0004 Yortera 07: Delivery

Wow. A week into the new year, already. Normally, I would've taken great pains to commemorate Thilafa, but events have not favored it. That's a pity, really; I do what I can to mark the holidays and important events of the Lapinian Calendar. After all, if I'm not going to use my own calendar, who will? And yet, that's the drawback, too. Because nobody else is using it, nobody else accounts for it unless I make a big deal of it. I imagine it's a little like trying to get Yom Kippur off from work without using vacation days. "You celebrate what? That's not a federal holiday, is it?"

Ceci n'est pas une blague juive.

Yesterday was the first beta run of the puzzling event that we're hosting, and it went far better than it could have. I'd be lying if I said everything ran without any problems whatsoever, but that's what beta-tests are for. More importantly in the short term is that the fundamental theories of everything I wrote will work. I'm working on some revisions, but my contributions to the event should survive in something close to their present forms. This is a good thing, as the live event runs in a little under a month. Now is not the time to have to rebuild anything from scratch. I've got a few revisions that need to be made, here and there, but they're all manageable, and I've got every confidence that things will go well for the real thing.

Less confident at the moment am I of how well I'll be at interacting with humanity at large for the next few weeks. In the time leading up to the beta, I had a lot of late nights, and near the end of last week, it started impacting my ability to get enough sleep to function at work the next day. Under other circumstances, I probably wouldn't have cared so much. However, I'm down to the last week-and-a-half of the quarter and my big Get-This-Done project doesn't look like it's going to complete in time, for reasons that have some to do with me and a lot to do with other people's Get-This-Done projects that kept them from being to help me with mine. What this ultimately means is that even if I can't get my stuff together on time, I need to at least look like a dedicated and hard-driving employee, trying everything possible to meet the target, so I can say at the end that I really couldn't have done anything more. Showing up late and hopping around in a daze won't help my case.

It's not even really that I care about this particular project itself, so much as the fact that my boss is using it as a benchmark against my ability to do team-lead and project-manager-type work, which is the big path to promotion right now. Making matters worse is the fact that I really can't do any of the technical work myself, so I'm having to juggle other people's availability to accomplish it. It's highly frustrating, and it's made this quarter... well, to be blunt, it's sucked. I don't want to be a project manager, so much as I want to be team lead, and apparently at T-Mobile or at least for this manager one implies the other. So, I learn, even though I'm not sure I'm very good at it.

Outside of the work complaint itself, I'm just feeling oversocialized right now. Those of you reading this who're extroverts, go ahead and skip to the next major heading; you're not going to understand this part, and that's okay. I've had to hook up with the same small group of people multiple times over the last week to work on this event, culminating in roughly three miles of walking and taking notes in the cold yesterday. Then I went out to dinner and we talked about everything that had happened over the least ten or so hours. I really haven't had a chance to get much downtime in a few weeks, and as we get closer to the live event, that's really only going to get worse. I know that at least one weekend I'll have to myself between now and then; Orbus and Mufi are going to Norwescon, which happens to be the weekend before SNAP, but outside that break, I know I'm going to be seeing a lot of people I already kind of feel like I've already seen a lot of, without much chance to recharge in peace.

Nobody plan on talking to me on Zelera 2 or the weekend of the 9th. I won't be here.

In other completely unrelated news, the sibutramine seems to be doing exactly what it seemed like it was going to do when I first started taking it. My weight this morning was 346.1 pounds, down from 364 when Dave weighed me two weeks ago. I'm eating between 1200 and 1300 calories a day, and while I'm hungry from time to time I never really get the yawning-chasm food cravings that used to plague me. I don't feel the urge to eat when I'm not hungry. My weight situation is actually improving for the first time in eight years.

Now I just have to go back for some bloodwork so that Dave can verify that my liver is still functioning. Ha-ha, only serious. The odds are small, but it's worth checking. After that, I should get a refill on my prescription, and that should set me for a while. I'm not sure how often the blood tests are necessary, but for now, I'll take it.

Jessie mentioned to me not too long ago that apparently I've been carrying myself better since I started seeing a positive change in the scale. I believe it, but it's surprising to me. I'm still obese, but I'm finally feeling like I have a plan and that that plan is coming together. I'm starting again to feel like some of the things that I want are actually going to be able to happen, if not today then soon. I'm looking forward to feeling comfortable about myself again, about making clothing decisions that look good instead of simply covering the necessities. Dobbs help me, I'm actually starting to seriously consider a fursuit... and some other things.

This is, in its own way, all tied in to the big talk that happened during my last Portland visit. These are all interconnected parts of a whole. I've all but quit City of Heroes; all that remains at this point is the install on my hard drive and the automatic payment on my account that I haven't deactivated in case the next big release interests me enough to return. I haven't exactly been vegetarian, per se, but I've been close enough as makes no odds, and the few times that I haven't stuck with it have been either necessity or a minor step outside, with no real urge to walk away from the path I've chosen. I'm even starting to rediscover a lot of my sexuality. It's embarrassing to put it that way, but even I have to admit that the weight gain hurt my self-image considerably, and seeing the progress, I'm starting to feel confident in my existence as a sexual being again.

In that sense, I've actually been looking at porn again, both creating and consuming. In specific, yes, I've been after the furry bondage again. Most of it is a wasteland of I-can't-help-myself and you-forced-me and the like, and the context is as much a turnoff as the subject matter itself might be intriguing. Every so often, the search does turn up a gem, but by and large it's uninspiring, which is a shame because I know what I like and finding it is a challenge.

Last night, as I was winding down for bed, I happened across A Private Heaven. In a strange way, this is perhaps the worst thing that could've happened. I wanted something fairly quick, fairly arousing, and easily forgettable. What I got was... well, read it. Go on; I'll wait here.

Finished? No? I'm serious.

So, now that you're done with it, let me tell you about how it made me feel. I talk a lot about wanting the characters in the media that I peruse to invite me into their heads. That's what I got out of this. Ignore the exposition; it was bad, and it was handled clumsily. Ignore the insertions; the names could've been changed and I don't think anyone would've noticed. Ignore even some of the individual aspects of the scenes that you didn't like. Some of them were cheesy and others were highly improbable. All of that aside, this story touched me, because I saw on the page and in my mind the words and the ideas that I had had before then, that someone else had made concrete, albeit fictionally.

I could go here into detail about my headspaces and what I do with them, but in the nine years that I've been keeping this journal, I've already done it before and I don't much feel like going into it again right now. Perhaps later, if the time is right and the mood strikes me. What's important right now is that for all its faults, I felt as though the characters were telling my story as much as theirs, and that moved me. It excited me, sure, but more importantly, it impassioned me. It wasn't validation from another person, but it was pretty close.

If nothing else, it gave me ideas of what to strive for, and on the nature and shape those ideas could take.

Welcome to my private heaven.

0003 Lakera 24: Neologism

Normally, we speak of coming out to someone, as in, "I came out as adopted to my friends" or "I came out as xenophilic to the pretty green kitty with the antennae and compound eyes." Used in this fashion, it means revealing a part of oneself that was previously unknown, and usually it implies that said fact would be considered socially problematic, if not legally questionable.

I believe it's time to coin a new idiom in the Lapinian Argot: coming out at. To come out at someone is specifically to use the revelation of this status as a conversational weapon. Consider the following cases:

1. • A: Hey, B, I'm throwing a party, and I'm invting my coworkers as well as some friends. Want to come?
   • B (male, A's coworker): Oh, hey, that sounds great, A.
   • A: Awesome. Listen, there's this girl I know, C? I've been telling her about you, and she thinks you sound really cute. She's going to be there; want me to hook you up?
   • B: I really appreciate the offer, A, but I'm really not interested in girls.
2. • S: I hate it when folks think they're better than others. That kind of arrogance really chaps my hide.
   • T (a Christian): I know what you mean. Humility is a virtue and all that.
   • S: Yeah. Like, all those religious types really bug me. Who gives those holier-than-thou types the right to dictate morality
   • T: As one of those holier-than-thou types, I think I can safely say you've just justified their opinion.

