I don’t think 30000 days will be long enough.
Sometimes the phone rings and I immediately tense up.
Today was one of those days. My cellphone rang. It rarely rings these days, and most of the time the callers are spam I send straight to voicemail.
Today it was a call that read ‘Cathy Greengrass’ on the display. I am not ashamed to admit I took a deep breath before answering.
We’re not close in the same way other families are close, so it’s pretty rare for calls to occur ‘just because’. There’s almost always some reason for the call (I do it too). The phone shouldn’t be ringing. Travel plans for her to visit in September have already been communicated, and adjustments would be noted via email. It’s not anyone’s birthday this week. I can’t think of anything they’d need to ask me.
That means it’s something they have to tell me.
I immediately thought ‘Which one of them is sick or has died?’. Yes, terrible I know, but we’re all aging at the same pace, and there are less days ahead than behind. We all know that, and it’s been the topic of some previous conversations.
It’s my dad on the line. Ok, so not him thankfully. With his heart issues, he seemed like the most likely. Mom’s tough, and from his tone when he says hello, it’s not her – he’d be shaken in a way you can’t hide.
It’s Austin. My uncle – his brother. He’s died.
My mind went blank. I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t.
Austin wasn’t always the easiest person to be around. He was intense. He was opinionated. At times he could even be a real grouch. He had some valid reasons. He had his share of bad luck. He had several other people’s share too.
This year his life was turning around. He was a short distance from some really heartbreaking unfairness finally getting sorted out. He’d patched up things with his son. He had plans still to execute on.
Now he’s gone.
I hope the end came quietly and without pain. I feel sympathy for his younger children, who’ll grow up without him. I regret we didn’t talk more.
Rest in peace.
Well damn.
This has happened to me a few times over the past few weeks.
I’ll be doing something, and something interesting, or successful, or fun will occur… and I realize other than my wife, there’s nobody to tell.
Previously, this would go onto facebook. Maybe it’d get a comment or a like.. sometimes it wouldn’t get anything, and yet I’d still treat it like I’d ‘told’ someone.
Now? Not so much. Let it go.
Dealing with the government.
So we paid our taxes, and settled some previously owing. Paid in full by cheque.
Except the CRA put one of the cheques against the wrong individual. The result? We have to pay the money *again*, and they’ll eventually refund any credit on the account the money went into, but only after this year’s taxes process.
Oh, and if we waited for them to correct it? Penalty. Don’t pay that while trying to get it reversed? Second penalty.
I believe the phrase goes:
‘It’s our fault, but it’s your problem’
If you’re going to complain about it in private…
Then it’s obviously bothering you.
With that in mind I took the time to write the person involved in the last post directly, and explain how our last conversation had played out. What he’d said, what I heard, and how that both annoyed me and made me question unspoken limits.
I left him with a series of questions hopefully designed to clarify whether or not there were some unspoken rules I was breaking. Now to see if he responds.
Like so much of life, this too is a test. There are a lot of ‘correct’ responses. Only one or two of those include anything that makes me happy. The only really wrong response.. is no response at all.
How he responds (if he does) matters quite a bit to me. There’s a chance we’ll be actively working together in the future. If we are going to have issues, I’d rather know now, so that I can start preparing other options.
Sometimes I get frustrated.
I’ll admit it, I’m annoyed.
I saw a coworker ask for something to be set up. I had just finished setting up exactly that for another team, so I offered to either to the work, or show him how to. He was interested.
Meanwhile the team he’d initially asked came back to him, they’re too busy for a month or two. That’s believable. I mentioned to their lead I had made this offer, and it would therefore be something they didn’t have to worry about, unless they wanted to own it.
His response irritated me. He didn’t like the technology I was using. I gave him my reasons, and mentioned it would be a rapid setup. He said X other way would be faster…
All the while, I’m thinking “Huh? You’re not going to be doing the work for at least a month, so it’s not really faster is it? I mean if it was as easy as you’re saying, why the hell are you pushing this other guy off? Why do you dislike my solution so much, especially if it reduces the amount of work you have to do?”
I managed to stay polite, but I was pretty offended. I offered to walk back my offer (thus taking the role of bad-guy), and even that didn’t provoke a reasonable response.
He’s not my boss, and I’m pretty glad about that. I like being appreciated, and having someone back-seat doubting my decision was pretty demoralizing.
I say again he didn’t like my solution, but was not going to provide an alternative within a reasonable period of time.
Spring upgrades
Well, it’s still january, but it was warm today, so that counts as spring right?
Ordered the upgrade for my primary workstation. I’ll migrate the current primary down to my secondary, and put the current secondary away until it’s needed.
It’s been about 18 months or so since I upgraded, so I’m about due. I likely won’t need to upgrade again for another 3 years however, as this system won’t become obsolete any time soon.
It’ll be a week or two until it arrives, and another week or so until I do the switchup.
