Tag Archives: time

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Last minute. It’s safe to say that we all know my feelings about almost every meeting I’ve ever sat through. For those who don’t, I generally find them to be enormous time-sucks from which there is no hope of escape. They’re the black hole of the “professional work environment” and I’m all for canceling them as often as possible. All that I ask is that when they are cancelled, the meeting organizer should probably give a fellow enough notice so that he doesn’t walk halfway across the county to find himself turned away at the door. Giving sufficient notice of changed plans is just good form, really. Although I’m glad to have the unscheduled free time in the middle of my calendar and all, a few minutes’ notice would by me have been appreciated.

2. Contempt of Congress. The fact that the House of Representatives has the unmitigated audacity to hold anyone in Contempt of Congress for any reason whatsoever is simply stunning. Now I think Lois Lerner and the IRS were probably up to some dirty tricks – one doesn’t tend to invoke the 5th Amendment when there are no skeletons lurking about – but I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t consider Congress a particularly honest broker when it comes to issues of fact. The truth is, they’d probably have to level charges at most of the country if they wanted to root out everyone who currently holds Congress in contempt. God knows I find them the most contemptible band of thieves and charlatans currently not serving time in prison.

3. Tradition. The older I get, the worse “because it’s tradition” sounds as a justification for doing anything. I was always under the impression that most people become more traditional as they get older. I seem to be veering in the opposite direction. I’m never going to be a sandal-wearing hippy, but I do seem to take increasing amounts of joy from rousing rabble as often as possible. Maybe it’s just my inner cynic finding his voice and preparing for a long career as a grumpy old sonofabitch… but if you can’t give me a better reason to do something that “it’s tradition,” I’m afraid I’m probably going to invite you to bugger off at the first available opportunity.

Another lost weekend…

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After three days of sitting here relatively quietly and trying to give my back the time it needs to unkink, I can say with authority that I’m absolutely over the part of this process where I sit around and don’t do much. As much as I like reading or watching entire seasons of television in one sitting, the fact is if I don’t get out of this house tomorrow and go to work I might just go stir crazy. Strictly speaking that’s not violating doctor’s orders, since he told me to “take it easy”. It’s not like I’m in a warehouse tossing around boxes or working out in the oil shale fields somewhere. I know, I know, it’s a sad state of affairs that I’m ready to get back to work. Rest assured, it’s mostly a function of wanting to be somewhere other than in my own living room than having a burning desire to get back to PowerPointing and endless meetings. If I’m going to be groggy and uncomfortable, I can do it there just as easily as I can from here.

This has basically been a lost weekend – just another one added to the list that’s already gotten to be too long. With spring coming on and weeds popping up all over, it’s looking more and more likely like I’m just going to have to start playing hurt. And don’t get me started on the cleaning that’s getting put off because of bending problems. At some point in the not too distant future, this damned traitorous back is going to have to learn that it works for me. Either it can cripple me right and proper or it can get with the program and start cooperating. Either way, I’ve had it with just nursing it along. It’s reign of terror is coming to an end. If the pills and the chiro can’t get it right, I’ll default to my usual approach and trudge through it by virtue of sheer force of will.

Darkness at dawn…

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It occurs to me that when I wake up at the customary weekend time of 6:30 it’s going to be absolutely dark again at a time of day I’ve just started getting use to having light. Tomorrow, though, the sun will follow me up in short order. The big problem is coming on Monday, because 6AM looks awfully bleak when it’s pitch black outside.

There’s probably a fine balance that we could strike between springing forward and falling back. As I’ve covered before, I’d say just do away with the whole mess completely and let the time and daylight operate independently of one another rather than making a hash of yoking them together as we have for the last hundred odd years. Surely tinkering with the time could simply be solved by letting individuals adjust their own wake-up time to accommodate the mount of daylight they want earlier or later in their respective day.

Frankly the whole concept of daylight saving time feels like a concept that has outlived its usefulness. Now that we’re well into the 21st century and even farming can be done by GPS in the dead of night, why we can’t simply pick one or the other and stay there is simply beyond my meager abilities to understand.

Going back…

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The trouble with being away from work for the better part of a week is that if you want to keep getting paid on a regular basis, you have to go back eventually. If I’m honest with you and myself, it was exhausting. Not in that way that you’re tired after a long day of chopping wood or being physically engaged, but in that very special way that leaves your brain feeling like it’s turned to jell that could ooze out your ear at any moment. Today was definitely a day like that.

I keep telling myself that it’s just a matter of getting back into the swing of things, but even while the joy of time off is still fresh in my mind I know that’s not really true. As I’m sitting here bashing at the keyboard, flanked by a steaming mug of fresh coffee, a few good ideas, and a couple of dogs, I know it’s not true at all. At best I’ll muck through tomorrow, the day after, and the ones that follow so I can get back to doing this as quickly as possible.