In the former case, the person doing the revelation appears to be making an effort not to be confrontational while still delivering the necessary information. In other words, A has come out to B as gay. In the latter, though, T uses the revelation of a strong personal faith in part to shut down S's commentary. In Lapinian Argot, we may say that T came out at S as religious.

The reason I draw this distinction is because I came out at one of my coworkers on Setya.

Now, normally I don't approve of conversational weaponry, and I try my best to be on my guard against deliberately locking people out of a debate, but every once in a while, it's good to know how to be able to use such techniques to one's advantage. Also, considering that the real meat of the discussion started when one co-worker tried to open a conversation about the stimulus package and the coworker I had to lockdown responded by chiding, "you mean the spending bill," I feel pretty good about having done what I did.

Anyone wanting the full story, feel free to ask, and I may post it in the comments, but the important part of the exchange is that we were having a political conversation outside of an office setting, and that at one point in the discussion, the subject of the HMO business model arose and I asserted that universal health insurance would be a step towards ensuring that profit margins didn't stop people from getting the care that their doctors prescribed for them. To this, my coworker retorted that he didn't have any problem getting his wife's medical costs covered by his insurance, and he insisted that people could always appeal any decision an HMO made to refuse payment for a prescribed treatment.

Now, I could've said a lot of things at this point. I could've gone into a discussion of pre-existing medical conditions and how hard it is for someone with a history of cancer, diabetes, or HIV to get medical insurance without a job. I could've talked about the forty-seven million Americans without health insurance. I could've talked about the plight of people who couldn't get work because of their medical problems and couldn't afford treatment because of their joblessness. I had a plethora of options open to me at this point in the discussion. One might even say I had a myriad, or perhaps even an embarrassment of rejoinders.

What I said was, "No insurance policy I've ever had as part of any job I've ever held would pay for my sex change, and a sane universal health insurance policy from the federal government would have to cover it as a legitimate condition with an ICD-9 or ICD-10 diagnosis and treatment process."

Then, having fired that volley, I proceeded to talk about the money spent out-of-pocket for therapy, the fights I had over getting my hormones covered despite my insurance company's insistence that they would pay for any drug my doctor prescribed. Finally, I argued that I had spent close to twenty-five thousand dollars on medical bills that any sane medical insurance policy would have covered, but that I had to spend myself because every insurance company encourages its customers to categorically exempt sex-change procedures in order to save a little money.

My coworker's response to this was, "I think we're going to have to agree to disagree at this point."

To the best of my ability to tell, there's no residual tension on my coworker's side of things. The other team members who were in the car who heard my statement have not followed up with any commentary. The whole matter seems to have come and gone, and I suspect at least in part it's a done deal now because pursuit of the topic would require him to revisit a political debate at work, something upon which most tolerance-and-diversity policies frown intensely.

I still had a minor freak-out last night about the possible fallout.

Now, however, that the immediacy of the incident is over, and I've had a good night's sleep, I think that despite the aggressiveness of how I said what I did, and despite "using my past as a weapon," I think I did the right thing. I engaged in a political and economic debate with somebody squarely in the conservative camp, I held my ground, I didn't lose my temper, I forced my opponent to resort to a conversational nuke to save face, and I was able to tell my coworkers about a part of my life of which I'm embarrassingly proud but about which I'm usually mpowered to say very little. Despite all of the possible future repercussions about not being a team player or about having committed a social gaffe... I feel good about the conversation.

Olly olly oxen free....

0003 Ertera 15: General Trivia

So, as always, it's later than I expect updating this thing. I always start off with the best of intentions, saying "I'm going to update regularly from now on! Every Kimya after work! Every Pozya morning! Something, just... say something!" Of course, me being me, I get distracted, and then I get sullen and silent over the fact that I haven't updated, and that leads me to... delay updating.

Vicious Cycle: see Cycle, Vicious.

So, first, the all-important post-Bandaza update. The turkey turned out wonderful; The bacon stayed in place for the first hour or so, and then crisped up and fell off, destroying my careful entombment of the bird, but having imparted a good amount of grease and pepper to the turkey itself, which kept the bird moist during the rest of the cook cycle. Much of the chicken inside came out tender as well, though the middle of the bird and the innermost breast failed to cook to my satisfaction and went instantly into the trash. I don't know how many arteries clogged as a result of my dish, but I'm sure I've just added to the overall cost of American health care.

Of course, during clean-up I did manage to dump the turkey carcass, including the serving platter and all of the drippings, onto the carpet. Some quick work from a number of friends managed to prevent any unlivable damage, but there's a weird dry-and-flaky spot on the carpet that will need power-vacuuming at some point, or perhaps a good carpet cleaning. Most like, it means the end of my security deposit, but I never expect to get that back anyway.

All in all, ten people came for the get-together, not a record but a fair showing. When I told my parents about it later, they were shocked to discover that I could actually prepare a meal for ten people. I told them I'd served for fifteen once, and they were duly impressed. Maybe they were horrified. Either way, I got impassioned responses from them on the subject of my holiday meals. No real conversation occurred on exactly what I celebrate, but that's a minor detail.

Much of the intervening time has been, sadly, a case of "Work Eat Me!" To give you the best description yet that I've found to tell people what working at Big Pink is like, imagine that you're a firefighter working for an insurance company doing damage control, and you get a call from a customer who says, "my car is on fire but I'm late for my child's wedding or maybe it's my wife's first delivery; I forget. Either way, I need you to come drive alongside me and put out the flames so I can get to where I'm going without dying in a fireball or stopping. Remember, if I burn up, it's your fault!" Now imagine that every call you ever get is like this. Eventually, you know the drill by heart, and you get really good at fighting mobile fires, but you know that for every fire you successfully smother, two or three cars have exploded and one driver has simply stopped calling, and so you know it's all very urgent every time, but it's really hard to care about any individual case too much.

Jessie's been out of town over the last week, which happened to coincide with my on-call rotation, which has meant that my sleep levels have been absurdly low. I don't sleep well when she's not around, so I end up delaying trying to sleep until I'm too tired to do anything beyond crawl into bed and collapse, but three times last week I would lie down and then get a work call ten minutes later, meaning several days at work with virtually no sleep. This has made for some interesting conversations with my manager, to be sure.

Further Confusion 2009 approaches swiftly; I'm going to need to arrange the days off of work. Plane tickets are apparently absurdly cheap at the moment, so rather than drive twelve hours each way, we may fly it. I'll discuss the options with Jessie, but I'll confess that I'm having second thoughts. It's not that I won't have a good time. It's not even that I'm afraid I won't have a good time. It's that every time I turn around, it seems like there's some large expense that "we can afford just this once" that keeps me from getting ahead on my goals. Ghost Patrol was absolutely awesome despite my feet giving out and my general exhaustion, but the final bill came out to more than I expected. Jessie's enjoying her trip to her parents', but it was an emergency expense not in the budget that I could only just barely afford. Now FC's approaching, and while I don't expect it to be a bank-breaker, it's yet another bill that I'm somewhat loath to incur, even knowing I'll enjoy the experience.

Of course, I make this complaint knowing that there are people I count among my friends who can't afford to put two beans on the table in the same night. I don't know how to feel about that. I'm reasonably secure in my job, I have a good home, I have roommates with whom to share good times and living expenses, and I'm bitching that I'm not paying off my car enough ahead of schedule. Meanwhile, people I care about are literally starving. Part of me feels really shit-tacular when I think of it that way, but on the other hand, it's not like I haven't been generous. I just wonder if I'm being generous enough. Call it Schindler's Syndrome.

