Category: Friendship

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Had a good day…

My weekends are usually busy; I know, whose weekends aren’t?

The problem is that often I spend a lot of my weekend on the road driving, and this weekend was no different, save for one detail. I drove to meet a friend and we talked, ate, drank, and walked around the Glendale Galleria and local area. 

No agenda, no plan, just two old friends enjoying each other’s company.

It was great.

It also highlighted to me thatI really need to make more time to just enjoy the simple things. It also underscored that I need to get a new job and get to a more “normal” schedule. I know this but it’s easy to get caught up in the grind of my day to day insanity and forget that I work to live I don’t live to work for any corporation or corporate assholes.

DUH!

I need to appreciate the little things and I need to make more time for those little pleasures in my life.

Getprev2 4I also found out that I should trust the helpful navigation lady in my car even if she can’t make up her mind. When she updates her estimated travel time by a substantial amount I need to take notice. Instead of ignoring her thinking she’d lost her mind. Especially when she doubles the travel time in transit. So helpful navigation lady, I apologize for what I said to you on the I-5 south of LA. You are not a daffy fucking bitch… 

I saw midnight for the first time in a long time, and I’m paying for it today. Not that I’m complaining but I feel like hammered shit. Got to the mountain and just couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned all night. Strangely, while I’m really tired, my state of mind is good. I can only chalk it up to seeing new sights, and great company.

Doing chore around here this morning and will head back down to San Diego later this afternoon. My goal is to get down there early enough to get to bed and get a decent night’s sleep. Tomorrow I get to hit the grind again but hopefully I’ll be in a better state of mind as I make it through the week.

I hope your weekend is a fun one.

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No Matter how many times I say it…

I’m ignored.

I’ve been maintaining a few Web sites for folks. It’s not a big deal, I have the tools necessary to do it. But it takes time…

Generally not a lot of time, and often I can tweak things on the fly from my iPad or even my phone. But I kinda need the data that folks want me to put into their website. I’m after all not a mind reader and with my work schedule, the people I deal with every day, and being pretty much exhausted all the time I have little patience for uncooperative people.

One of the folks whose site I maintain, has been planning a move, from one location to another. They sent out a notification to everyone on their mailing list in late September or early October. 

Fortunately, I was on their mailing list.

When I read the notice from them, I sent an email and said “You’re going to need to update the web site, send me all the information as soon as you can so that I can get ahead of your move and the website is up-to date”

I got a reply, “Yep, we’ll send you the info.” 

Then nothing…

UNTIL an email the day before Thanksgiving, again to the general mailing list that their shop would be closed Thanksgiving through Dec 1.

I sent another message, “OK I’ve got the new address from your email notification. I’ll update the basics Over the Thanksgiving holiday.” Silence…

I updated the website based on the information I had. I sent a link to my sandbox so they could verify the information is good. Still silence.

4PM on Black Friday, OH we want to add a whole new page can we do that?

I sent back a message, yes we can do that, what do you want the page to contain?

Silence.

Then, early in the week I get an email that has two JPEG images of their brochure. No other explanation, just a typing chore for me to transcribe the text from a photograph into something that I can even begin to incorporate into a web page.

Gee… THANKS!

It’s not like there’s only a small amount of text this brochure is so text dense that I was reminded of war & peace, or The Dead Sea Scrolls!

It would be nice to know what it most important and what could be left out. 

I’d haCbe68874ve run OCR on the photo, except that the copy they sent me had a bunch of marks on it making it look like a “Captcha”. This rendered OCR almost completely useless.

Again… THANKS!

I’ve finally got most everything into a usable format and now it’s about wrangling the text into some kind of organization and onto a page. Given that today is my one day off this week… I’m not a happy camper because this is not what I’d like to be doing today.

I’d like to be writing, and napping, having sex… Instead of sitting in front of a fucking computer doing someone else’s shit which is what I do all day long, every day at work.

