Tag Archives: time

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Irons in the fire. If there was ever a recurring them up in this place, it would have to be that time is fleeting. There’s never enough of it and there’s always too much to cram into the hours available. I hit that wall once every five or six months – when it gets to the point when you’ve got to start making uncomfortable decisions about what stays and what goes; what you’re willing to invest time into and what you’re going to toss over the transom. It’s why I don’t golf any more – I loved it, but carving out four or five uninterrupted hours at a time eventually fell into the too hard to do column. It’s getting to be one of those times again and it’s just a matter of racking and stacking the things that are eating up my day and deciding what makes the cut and what doesn’t. I’m absolutely convinced that I can do it all, but I equally sure I can’t do it all at once.

2. Failure to lead. Once upon a time, the United States was the voice of reason on the international stage. Winning two world wars and forging an international economic order, we managed to keep the cold war from turning hot and kept enough of a lid on a dozen other regional conflicts to keep them from boiling over and dragging the rest of the world down with them. Now, with our oldest alliances fraying and our “great power” influence on world events waning, we seem more or less content to let others lead while we fall back. We’re in retreat from the world around us and our responsibilities in it; worse, we’re letting other countries call the tune to which we’re going to have to dance. I see the growing notion at home and abroad that the United States is “just another country.” Philosophically, I’m horrified by the very notion and know full well that the road we’re on doesn’t end well either for us, or for the generations who have looked for us to lead the way.

3. Modern convenience. I have a light on my truck’s dash that is supposed to tell me when one of my tires is low on air. It’s been on for six months because what it’s really telling me is that I have a bad air pressure sensor. When I was informed by Toyota that the pressure sensor was a $300 fix, let’s just say that after laughing at them my next question was whether I could get behind the dash and just take the bulb out of the idiot light. I’m sure some people consider knowing their tire pressure from the pilot’s seat an incredible convenience. I’m not one of them. Back in the dark ages when I got my driver’s license, we had to manually check our tire pressure from time to time with a $.99 handheld analog gage. If it means not spending $299.01, I’m happy going right back to doing that once a week just like I did from 1994-2008. I’m pretty sure this is a case of modern convenience being more trouble than it’s worth.

One good thing…

Posted on by

I don’t know anyone who is really a fan of Monday. I suppose there is always the odd shift worker whose weekend starts on Monday, but they are clearly the exception. For most other working stiffs, Monday is mostly just the week’s great reminder that our time really isn’t our own.

The day does have one redeeming quality that I’ve found. This singular quality would be that Monday is so significantly different from the two days preceding it that in most cases the morning just seems to fly by once it gets going. Maybe it’s a minor issue of perception, but being the optimist that I am, I thought it worth pointing out. After lunch, of course, the perceived passage of time slows to its standard weekday snail’s pace. At least one this one day of the week it’s nice to look up from whatever I’m doing and be pleasantly surprised that it’s time for lunch rather than looking up and wondering why it’s not even passed 9AM yet.

Perception is a tricky mistress like that. She gives with one hand and punches you in the junk with the other. My advice: Try enjoying the good moments while you’re waiting for the other hand to drop you like a ton of bricks.

Watch…

Posted on by

Since sometime in the middle of the last decade, I’ve been using my phone to keep track of time. Wearing a watch seemed like a throwback when I had a device in my pocket that told me the time based on knowing wherever in the world I happened to be at the moment. As phones got smart it became possible to know the time anywhere on the planet at more or less the same time. Progress. That’s how things are supposed to work in the modern world. Except, of course, the Swatch Watch Flumotionsmodern world brings it’s own set of inconveniences… like spending an inordinate amount of time in rooms where your cell phone isn’t welcome. Maybe it’s a function of my OCD, but I like knowing what time it is, how much longer a meeting should run, or how close to on time I am for whatever comes next. That’s hard to do when your only time-teller is locked up in your desk drawer halfway across the building.