In more cheerful news, I'm slowly adding the back entries from my old website to the Ranch. I did a large lump and then stalled for a while, but I haven't forgotten. Nor, for that matter, have I forgotten the Nail, but it too has languished. Most of Fathera and the end of Ertera goes into preparation for the holidays, and frankly while Jessie's out of town my energy levels are usually pretty low anyway. Plus, work's been a beast through various on-call shifts and teammate vacations, so most nights I've come home, fought crime for a few hours, and then called it a day, when I could sleep at all. Bombarding hordes from towers has sucked up large chunks of my time as well. Plus, starting in the near future, I'm going to be helping to organize a puzzling event to be held in the spring, and somehow on top of all of this I have to help prep for All Fur Fun at the same time.

What I really need is a twenty-eight hour day and a nine-day week.

Is it any wonder I'm not crazy? Is it any wonder I'm sane at all?

Where does time go?
Are there seconds caught in the stitching of my pocket?
Could I pull a minute out of the lint trap of my dryer, looking for that missing sock?
Did I lose an hour under the couch as I sat with you, running my fingers through your hair?
Where does time go?
Last year I was giggling, wide-eyed at the sides of my crib, wondering at the miracle of my own fingers and toes.
Last month I was crying, sitting on the sidewalk, wondering if anyone would ever like me.
Last week I was cringing, daring to reach out into the digital world, looking for others who might feel as I did.
Yesterday I was smiling, watching you step off the bus, waving as you slung a duffel bag over your shoulder.
Where does time go?
Tomorrow we'll be in Seattle, watching the sun rise over Puget Sound.
Next week we'll be in Canada or Iceland or Finland or Thailand, looking up at the sky and wondering what's next.
Next month we'll be in space, staring down at that dirty brown and blue marble, wondering how we ever lived there.
Next year we'll be in bed, gazing into each other's eyes and waiting for the sunset.

Ever since my last post, things have been... insane. There is no better word for it. So, rather than rehash absolutely everything, let me see if I can provide it all in some kind of quick summary, the last month in thirty seconds as performed by... uh... oh, never mind:

• I got the job in Seattle.
• The HR department promised me relocation based on the EDC's closure.
• Management panicked because they hadn't yet designed or budgeted the EDC closure relocation package.
• They came back with a signing bonus instead, which I accepted.
• I put my house on the market.
• My primary CoH character hit the highest level in the game, also known as "dinging fifty".
• A friend in CoH and I, with the help of some game logs and a few other people, cranked out a good amount of text on said character's condition.
• Jessie and I have started the process of applying for an apartment in Bothell twenty minutes away from my new office.
• The moving company arrives a week from either tomorrow or day after to pick up our stuff and take it to the Left Coast.
• We're planning a five-day roadtrip to get from Pottstown to Bothell. I'm taking a week's vacation with my new manager's approval.
• Today's my last day in my current position.

I think that's pretty much everything. I could say "nothing else is new," but it would sound trite. Right now, everything is new. I've never sold a house before. I've only ever moved my own stuff once before like this, and I wasn't any better prepared then than I am now. I've never tried to arrange an apartment on such short notice or at such great distance; the last time we moved into an apartment, it was occupied already and we were just adding our tenancy to his, then renting another unit in the same complex. I've been twice to the Seattle area, and I know what some of the parts of it look like, but I've never had the chance for an extended stay, and really I only know what I've read in the picture books and what people tell me. This really is jumping off the high dive and hoping that the water will cushion the fall.

It's scary, and exhilarating, and nervewracking, and wonderful. If Jessie weren't with me, I'd go mad from panic. As it is, I'm only just holding it together, but it's still a beautiful thing.

Hopefully Mike will be up this weekend to help us clean up and pack. Next Monday night will probably be our last big group meal with the local contingent of folks in the area we know: Bennie, Sue, Gideon, Kitana and that crowd. The movers show up either the twenty-third or twenty-fourth to take our boxes to Bothell, hopefully to our new apartment or to a storage facility. Some time next week, Kincaid comes down for a visit to help finish the assembly of our stuff into neat boxes. Sunday week, we start the drive to Seattle. Monday, October second, I start my new job full-time in my new office. Analyst III, Enterprise Monitoring.

I feel like I've just turned my entire life umop-apisdn. I wonder if this is what twenty kilos of TNT feels like when it detonates. It's less sexhurt than a third nostril opening but definitely more gutwrenching than having my life erased or discovering it never existed.

Last day, Year of the City, 2274. Carousel begins. Identify.

---

As a side note to all of this, the Ranch on Mars isn't dead. I didn't update it last month with new goals because I knew in the crush of everything that's happening, I would fail, and that would be three months in a row that I had planned something and then missed it, and I thought that the smart thing to do would be to simply not put myself into an emotional bind. I'm still totally committed to the project, and starting when I get to Bothell I'll be updating it regularly, as well as expanding on the site, I hope. I have some ideas involving expanding things and changing how I document my progress. Right now I'm changing six or seven pages, and that's kind of ridiculous. I know how I want to streamline the design, but until after we're in Washington, I know I won't have time to do the work, or to concentrate on pushing myself on anything other than moving.

No more talking; time to land.

I think I've just surfed the Luck Plane.

The day after I arrived in Seattle, my manager called me and asked me if I would have time later to talk, and that it was very important. Now, anyone who knows me should know what that kind of statement can do to my heart rate and general feeling of well-being. So, as calmly as I could, I asked him if it were anything bad. He said, "no, not really", but he refused to elaborate further and simply said he'd call me at 14h00 his time and that I should plan to be somewhere private for the call.

The hour that passed after that was pretty much a big bright blur, as I tried to figure out what he could possibly want to tell me that he didn't want to tell my other teammate who was present, and that he couldn't tell me on the first call. I joked with Trell about it being my notice that I was being encouraged to seek other opportunities, but it was in the context of "ha ha only serious".

At the designated hour, my manager called me, and I dutifully sequestered myself by the stairs away from my team, and he informed me that in approximately one hour, the rest of the people at the Eastern Distribution Center in Bensalem, the facility at which I'd been working for the last seventeen months, would be shut down on or by 2006-03-30. The entire
operation was being relocated to Louisville, Kentucky, and outsourced to a firm specializing in logistics and distribution. T-Mobile already had an arrangement like that with another firm, ATCLE, located in Fort Worth, and so this wasn't really a shock for the company, though it was probably surprising for everyone working at the facility.

Actually, it probably can't have been too much of a shock, really. To get into August and not have a lease signed for the following year haed to tell a few people that something wasn't on the level. We still had sprinkler system issues and an ongoing battle with the landlord over who was paying for what. I don't think anyone really got caught too much by surprise by this, though I'm sure a lot of people were disappointed that it turned out this way. Shortly after the public announcement, the general manager of the facility sent everyone home for the day.

At any rate, this announcement took everything that had come before it and threw it all into overdrive. My manager and I had agreed in the past that I really had no promotion path in my current team. The group simply wasn't big enough to support two people at the Team Lead level, and I was as close to that as I could get without being one, and the current team lead wasn't going anywhere any time soon. Add to that that I was on-site and not in a corporate center, to get into another team, I would have to move anyway, so I had already geared myself up for the eventuality that Jessie and I would probably be moving to Seattle some time in... oh, say, 2008 or so.

The announcement that they were closing the EDC meant that I had seven months to find another position in the company or risk being relocated to Atlanta. Nothing against Atlanta, but... I don't think the culture would have been good for either Jessie or I, to say nothing of the weather.

Now, when I initially applied for the position in Enterprise Monitoring, I didn't know that the EDC was closing. I found out after I got to Seattle that this was going to happen. So, suddenly, I had a lot of pressure on myself to do really well at this interview. Before I left, the HR rep with whom I'd spoken had suggested that I could interview on week one and have an answer by week two, and suddenly that sounded like a really good idea. If I was going to get the job, I wanted the peace of mind as soon as I could have it. If I wasn't, I needed to know so I could start looking for alternatives.

