It’s Monday as I write, and it’s the last day of my week-long “working from home” vacation extension. If I were grading the amount of “work” I’m getting done while “working from home,” I’d say I’m at about 75% of my in-office capacity. It’s not that I can’t do it without being distracted, it’s that I just don’t knuckle down enough while here. So, in part, I’ll be glad to actually get back into the office tomorrow where I can be 100% worker-Dave and work my way back into the flow of things. I’ll miss the baby, and the abject laziness without regret, and hanging out with Sharaun all day eating gingersnaps – but it will be good to actually feel like I’m truly “earning” my paycheck again. Oh, and before we get into whatever we’re about to get into – I added a bunch of new pictures to Keaton’s gallery. I dunno, maybe you’re not as amped as I am about my new daughter… I suppose that’s understandable. But even so, I’m gonna keep posting pictures and linkdropping right here, mostly because you’re not the boss of me.
Tonight Sharaun ran out to the grocery store and left me to man the baby-ship. Turns out, Keaton was still a half-hour away from her next “scheduled” feeding (I like how, when they’re infants, they’re not “eating,” they’re “feeding.” Like throwing slop in the trough for the pigs every day at 4pm – “feeding time.”). However, we’ve sort of noticed a pattern in her evening eating habits – the pattern being she picks up her schedule starting around sundown, wanting to eat every couple hours vs. every three. Needless to say, she was not happy being stuck with dad – the only member of the family with milk in her breasts not around. So, I bounced and sang, swung and patted, hugged and kissed – did pretty much everything and anything to try and calm her down. I had a modicum of success, for the most part keeping her occupied between raspy wails, but I was a poor substitute for boobs. Hopefully, as Sharaun learns to love the robot suckling-machine, I can play a poor mammary substitute with a bottle of fresh stuff in mom’s stead. ‘Cause man, ain’t nothing piercing like a baby’s hungry cry… I mean right into your brain.
Sometime over the weekend, my SATA RAID array went south. Truth be told, I knew it was going to happen – the thing’s been acting flaky now for the better part of a year. Randomly on reboot I’ll get a degraded or failed message from the controller, but usually a reboot will make the thing recognize properly. It’s been tenuous forever, and I keep saying I’ll replace it one day – but working in the “computer industry,” the last thing I want to do at home is fix computers. So, I’ve been ignoring it, rebooting until it works, chugging along and filling that crap array with more and more data I don’t want to lose. So, now, the standard frantic data copy to some intermediate drive, RAID replacement and re-copy. I’m going to a larger PATA drive array, I made a purchase of four 250GB drives long ago when there was some rebate offer – planning to change the dodgy array all along. As a bonus, aside from a non-crap array, I’ll be doubling my capacity to 500GB – which is good, as I was fast approaching my old 240GB cap. I hate working on computers, I really, really hate it.
Back to work. Cellphone alarm’ll ring ’round 6:40am and I’ll snooze it till 7am. 10min shower, dress, pour four cups of coffee into my metal carry-cup and hit the road. Tomorrow I’ll dig my fingernails in, grip tight for my 8hrs and try and kill so much work that I can sleepwalk through Friday afternoon. I imagine it being busy, when I get back; busy like it was when I left. I plan on coming home for lunch so I can hold my daughter – maybe she’ll be in one of those good moods where she just looks up at the lights and makes little snorting sounds. I think that would make my day.
Goodnight.
Also written on this day...
- highest-value next steps - 2019
- of gas alone - 2011
- Post #1683 - 2008
- sweat, death, & fervor - 2007