start 2338 EDT Thur

I am still alive. Barring some unspeakable tragedy involving large metallic objects moving at high velocities, I will still be alive, and in familiar, safe Colorado by long before this time tomorrow. Crazy how that works.

Right now, and in the near future, I think that a few carefully placed Jedi mind tricks will come in very handy. (Totally cryptic, metaphorical obscure, non sequitur statement that not even I will be able to comprehend by tomorrow.) That means there's nothing to see here. You don't need to look at what my brain is pondering. Now move along.

I wish I had enough time to do justice to all the roller coasters this day has witnessed. Time is a precious thing. Time is not money. Time is immeasurably more valuable than money.

["Chemicals Between Us" by Bush plays. Not in the physical vibrations of air, but in the bazillion electro-chemical implulses ricocheting through Bitscape's brain.]

God. Doing this with a pin just takes way too long. OTOH, the inherent constraints imposed by the medium do force me to be somewhat more concice, on target, and to the point. Well, maybe not. Given that I'm on the second physical page of this rambling now, and still have yet to actually start in on the topics planned for tonight. Uggh. Wordy sentence. That's the other thing. Going back to make corrections also becomes much more costly. Extensive revision and tweaking for perfection near impossible. Such is the way of things.

Speaking of interfacing theory, after a few days, I've found that I've adapted to become almost as productive as I was on my work desktop machine back in Broomfield. I've become accustomed to the odd keyboard tilt and spacing. (You better BELIEVE that virtually the first thing I did on Tuesday after arriving, was go to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Keyboard, where I rapidly as possible located the Dvorak driver to set the layout.) The touch mouse has been a bit more challenging, but even it I have learned to befriend to some degree.

The Windows interface... well... not much hope there. You just gotta kludge around its limitations the best you can. Getting a decent telnet/ssh program so I could reasonably use the department devel server and get access to my desktop back in Broomfield was the first real progress. Downloading and installing Netscape was the second. Oh, and I forgot to mention fixing the touch mouse settings so it doesn't think you're clicking every time you lift your finger up momentarily. That was key. Then you just open a few terminal windows to all the key places, get a couple browsers pointed to useful pages, use the task bar to navigate between them, and you have something resembling an environment where one can get stuff done. It ain't virtual desktops, but it does allow for the necessities.

Damn! I'm a third of the way down the THIRD page, and I'm still ramblin about what was happening TUESDAY afternoon / night / Wednesday morning. Today, Bitscape! Well, actually now that would be yesterday. Time fscking flies.

This morning, as the intensity heated up, it was a dark and stormy day. No, really! When we left the hotel, the rain was just drenching everything, and the thunder and lightning were so close that it would've had Snowball undergoing both heart attacks and seizures curled into the darkest corner of the bathtub floor. (May her soul rest in peace.) A dark and stormy day indeed.

And... surprise, surprise! The engineering team was running behind on the newly revised version 255.15 of the Impossible Schedule, Green December edition (whatever the fsck that means; How should I know? I just made it up because it sounded good). The urgent call was put out: Help needed for the weekend!

B already knew what his response would be. (Here's a clue: Which do you think B would value more? His selfish precious sanity, or some apple (call it a "release date") on a fishing line hanging in front of a horse's nose, the fishing pole being held by the rider in the saddle? Any guesses? Any at all?) What would B choose? Hmmmm....

Then, the time of reckoning came. (new letter addition) "J" asked if be could speak for a few moments. B had some vague suspicion about what was going to be asked. Sure enough. Would B be willing to reschedule the flight back to CO, and remain here an extra day or two? B succeeded in subduing what could have been an outburst of unfiltered rage into a measured response.

"I'm not willing to do that. Absolutely not." Building tone, and emotion starting to bubble over, "My sanity is already in check as it is. I'm not used to working these kind of hours, and this traveling thing is taking its toll. I need to go home and rest for a couple of days. I won't stick around here."

I don't know if the acting class has helped me, or just the sheer urgency of the situation kicked the brain into gear, but I did not falter, stutter, hesitate, or mince words. Stronger.

At this expression, I believe J, for the first time, intuitively realized just how close to the edge B was getting. Behind closed doors, with the facade of professionalism lowered to some degree, B was opening up a bit, and the face inside was not a happy one.

