Saturday Thoughts

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I read a few blogs these days and only a few. One of them is Jonas’ which has this great mix of his life events, travels, cooking, stories which seem to me so enjoyable. Another is my friend Setuid. Although Dave does not update his blog at any set pace, his posts have always been a well of information on a myriad of categories from Windows configuration to travel to hints on how to get a thing setup on Debian. I also have been reading my friend Hank’s blog on his pending return to Japan. I don’t queue these up in some RSS or Atom or whatever reader. For some reason, I enjoy the act of visiting the sites and not just scraping them for the content. Perhaps its the format of the weblog I enjoy and how its presented.

So what is there to gain from these perambulations? Well, each person brings a set of things to consider, to cogitate, to reason with or to fantasize about. Truth be told, I have this fantasy trip in my ideal and perhaps real state some day. I wish to tour Asia starting again in Japan and taking the Shinkansen down to Hiroshima. Then flying over to Bangkok and catching the 23 hour marathon train to Singapore. I’ll spend time in Singapore until I’m done and perhaps head to KL to go to a cheaper place. Chennai will want me to return as well but I would like to reach other places in India. Places I have not been to and there are many in my EverNote note. Places that either are mysterious in their history or beautiful in their present. A friend asked me at work whether i felt travel was this drug which kept the nasty world at bay. Perhaps it is to me. Maybe I can find the way to not be connected to life events when everything I own is in a RedOxx AirBoss and my entire connectivity option is a Android Tablet like the Nexus 10.

In my last sojourn I discovered that tablet travel is so doable for me. It makes the whole laptop which weighs in a 3 pounds and all the cables so easily replaced. No cell phone is needed either. I can skype or Google Chat so easily.

So one day I’ll venture forth and not look back. Looking back is for chickens when you can look to the day or even to the next. I’ll write more blogposts and perhaps a story or two about how I touch things and how they touch me.

Most of all thanks to those folks which write the things I love to read. I visit and read and learn with each of the posts you all do and its appreciated. There is no real point to this blog and never has been. Its been the experiment of one which keeps on creating and installing new variables. For each thing that I thought was an end there was always a beginning which was around the corner. Marriage, divorce, jobs. All are ends and beginnings.

That’s a good thing BTW. Cheers!

Bits and Bytes

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A collection of myriad, unconnected facts and fictions. Read if you dare. Tomorrow ends my first week back at Visa. Its been fun and perhaps a bit intimidating. I remember every so often the other days. I still see people I worked with and even worked for. My bud Mani works just down the hall from me. Same floor but worlds different work. I saw my old boss the other day as well.

I’ve reached the conclusion that project management work is often not very passionate. It seems to be dull, plodding, perhaps boring work. You do this. You need to do that. You edit a spreadsheet or create some project plan. You attempt to either create a new process or change an existing one. Sometimes you make a difference. Other times you are a pain in the ass. But now I get paid better. A better paid pain in the ass.

I don’t really trust most people. They say one thing and mean another. They do one thing but would probably prefer to do something else. They say stuff like “trust me”. I really feel like most times I simply don’t need the majority of them. They’re extraneous and don’t have a real mission.

I walked for 75 minutes at work today. First walk there and nice. I ended up at Carl’s junior. Not sure why. Tomorrow I will do 2 hours. Only because I can.

Tomorrow my friend Ed gets to the bay area. We will hopefully meet up Saturday for beers. I will also go with my friend Mani for lunch at our Vietnamese restaurant in San Mateo. Good times coming!!

There is not much more to say.

Sunday and Me

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On the weekends I tend to read news a lot on my Nexus 10, try out new software, and dream about the next big thing. Today I will go for a 70 minute walk in some cooler temperatures and do some basic observation about my condition. I often also read backwards in the blog back to even the days when I first started doing this thing. Back then it seemed like blogging was all about authority, linking in and out, readership, and tracking. You all remember when blogging seemed to be poised to take over multiple roles? Perhaps like information and management of that information, reporting, and even presentation in its curious blend of newest on top. What has it become these days? I’m never sure. I enjoy doing it but don’t really know why. You would figure I would know by now. Right?

No real clue.

I do know when I don’t do it I get this uncomfortable feeling. Kinda like mental constipation or something. I feel there are these words there. Perhaps personal stuff or maybe something about Linux or Android. Sometimes bunches of things. Definitely uncomfortable.

Posts from back in 2008 to about 2010 show a different me. Still dealing with the results of 19 years of a marriage which never was worthy but still persisted. I’ve asked those why questions too many times both in this blog and in my moments of introspection. But I had the travel then. I could just leave and end up in Singapore or India. It was just a matter of time though. The moral of this or any life event that has the capacity to be a game changer is to not put off dealing with it. Don’t procrastinate and think some event or person will be a game changer. If it ain’t you, then who.