I got the job pretty much as soon as I walked in the door.

To be fair, it didn't go quite that quickly. I showed up on-site for the interview, waited for about ten minutes for the hiring manager to come downstairs, and then chatted with him as we returned to his cube. I then had to confirm that I wasn't just fishing for a means out of the EDC and that I had in fact applied for the position before I knew that the EDC was closing. That established, he said that he was very excited to know that I was interested and that he was hoping to be able to convince me to follow through on my expression of interest. We talked a bit about my background, he showed me some of the tools of the trade, he introduced me to some of the people with whom I'd be working if I took the job, and then he sat me back down at his desk and said, "Can I be honest with you? I want to give you an offer letter".

The whole interview took maybe half an hour, and most of that was meeting people.

Now, this is by no means a "done deal" yet. He has to get signoff from my current manager, then he has to go through a complicated process of dumping numbers and information into a spreadsheet that the company providdes to make it easy to determine compensation offers, which will ultimately spit out a single number at him which he will then ignore. He's then got to get me an offer letter and suggest an amount, which may or may not be sufficient to justify relocating to Seattle. It could, in theory, still fall apart at any point up to me signing off on the offer.

I figure the only way I'm not going to sign is if he tells me I have to take a pay cut to move. I don't think that'll be an issue.

He also asked me about timeframes, and I told him that I had a house to sell. He said he understood that, but still wanted to put in for "as soon as possible". My current manager asked me to give him two weeks, but outside of that he said he was fine with whatever timetable I could set. I really can't do anything until I get back to Philadelphia, so that means at least a week-and-a-half from now before I do anything at all.

So... what does all this mean? It means that very likely, in the next few weeks, Jessie and I"at least"will probably be moving to the Seattle area. The job is in Bothell, so we'll look for houses in the area, though we'll probably start with a six-month lease on an apartment and go from there.

Now, why does this count as surfing the Luck Plane? Simply put, timing. You see, originally when I was looking at moving to the area, I told people that I was willing to pay for my own relocation, and I was and am, but I wasn't looking forward to it. It's an expensive proposition. However, because of the closing of the facility, upper management offered, or at least I think they offered, to pay the relocation costs of people who took other positions in the company as part of the employee retention program. This means that, if I wheedle and beg and sweet-talk enough folks, I may get to move on the company dime. The Suits really are pickin' up the bill, or so goes the theory. I won't know for sure until I get back to Philly and ask on Tuesday of the Employee Assistance Program folks that should be on-site to help people transition through this difficult period of readjustment.

Oh, this is going to be so difficult for me. Toolset development. A UNIX desktop at work. A private cubicle. Sure, that last may sound like I'm setting my sights too low, but share an office with my current coworker for a week and you'll understand why this makes me happy.

You can just visit, but I plan to stay.

Last month—at the end of May, really—I started a new project, the Ranch on Mars. The idea was to harness some of the tricks of psychology that I've seen exploited at work to try to make meaningful improvements in my own life. With the first month of tracking progress behind me, I think it's a good time to evaluate not only my progress, but the means of measuring them. I learned a few things about my own brain, which I can hardly say is a bad thing.

First, the good news. I was able to successfully complete two of my four goals for the month, and in both cases by better than an expected margin. With the regular introduction of money into my various savings accounts, I saw a good increase in our financial cushion in case of disaster. A two-hundred dollar deposit into my stock account combined with the dividends of the last quarter to make enough of a cash sum on hand to make a stock purchase that would keep my commission rate under three percent, which is pretty good. Two percent or less would be optimal, but that's going to take larger sums than I can currently drop. Getting to work early means that, at least in theory, I get out of work early. This has helped me spend less time on the road because now I'm no longer stuck in rush hour traffic as often or as long. That's definitely had a positive impact on my quality of life, especially with summer heat. On the whole, I think I did really well on the goals that I completed.

Now, the downside. My weight actually went up month-to-month, and I made absolutely no headway at all on my novel this month. These are both disappointing, but I'm trying not to be too bummed about them. It means I didn't earn the DSLite I'd been wanting, but oddly I don't feel that I'm denying myself something or living the ascetic's life. Did it mean I didn't want one badly enough? I don't think so. The weight difference in my purse alone will be an improvement, and I admit some amount of wanting the cool toy that my wife has. So, what happened to keep me from achieving these when the other two came so easily?

As far as the writing goes, I really do think that City of Heroes takes a large part of the blame for this. It's very easy to simply come home and slump in a chair and zone out in front of a game, doubly so when one has had a really shitty day at work, and I've had a lot of shitty days this last month. My team lead was out of pocket a good part of the month because of personal issues—a death in the family on top of scheduled vacation—and so I've had to step up unexpectedly and serve as head of projects that I had expected someone else to be managing. This has meant that, despite getting into the office at 08h00 or even 07h45 on some mornings, I didn't get to leave work until 17h00 or later. In one case, I was still at work as late as 19h30. This had a huge negative impact on my desire to do anything other than lump when I got home in the evenings, and City of Heroes is just interactive enough to make me feel like I'm being at least mildly creative even if all I'm doing is spinning my gears.

This isn't to say I did nothing creative last month. I've been working on what could really best be classified as "fan fiction", even though the characters are my own creation. They just happen to be set in the City of Heroes setting, and thus are utterly non-publishable unless I feel like going back and ripping large chunks of history apart. They're also mostly collaborations, which mean that I don't have sole ownership of any of the works. It's creativity, but it's not progress on my novel, which is what I really hoped to achieve. Still, it's been good to at least keep writing, even if it's not writing that furthers my goal of being published.

Finally on the creative front, Jessie made an observation that I think bears further exploration. I do most of my creative writing when I'm not at home. I'd never noticed this before, but I think she's onto something here. In the past, most of my short works happened when I was in the computer lab on campus. The biggest chunks of Child of Man appeared when I was on trips of one sort or another. I added half a chapter and four-thousand words across previous parts over Anthrocon. I had actually set the goal of finishing chapter twelve anticipating a trip to Seattle last month, and then the trip was delayed. This actually did throw my plans for creative writing for a bit of a loop. The trip's been rescheduled for next month, which should give me some time to actually work on my novel in peace, but it will also give me the chance to get some other bits of writing done that I've been delaying. This also makes me wonder, though, if it wouldn't be beneficial to plan to take regular evenings out to a coffee shop or some other home-away-from-home with my laptop to give myself the chance to work on stories. Maybe even a weekend trip out to a motel somewhere on the interstate just to write might benefit me.

As far as the weight goes, there are so many things I could blame here that it would sound not like a reasoned discussion but instead a laundry list of excuses. This said, however, I think I know what the largest factor of my failure here was. There is no direct correlation between what I eat and what I weigh. Now, that sounds like an absolute load of bulldada, and it is, but within it lies the key to the answer. Consider the following scenario:

• Day one, morning: I weigh myself and my weight is X.
• Day one, afternoon, I eat something unhealthy.
• Day two, morning, I weigh myself and my weight is X-n.
• Day two, all day, I eat reasonably and moderately.
• Day three, morning, I weigh myself and my weight is X again.

This happens more often than I think anyone really realizes, and it's not exactly rocket science. Many things have an impact on day-to-day weight, not the least of which is how much fluid I've had to drink. A gallon as compared to a half-gallon of diet tea at work could easily make up the difference in those numbers. So could sweating out a lot of water, or a second bowl of curry, or skipping the toast in favor of the bagel. Whatever. The point is not the specifics, but rather the psychological impact of these events. Eating something bad didn't hurt me, because my weight dropped. Eating well didn't help me, because my weight rose. This sends all kinds of mixed signals that reinforce bad behaviors and punish good ones, and that's a surefire way to undermine positive performance.