Somewhere in the detritus of my past, there’s probably a box full of watches. Some subtle dress watches, some big clunky dive chronometers, and more than a few cheap Casio and Timex models that were cheaper to replace than to fix when they inevitably broke. The problem is, I have no idea where that box might be. I’ve looked for it from time to time, but it really is nowhere to be found. Maybe I purged them when I realized the time-telling cell phone was going to be the wave of the future. Still, I’d love to know where my collection of wonderfully tacky Swatch Watches ended up. They’d be a real conversation starter in a room full of button down serious people.

Alas, the old watches are nowhere to be found, so in a fit of not being able to tell what time it was this morning, I pulled up Amazon and have a very sturdy looking stainless steel number heading my direction even as I type this. Nothing gaudy or over the top. Just a simple face and durable band… a workhorse of a wristwatch that hopefully won’t mind living in my desk drawer when I’m authorized to be a child of the digital age.

Nothing to show…

Posted on by

Ever have one of those days where sit down at quarter after seven and then suddenly look up and realize it’s half past three? Yeah. The kind of day that feels like it’s over before it ever got started. I hate days like that. I want to know where my time is going instead of just having it lost into the ether. Maybe if I had something to show for it, I wouldn’t be quite so bothered. At a minimum I’d like to be able to at least tick off one or two of the things on the day’s list of things to do. Some days you don’t even get that small pleasure. Today was one of those days. I know I got “stuff” done, but I can’t quite shake the feeling that I’m standing around, looking vaguely confused, and wondering WTF just happened.

One bad mother (shut your mouth)…

Posted on by

I generally make a point to avoid using this as a venue to talk about work. For one thing, it’s just bad form to grouse too much about the people who sign your check. For another, work is hard enough without everyone looking around wondering what embarrassing story you’re going to tell next. Finally, work is usually the last thing I want to talk about when I’m not, you know, at work, so most of those stories never get written, let alone see the light of day.

This post isn’t going to break that mold in any meaningful way, but I don’t think I’m talking out of school when I say that other the last week and a half has been a real mother. It’s been seriously busy. And I mean busier in the last ten days than any other tend day stretch in the last 17 months. It’s not that the work is any harder, just that there seems to be more of it… and between flu, random sickness, planned time off, meetings, uncertainty about the budget, impending sequestration, no raise for 3 years, and a host of other things, I think it’s safe to say the whole place is just in a mood.

I don’t know what the remedy is, but for the time being the best course of action is probably just keeping my head down and doing my best not to draw unnecessary fire. I’m not wishing my life away, but 4:00 Friday afternoon can’t get here fast enough.

Now and then…

Posted on by

Every now and then I stumble across several seriously good blog posts in the archive. If I do say so myself, I was in particularly good form between September 26th and October 5, 2006. If I were going to open a “Best of” section, I think four of the five entries would probably be in the running to be included. It’s hard to believe that six years ago I was just starting my start in Memphis… It’s even more surprising that I actually seemed to be enjoying it. What a difference four years and some keep personnel changes can make. Fortunately, no real damage was done, and I’ll always think of West Tennessee as my cautionary tale.

What Annoys Jeff This Week?

Posted on by

If I were to list the things that really got my goat this week, there’s a pretty good chance that I’d still be typing when it was time to start on next week’s edition. So without any further introduction let’s get right into it…

1. Cold. Or more specifically cold in the office. Or even more specifically, cold air being blown out of the air handler directly over my head and rolling down the back of my neck. Even protected as they are, ever muscle from the back of my head to my lower back feels like someone spent the last two days twisting them into knots. Thank God it was only on the 40s and 50s outside. If I walk in some morning in January and find the cold air venting, just go ahead and put me out on annual leave, because I’ll be going back to the house. When I lived in Memphis, I use to think I’d enjoy fall and winter in a more northerly clime. Clearly I was wrong. What I really want is Baltimore with Miami’s weather.

