Monday, January 19, 2004

7 Minutes

I'm going to write this by midnight and then go to bed.



Anyway, I set out to learn to be a web developer a few years back, wanting to be in on the cool stuff. I know some rudimentary html but I can't figure out how to get the fucking comments to work on this thing. Other people get this stuff and can do it. Why can't I?



What can I learn tomorrow? A little bit and the next day? A Little more.



Baby steps, baby steps and soon we're walking and running.



Also I'm reading Desire of the Everlasting Hills by Thomas Cahill or listening to the audiobook on my commute and it's fascinating. I grew up in a Christian home and had lapsed out of my religion, but it's intriguing to learn the history of Christ and the early church in a full historical context.

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

On Religion

I'm an atheist, not an agnostic. I prefer certainty.
Oh my God, they killed.....



I have started out to update this thing a couple days ago and the system crashed. So here I am, trying once again.



Last week, we lost Kenny. Not that we really lost him, for he was already a lost cause. He was fighting with everyone at every turn.



One day, he came with a hammer-and-sickle t-shirt (lots of hyphenation there) and said, "Hey, look!! Do you agree?"



"It hasn't been demonstrated to work."



So we discussed it awhile. I gave up when he told me that Cuba would be okay if we'd only trade with them but that "Fidel knows what's best for his people".



In later weeks, he took to coming in more stoned than before, to the point where I noticed. When the bosses noticed, they'd ask me. Other team members noticed.



He managed to screw up enough to the point that he was on notice, written up and then called one Friday afternoon, 10 minutes before his shift began and told me he wouldn't make it in that day. Turned out that he had pissed off his girlfriend so much that she had left him and their daughter in Riverside and driven off in a rage. That put him on final notice.



As happens so often, he determined that he was a victim and not responsible for his actions and everyone was picking on him. A few days later, he came in early for his shift and futzed with the computer in the office for awhile. I had a 3:00 meeting for which he was to cover me.



3:00 PM and no show, he had disappeared. I got someone to cover me by 10 after 3 so I could hit the meeting.



Came out of the meeting to find he had made the rounds at 2:30, reeking of alcohol then gone out to smoke a joint.



No surprise that he is no longer among us.