Author Archives: jdtharp

Select “Panic” in 5…4…3…2…

Posted on by

So you guys may have seen that the media are making a big stink about the impending hurricane of doom that will be sure to devastate the East Coast over the weekend. Judging from the current models and from watching these things semi-professionally for the better part of the last ten years, I’m more inclined to think that eastern Maryland will end up getting a little soggy on Sunday and maybe have a few branches blown around if things “get bad.” That said, there’s always the off chance that this thing doglegs left and shoves a wall of water directly up the Chesapeake. That would fall directly in the category of Situation Other than Good. With the track edging east with every model run, that unhappy outcome seems less and less likely.

What seems more likely at this point is that the regional weather personalities and newscasters are going to whip the local indigenous population into frenzy by close of business Friday regardless of what the reality looks like. What this means is that every idiot with a pickup truck, a car, or a moped is going to come out of the woodwork and descend on Walmart, Costco, and every grocery store within driving distance and buy six gallons of milk, two dozen eggs, five loaves of Wonder bread, and a metric ton of toilet paper. I ordinarily don’t begrudge anyone their pre-apocalyptic stockpile, except in this case their panic is going to conflict with my normal grocery shopping schedule.

In the event that this was an actual emergency, I’d be the first to institute the no harm, no foul rule, but in the case of purely fictitious disaster, I’m less inclined to give stupid people the benefit of the doubt. My inclination at the moment is to go ahead and make due this weekend by drawing down my own fairly impressive stockpile. Sadly, like Christmas shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, I just don’t know if I can stay away from the spectacle of so many asshats gathered in so few places. I know I shouldn’t, but I might not be able to keep myself from going to watch the spectacle first hand.

Not cool…

Posted on by

One of the last things I did before leaving Memphis was add an earthquake rider to my insurance policy. Memphis is prone to periodic rumbles after all and only being on the hook for 10% of replacement cost seemed like a good idea at the time. In Memphis, the next “big one” on the New Madrid fault system is one of those things you pretty much just accept as a possibility but don’t spend much time thinking about. Moving back east, the idea of an earthquake was even further from my mind. I know they happen here too, but only small ones that stay well below the threshold that most of us are able to feel.

Look, I know that everyone is playing this down, but the earth friggin’ moved and not in that nice calming way that it does all the time. The firmament became something less than firm. I’m not ok with that. It’s like rocky road ice cream suddenly tasting like liver and onions and everyone just deciding that it was no big deal. Not cool at all.

I remember feeling the chair move under me and then standing up at my desk watching the lights sway above me. I remember the overwhelming feeling that my equilibrium was just a touch off as the world lurched. I’m not embarrassed to admit that was the point where I bolted for the door. I think you’d all be surprised at the speed with which this fat man can move when he has the proper motivation. It’s for the best that there were no women or children between me and the outside, because I learned this afternoon that when faced with imminent peril, I have no intention of slowing down until there was blue sky and not five floors of concrete above my head. Realistically was anyone expecting me to be the selfless hero directing others to safety? In this case, I think the infantry motto, “follow me,” is the more appropriate course of action… even if I did pause long enough at my desk to pick up my iPad, phone, and building ID card. Just because I’m running for my life doesn’t mean I’m willing to drop off the grid or be stuck in an endless line of people with no ID cards in the morning.

Things I like (today)…

Posted on by

1. My doctor’s office. They send prescriptions directly to the pharmacy so all I have to do is get in line and pay. Less waiting makes me happy.

2. Fisherman’s Friend. Best throat lozenge ever. It tastes like a cross between licorice, a menthol cigarette, and poop, but works better than anything I’ve ever tried at soothing a scratchy throat.

3. Health insurance. $20 co-pay for the visit and $20 co-pay for giant antibiotic pills. Plus $2 in gas. Starting to feel less like a warm steaming pile cost $42 out of pocket.

4. WaWa. Your $6 salad is big enough that I actually feel like I ate something at lunch time. Plus you give me a hardboiled egg. That’s a classy touch for a gas station.

5. Meeting a suspense with time to spare and without being badgered to make a million minor changes at the last minute. That’s called productivity right there. Get some.