But hey, I like eating something other than Top Ramen and there are bills to pay, so before the sun’s up tomorrow I’ll be back at it. Maybe not with a spring in my step or a song in my heart, but sometimes just going back has to be good enough. Sometimes that’s the best you’ve got.

How I’ve misspent my time off…

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The world where days off are relaxing, restful, and leave you feeling recharged and ready to face the world is probably a complete fiction. Even on my slowest moving weekend, I don’t remember reaching the end of it and feeling particularly recharged. Productivity-HacksIf I’m lucky, the weekend means I’ve allocated an extra hour of sleep each day to the five or six I try to stick to during the week.

Even though the extra long, long weekend I’ve had is coming to it’s inevitable end, the best thing I can really say about it is it has been fruitful and productive. I won’t even make the pretense of it having been restful in the least. The last two days have been eaten up by organizing last year’s tax information and pulling together the even larger stack of paperwork needed refinance a home loan. Either one of those activities over a two day period would be enough to make a simple history major like me crazy, but running them simultaneously has left me feeling a bit like maybe the world getting hit by a meteor wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Sometimes I wish I was the kind of person who could just sit happily in front of the television and not have ideas that inevitably end up causing me to jump through inordinate numbers of hoops. I could just use one of the online tax services and let it go at that… but for a little more effort, I can squeeze every drop I’m owed back out of the system. The loan I have now is good enough… but I can better structure my debt using a new loan. I could just sit here and stare at the talking images, or I can try to churn out a few hundred more words of my own story.

For a guy who fundamentally thinks of himself as lazy, I’m not at all sure I’m doing it right. Surely I’d spend more time with my feet up and a lot less trying to cram 30 hours of “wanna do” into a 24 hour day.

Too soon?

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After driving to the office a few weeks ago only to find that they had closed for the day without giving much of any advanced notice, I’ve opted to go ahead and ignore official guidance (whenever it comes at all) and establish my own policy for when to come and go in craptastic weather. This morning, for instance, I made a showing at the office, but pulled the plug at 1000. I cleared the parking lot and the security gate in my usual 10 minutes. Twenty minutes later, official word came down that liberal leave was in effect. Maybe twenty minutes after that, they announced that post was closing for the day. 20,000 people immediately got in their cars and jammed the gate for the next hour. By the time people who waited for “the word” got their gear and headed out, I was already home sitting in my fuzzy slippers. It’ll end up costing me 2 hours of annual leave since they didn’t formally close until noon, but I’ll trade 2 hours of leave for not spending an hour or more sitting in traffic at the gate any time.

The moral of the story is that when it comes to my health, welfare, safety, and convenience, I’m taking the decisions out of the hands of “something corporate” and making them myself from here on out. Unless or until the decision-making improves, I’ll cheerfully trade my earned leave for some semblance of sanity in how things work. I may not always make the “right” decision, but by god I’ll always make one in a timely manner. Maybe I’m just too damned old and cynical to sit around waiting for permission when forgiveness is almost always available.

So, is it too soon to start agitating for a closure tomorrow? Or authorized liberal leave? That would work too.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. 2:30 PM. Everyone gripes and complains about early mornings. Those have always been pretty easy for me, even before long commutes and unholy start times turned me into a de facto morning person. The mid-afternoon is the part of the day I dread. It’s the time that turns me into a near catatonic meat sack. By the 2:30 mark on the typical weekday, I can’t pour coffee down my throat fast enough to do much more than keep up the basic appearance of not being asleep at my desk. Forget about being able to actually concentrate on something, I’m using all available power to keep myself from going face first into the keyboard. Fortunately, most days by about quarter of four, things start looking up a bit, happily just in time for the drive home. Although that’s convenient and all, it would be awfully nice not to feel like a zombie for a good third of every shift. Sadly, thus far, “more coffee” has not been the solution.

2. Price drops. I’ve noticed on the last few things I’ve ordered online, that a few days after I fork over my credit card number, the same item is available on the same site for slightly less than I paid for it. Of course most of these business are reputable establishments and would probably give me the discount if I spent 45 minutes finding my receipt, calling customer service, and complaining to two or three levels of CSR. Usually, though, the general hassle involved isn’t worth it to save the couple of dollars I’d end up getting back for the effort. Sometimes knowing time value and opportunity cost is a real pain in the ass.

3. iPhoto. I think it’s obvious that I’m deeply committed to the Apple family of products. My iPhone talks to my iPad which talks to my MacBook Pro which talks to my Mac Mini which talks to my AppleTV. Everything digital is basically available through any device all the time. It happens without much behind the scenes interface from me. And that makes me happy. But then we come to iPhoto, Apple’s dedicated photo management software. I’ll confess: I hate it. Like a good fanboy, I tried hard to like it, but I really do despise this little piece of software for not giving me control of the underlying file structure and letting me organize my pictures the way I had them filed on my PC in 2002. In this one little thing, Apple has made my life infinitely more difficult. I don’t need smart albums, or tags, events, or social media integration. I just need my photos stored in a logical file structure with folders, sub-folders, and sub-sub-folders that make sense to my OCD addled brain.

