Ass crack of dawn…

This morning I was awake at 5:30 for no apparent reason. Snarky Facebook status messages aside, I actually do like being up early on the weekends. It’s just a hot mug of coffee, warm slippers, and the dogs curled up at my feet. Maybe more important is those early hours catch me in the best mood of the day before the asshats and idiots have had a chance to agitate the hell out of me. The day is still fresh with the possible. Most of that nice relaxed feeling will evaporate the minute my garage door rolls up and I have to deal with the rest of the world, but for now I’m enjoying it.

Expectations...

The problem with being good is that it conditions people to expect good things from you. I use to work with a guy, back when I was touching America’s youth, who was fond of reminding me to “set your goals low and achieve them.” Some days I wonder if I shouldn’t have applied that advice. I’ve never minded long hours or short deadlines and I’ve never backed off from the challenging projects, but sometimes I do worry that I have raised the bar of expectation a bit too high. I’m always game to throw in and get the job done, but damn don’t I hate pulling the fat out of the fire for someone who is apparently not subject to expectations of, you know, actually being able to do his job. Seriously, some days I wish I could tolerate the sloth of it all. Oh, and just for the record, it’s not that I have problems with authority… It’s that I have problems with people in positions of authority who have been promoted way, way beyond their level of competence. Then again, maybe I should just start fouling up every project I touch so they’ll promote me again. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Anniversary…

Today is the six year anniversary of my going to work for Uncle Sam. Like every other recent milestone lately, I’ve been struck by how quickly it came up. Six years isn’t one of the normal milestone years that end up being divisible by five, but it does mean that I am basically one fifth of the way through my career and that I’ve now spent more than twice as long doing this as I spent doing what I was studied to do in college (which also seems like a long, long time ago by the way). I’ve had a good run so far, which is a tribute more to the supervisors and colleagues I’ve had more than to my own native abilities. For anyone who followed my blog on MySpace and now here, you’ll know that I haven’t always been happy with it and I’ve often left the office fuming over some perceived slight or professional failure. Though it’s not always plain from the outside, I can honestly say that despite it all, I’ve always been proud of the job I’ve done. Hopefully the next six will be even better… Although a little less time on the road would be ok too.

Breaking up is hard to do...

Since October I have had the opportunity to own three of the leading smartphones on the market today. My typical preference for BlackBerry led me to the Bold and, briefly, to the Storm. My abject love of all things new and shiny led me to the iPhone. Having carried a BlackBerry device for the last five years, and it pains me to say this, my friends in Waterloo just are not keeping their devices terribly fresh. The handsets themselves are leaps and bounds over the old models, but their underlying operating system, web integration, and ability to add features just don’t hold up. By contrast, the iPhone is a remarkable piece of equipment. Its web browsing and the availability of 3rd party applications put it in the top tier of handhelds. It doesn’t handle a large volume of email as well as a BlackBerry and the lack of cut/paste functions can be irksome, but I kept coming back to how smoothly integrated the entire device seemed to be.

After carrying all three and living with each of them as my “daily driver,” my final decision is to keep the iPhone. It was a bit of a long goodbye to RIM while I gave them every opportunity to wow me with their new flagship handsets. I won’t rule out having another berry in my life someday, but they’ve got some work to do to earn back my business. As for now, I’m going to have some lightly used phones for sale (suitable for jailbreaking) once I cancel their contracts. I can’t quite shake the feeling that I’m breaking up with a long-time steady… or am I trading her in for a newer, sexier model?

Uninspired…

I’m just not feeling it today, so I’ll be phoning in this post. I’m not sick and I don’t really feel bad in any way other than having no motivation at the moment. Seriously, I can’t think of a remotely interesting thing to say tonight. If I were to make a swag, I’d say that it’s probably got more to do with not getting enough sleep as I probably should be so far this week. Time was when getting four or five hours was enough to keep me running hard all day. This week it seems like that’s just enough to barely let me scrape by. Maybe I’ll take my own advice and crash early tonight… but lord won’t I feel lame trying to go to bed before 9:00!

Attention Petsmart shoppers...

Dear fellow customers,

He is an English Bulldog. He is not there to have your two year old try to pull on his “cute little tail” or for your little tike in the stroller to kick in the face when she gets excited. He’s not free entertainment. He was bred to grab a bull by the nose and stay there until it was dead. If he weren’t as easy going, that could have just as easily been one of your little darlings learning how powerful a bullie’s jaws can be. But he didn’t do that. He sat and let your children molest him; quietly enduring the indignity of it because that is what I have taught him to do. Sadly you haven’t taught your human children the same manners. At the very least you, or they, could have asked my permission before squealing their way over to him. That he didn’t bite them was a tribute to his remarkably laid back nature.

I understand he’s quite the charmer and most people don’t see a bulldog often. At the same time, I didn’t walk up to your wife and start fondling her sweater puppies because I thought they looked good. It’s called having some slight modicum of self-control. He may not have bitten you, but I was seriously tempted to do it myself. Asshats.

Very sincerely yours,

Jeff

A thought about the new year…

I live in a pretty standard subdivision and the houses are probably 15-20 feet apart. Can someone tell me how the hell someone would think that was a good venue to set off bottle rockets? I was out with the pups last night around 11:30 when some jackass up the street started popping those things off. I’m guessing the launch platform was their driveway because the flashes were coming from the front of the house. Sadly, by the time I got the dogs herded into the kitchen and got the garage door up, the brilliant individuals who were doing this were nowhere to be found… Which is too bad, really, I was in just the right mood to raise all kinds of hell.

Everyone things the new year means a new beginning. That’s crap… it’s just another year of tolerating the same morons because it’s illegal to kill them. Happy New Year, friends.