I have another hobby to start . . . . .

36 miles to go . . .

I'm closing in on 500 miles this year. Gotta run 4 miles each work day to make it the remaining 36. Will be up for a big New Year's celebration if I make it. . .

Sent via mobile device

Almighty Dollar

I often find myself sitting at my desk, staring in disbelief at the work I am performing, and wondering just how and why I ended up here. Furthermore, I don’t understand why I work so particularly hard at it. Why am I wasting my time working all the time? For that matter, why am I in this city? What particular good is all this crap doing me?

The answer is shockingly simple. I have to come to work day in and day out to make paper. Paper to keep the house payments up to date, paper to keep the lights on, and hopefully enough paper to buy a sufficient number of distractions to keep you, if not happy then numb. If you can’t do that then there are numerous prescription drugs that can numb you to reality, just ask your doctor.

People always say that you should find something you want to do, and that will make it all better. But do you know a single person who truly does what they want to do for a living? What person all full of sunshine and daisies comes home from work and says, “What a great day! I love my job! I can’t wait to go back tomorrow!” Just for clarification, people who hate their family and use their job as an escape don’t count.

Even if you find a job that is interesting in the short run, soon enough you’ll be doing the same thing over and over and over and over, and it’s back to feeling like work again. The same old, same old drab nothingness of a gray dawn. Just 25 more years until you can retire, if you’re lucky.

I guess that’s one reason why some people are religious. They’re so fed up with real life that they create a new, “eternal” life that will somehow be everything that the one they have is not. Others drown in their booze. Some run marathons. A few power through it all with hopeless optimism. Any way you slice it, they all show deep discontent with the way things work, the way things are.

In the end we will all end up just as industrialized generations past. The cycle repeats over and over, crushing the souls of billions each time around. You can’t fight it. Even if you wanted to you wouldn’t know who to hit. And so you’ll sit in your office, or cubicle, and when it cuts you to the core, never fear. Your paycheck will be waiting to salve your pain.

Indecision

Just downloaded the latest Carbon Leaf album. For those who don't know, it's an alternative celtic band, kinda. . Plus they were formed about a mile from my parent's house in Ashland, VA. Previewed the first song and the lyrics went:

And if I face indecision, don't let me face it alone.
Just take me straight to Virginia, back to the faces of home.

Right then I was sold. Then the lyrics got better and better:

Now my spirit and bones take me straight to a fork in the road
Now my spirit and bones take me somewhere I've never known
And if I face indecision don't let me face it alone
Just take me straight to Virginia, back to the faces of home.

The song speaks to me. That's kinda the theme of my life. I don't really feel like I've made any decisions in my life. I'm not saying I haven't had choices, it's just that in all the cases I can recall, the choice was either obvious or made for me. I feel like a cloud, moved around by unseen currents. Like a cloud, I'm trapped by and manipulated by my environment. Most of the time I am (more or less) happily floating along, but I can collide with others and unleash furious storms on occasion. It's just me. I'm here. I don't know why, and I don't really care why.

Long days, fade away
I take it in through my eyes
Sometimes, survival's the milestone
Electrified like a lighted tree
Take these spirit and bones and catapult from the ground
what doesn't throw you or burn you will surely turn you around

I've always been more of an observer than a participant. What can I say? I much prefer watching and listening to people to actually conversing with them. Looking back, time seemed to go so slowly in my wishfully not-so-distant youth, and every year it seems to slip faster and faster into the future. I've definitely been thrown, burnt, and turned around over the past five to ten years, particularly in my work life. I've seen several friends die before their time. I was nearly killed twice at Carderock. I've seen people I thought were decent turn into amoral monsters. I faced total disillusionment, for the first time witnessing first-hand the house of cards the system is.

Long days, fade away
I hope to see them again
Sometimes survival's the milestone
I may get lost but I know where I've been, I know where I've been
I know where I am right now

It's a great tragedy that we don't realize the value of time until all of it's gone. And the lessons you learn in school never matter. What matters is what you learn in the real world. Will you let it break and beat you down? For certain, no one can hold it against you if it should. There's that nagging hope again, such a base human emotion. Rationality will drive you insane if you take your limited experience and apply it to the world at large. There's so much out there. It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black. If you let it the darkness will engulf and destroy you. But if you carry on the dawn always comes.

I take comfort in the faces of home. The people I know rekindle my hope. We're all lost trying to find our way in this world. I know deep down there is no purpose except that which you create for yourself. I'm not sure if anyone else feels this way, but I suspect they do. Best of luck to everyone carving out their own path.

If the hour gets late, rest and await the dawn . . . .