Archives for June, 2008
Friday Night Lights
I’m enjoying another nice evening reading tonight, going through the links and posts I wanted to read during the week that I just never had time to get to. Some people party on Friday night. Me, I catch up on what I missed during the week. Yea, I’m nuts. It’s ok, I like it that way.
Tomorrow I have an appointment with a personal trainer and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m hoping to learn what it is I need to do in order to get ripped again. I’m only 36 and I’m in reasonably good shape already so this shouldn’t kill me . I hope …
Ok kids I’m off for the night. Adios.
Details, details …
I’m spending my time at work these days pouring over details to prep for the next show. I have a large amount of things going on and some friendly pressure to nail it perfectly. Not that I wouldn’t strive for that anyway, but the added weight only makes it that much more visible. However, there is plenty of time for all of this so I’m not worried in the least.
10 minutes later, after much coffee …Yea, that crazy paragraph just poured out of me at 7am … so obviously I didn’t sleep last night.
My little demons came back again to wake me up and as usual I don’t remember what they were about. The side effects of this cocktail suck, and what’s up with coffee making me relaxed now. WTF?! I think its time for another one doc.
There’s not much more I would like to say about that right now, but if you encounter me I bet I’ll look tired for the next day or two while I come back out of this funky medical induced bs.
Good thing I have a personal trainer appointment for Saturday, I need something to constructively kick my ass.
See, there’s the waxing poetic crap again … damn side effects.
Oh hell, have a good day kids I’m going to work.
Stormy Morning
Today is another crazy stormy Texas day. It’s 9:15am and black as night outside with heavy thunder and way cool lightning. Growing up in the north east US we never had anything like this. I mean we had thunder storms and living just off the Atlantic Ocean had its moments too, but jeez. This place has 70 mph winds at the drop of a hat with golf ball sized hail and rain. Its impressive to say the least.
Well another day living in a spreadsheet for me. Although today I am absolutely making it to the gym at lunch. I have my truck today so there is no excuse.
The above song has become like a mantra to me. I hear it in my head almost every morning. Its a kind gentle wake up call.
See ya’ later kids.
Test Post
Just testing to see if this new download plugin works as advertised.
Firefox 3.0 - OSX (27) - 17.17 MB
Ughhh …
I am spending my day today going through a massive excel spreadsheet trying to setup a new recording/capture project for the end of July. Ughhh …lots of copying and pasting now that will speed up my post production process later. It’s arduous, but I either do it now or during the post process, so now it is.
This morning I dropped off the Bunny dog at the veterinarian to try and clear up the hot spots and take care of the growth she has on her neck. She was so upset at me again for leaving her somewhere, I could just tell by looking at her and then with her depressed look back it was a real throat grabber this morning. She may not like it now, but hopefully they get her skin problem under control and she can start sleeping better. Poor girl …
So here is my song for the day, it goes out to someone special in the Baltimore/DC area, you know who you are.
The rest of you can just guess … haha
Well I just got word about Bunny dog. She has a bacterial and fungal infection on her skin in multiple spots, and a tapeworm. Neither I nor the veterinarian could find any sign of fleas so we think she got the worm from biting a flea outside somewhere. The cats in the house don’t have any either, so who knows what that’s all about?! But the skin problem stems from that as well as the weather we have been having. It seems there are many pet owners dealing with similar issues this year. The poor girl had a skin scraping, an oatmeal bath, and several shots. Oh, and she had that syst drained as well. Wow, I feel terrible. Big dogs have big issues, and she has always battled skin flare-ups so that makes me feel a little better about things. But I just hate to see my girl in pain.
My poor girl.
Happy Monday
Happy Monday everyone! I hope you had as much fun as my IT department did this morning when we came in and found the main server dead. Oh boy howdy, good fun first thing on a Monday morning …
Seriously all we could do was laugh and begin to troubleshoot. At one point all the lights on the server suggested a complete motherboard failure, and that’s really bad. But after a few minutes of rebooting everything seemed to come back to life. After reading the server logs we now know what the f%^k happened. Apparently Microsoft initiated an upgrade pack that hung up during installation. Thanks Microsoft.