This probably wouldn’t annoy me all that much except that these are “Friends” (Apparently I’m not on their Christmas list) and by the way THEY DON’T PAY ME. Taking advantage of your friends is the surest way to not have friends anymore.

Yep, This started out as a One-off to help them get their business running and now 3 – 4 years down the road I’m still doing it for nothing.

Grrrrr.

I guarantee that if they were paying me even 25 an hour, I’d have all sorts of pictures, and word files to put in their site. I also know exactly what they wanted and how they wanted it. Instead of working from something that is almost completely useless. 6 to 8 hours paid time would be “Too Expensive” I can hear the whining about the cost now.

Oh and I’d probably have had the time to do it in an organized way, instead of their usual method… PANIC MODE!

I’m thinking it’s time for me to put all their files on a thumb drive and mail it to them with a nice letter explaining how to transfer their domain to another location. Reminding them that failure to pay for their domain renewal will result in the loss of their website and rights to their domain.

Yeah, I’ve been handling the backend stuff for them too.

I think the time has come to cut my losses. Whatever happens after that it would be on them.

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It’s on my Calendar…

Checklist 4

The accusatory reminder is sitting there.

“Blog,” It says.

“About what,” I think to myself.

“That I have nothing to say?”

The reminder is implacable. I should just delete the little bastard, that’d show it. Consign it to the digital hell of forgotten “To Dos”.

But as A friend has reminded me and several well renowned authors have said;

Write anything, just write daily.

Okay, I’m writing. 

The internet is an interesting thing. I was able to distract myself from writing for a whole hour. I was suddenly curious about an old High School friend. Actually, he was my best friend. I may have found traces of him, but doubt seriously that we’ll ever re-connect. 

That relationship ended in a weird way in 1980 (I think). I honestly don’t remember now. I just remember thinking as I watched my friends back receding from my view that this was probably the last time I’d see him.

Then I got busy living my life and I assume he got busy living his. 

Through the years I’ve been curious about him and how his life had gone. I tried sending a letter or two and the occasional Christmas card. I don’t know if they ever found their intended recipient. These items were sent with paper and an actual stamp, but there was no reply.  I suppose I had an answer in that – there was no reply.

Nonetheless I’ve been curious through the years. 

With more and more data and personal information being stored and made available on the internet, it’s a lot easier to locate someone from your past. They don’t even have to have a social media account. Public records can go a long way toward letting you find someone.

Regarding my long lost friend… Either he was arrested for domestic battery in 2002, OR he’s living in a nice house, in the town that we grew up in working a blue collar job. The latter is, I think most likely. The second result’s age lines up more closely.

Thinkstockphotos 162406124

The mug shot is striking in its similarity to the face I remember.

However, I think it highly unlikely that the police would be off by 5 years on the person’s age.

Perhaps it was a relative…

Not that an arrest record would be a reason for me not to re-connect. Multiple arrest records would be another issue.

This appears to be a one-off, and God knows I’ve had my knock down drag out fights with significant others over the years. Had some of those fights happened while I was living in an apartment… Well, then probably a mug shot of me would be gracing search results on the internet too.

The legal definition of Battery is surprisingly vague. I could see slightly rough sex being considered battery. 

I could easily imagine doing the same thing this week, that you did last week where your partner was really into it. Only to find out that your partner wasn’t into it today, and was flat out pissed off. Next thing you know, you’re having unflattering pictures (Front and Profile) taken.

I wonder what it would be like to re-connect with my friend. Would it be like no time had passed, or would the time and life experiences be so different that the gulf simply could not be bridged?

Would we each be disappointed with the effort? Is it better to let sleeping dogs simply lie?

The question is…

Do I want to put this on my “Bucket List” or not? Given that we’re both as old as we are if this is something I’d like to do, I should probably get on the stick about it. I’d hate to drive all that way only to lay flowers on a grave.

Something to ponder, I suppose.

Oh Look!

I can now check blogging off the list of things to do today.

Huzzah!