Author Archives: jdtharp

Out to pasture…

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The reliability of my venerable Late 2008 MacBook Pro has reached such an unfortunate state. Despite my best efforts at salvaging the situation, it is time to retire the poor, battered contraption. Assuming all goes to plan, this will be the last post from an aged, and increasingly temperamental machine.

As much as I love new tech, parting company with this first of the aluminum unibody Mac laptops is bittersweet. You see, it comes with history. Or at least some personal history.

The first computer I ever used was an Apple Macintosh. There were six of them squirreled away apple_macintoshin a back room of the library at George’s Creek Elementary in the mists of pre-history (AKA the mid-1980s). I was probably all of eight or nine years old. We eventually added one at home too – my entry into having a real “personal” computer. That little beige box met all of the household’s computing needs for almost a decade.

The year was 1995. Enter Windows. I got my first Compaq desktop and never looked back. I was a committed Windows user from there on – building a series of progressively more powerful machines. That lasted for more than a decade of upgrades, new towers, and laptops until finally it ended with a puff of acrid smoke from the back of a Gateway laptop on March 20th, 2009.

Apple lured me back, not with a computer, but with a phone. I was so enamored with the engineering prowess in that first iPhone that I thought surely they know how to build a computer. And they did. The machine I’m typing this on outlasted generations of new computers, three major OS upgrades, and in almost five years didn’t so much as hiccup on anything I asked it to do. Right up until the point where it started choking on everything, of course.

Like every other bit of electronic kit, my ’08 model has reached a point in its service life when it is simply uneconomical to repair. In the finest tradition of American consumerism, I will therefore shunt it unceremoniously aside in favor of a newer, shiner model. But I won’t do it without posting one last blog from the machine that brought you every single word ever published on jeffreytharp.com, two ebooks, and spewed snarky commentary from one end of the internet to the other. It deserves at least that much for its years of good and faithful service.

The most wonderful time of the year…

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The week of Thanksgiving heralds the arrival of that most magical and wondrous time of year… and I’m not talking about Christmas with its faux joy, peace and goodwill towards people you otherwise can’t stand. I’m talking about the four weeks between the holidays when nothing gets done and everyone is busy burning off what’s left of their annual leave. In short: Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the long march towards the end of the year when there are fewer colleagues around asking reports, wanting to see slides, and generally pretending to be productive. It’s the time of year when the pretense of being productive falls away. Sure, that’s only because there are barely enough people around to keep the lights on, but beggars shouldn’t be choosers.

There are going to be plenty of people running around for the next month trying to put together pick up meetings or cram on one more “special project” before 2014 rolls in, but mostly even they know they’re putting on a show for the sake of appearances. I’d be hard pressed to find anyone who really thinks they’re going to be able to get anything significant accomplished at this time of year. That makes for a low key environment… and low key makes me exceptionally happy.

If I haven’t learned anything else from being a drone these last 11 years it’s that this time is fleeting. Before you know it, and well before you’re ready for it, we’ll be back to the full-on grind. So the advice from your kindly Uncle Jeff? Take some time. Slow your roll and remember that no one ever saved the universe with their PowerPoint slides. Even when you think what you’re doing is important, there are well over seven billion people on the plant who don’t care if you live or die.

Perspective, my friends, is everything.

Two to go…

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With this morning’s posts out the door, there are only two weeks worth of archive posts left to go. Assuming nothing catastrophic happens between now and then, the last posts will go up early on the morning of December 8th. As fun as it’s been – and as glad as I’ll be to have everything I’ve ever blogged living here under one roof – it will be nice to move on to something else. I’m still not sure what the new Sunday morning focus will be, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

If my math is right, by the time the last word is published we’ll be looking at a grand total of about 1525-ish individual posts from June 2006 to the present day. Most days add another to that total. I haven’t come up with a good way to estimate word count, but I’m just assuming the total would be more than enough to stun a team of oxen in their tracks. Even if we assume only 200 words per post, that will get us to 300,000 without any real trouble. Trust me, that’s a lot of words, especially considering most blogs probably survive a year or maybe two and then disappear.

With two weeks to go, make sure you stop by and enjoy today’s update from September 2008 – including my one and only foray into “Eastern” medicine.

In the rigging…

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I’ve been out of sorts for the better part of the last month. I know that’s coming through loud and clear in my writing (and my lack of writing for that matter). Even my OCD has taken a bit of a holiday as I let things pile up around me. Few of you have ever been in my home, but take my word for it that finding things out of place is an extraordinary rarity. I end every fall with some kind of minor funk, so it’s not unusual or unexpected at least. Top that off with a couple of other issues and let’s just make the blanket statement that October and November this year have been particularly unkind. I wouldn’t say I’ve been a wreck, but I’ve definitely been way, way off my game.

But a funny thing happened at 6:43 AM yesterday morning. Not “haha” funny, but still. That’s when I felt my confidence return. I don’t mean a little bit. I’m talking about physically feeling it pour back into me like it was dumped out of a bucket. And then it was just there; like it has always been in the past.