Networking… or not…

Posted on by

The network is my single point of failure. When it goes down, basically I become an astronomically well paid paperweight. Sure, there is a way to do everything I do manually, but because I wasn’t raised in the horse and buggy era, I don’t know what that way is because it was never covered in training and I’m certainly not old enough to have ever had to do it that way myself. And since everyone around me is in the same boat when it happens, after the initial bout of consternation and annoyance, the whole place takes on a bit of a snow day atmosphere. Which is great… for a while.

As fun as officially sanctioned down time is, it does highlight an issue that I don’t think any of us have spent enough time thinking about: What, exactly, is an army of technology workers supposed to do in the event of something more than a temporary outage? If we can’t email, can’t access the cloud, and can’t call out over VOIP, we’re pretty much just a bunch of people hanging out. What if it lasts for a day? Or a week? What if a network outage became the new normal?

Ninety nine percent up time sounds great until you realize that means you’ll be down for at least 3 and a half days every year. That’s annoying if you’re a dedicated gamer. It’s potentially catastrophic if you’re managing the world’s financial markets, running a war, or trying to manage the nation’s air traffic. Our reliance on computers and networks isn’t going to decrease in the future, so if we’re going to be so dependent on the network, redundancy and failover should be the standard. If the powers that be can’t manage that, they should at least spring for a cell booster for the building so we can play Angry Birds while we’re just sitting around.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Ripped…

Posted on by

My throat is ripped, and sadly not in the good way that things get when you spend too much time doing P90X. Perhaps I should say my throat is shredded. Swallowing is tough. Talking mainly makes me wait to cry, so yeah, if you’re trying to reach me on the phone, don’t bother, because there’s no way in hell I’m willingly putting myself through the torture of trying to have a conversation. We’re on day two of this little treat and unless something changes in short order, working tomorrow could be out of the question… which is kind of unfortunate because almost everyone else is out of the office attending a boondoggle…er… I mean “conference”, in Tampa. Maybe I’ll go in anyway. It should at least be quiet and it’s only a 10 minute drive to the doctor’s office from there. My treatment plan of honey tea, ibuprofen, and salt water gargle doesn’t seem to be doing the trick, so day three seems like a reasonable time to seek professional guidance. We’ll see how it goes. I’m not sure I can deal with too many more nights of waking up two or three times needing to gargle and pop another handfull of pills. The up side is I think I’ve now actually seen four or five episodes of Brooke Knows Best. That’s always fun.

Other than the whole throat being torn apart thing and not getting quite enough sleep the last two nights, I don’t actually feel bad. Thank the gods for small mercies, I suppose. It’s safe to say that I’ll be pulling up an e-book and a comfortable spot on the couch and spending most of the day watching trash television. There are worse ways to spend a Sunday.

Getting my write on…

Posted on by

I’ve toyed with wanting to write a book since I was in high school. Where in most endeavors there’s an overwhelming focus on “the team,” there’s something appealing to me in the thought of writing as an individualized pursuit; of me versus the blank page. That’s an idealized version of course, particularly when you delve into the world of publishing, but when you’re writing without giving a damn if any publisher ever sees it, it’s definitely a one-on-one experience.

If blogging instantly gratifies my narcissistic tendencies, filling page after page of blank “paper” is the ultimate expression of feeling like one against the world. There’s no room for narcissism there, because unless you essentially win the lottery, the only person you’re writing for is yourself. Writing is really heady stuff like that. Starting out with nothing more than a vague idea, struggling with how to even start writing 80,000 words when you can barely scrape together two or three hundred words on any other “good” day, finding the time between work and the other minutia of life, but eventually discovering your voice – It’s some feeling once you’ve found your own rhythm… and then it’s just you and the blank page.

It’s an ongoing project and one that I’ve given more time to in the last month than I have in the last ten years. It’s something I’ve always felt the need to do, even without really knowing why. I don’t have any delusions about writing a great American novel and the chances that I’ll serve up chicken soup for any demographic subgroup is pretty limited. For now, I’m just writing because I feel a need to write. There’s a story too good to be fiction milling around in my head and if I can manage to find the words, I think a few people might just be interested in reading it. All I need to do now is find two or three uninterrupted hours a day to keep up some kind of pace. I’ll keep you posted.