We’re now back up and running in the office, but after our initial report of the motherboard being blown, the blood ran out of our GM’s face, so now we’re working on replacing a few pints of blood on her. Sorry …
Other than that it was an eventful weekend. With Bunny licking herself raw from allergies, the cat running under the house, my sprinkler system not working, and two (semi) dead trees in my front yard, it was a real fire drill of a weekend. Despite all that I did manage to get a membership at the gym yesterday. I’m now a member of Lifetime Fitness. So let the whipping into shape commence …
That’s all for now. I’ll be back later.
Early Start Today
This morning I was up early and siting quietly outside drinking my coffee and reading the paper, enjoying the relative heat. Of course now at just past 8am its kicking 90 degrees, so today should be another scorcher. But that’s cool with me, I would much rather have this than ever see snow again. Although it looks nice from the window, Pittsburgh really relieved me of any desire to live through a blizzard ever again. Yet I digress …
So yesterday I was the subject of a coming to Jesus meeting at AVMG. I know I have been really stressed at the office, its showing and has been for a little while now. It may sound like this was a bad meeting but it was really quite the opposite. I have a great team that I work with who are generally concerned about me and that is a very nice thing. However, the stress of my personal life has leaked into my professional world and that is just unacceptable; to me as well as others. It is time for me to find a new way to creatively and constructively release the built up stress that comes with my job.
Not many people can understand what its like to be “on” for 24 hours a day during the entire duration (usually 4-9 days) of a show. Let alone understand the experience of a “combat AV” show where I have basically nobody to turn to for immediate help, or even a break. I liken it to running on a razor blade with bare feet while humping a 50LB. rucksack and trying not to get cut. Its not easy that’s for damn sure.
Normally, I am known for doing this with ease, but on this last go around I felt like I was beginning to bleed; in reality I was very close to bleeding out. It’s my own fault for not delegating enough responsibility and obsessing over details and I know it. Hell I knew it then too, but didn’t have the confidence in certain people’s abilities to get specific items done on a fairly insane schedule.
Sometimes I take so much ownership of a project that its schedule begins to dictate my life, and that’s when the stress really begins to mount. When I go home and sit down, open up the laptop again, and feel like its my responsibility to resume working after an 8 hour day, that’s probably nuts, and an inaccurate picture of what my team expects of me. Somehow I need to learn to draw a logical line between my personal and professional life and that’s the hard part. For me, my work has always been my life. It is all consuming at times and its always been that way, all on or all off. But now that I am a little older and have a different set of responsibilities and priorities this juggle has got to sway a little in the other direction. I need to be able to let go of work and try and focus on keeping my personal soul happy. If I can’t do that, then we get what we had right here … failure for me to communicate.
When I started the job a year ago I was on medication for anxiety from the divorce. Over the last several months I have stopped taking my medication because of the side effects and relative stupor it can put me in. I really hate the feeling of not being in control of my own body, and in a nut shell that’s why I don’t like the meds. There are also less desirable (and some desirable) sexual side effects that go along with it as well. I’m not going to get into that, but its easy to figure out what I’m talking about.
In an effort to stay off the meds I was trying to get back to a spiritual/religious level through Buddhism. Well that has kind of fallen off … I am so weird with religion of any kind. I just don’t trust it. I don’t know why but my intuition has never really let me buy into anything on that level for any length of time. I’m not agnostic, nor am I ignorant of any form of religion, as I have studied nearly all the various types over the years to some degree or another. Yet I never can fully immerse myself in one form for a real length of time. I just see the creation and being of life much different than most people.
So what am I going to do about all of this? Well for starters I am joining a health club today and beginning a lunch time commitment to go everyday when I am off the road. Sure I have a freakin’ Atlas gym in my garage but you think I use it?! No, I need to get out of the house for stuff like this. I think I’ve used the home gym twice in the last six weeks. Exercise is what I really need now, for my mind as well as my body.
One of the team members mentioned that he would partner up during lunch to start some serious weights, which would be a great motivator for me. If I have a partner than maybe I can get back some definition and my six pack. That would be nice.
I am also going to delegate responsibilities and take the time to teach people how to do something the way I want it done. This will take more time on the front end, and I know it, but in the end the team (as well as me) will be better for it.