2. Warped time. It’s Thursday. I know this because both Outlook and my iPhone tell me. It has still felt like Tuesday all blessed day long. And since the only thing more annoying than feeling like Tuesday is feeling like Monday, it comes in above the cut line this week.

3. News exhaustion. I don’t say it very often, but I think I’m overloaded on the news. From Sandy to the election to random feeds that show up in my Twitter stream… At some point in the near future, I’m going to have to shut it all down for a few days. I just hope I can manage to stay focused through next Tuesday… ‘cause this one’s gonna be good.

Sleep…

Posted on by

I know some people revel in spending as much time in bed as possible. Listening to them talk about a good night’s sleep is like listening to someone describe their deeply held religious convictions. I have a slightly more utilitarian relationship with my bed; it’s a necessary evil that occupies one room on the house and I try to limit my interaction with it as much as possible. I’ve said it before, but I can’t quite shake the idea that sleep is just a enormous time suck that’s trying to eat up a third of the day… and there are always things I’d rather be doing that, you know, just laying around.

I do have to admit, though, that sleep does have one thing going for it; even though it takes up five or six hours, the time goes by fast. By that I mean there’s no sense that time is really passing. You fall asleep and bam, you’re waking up. Even when eight or more hours intervene between Point A and Point B, it feels almost instantaneous.

A good point of comparison is long haul flying, since even on red eye flights, I’ve never been able to get comfortable enough to actually fall asleep… Getting from the East Coast to LA or to London feels like it takes something just short of forever, even though it’s really only five or six hours (which conveniently for this thought exercise is about the amount of time I sleep most nights). Whether I’m flying across the pond or sleeping at home, the same amount of time passes, but one feels much shorter than the other. That’s for the best, of course, because if every night felt like it lasted as long as trans-continental flight, you’d never convince me that going to sleep was a good idea.

There’s not really a “so what” to this post other than time, our perception of it, and what it all means are topics that I currently find fascinating… and since I’m the proprietor of this establishment, it’s what everyone gets to read about today.

Prep time…

Posted on by

I don’t see any real in depth blog posts happening in the near future. I spent most of tonight dragging out old baby gates and trying to “slip-proof” as much of the kitchen as I could manage. I’m working on the assumption that Winston will go to surgery tomorrow afternoon after our morning consultation. Sure I’ll have all afternoon and evening tomorrow to do that, but I think I’m just trying to say busy. I hate the thought of my my boy needing to more than likely go under the knife, but that’s the tomorrow I’m trying to mentally prepare for… Plus, there’s a new iOS downloading on my iPad at the moment and I’m going to need to stop trying to write and go check that out in a minute.

What Annoys Jeff This Week?

Posted on by

I’m on a bit of a time crunch this evening so in no particular order, here they are:

1. The general public’s complete lack of awareness about what’s going on in the world when it happens more than 15 miles from wherever they happen to be at the time. World events are important if for no other reason than they are going to impact you whether you think they will or not. Like a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing, some decision made as a result of current events is going to impact you, your family, your finances, and your country (not necessarily in that order). For the love of God, please start paying attention… or at least promise me that if you choose to stay ignorant you won’t show up to vote in November.

2. Time Management. Keeping a room full of people waiting for thirty minutes without anything in the way of explanation is bad form, no matter who you are. So yeah, you people with piss poor time management skills just figure out how to get it together. The rest of the world is tired of waiting on you.

3. Car Pooling. Riding with other people sucks. You don’t control the speed of travel, the temperature, or really any factor of the trip other than where you start from and where you’re going. Being dependent on other people’s schedule blows. Sure, carpooling decreases the number of people on the road and decreases emissions, but it’s just so bloody inconvenient. It’s legitimately nothing personal, I just don’t think I’d like carpooling with anyone. In the future, I think I’ll either fend for myself or find a reason to avoid the trip completely.