The learning cliff…

Posted on by

Not every day can be stellar. I’m fine with that. At the moment, though, I’m frustrating the hell out of myself with the things I don’t know the answers to yet… Like who needs to review which documents, what office is responsible for some random project, the name of the go-to guy for some obscure and arcane piece of minutia. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to lose my institutional memory. I knew who those people were just by virtue of having been around for a long time. Today’s just one of those days that feels like falling off the learning cliff instead of running up the learning curve. I’ll feel a damned sight better when I’ve figured out the magic questions to ask in order to get the answers I need. In the meantime, I’ll keep my head down and powder dry. Frustrating as it is, I’ll take it any day over random chaos.

Summer nights…

Posted on by

I’ve said it before and it’s still true… Sometimes all you need to do is get a nose full of a particular smell to have a train load of memories smack you in the back of the head. In all my travels I’ve never found anyplace that has the exact scent of the back yard of the house where I grew up. It sets in around early evening and will be even stronger later when the dew settles on everything. It’s a mixture of deep woods and damp earth, pine and something I can’t quite identify but know entirely by heart. As far as I can tell, it’s a smell that only happens on this spot. For all I know it’s a smell that only happens for me.

I’m settling in for a night of tales from the old days with one of my closest buddies. There’s a fair chance that more than one frosty cool beverage will be involved. Summer days were made for nights like this. Cheers!

Dedication…

Posted on by

One of the people I work with loves her job. I’m making that assumption anyway because most days she seems to always stick around until 6:00 or 7:00 when end-of-tour is closer to 4:30. According to her, there’s always something “hot” that comes up after the rest of us pull up stakes for the day that needs done and just can’t wait for the next morning. I suppose it’s theoretically possible that this is true, but based on my own observation of daily workload around here, I’m somewhat skeptical.

I guess someone might look at her and think the late hours were a sign of dedication. The fact is, though, we’re not a life-or-death operation. It’s probably not politic to say in a world of 9.2% unemployment and a collapsing stock market, but sometimes a job is just a job. As much as an escort sells her body for cold hard cash, I whore out my big beautiful brain for the same consideration. Maybe some people do it for the love, but me, I do it for money. I do it so I can afford to pay the bills, eat nice meals, and occasionally travel to new and interesting places. I don’t do it out of a misplaced sense of loyalty as I’m quite certain the powers that be would have no qualms about throwing me over the gunwale during a reduction in force.

Sure, there was a time when I was young and idealistic and my sense of self derived directly from my position title and placement on the org chart. I got a little older and a little more jaded and discovered that no matter how cushy, the job is pretty much just a set of handcuffs keeping you from doing the things you really want to do because you’ve got bills to pay. And we should have bills to pay. We should have to work for our supper. But we shouldn’t be working instead of eating our supper.

I’m too old to be naïve about how the world works. Maybe sticking to the ol’ eight-and-out is committing slow career suicide. Missing the next rung on the career ladder still sounds like a better option than missing out on everything that isn’t work. The only shame is it took me so long to figure that out.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date

Their spidey senses are tingling…

Posted on by

Sometimes I wonder what’s going on in the dog’s minds. They definitely know something’s up. As soon as I get one of my suitcases out of the closet Maggie becomes a super needy attached to my feet version of herself and follows me from room to room for the rest of the night. Winston is more circumspect about the whole thing and sprawls out in front of the door figuring that way I can’t leave without him seeing it and still expending as little energy as possible. This makes Winston the easier of the two to deal with right up until the point where I need to start loading the truck – and yes, I’m one of those obnoxious pre-planners that loads everything the night before so the next morning involves only shower, coffee, load dogs, drive.

We’ve been through this experience more times than I can count but the response is always the same mixture of excitement and nervousness from the two furry beasts. What they could be nervous about at this point is utterly beyond me. Fortunately, they’ll both be asleep long before I merge onto 95 and won’t stir much until I start slowing down to pull off the interstate three and a half hours later. By then we’ll have arrived at somewhere vaguely familiar to them and the whole attached at my feet period can continue for the rest of the weekend and then reverse itself two days later on the return trip. After a good night’s rest they’ll be right back to their normal selves. They’re resilient little buggers like that. I wish I recovered from a trip that fast.