So, what's the solution? The scale is the only measuring tool I have, and its accuracy as a measuring device is suspect. Then again... is it the only tool? I do have another means of measuring weight impact: intake. Specifically, calorie load. Does this mean I'm going to be counting calories? In a word, yes. Why? Because it's more reliable than the scale. The scale makes a good trailing indicator. Does the moving average say I'm going down in weight? Then I'm eating right. Does it say I'm going up? Then I need to re-evaluate what I'm eating. The food, though, is a pretty good leading indicator. If I eat that ice cream bar, I'm going to need fat jeans. If I skip that second bowl of rice, I may fit into the top I've owned for six months that I can't wear without feeling ugly despite the pretty color.

This next month is going to suck. However, hopefully it will pay off in the long run.

As a side note, I'm not blind to the effects of exercise on weight and health, but after my trike got stolen, I took a real hit in morale. Getting out and walking, especially in the summer, is just no fun. The trike was fun, and that got removed through no fault of my own other than perhaps not keeping it under a laser cage. I had two DDR pads, one mine and one Kitana's on extended loan, but one got broken at Anthrocon and the other is so close to falling apart that it's not really reliable any more, and bad feedback is more frustrating than no feedback at all. I've rearranged the furniture in the living room to provide space for a replacement pad once I buy it, but I do have to buy it first. Jessie and I have talked about getting exercise bikes to ride together, but we'd have to find a good place to put them. I could walk around the warehouse during the day, but that's hotter than doing it outside, and the overhead fans just stir up the hot air and make breathing a privilege instead of a right.

So, in recap:

• I didn't achieve my goals in July by a large enough margin to justify buying the DSLite for myself.
• I have a pretty good idea why I didn't achieve the two I missed.
• I have my goals for August based on what I learned in July.

I still feel a bit like a perfect damn fool putting myself through this, but at the same time, I think it's helped me, even if just a little bit. I saved two hundred dollars I wouldn't have otherwise. I'm getting to work at 08h00 without a struggle, and I'm setting my sights on 07h45 and thinking "Hey, I can maybe even push myself back to 07h00 one day!" I'm feeling more focused on my weight issues than I ever have during the whole time I was on Atkins/low-carb/whatever. I don't feel like my novel is some far-off one-day thing any more. I'm making progress, a step at a time.

A true initiation never ends.

---

In other news, as hinted above, I'm going to be going on a business trip next week. Seattle—Bellevue, specifically—this time, for two weeks. I leave Monday morning, and I return Friday a week later. That's eleven days in the PacNorWest. Anyone reading this who'll be around during that time, please let me know. I'd love the chance to find out who my potential neighbors are.

That's right. Potential neighbors. My stated purpose for the trip to Seattle is training at the hands of somebody who has a decade of experience in our primary software package, but I do have an ulterior motive for going. Last week, I applied for a position in the Enterprise Monitoring group in the Bothell office. My manager knows and supports the transition, as does the person with whom I'll be training. Everyone that I've told so far has been positive about it. Now I can but hope that the hiring manager is as supportive.

This wasn't the way this was supposed to happen. I really hadn't planned on looking for work in Seattle until 2008 or so. I'd figured I'd get one of my two mortgages paid in full, rack up some living capital under my belt, apply for a position, and make a nice leisurly transition from one coast to the other. I had a few years yet in Pottstown to get some sense of stability in my life. I really did think that this is how things woul dhappen, and I planned accordingly.

Then I came in contact with the event horizon of the Luck Plane.

As fate would have it, a friend of mine is looking for work. Knowing he has a degree in psychology, I suggested he apply for one of the many open manager positions at the distribution center. He asked me for a requisition number—the unique ID given to the position itself so that applications can be tracked more easily—and when I went into the company jobs website, I happened to notice an open position for my same analyst grade in a team that does work interesting to me in a location to which I've said I wanted to go. So, after a quick consultation with Jessie, I put in an application. I didn't really go looking for this opening so much as I found it, as one might find a dollar bill on the sidewalk, or a cake.

On Friday, my manager presented me with the name of the recruiter for the position, and that afternoon I called her. When I told her that I had applied, and that I'd be in Seattle for training in a week, she said that it would probably be a great chance for me to interview, and that if things went really well, I could have an answer on whether or not I got the job before I left for Pottstown again. On the whole, she sounded really positive, though she did warn me that T-Mobile doesn't pay to relocate people in the COS team. That means I'd have to pay for my own move, but I told her that I was fine with that. She wished me luck in my application process and said she'd see what she could do to escalate the timetable for my interview so that I could plan on taking care of that while I was already there.

I'm in what feels a bit like uncharted territory here. The plans I had made are now potentially in total disarray. I've never tried to sell a house before. I've moved cross-country, but I had a place I knew I was staying when I arrived. I don't know what kind of timetables exist or are proper to request to get all of these details resolved. I haven't even gotten the job and I'm worrying about what to do if I get it. I've had serioua stomach-twitches all weekend over it.

On the other hand, of course, is the fact that even if this had waited until 2008, I probably would still be going through all of these sensations. Doubtless I would not have gone looking for answers until I needed them, and even now I may not. If I don't get the job, nothing has changed. If I do get it, it's something I've said I wanted, and I really do think the move is for the best. Pennsylvania is nice, but the weather here is still horribly unpleasant during the summer, as our current hundred-degree heatwave will demonstrate. The neighborhood in general is not a good area in which to live. The culture in Seattle, so I have heard, is far more like what I think Jessie and I are seeking as far as standing community. If nothing else, the job opportunities within T-Mobile are better at the corporate headquarters than they could ever hope to be at the warehouse. I want very much to believe this is a move in the right direction.

Do I sound like I'm trying to convince myself? I am, sort of. When I felt like I had no chance to get out of my current situation, I've said repeatedly that I wanted to get into a corporate environment again. Now that I'm facing the chance to get it, I'm suddenly unsure. I don't think this is a change in what I want, or in what I think I want, as much as it's a case of cold feet. I'm no longer standing on the side of the pool, looking up at the high dive and saying I wish I could do a back flip. I'm now standing on the diving board looking down at the water and realizing what a long drop it really is. If I climb back down, I'll still want it just as much, and I'll have added to it the "shame" of having run from it, but that doesn't make it any less nervewracking.

Still, for now the best approach is Zen. The interview hasn't happened yet. The interview may not happen this trip. I may not know anything soon. Until it happens, guessing about the future is needless anxiety. Relax and enjoy.

Tomorrow does not exist. Twenty tomorrows is a long time.

Where to begin, where to begin. Another month has passed, suggesting that I've been lax in keeping this up to date, which is in its own way true. I do prefer to try to post more regularly about the things that are happening, but it's proven to be a difficult habit for me to develop. I always feel as if the people who want to know what's happening will ask me, and the rest were there, and thus there's no need for me to tell them. I already have enough trouble with people reminding me that I don't need to repeat myself endlessly just to be understood, and so I sometimes forget that I have to... uh... peat myself first.

So far this month—and tail end of last—I've taken three business trips: one to Seattle for a week for a hand-off of a project from development to support, and two to Atlanta for training on the software I'm currently supporting. I know I've spoken at length before about business travel and the feeling that when I got to fly for my company, I would have achieved something significant in my career. Now that I'm flying for my company, though, suddenly there's a lot less glamour to it. "Glamour" is the word for it, too. It was a magical thing, going to airports to be there when my father walked off the plane. I still remember the smell of the experience, though I couldn't describe it except by meaningless and inaccurate comparison to other scents. Now that I'm the one leaving the plane, there's some small amount of glitter that's been wiped away from those memories. The magic isn't gone, but it's suddenly as if I've had the curtain drawn back on a mechanical marvel and all the gears and levers have been exposed. There's no more mystery and charm to it. It's just routine.