I don’t know where it went, or what brought it back, but for the first time in longer than I want to admit, I’m feeling like myself again. I’ve got a smirk in my lips, a glint in my eyes, and more than a few sarcastic comments on my tongue. As it should be when all is right with the world.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the rigging nailing my colours to the mast.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Color commentary. I hate people who feel the need to share at every opportunity… and nothing fills me with more homicidal rage than listening to a nonstop stream of running commentary about how the day is going from a few desks away. This didn’t work. That didn’t work. I just had to reboot for the 100th time. AnnoyingYes, look, we all know the network is in a bit of a snit. Most people are experiencing the same issues… and rest assured, those few who aren’t experiencing your issues are having issues of their own. In times of crisis, my best advice is to sit down, STFU, and try not to aggravate the ever-loving hell out of those around you. John Madden’s commentary may have been obnoxious, but at least that meathead came with a mute button.

2. Spam (the electronic kind, not the gelatinous potted meat or the song). If you’re a business and you have my email address – my real address and not a junk account I set up to catch wayward marketers – you already have products or services that I like and use on a regular basis. The best way in all the world to convince me to never purchase anything from your business ever again is to flood my inbox with “helpful” email. I’m already a customer. I don’t need to be reminded. When I need a refill, a reorder, or a new product, I know where to find you… and even if I forget, there’s a better than average chance Google will be able to track you down.

3. Sleep. Every now and then I convince myself that I’ll get along perfectly fine on four hours of sleep. Usually those occasions revolve not being in a good place to stop reading or wanting to “catch the end” of some 50 year old move I’ve seen dozens of times already. Very rarely they’re the result of just plain old not being able to fall asleep on schedule. Regardless of the cause, the result is always the same – by 2:30 the next afternoon, I’m poring coffee down my throat in Big Gulp sized quantities and still barely manage to keep my head from slamming into the keyboard. I’ve grudgingly accepted that sleep is an inconvenient necessity. I think in fairness sleep should concede to me at least one day a week where I can get less than five hours of it and still feel mostly like a human being.

Some days…

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Some days all I can do is sit at my desk and shake my head. I’m never quite sure if it’s my cynicism getting stronger as I get older or if it’s just the amount of stupid shit I deal with being cumulative. Some days I wish I was one of those people who wander through life not being bothered by what happens to and around them. My God, some days I envy those people who seem to get up and sleepwalk through the day.

I’m not self absorbed enough to believe that I’m the only one who deals with stupidity. Lord help us, the world is overflowing with it. You can’t help but wade through the day up to your knees in the stuff. What I increasingly don’t understand is why those of use who see it and recognize it for what it is, don’t call it out by name. Why do we smile politely and then roll our eyes at the first opportunity? Why does anyone with the least bit of talent at what they do tolerate the vast sea of stupidity that surrounds them?

Despite my best efforts, somehow, for some reason I still apparently give a damn. I can’t help but think that life might just be better if you’re schlepping through it fat, dumb, and happy. Or is life worse and you’re just do bleeding dense to know it?

A dog’s approach…

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I’m sure something noteworthy happened somewhere today, but I was too busy bouncing between meetings to figure out what that might be. I’m not saying jam packed days are a bad thing. If nothing else, they tend to go quickly. Still, the amount of mental energy I expend on being “on” all day to deal with large numbers of people is quite simply exhausting. I’ve heard that some people thrive on nonstop activity, but right now the refrigerator’s compressor is filling the house with enough noise to drive me to distraction.

The dogs, bless them, are incredibly intuitive when it comes to picking up moods. Winston just waddled over and laid down with his chin on my foot, demanding no attention, but offering a satisfied snort in exchange for a rub on the head. Maggie took the opportunity to steal his bed and is most likely bunked down until it’s time to go upstairs later. It’s days like this that make me supremely happy I don’t have overly excitable pets.

There are too many overly excitable animals in the world already… and unfortunately, the majority of them seem to be people. That’s unfortunate. I think they could learn a lot from taking a dog’s approach to life.

Annual history…

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It’s that magical time of year where you get to distill the essence of your professional accomplishments down to less than 1000 words and then try not to slit your wrists as you realize how you’ve spent the last 365 days. Whether you’re compiling the annual unit history report or creating a list of accomplishments for your yearly performance appraisal, the one thing they serve to remind you of is how much time you’ve spent working on stuff that you have no actual interest in doing.

I’m the last person on earth to recommend that you need to find personal fulfillment in your profession. As I discovered with my ill-fated sojourn as a history teacher, having a deep and profound love for a subject doesn’t a fulfilling career make. For as much as I love all things historical, I despised most other elements of the job. Still, I’d like to think I’m doing more than writing reports, enduring meetings, and building the world’s most complex PowerPoint briefings.

The beauty part of these brief moments of professional clarity is that they only come on once a year, so for the other 11.5 months I can maintain a blissful level of willful ignorance on the topic. I think in the end, everyone is better served when I’m ignoring just how much time I’m spending on mundane, routine tasks and just keep churning out reams of paperwork on demand… because really, if I were stop and think about it for any sustained length of time, I’d be tempted to run off and join the damned circus.

I’m glad a have a job that keeps me employed (almost) full time… but I’m even more glad I don’t mistakenly identify what I do with who I am.

Gone fishin’…

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I’m up early even by my standards on a Sunday morning. Despite the mad dash to get the day started, I made sure I left plenty of time to dig through the archive and find your selection of five for Sunday. This week’s posts hail from August and September 2008 – a bit of time when I was really starting to question who I was professionally and when my feet stopped working. Yeah, that last bit probably sounds worse than it really is, but still it was damned unpleasant.

And with that, I’ll wish you a happy Sunday. There are places to go and people to see. If anyone needs me, I’m gone fishin’.