One of our recently laid off compatriots mentioned after work yesterday at the brewery pub (networking, you understand) that the job market has apparently heated up for people with Siebel experience. Siebel is a company that sells customer tracking - sales related software, the current buzzword is CRM or Customer Relationship Management software, and we are a Siebel shop.

Recently, when it became obvious our management was going to implement the next generation of hyped software (the implementation of which we will screw up, or, if we do get it working, we won't actually implement it because the business side of the company won't need what it does) and throw out the last generation of hyped software (which in Siebel's case, we got to work, but didn't, for whatever reason, roll all of it out) it became obvious our Siebel support staff, of which our compatriot at the table had been a member, would be out on the street.

This sudden interest in people with Siebel experience is good. Siebel software I know not, although I have esoteric knowledge about how to get a Windows 2000 machine to run the stuff, but any news of the market heating up for any kind of software support is good. These are the things you think and say when you've been working too many hours and the walls have begun to make little whispering noises no one else seems to hear.

Friday, home early to take a nap. Wuss is sitting beside me on his chair. The weather is nice and I am in one of those vaguely tired states where I can't fall off to sleep, but I don't feel like getting up out of my chair and doing anything athletic, like standing. We'll see what tomorrow brings. This is the place where I say "I'll do this, I'll do that" knowing full well I won't. Right now I'm thinking get in the car and drive (tomorrow), but again, I can hear the laughter in the background, as if little lies were passing over my lips. So we'll see, we'll see. Currently I'm debating going out and getting something to eat, a tug of war between a tired mind and a rumbling stomach. Perhaps a video tape, a movie for the evening. Something energizing and uplifting: Debbie Does Detroit or Debbie Does Detroit, Deep Fried, With Catsup and Sour Cream.

I'm drifting. Half the journalers who started about the time I started have stopped writing or write sporadically. Some might say I myself never really started, but sputtered and died and I've been dead ever since. I'm one of the some. Riffling through all these photographs I sometimes like what I see and sometimes I don't. Today they look pedestrian and stale, the work of a hack. An unambitious hack. Which isn't all bad. Ambition, I've found, like standing, often requires effort.