Is it that there never was any magic, and my dreams were ill-aligned with reality? Is that there could be magic in it, but I've "grown up" so much that I've forgotten how to see it? I couldn't say for sure. Years of being the responsible one can be a grind on the soul. I spent much of the last of those three trips watching the original SubGenius commercial and thinking about how it tied directly into my situation. "Acting dumb so they'll think you're one of them" is something I have often lamented in my life, and working at a warehouse around decidedly blue-class people makes it even worse.

I have to reiterate again, these are not bad people! These are not evil people! These are not stupid people! These are good people! These are intelligent people! These are moral people! However, they have been trained by society not to look behind the Wizard's curtain and wonder about how the world works, except as the idle pondering between the nth and (n+1)th beers on Saturday night, to be forgotten by n+2. They have values and thoughts and ideals that have been given to them by their peers, their betters and their culture and never have they stopped to ponder why and how those and not some other set. They talk of "football and porno and books about war" without any regard to what else may be out there. They are part of the Konspiracy by dint of not knowing the Konspiracy exists.

I over-generalize, of course. What good revolutionary firebrand doesn't? I'm sure somewhere else within this warehouse there exists someone who is not like this. I have not, however, met this person, nor have circumstances existed under which I could meet this person other than through coded hand-signs and a sly wink at the right moment, when the commissars' eyes are turned towards the new inspirational posters we have hanging over the breakroom. I think there's a like-minded malcontent in my department in Atlanta, if only because of some of the conversations we've had in the past, but we never have a chance to just hang out given the rarity with which I actually go down there and the lack of time away from work while I'm there. That, however, is "my team", which is not anywhere close to my office.

I do know that there is at least one glorp on my team, and this makes any potential discussions difficult during work hours, even when I'm down in Atlanta.

The job itself remains reasonably uninteresting. I've learned things about real-time production support, logistics, warehouse management, Oracle, COBOL, job automation, team leadership, personnel motivation and conflict resolution. None of these things mean a damn to me in the long run, but they're all nice buzzwords that I can slap on my résumé should I need to consider leaving the company. Hopefully that won't happen. I passed my one-year anniversary with nary a hiccough—yet—which means this has now been my second-longest running job, behind only ISI. With any luck, this will be The Big One, though of course I refuse nowadays to predict any such thing.

Of note, however, is that I know elsewhere I've mentioned my timetable for moving to Seattle to the corporate office as being on or around early 2008. This may be advanced sharply thanks to one of my coworkers already in that area. She mentioned in passing that she had an open position under her for an analyst doing pretty much what I'm doing now but from a second-tier support and development perspective, not a first-tier support role. She suggested if the requisition was still open that I should apply for it and that if I did, she'd be interested in acting on it as soon as she could. She didn't pose this to the team at large. She didn't mention to me that she had suggested this to anyone else in the group. If she told anyone else, she did so strictly on the sly. I think this means that she's interested in my skills in specific, knowing my background as a developer.

Not only did this give my ego an unexpected boost as I had gotten from an outside source an unrequested and unanticipated compliment on my skills, but it also may potentially accelerate my timetable for moving to the Left Coast. I have no idea how long it will take HR to process my application, how long it would take for the interview and transfer process, or even if the job is actually still available. She didn't know any of those things either. However, these things could theoretically still come together to make the move to Seattle happen some time this year. At the very least, it's given me hope that even if it doesn't happen this year, it's made the likelihood of it happening eventually much greater, at least with this company. If I'm not still with this company in two years, I have no idea where we'll be.

As a sideline to all of this, I've just finished refinancing the house again. A rise in home prices has again made it possible for me to roll the last of my credit card debt from The Bad into my mortgage. It's tapped out my equity, but I'm locked into a thirty-year fixed 80/20 mortgage. Even if interest rates continue to rise, I won't be hurt on my home loan. All of the interest on my monthly outlay is now deductible, which will help our tax returns. Plus, the new mortgage payment is less than I was paying in both monthly payments on the credit card and mortgage before, so we're actually saving money each month. That will help our ability to save for the future, which is really where I want to be focusing my attention.

Between the refi and the application, I feel as if I'm finally in a position to start looking forward again. Not just "to Seattle" that's a step, not a journey. Where are we going, ultimately? What will we be able to build? What do we want from our future? What can we expect from "society", and what will we have to construct ourselves?

We need a religion.

I'm going to say that again, because some of you out there are sniggering behind your hands, paws, tentacles, talons, whatever. We need a religion. We need an organized statement of beliefs, a manifesto, a list of commandments. We need a structure within which we are all free to define our ideals and our personal ideologies, but that can serve as an umbrella organization under which we can all fit. We need a method of presenting outselves to the world at large not just as a collection of individuals, but as a movement. Dare I say we need to become a subculture?

I want to straddle the line between modernism and postmodernism. I want to proclaim both that there is always a hidden subtext and that not every hidden subtext is meaningful. I want to acknowledge the contexts and biases of statements without abolishing the intended meanings. I want to deconstruct without destroying. I want the flexibility to say there are multiple interpretations of an idea without losing the ability to say that some interpretations are wrong. I want to reject the idea that there is only ever one right answer without throwing away the idea of "right".

If the process of movement from human to posthuman is transhumanism, then would this be transmodernism?

We are evolving. We are changing, growing, becoming. Our understanding of the world shifts from day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, guided by the contents of our brains and the impulses entering them at every interval. The statements we make today are not true for all time, but they are true at that moment, and for however long the unstated framework upon which those statements rely remains valid. Ultimate truth is unknowable because infinite knowledge is impossible, but within the realm of what we know and believe to be true, we can make pronouncements about our world and our reality that do hold up to scrutiny, as long as we never forget the assumptions under which we're operating. If those assumptions change, then what we claim to be true as a result must be re-examined. It may not always be that what we think is true turns out not to be, but we should never shy away from the possibility that we make mistakes.

I want a world in which I can say tomorrow, "I was wrong yesterday", and have that be acceptable.

Yes, I am intolerant of intolerance. Yes, I am bigoted against bigots. Discrimination is transitive. There is room in my worldview at once to say that there is freedom for each person to believe as zie wishes, and to say that there is no room in my world for those who will not make room in their world for others. The surest and fastest way to convince me that you're wrong about something is to state that you're the only one who is right. Under the transmodernist umbrella, there is room for an infinite number of ideas, but some simply will not fit, and I'm okay with that.

It's a beautiful world we live in, a sweet romantic place.

This feels like a maintenance post. No great weight sits upon my shoulders. No meaty social issues currently constrain my thoughts. No horrible demons lurk just behind my eyes demanding attention. I figure all in all I've been doing a fairly good job of tending my baobobs, and that's meant fewer emotional collapses and less drama all around, which is pretty much a good thing.

To be sure, there have been a few issues that hover around the fringes of my perception. My internal network at home is intermittently dying for no apparant reason, and it has since the power failure last week that took down the server for a few hours. I suspect that in the power loss-return-loss cycle, one of the hubs got damaged. It's nothing earth-shattering, but it's a nuisance I'd rather not have to face right now. The sociopolitical environment outside the Lapinian Consulate remains tense and unwelcoming, but it's always tense and unwelcoming even when it's warn and inviting. This is merely the way of rabbits, and I'm adapting and accepting over time. I doubt the world will change enough in my lifetime to ever make me want to participate in society in any way other than the bare minima required to sustain myself and my family financially, but stepping outside my door doesn't actively invite death either from other people or my own head. My weight isn't where I want it to be, but I've taken a few baby steps in the direction of dealing with it and the feedback I've gotten has been mostly positive. It's going to take a while, but I hope these things will sort themselves out in time with a bit more effort.