47 minutes…

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In college, the universal rule, recognized across the known world, was if the professor didn’t show up 15 minutes after the start of class, you were free to go. Sadly, the same is not true of “professional work environments.” As a professional, you’ll be expected to sit quietly and wait for whoever called the meeting regardless of how long after the scheduled start time they actually show up. One might be tempted to think that their time would be better spent in going back to their desk and getting some actual work done, but unfortunately one would be wrong.

I set my own personal best (worst?) record today in the grand game of sitting around waiting for someone to show up. The meeting started 47 minutes after it was originally scheduled. Which is bad enough. But then of course it lasted almost an hour longer than it should have. Read that again. I’m not saying it ran for an hour after it started. I’m saying it lasted the “original” hour it was scheduled (albeit starting 47 minutes late) and then kept on running for almost an additional hour. All told, I spent just shy of 3 hours on a meeting that was supposed to be done and over in less than one.

It’s days like today that test my increasingly limited powers of keeping my big mouth shut. I’ve been around long enough that most ridiculous things seem like perfectly reasonable courses of action, but there’s something about leaving dozens of people to cool their heels because one can’t get from Point A to Point B in a timely manner apparently pushed all my buttons at once.

Stationary hell…

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I know a few of you out there are all gung ho about your exercise routines. You run marathons, lift six times your body weight, and participate in all manner of physical exertion. More than a few of you have commented about how the effort leaves you feeling energized and wanting to go harder and do more. See, right there is where you lose me. I’ve tried a lot of it over the years – free weights and machines, walking, jogging (aka my feeble attempt at breaking into a run), stair climbing, resistance training, etcetera and so on. Where these activities leave you feeling energized, they leave me feeling tired, achy, sweaty, and generally like there are a dozen other things I could have spent that hour doing that would have left me feeling more productive for the day. It’s not that I reject the obvious benefits of these activities so much as it is that I find them mostly dull, tedious, and often painful. Hard as it might be to believe, that’s not the exact recipe for keeping me interested in something.

However, my semi-annual visit coming up in January to my Teutonic doctor and he’s going to ask the inevitable question about doing a minimum of 30-45 minutes of cardio a day. I won’t lie to him, because lying to your doctor is just bad policy, so with the impending visit in mind, I’m back on the wagon. And by wagon, I mean the cursed stationary bicycle that lives in the basement and for the last three months has served as an improvised laundry drying station. So at least when he asks, I can tell him with a straight face that yes, I’m doing the requisite number of minutes per day. I’ll leave off the bit about hating every minute of it since I’m fairly certain that’s not medically relevant.

I envy you people who find your exercise regimen personally fulfilling. For me it feels an awful lot like three hours a week that I’ll never get back.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The damned darkness. It’s been said that it’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness. Still, all things considered, I’d rather be home before lighting the candles is necessary. I know it’s that fabulous time of year when the days are getting short and all, but I can’t help but think it would be awfully nice to get home in the afternoon before the photovoltaic sensors crank on the outdoor lights for the night. Plenty of daylight while I’m driving to the office in the morning is nice and all, but while I’m sitting in cubicle hell, it doesn’t make a lick of difference to me whether it’s blue skies and sunny or pitch black out there. Having an hour or two of daylight at the end of shift, though, would make all the difference in the world. You can keep Christmas. The winter holiday I’m most looking forward to at this point is the solstice.

2. Hand holding. Public displays of affection are fine, what makes me crazy are the allegedly professional members of society who need hand holding through every step of whatever it is they are supposed to be doing. I don’t have the time or the inclination to be your security blanket and dispense constant reassurance that you’re doing good work, or the right thing, or whatever other nonsensical prattle you need to hear multiple times a day to keep your little world from flying out of its orbit. Being a grown ass adult means you get to meet your own needs, not wander around looking for someone to meet them for you… because right now the only thing I can say you need for sure is a punch to the throat. That might not solve your problem, but it would sure as hell solve mine.

3. Everything else. I can’t quite put my finger on what’s causing it, but my general state of being could best be described as “annoyed” for most of the last week. While that may not sound surprising, the truth is actually do my best to ignore, or at least not engage with, most of what goes on around me. Observe it? Absolutely. Interact with it? Only when it’s unavoidable. I find that I’m much more at peace with the world and those in it when I hold the whole ball of wax at arm’s length. This week, though, I wake up pre-annoyed for some reason… although it saves me the trouble of needing to gin up a good level of rage later, it doesn’t exactly contribute to the smooth passage of the days. Sadly, that’s not a problem that can be fixed by the judicious application of more cowbell… unless you duct tape the cowbell to the person annoying you and then play it with a crowbar. That might actually help.