Quite a bit of time without a daylog. In the meanwhile, I have gone on a veritable noding spree. The WUs I am most satisfied about are DL, DT and DD; they are nodes that attempt at being the "definitive" writeup on the subject. Of couse, this is a lofty and possibly arrogant attempt.
But if one's attempts were not arrogant, why, then the only possible activity would be to endlessly softlink random nodes to Your radical ideas about X have already occurred to others.
The Job: mostly out of control. I fired one person, for manifestly stupid overslacking. I don't mind people slacking, as long as they do what I ask them to in a reasonable (not geological) time.
I am easy. You can run whatever OS you like. I will not insist on you using my favourite RDBMs. You can download pr0n, as long as you are discreet about it. Napsturbate all day, for all I care. BUT, do what I ask you to do. Which is always reasonable - I have been there, in the trenches of code, and I know what can and cannot be done in a week.
What really pisses me off is the illusion of progress. I will write about it, eventually.
And of course, there is the usual bevvy of new, very urgent and important stuff to do, like fixing a totally hosed database, installing a new help desk, and completing the building and bootstrapping of a new computing facility - by the end of the month, if you please.
The Fun: still reading a lot. I read The Spanish Tragedy, re-read Rayuela (it rocks ! read it !) and a book by V.S. Naipul, The Mimic Men. Now I have begun The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins - I am sure it will be fun.
Very slowly, I am also reading Radia Perlman's Interconnections, a very clear, very profound book on bridging, routing and networking.
What else ?
Intermittences du coeur, of course. Last night I walked out of my home and on my terrace, at about midnight. It was not cold, being in Mexico and all that; just fresh. And very quiet, Mexico City becomes very still at night.
I wanted to think about my future, about whether I really want to live here and about nostalgia.
I ended up staring at the moon for a very peaceful 10 minutes, while I smoked my cigar. The last cigar from El Jarocho, in Coyoacan. Which in turn reminds me of my ex-SO.
She read my photography WU, and she said it was good - that is important. She is a big part of my last five years.
CV two obscene little letters. I blasted another CV into the dark space that I immagine the Internet to be, and Lo! there was some sort of response.
Yesterday I also spent a very stupid hour trying to produce a PDF file on a Linux machine. Don't try, just use the handy on-line PDF generator at www.adobe.com - I mean, straight from the horse's mouth, neh ?
Mistery: I got a very nice response today to two WUs about doing unsavory things to octopus. Everything2 still amazes me.
Family: I talked with my family on the phone. It always opens (no, let me fix that: gouges, digs, claws) a nice pit of homesickness.
But it was good to hear them. They would like me to go to Italy for a week somewhere in March, but that would require asking for extra, unjustifiable vacation days, something I am reluctant to do.
REW -*- FFWD