I think the one big issue currently weighing on my mind is the trip I have upcoming. Three weeks ago, I flew down to Atlanta for team meetings and group training. Now they're flying me to Seattle for a week for more meetings with a different team on a new project for which I've "volunteered". To be sure, I wanted to be involved, but not so centrally. This project has the feel of "make-or-break" on it. It's something the business wants very much but that the support staff thinks in general is not a good idea, so if we can make it work, it'll be a big boost, but when if we have to cancel it, it could look ugly. I doubt I'd lose my job over it if it went poorly, but I'm lapine enough never to trust raw assurances.

This whole "business travel" thing still has me mystified, tired and a little tittilated. I've always loved to travel, and I know I've commented before on this fact, but I also know I've mentioned that the heyday of business travel is behind us. At least, it seems like it. At my level, I fly coach, I'm on the cheapest fares and the least convenient times, and I have to carry my own suitcase. I spend long hours away from home, but I know it's because I'm important enough to the company that they're willing to spend money on sending me places. I love living out of a hotel, but eating out all the time gets tiresome and sometimes I just want to cook a comforting meal. I love to go and see new places, but I always look forward most to coming home.

If anybody in Seattle over the next week wants to try to arrange a time to meet, email me and I'll send you my PCS number. I'll be staying at the Silver Cloud Eastgate, 14632 Southeast Eastgate Way, Bellevue, WA 98007. I won't have a car, but I should have my evenings to myself unless my manager decides to keep me chained.

I'm refinancing my house again, the second time in a year. The first time it was to consolidate debt and I was damn glad for the chance to do that, but my credit score was pretty low thanks to The Bad and my job situation was brand new and still a little shaky, so I got a pretty poor interest rate on a 3/27 Fixed-to-ARM. If none of that bit makes any sense, don't worry. It didn't to me at first either. Mortgages typically come in two main types, depending on whether the interest rate can change over time or not. If it can, it's adjustable. If it can't, it's fixed. Fixed interest rates typically save people money in the long run, but they're usually reserved for people who have great credit or who can afford to pay a large amount up front on a house. Adjustable-rate mortgages change with the prime lending rate set by the Federal Reserve, so every time you hear Ben Bernanke talk about raising interest rates, all those people who have an adjustable-rate mortgage pay a little more out of pocket on their houses. They tend to be more expensive in the long run, but anyone can get them. The fixed-to-ARM program is a hybrid of these ideas, giving the borrower a short window during which the interest rate will remain steady regardless of what the market does. Then, at the end of that window, the interest rate on the mortgage jumps to what it would have been had it been tracking the Fed's rate changes all the way along and becomes adjustable from there. It's great if you expect to refinance your house again in a short amount of time, or if you plan on selling the property within the fixed-rate time period.

This may actually happen for Jessie and I.

This is where the rest of my job weirdness enters into the playing field. My department doesn't really have any need for any more team leads right now. We've got a team lead, and he does a damned fine job as a team lead, but he's also not fully employed as a team lead because he's still having to serve as a principal support analyst on a lot of issues. He's an Analyst IV. I'm an Analyst III. Until the IV is fully working as an IV, there's no need for any more IVs on the team. This means that there's no room for promotion in my current department. If I want to advance faster than the cost-of-living adjustments, I have to leave my current department, or my current company. Assuming for the moment that I want to stay with T-Mobile—because I do—that means having to switch to another group. However, to do that I'm going to have to move. There are no other groups in my current facility, because my facility is a warehouse, not a corporate office. The only things open to me here are management jobs I don't want, and production jobs paying half or less my current salary.

T-Mobile's corporate offices are in Tampa, Atlanta and Seattle. Anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line is right out, if only for the weather, to say nothing of the political culture. This means that if I want to get anywhere in my company any time soon, I'm going to have to relocate to the Left Coast. This isn't an immediate thing, and it's obviously not a guaranteed thing, but to borrow from the Torino Scale, the likelihood of moving is somewhere around a five. It's not certain, but it's non-zero, and the most likely alternate scenario involves changing jobs, something I'm loath to do if I can avoid it. I've never worked at the same company longer than eighteen months, unless you count my stint as a teaching assistant at the University of North Texas, which was a year of three overlapping part-time jobs.

I figure the timescale on this is somewhere around the beginning of 2008 if it's going to happen, which should be coincidentally right around the point at which I've finished paying off my past debt. I like the significance of this. I like the cosmic unity. It means nothing, but it looks pretty, and that counts for a lot for me. I can choose to interpret it as symbolic if I wish, a new start in a new city and a new goal. In trying to find references to my past discussion on travel, I instead found the post wherein I discussed my desire to make a plan for the future, and putting down the last of my negative past feels like a good start to that. I'll be free of past burdens and ready to take on new challenges. I'll be able to face the future. From here, it looks like the kind of event that cries out for a commemorative print in Reconstructivist style, faces in a row along the bottom-right upturned towards rays of light from the top-left corner, wearing vapid two-tone smiles with a Cyrillic propaganda slogan beneath it.

In any case, this all started with a discussion of refinancing the house, and I'm going with a 3/27 because of the need to plan for the contingency of moving cross-country, but it also serves to pull down my interest rate another half-point beneath what I'd get if I went strictly with a fixed-rate mortgage. That means in the short run I'll be saving myself another thirty dollars a month, which amounts to a free box of Fudge Stripes for th' qiti every other day. Our Feline Mistresses must be appeased.

This will also mean I have more money to throw at the credit card, which might even advance the timeline by which we've paid off our back debt. That would break the nice little synchronicity above, but it would also save us some finance charges, and I'm unspiritual enough—or perhaps sufficiently capitalist—to destroy universal harmony to save a few bucks. It would also mean that if we move to Seattle, we do so with a nest egg and the chance to put some more money down on a house, or some more stock to start earning dividends, or a nest egg for emergencies. The less money we have to spend paying off the corporate masters, the more money we have to support ourselves and move towards self-sufficiency.

It's not that I enjoy being the ant; it's that I've been the grasshopper.

Much has happened. Much needs to be said.

Last night, I experienced my first PvP in CoH. If my physical responses to it are in any way indicative of my usual response to such things, as I suspect they are, then it was my last as well. I spent the next three hours twitching, shaking and shivering. My arms and legs felt cold, my hands shook, my eyes couldn't focus properly, my chest felt tight and my breathing was shallow. Consciously, I recognize this as fight-or-flight, and I'll go so far as to say that this probably isn't the same response that most people get to "playing a video game." If they did, I highly doubt that any but the most crazed adrenalin-junkies would ever play such games.

I fear the world in which most people are this kind of adrenalin junkie.

Honestly, I get the same response in any one-on-one competition. I got it when I was playing Tetris Attack against Jessie. I got it when I was playing Super Smash Brothers Melee against... anyone, really. At least, I got it back when I was unskilled and unpracticed. Once I felt like I had some measure of competency, it wasn't really an issue, but until I felt like I knew what I was doing, I got this same sick sensation every time I played against anyone else. It wasn't fun, and it wasn't healthy.

Two things are at play here. The first is that I hate feeling incompetent. I still get the same response in SSBM or Tetris Attack that I used to get when I first started when I play against people who are far better than I am. This may be a testosterone thing, or some other neurochemistry thing. I get this need to prove myself somehow, like I have to win, even just once, to show that I'm not a total waste of flesh. It's stupid and pointless, but I get into this feedback loop anyway, of each pass being worse than the next, every loss making victory that much harder because of the physical response to the defeat. It's a vicious cycle that ultimately I either break by winning and immediately quitting, which makes me look like a shit, or giving up, which makes me feel like a shit. Neither behavior is one of a responsible, rational adult.

Then again, I never claimed to be either.