I’m going to take some time each day to just sit, relax, and assess the current state of things. I have a tendency to see what’s wrong with a project or situation, and that comes from the technician side of my background and a desire to “fix” things. What I need to do is focus on what was already accomplished and what it will take to efficiently complete a project. And that’s a key item there, efficiency. I must make a conscious effort to streamline the processes I use to complete certain tasks. I must also learn to let go of some of the more detailed aspects of projects and my desire to make everything perfect.
Sometimes you just do not need to make every last detail exactly as so. Its the ADD and OCD in me that drive that desire and its a demon I have battled my whole life. It is something I inherited from my father and over the years I have seen him deal with the same issue. Its time for me to learn that same lesson.
Well there you have it. I’m not entirely sure why I just wrote that, but it seems to always help when I do so. I may be a person who wears his life on his sleeve, but I do not always wear the full outfit and usually hide the real stuff pretty deep. Its been that way ever since the divorce, and was probably that way through my marriage now that I think of it. I know I’m not the only one with life issues. Sometimes it just takes a lot for me to step back and see that. I’m getting better at it, but I know its a long road and I’ve just begun to walk it. It was much easier to do when I had a partner, but as someone famous once sang “I don’t want it, if I can’t get it on my own …”
Thank you to my team for their continued support, both on and off the field. I will not let you or myself down again.
Educated Fools
lets try this … a song about irresponsible parents, Jamaican style.
Hello Out There!
I forgot how I had setup the users and groups for this blog and when I woke up to a new user it threw me for a minute. But hello Bonnie! Very cool. It looked like you tried to post an image but the link was broken. Still very cool, I like this kind of surprise!
What I don’t enjoy is the mess I woke up to in my living room this morning. Apparently there was another water leak last night and now I’m ripping up carpet again, taking the day off, and waiting for a repairman. All this the day after I pulled the trigger on a vacation. My timing is impeccable.
I’ll post some pictures from the mess later. Now I have to get back to cutting. Fire-drills … my favorite thing …
Jamaica Mon
Today I booked a trip for Bryan and I to Montego Bay, Jamiaca. I decided to do this for his birthday and my sanity. I had been planning a trip to Jamaica anyway and I know he could use a vacation as much as I could so it just made sense. We’re staying at the Rose Hall Resort and Country Club, which came recommended and looks cool. They just finished a complete hotel makeover and the reviews have been really good so I am looking forward to it. I have wanted to get away and I promised myself after the divorce that I would treat myself to something, so here we go.
Otherwise things have getting back to normal, finally. I was out for basically 5 weeks and it took a little while afterwards for me to feel like a functioning part of society again. But its nice to be back.
If you take a look at the picture to the right you’ll see my cat in a strange cage. Seems she was picked up by Animal Control of Garland and had to be picked up at the station. Apparently she wore her welcome out at a neighbors house and instead of calling me (from the tag on the collar) they called the cops. Needless to say this little stunt ended up costing me time and money, and in the end Paloma had to get a shot. Rediculous … now I have a cat with a record.
2 Gigs of Sheep …
So I’m back and finally on vacation for a few days, and not a moment too soon. I was about to take people out and have them wacked. Seriously … stress like I haven’t felt in a while. The relentless show/project, show/project, repeat and rinse schedule just finally took its toll.
Most of my life sat in the backseat for the last few weeks so the next few days are a mix of rest and figure out what broke in the house. But you know what? I am really looking forward to it. A few days of pulling weeds and working with anything other than technology will be a huge release. Sometimes I am so in the freakin’ box that it is impossible to see hte forrest for the trees. Honestly, if anyone was ever guilty of that it would be me.
The next few days will also bring several visits to the doctor for both Bunny and myself. Seems she is having a heck of a time with her allergies and is licking herself raw, poor girl. Me, I just need to know I am of sound mind and body again. Nothing much just the usual oil and lube. Baring anything major I’ll be resting and dreaming of the August trip to Jamaica.
Oh yea, we’re going to Jamaica. I decided to spend some money on something like family and send Bryan and myself back to somewhere quiet and completely off the map. There might be a few others coming, but even of its just us, we’re going. It’s been a long time … and I could use 2 more gigs of sheep …