So I still don’t know the why of many things. Nor is there some magic bullet of acceptance. There is evolution though and learning to live well and wisely in spite of something. A friend once remarked that the greatest revenge is outliving the condition that caused the pain.

Maybe. Then there is the blog and its years which gently remind me of all the past conditions. Considering writing one? Don’t do it. It will either claim your life in words or you will be a single post wonder. You don’t have to use it as catharsis though and I’m sorry sometimes that this is a personal reflection and not some grand technological treatise.

Other times I think if you feel like complaining… well fuck off. This is my thing. Go find your own and then you can write your own treatises.

Gone to Visa

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A long time dream of mine was to go back to Visa. I had a great time there doing infrastructure and other stuff. For some reason the tasks just resonated, money was really good, friends were made that I have kept to this day. About 5 weeks ago cisco decided not to renew my contract. Truth be told though I had already interviewed at Visa. Already decided to leave. There was something basically broken there with what we were given to do. I think we all knew it.

So cisco faded away and Monday I go back. Back to visa for 2 years. But it’s not really going back. In all ways it’s moving forward. It’s the necessary part of the mike force plan which has been evolving for some time. One day I’ll post the details. Let me just say that the last cosmic variable has aligned.

What I needed I found. I’ve been with some really good companies and some f**ked up ones. Some started good but a company is an organism and evolution happens. Others I knew were bad from almost day 1. We do things to either prosper or survive. I’ve crossed to the prosper side.

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I have this vision of doing IT Project Management in a consulting basis where everything just works seamlessly. A position is offered, its accepted, a start date is given, you start. A plan develops, the work becomes challenging, you are completely engaged. Things are good.

Then disaster strikes. Your contract is not renewed or if fulltime you are severed. The entire job economy for Project Manglers becomes completely f**ked up (again). You are starving literally or even figuratively. No challenges. Nothing on the horizon. You are forced to do something completely foreign.

Then you wake up.

You are laying in your bed. Nothing is different, nothing is the same. Its just work in the Silly Icon Valley. Full of perks and downturns. Hatred and low points. Possible contracts and almost potential fulltime gigs doing work for a small offshore company which shall remain nameless.

Then you wake up.

You are standing in line in a Project Managers soup kitchen. Next to you is a dude that used to work for Zynga and another from HP. There is yet another from Cisco that just disappeared. Life is sad.

Phone rings. You wake up.

Damn. What is the reality and what is the fiction?

I hopefully will know by end of the week what’s real and what’s not. I do know that living this way is not much fun. Living and death by phone and email. Sucks.

What about goals? Well…

 

Library This and That

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At our local library reveling in the really good wifi and looking up facts on cost of living and economic conditions in a few places. It’s a groovy place to exit the BS that transmits and receives around the house.

Still not working which is a pain. They’ve assured me things will start next week. They’ve said that before. I really have a love and hate relationship thing with IT. I wish it were better but being a consultant has its ups and downs.

There has been a lot of news lately about how android is kicking serious butt. I think it more points out how a coalition of openness will take it to a walled garden. There is no way to win if you won’t compete and only litigate. Apple should really stop all that and get on with what they say is their primary occupation – innovation.

Also thinking of chennai for some reason today. Wondering how my native place is doing these days. Friends. Things I once did. Lifetimes ago. Sun and skies. On to pick up the daughter force at school. Maybe will add more to this later.

Later

Now it’s later and I’m at home. Been thinking a lot about traveling and what I want to do next. No matter how bad things get, there’s always a next thing. Hopefully not worse.

It’s hard to sit and wait on a call or email about the very thing you have defined a plan for months if not years on. I feel confident that things will evolve. Sometimes it’s hard to wait.

Tomorrow is Today

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After deciding to continue writing this thing, I had this thought based on this,

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation

At first I thought we should change this to people instead of men. But now that I think of it men truly lead these lives. We, as a sex, seem destined for this desperation no matter what. I’m not satisfied with that though. Women are at least as screwed up as we are. Perhaps more and in different ways. You can attribute this to my divorce or my jaded life view.

But why are women called the opposite sex? I don’t get that. In what ways are they opposite to us men? I think they should be called the other sex instead.

It makes it more clear and perhaps painfully too obvious there is us and then there is them. Not opposite. Just other.

Of course this is all tongue in cheek so to speak. But why did Thoreau say men to begin with? What the hell did he know?

I don’t dislike women. They’re fine. As long as they don’t intrude on my desperation. Thank God we have marriage. Divorce ain’t so bad either come to think of it.

See ya.

just an update

Today I got to see my ex wife and her husband at of all places a jack in da box. Life is very strange. Four years of mystery crushed in a single moment of silent laughter. My God. I’m okay. Really.