The second—lesser but still important—issue is that I can't read the emotions of people I don't know, and their
intent is very important to me. For someone as able as I am to emotionally detach from people, I get pretty screwed up when I start thinking that other people are out to hurt me. I can't seem to shake the idea that the typical PvP player is in it not for the friendly competition about which one can joke and reminisce later, but the "lol what omg" Internet B crowd that are out to piss in people's cornflakes and then claim that it proves something about their virility in bed. This is my dysfunction and I recognize that, and I don't ask other people to understand or accept it, but I almost universally ascribe worse intent and meaning to the actions of people I don't know than are intended, and I usually assume the worst about others just as a matter of habit. It takes a lot for me to overcome that, and I'm often amazed that I've managed to do so for as many people as I have, but for the vast majority of humanity, I see little reason to bother trying. Thus, it feels like most of the people I'm going to face in any sort of PvP setting are in it only to assert the size of their eTesticles, and I've got better things to do than give them a reason to brag at my expense.

So, from now on, I think I'm just going to stick to the hero side of CoH. I'm not even sure I'm going to bother buying City of Villains, either. It'd be nice to have the extra character slots on each server, and yes I'd love to see the additional content they've added, but I just don't go in for all the darkity-dark-dark bad-guy stuff that they seem to have geared the game to support. If I'm going to play a "villain," it's going to be somebody that has to operate outside the law and has little regard for the structures of civilization as they currently exist, but who ultimately isn't a bad person and has a very strong personal moral code. That doesn't seem to be the sort of person that the game is trying to endorse. 

Maybe when the unit price falls to thirty dollars like City of Heroes, I'll give it a look-see.

---

This past weekend, Jessie and I went to visit her family, my in-laws, in Shreveport. Having in-laws still, in some very small ways, creeps me out. The idea of having someone related to me that isn't by blood or direct choice is kind of strange, and the idea that someone could have feelings for someone else based on a vicarious relationship gives me goosebumps and not in a good way. Still, I suppose that where genetics and desire overlap, there can be some sort of transitive family equation: "I like you, and you like zim, ergo I like zim as well." This isn't lossless, and it's not necessarily reciprocal, but it can happen. It just never did for me before getting in with my wife.

The trip itself was... interesting. Normally I love flying, but I hate flying coach. My hips do not fit into a standard
economy seat, and I think even if I were to shed the eighty pounds I need to lose and the forty beyond that that I'd like to misplace that I would not be able to comfortably lower both armrests even in a standard size seat. It's just not going to happen. Plus, on one leg of the trip down from Pennsylvania to Louisiana, we got to fly in an Embraer minijet, which Jessie likened unto a coffee can with flaps. Neither she nor I fit in the seats with any degree of comfort, a fact that I think directly contributes to my having left my Nintendo DS with Advance Wars GBA and Advance Wars DS in the seatback pocket in front of me when I debarked; I was in too much of a hurry to stand and stretch my legs.

This year, we were not only trying to make up for last year's lack of a real visit but also to cram an early Christmas into the schedule. As I've said before, I don't really go in for the whole Christmas thing personally, but I know it's a really big emotional investment for Jessie's mother, so I go along with it as best as I'm able. We managed to find a number of collectable Barbies that I knew she wanted, and she tried to find us flannel sheets but there really aren't many stores in Louisiana that will sell them; it's just not going to be a popular item there. So, she ended up giving us the money to pick up our own and instructions to tell her what we got when we got them. It's an arrangement with which I can work without an issue.

In addition to that, we got to see a little bit of local television, and I'm reminded of why not only I don't watch TV any more but why I'm glad to be out of "the South". The number of references to church, religion and worship that occured during the commercial breaks frightened me. Living in my little Universe A bubble, I can oft-times forget how little I share spiritually with the people around me, and so that sort of exposure can easily lead to an overload of discomfort. I very much wanted to walk away from the set and go play with my Treo or Jessie's DS or even sit and stare at the walls; it would've hurt my brain less.

On the other hand, though, I did get to see an episode of the new Outer Limits show and for once I'm glad I
caught something on television. In this particular episode, children exposed to alien transmissions experience euphoria and a desire to share it with other people, but adults only hear the broadcast as garbled sounds. Everyone treats the "alien music" as an attack, until a twenty-four-year-old cracks the code and discovers that the broadcast is meant to protect terrestrial lifeforms against sharply increased ultraviolet radiation and is being sent from a planet orbiting a star that had recently—within the last sixty years—undergone stellar conversion to a type that put out increased UV. After the discovery, the alien broadcast is transmitted planetwide and a hormonal treatment is created to allow adults as well as children to hear the "music," which turns people into hairless metallic-sheen-skinned beings. Everyone then goes outside to watch the sky shift from blue to deep red as the sun shifts to a new spectrum.

About the only things missing on the Puzzlebox Kink Chart were antennae and antique internal-combustion engines.

In general, the trip was a positive one, but there's one thing that does honestly grate on my nerves when we visit, and that's the fact that Jessie's father seems incapable of remembering to get Jessie's pronouns right. She's not going to push him on it because she's got problems believing that she's made enough progress to justify making a fuss over it, but I don't think she really understands the psychological impact that having someone who professes to love you on one hand and can't respect you enough to be conscious of your stated choices on the other can have. I've done eerything I can to stand up for her without outright being confrontational, but I'm afraid it may get to that point. I know she did the same for me when it was my parents who couldn't keep things straight; I see no reason not to do the same for her.

Of course, I don't want to be the wedge between them either. I'd feel really shitty if I were.

The flight out was, if anything, even more "interesting" than the trip down to Shreveport. In retribution for
her comment about coffee can with flaps, we had to fly from Shreveport back to Houston on a turbo prop, which was even smaller than the Embraer! Then the flight from Houston to Philadelphia itself was completely full, meaning even less leg room than before, so by the time we arrived back home, we were both pretty miserable. I still love the experience of flying, but the actual intimate details of the act, I could do without.

Maybe from now on, I just need to insist on first class.

---

Today was my first day back at work after five days of vacation, and already I feel like I'm ready for more time away from the office. It's not necessarily that things are bad so much as that things are not getting better.

Last week, someone in upper management—as in vice president or director or something executive like that—decided that it was a crisis that the distribution centers were having all these "fatal errors" and bouts of indetermine slowness in the network and periods of system freezing in the application software, and they decided
to put together a cross-functional crisis response team to resolve these issues once and for all. Because I'm the only one in Application Support on-site at a distribution center, my manager named me as the App Support member to the team, which I had no problem accepting even if I'd had an option to decline.

Three days later, I went on vacation. At my manager's request, I sent out a notice to everyone in the response team that I would be unavailable for five days and that my backup would be able to handle any problem in my absense. I gave contact information and even said that I wouldn't have access to the company VPN since my in-laws don't have broadband.

While in Shreveport, I received a call from Event Moderation asking me to join the command bridge.

Now, I can understand not checking one's e-mail. I'm sometimes guilty of letting messages pile up myself. Even now I have eighty unread messages in my inbox at work, and that's down from three-hundred-something from this morning. I can't understand why people attached to an issue this theoretically critical would not read every email relating to it.

Then again, there's a lot about this issue that seems politically motivated, aside from my manager's statement that, and I quote, "this issue is being driven politically from above." Nobody on the floor of the warehouses seems to be that up in arms over this problem, which they say has improved since installing the new scan guns and RF network; but upper management says that the problem has only been getting worse over time. The vendors have said repeatedly that one-hundred-percent connectivity in an RF environment in an unshielded building, but upper management refuses to accept "the hardware literally can't do that"as an answer. This is a problem, as far as they're concerned, and it has to be fixed, whatever it takes.

I do not want to be caught in the fallout when somebody discovers that it can't be fixed and has to start lopping off heads to protect zir job.

Today, I also found out that my manager has been reshuffled to another group pending a split in reponsibilities between our team and Application Support Reporting, and that a manager from another team is being moved into his position. This will be the third manager I've had at this company in less than a year, and I haven't changed jobs yet. 

As I said to a coworker on my daily conference call, before anyone else arrived, it's really starting to feel like a
sinking ship around here. 

Stop the world; I want to get off.