Stubborn Idealism

Sick

Date: Wed 2 February 2005
Time: 6:52 PM EST

I have been sick all day. Last night I felt cold after I went to bed. I couldn't stop shivering until I put my pajamas on (I usually sleep naked). I had to run to the bathroom several times with diarrhea. The whole time, my stomach felt strange, like there was a hot rock inside of it. Finally, at around 3:00am, I threw up. It has never felt so good to vomit. When I was finished, I stood up with a big stupid grin on my face just because it was such a relief to empty my stomach. I took a shower to get all the crap out of my beard that got caught there.

About this time, I started to get thirsty. After sleeping for a little while, I got up and poured some milk into one of those big plastic cups you get from fast food places. I taped two straws together to make it easier for me to drink it while lying down. I drank that cup of milk in about 15 minutes. 30 minutes later, it all came back up. I might as well have just poured it down the drain.

I was still running to the bathroom every 30 minutes or so with diarrhea.

At about 6:00am, I decided to try to drink something again because I was still very thirsty. This time I put water in the cup, and only drank it in tiny sips every 15 minutes. It stayed down, and I wasn't thirsty anymore.

I've been in bed all day since then, still getting up occasionally to void my bowels. Still running a fever. I don't have a thermometer, but I can tell I've got one by how my head feels.

I just tried another cup of milk. I'm hoping this one stays down.

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Work Sucks, and Computer BAD

Date: Sun 30 January 2005
Time: 10:19 PM EST

I got home from another frustrating day of work about an hour ago. The company's growth has been out-pacing the hiring of more technical support for at least eight months now, and the situation has gotten critical in the last month and a half. Every day is a struggle to deal with urgent issues, while the non-emergency ones sink out of sight unaddressed. Today one customer even closed a ticket that hadn't been answered by us in over three days, with the comment "not helping." In the year and a half that I've been working there, that's the first time anything like that has ever happened.

When I first started there, tickets rarely went unaddressed for more than a few hours. Now, having 5-day-old tickets is the norm.

What gets me is that we're still accepting orders for new servers when we don't even have the manpower to provide support for the ones we already have. There are always at least ten orders in the queue at any given time.

We have a reputation for great technical support. It's only a matter of time now before that changes, as customers get fed up and start talking on public forums about how bad our service is.

If we had double the technical staff that we do now, we'd be okay.

On a different note, this thing has a froggy inside it.

My idea of setting a time to maintain my living space isn't going to work, if Thursday is any guide. I was out and about at 2:00pm, and after I got home I never felt like cleaning up.

What I need to do is just stay off the computer unless I have a legitimate reason to use it, such as checking email, updating my Web site, working on one of my programming projects, or something along those lines. No more throwing away my time playing video games or idly browsing the Web.

So what will I do with my time? I'll lounge around my apartment. That sounds just as bad, but really it's not. When I didn't have Internet access for two months, mostly I just sat around, reading a book. But, whereas with the Internet I can get on it and have no need for a break until it's bed time, with a book I have to put it down after an hour or so.

So I would end up looking around, seeing how my place needed to be cleaned up, and I'd think, well I've got nothing better to do. I'd get up and clean. There was no rush or any sense of urgency. I'd clean while I felt like it, and when I didn't feel like it any more I would stop.

Sometimes, if I was bored, I'd do my laundry, or go grocery shopping, or pay my bills, or something else on my personal to-do list. The point is, I would take some time to actually do things that needed to be done...simply because I had nothing better to do.

That was how I lived for those two months that I had no net access, and the place looked great. It also felt like my weekends were longer. Time flies when I'm sitting at the computer.

The time is now 11:07pm EST, and I'm going to bed. Got another fun-filled and uplifting day at work to look forward to tomorrow. I've been toying with the idea of starting my own Web hosting business so I can quit my job. More on that later perhaps; I really need to go to sleep now.

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Messy Apartment

Date: Wed 26 January 2005
Time: 9:34 PM EST

I've been spending all of my free time on my computer, and I've been neglecting my apartment. There are dirty dishes in the kitchen. The dining room table still has junk on it from Christmas. I need to pick up the living room floor. The place stinks of cat urine from Barney spraying on things. The cat room is even nastier than it was before, and the bathtub needs a good scrubbing.

I've resolved to take at least a half hour out of each day that I'm off to devote to my apartment. I'm setting a time for this, 2:00pm. The choice of the hour is arbitrary, but I need a specific time or else I'll just say, "I don't feel like doing it right now," all day until it's time to go to bed.

I might not get everything done in half an hour, but every day the place will be better than it was the day before.

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