For An Afternoon
Monday. Tired but otherwise a good day. Ran into a fellow worker I haven't seen for a while walking across the way. He's thinking of retiring in another six to eight months. I don't think he's near old enough to be thinking about retirement (maybe he meant baling out rather than retiring out of the company), but he said a couple of things that made me think. Why work up to the very last minute when these are the days we feel our best. Why not make the best of them? Why stress ourselves out and then end it all a physical wreck?
See! You're doing it again!
No I'm not. I'm just resonating to comments from a friend at the office who's thinking similar thoughts.
I've heard this before.
Yeah, but I listen. I do listen. I even listen to myself.
That's not the problem. Everyone, usually to the exclusion of all others, listens to himself.
Tuesday. Today a big Compaq (now Hewlett Packard) file server arrived. Weighs 210 pounds. Twelve 72 gigabyte 10,000 RPM drives. Four 3GHz Xeon processors. Memory out the ass. I am still techie enough to be moderately excited, since it's the main server of many more to come for this half way interesting project I've been working on at the office. All this hardware attached to a funky little video card. You don't use these things for graphics, but still, it seems a crime.
Lunch at the sushi place near Jack London Square. Various servings of Maki and a cup of hot tea with the usual crew. A walk into work this morning, something I've been avoiding, but yesterday I bought a new hat and I wanted to show it off. A white hat with a black band, a nice one with a wide brim you pull down over your eyes and play at being someone interesting. Interesting to whom it's hard to say, but MSW suggested experimenting with my image (to get the juices flowing) so I've bought a couple of exotic hats in the last two months and, who knows, maybe they will turn the world on its side.
I think you're supposed to do this change your image stuff when you're young, but I also think that may no longer be true in a world hell bent on change. You need to reinvent yourself every so often to be able to sleep at night and wake up the next morning looking forward to feeding the cat. Or do you seek more in your world? “Happiness is being able to get up in the morning and tie your own shoes,” said an old friend a long time go. I suspect photography comes in there somewhere too, but it's a Tuesday and I've done enough thinking for an afternoon.
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