(I am somewhat hesitent to go into detail about coversations like this, due to my ethic of trying to preserve the privacy of possibly unwitting and/or unwilling victims in Bitscape's soap opera of life. No real names prevents search engines from picking things up, but it would hardly require a trickle of effort for coworker readers to realize exactly who and what is being referred to. Recent evidence and intuition tell me that the demographic of anonymous eSoft readers is growing significantly. However, in certain junctions, completeness is an absolute prerequisite for understanding. Hence, onward...)

J said not to feel pressured. Not a requirement. It's purely voluntary. Won't think any less of you for choosing not to stay. Just wanted to get an idea of where you were at, and how you felt about it. None of us are used to these hours, and it's hard for me too. Have family back at home in CO. Not an easy time for me, or any of us. So now I know where you're at, and what you're willing to do. You can fly back with L (another new letter addition) tomorrow, as scheduled.

Meeting adjourned. As if to have read what was on my mind as of two days ago, moments later J added that the last thing that he wanted was to drive workers into such frustration that they would leave the company and seek employment elsewhere. It would be a dire loss if B were to leave, and with him go knowledge of certain sections of the codebase. (I never said anything about quitting during our conversation. Like I said, he must've made a very well placed guess.)

Minutes later, J announced that tonight we would eat a real meal. Out. A strongly recommended Cajun seafood place down the road was proposed. And so it was.

Code hacking. Lunch. Hours more code hacking. Testing. Bug fixing. Etc, etc, etc.

Shortly after 1900, B, G, J, and L -- the journiers from afar -- went to sample some genuine local cuisine. J surprised everybody by ordering as appetizers frog legs and fried allegator. No joke. All were invited (more like dared) to taste these unique delicacies. All did, although G's bite of frog leg was so small before he put it back on the plate and pushed it away in disgust, that J found the whole thing quite amusing.

B's comment was, "I think I can taste some tendons."

L: "Yeah, it does have a stringy texture."

But all agreed that the allegator bits + sauce tasted good. Just put behind you the notion of exactly what it is you're eating, and it's quite delicious.

All placed their orders to the rather bubbly and enthusiastic waitress. Various dishes of spicy content were ordered. B got the seafood platter. A large scattering of shrimp, catfish, crab, and various other goodies on top of a LARGE mountain of fries. Yum. It was so huge, I didn't even come close to finishing it.

The waitress continually and without prompting kept coming back to refill B's Coke, which he drank instinctively almost without thinking about it. The others were quite amused by this and commented that B would probably be up for a long time. Yep. :)

J, G, and L ordered some delicous looking desserts. B declined, his stomach overly full while continuing to nibble on the not even close to finished platter.

When the bill came, J picked it up, and commented that it's going to be fun trying to convince M to approve this expense report. Others were dared to guess the total. None of us were even close. We're talking above and beyond a typical sushi dinner by quite a large margin here.

Besides the food, the architecture and decorating of the restaurant was most unique and impressive. A huge place. Many, many tables. Large elongated glass windows looking out onto the thick green folage. Visually, it simulates a huge open patio, but the glass is really there. Relatively dimly lit interior, but with many colored lights of all shapes and sizes. Did I mention that the dining area was utterly humungous?

After that, there was a brief discussion as to whether to return to the hotel immediately, or back to the office. All said that they had items that really needed to be worked on, so a consensus was reached: back into the frying pan.

Good thing too, because the native Atlanta folks had discovered (surprise, surprise) more stuff that required assistance and troubleshooting pronto. (It was nearly 2200, and the place was still buzzing like a beehive. Should I be amazed or horrified?)

I really hate to use it, because the term has generally been reserved for describing primarily recreational activities, NOT work-for-hire or class. But I have to say it. The word "fest" did pop into my mind while observing and participating in this scene.

Well, after a while, we Broomfielders decided it was time to shutdown. Headed back to the hotel. And that's where we pick up at the beginning of this rambling.

Ugh. I think I slaughtered that. Up too late. This is irresponsible, especially for someone who claims he needs to go home and rest. But I thought recording these thoughts while still fresh was too important. Hope I didn't violate any confidentialities. Maybe I should walk around with a sign affixed:

"WARNING: Interacting with this person may result in tales of your personal lives, utterances, and activities being broadcast over the web at large for all to see. Approach at your own risk!"

Yeah, that would do it. I gotta rest. More hacks to be devised come morning. At least, unlike J and G, I will be heading home tomorrow. And unlike many others, both here and to the northwest, I won't be putting in time this weekend. Not me. Coals of fire.

Well, down I go. Tomorrow will be a big and joyous day. Sleep, sleep, sleep.

Sleep? What's that?

Finish 0234 EDT Fri