I’m highly defective…
Whew. It’s been a crazy week since my last check-in. Quick rundown for the detail inclined: Went to see X-Men 2 on Saturday (3May), which was a pretty good flick. I thought some of the foreshadowing was a little over the top, but then I’m a fairly big X-men fan. The average viewer would probably wouldn’t notice anything. Also, major props to Ian McKellan, who is rapidly gaining ground in my favorite actor list as both an excellent Gandalf the Grey and Magneto.
Sunday was a relatively quiet relaxation day, which was vital given Monday’s extreme “all-hell-hath-broken-loose” stress. A major part of the ISP network for the state went down, basically leaving one-third of trib.com’s customers without internet service for the better part of three days. The four techs were basically calling people as fast as we could, fixing their settings so they could connect, and we were losing ground all day. Fortunately, the company in charge of the component finally got their collective sh*t together and turned the system back on, but it was still quite the harrowing experience.
Tuesday we had another fun day, one of our authentication servers went down, basically leaving the entire state unable to connect. Since it was a system in our control, it was back up within about 60 minutes of going down, despite the fact that it happened over lunch with both sysadmins out of the office. This of course did not stop people from calling in all day long, complaining about not being able to login. To top the workday off, an extremely obnoxious customer called in, having utterly screwed up his connection by installing some POS software, and decided to chew me out for every stupid mistake he made. Forget the fact that I managed to fix his screwup despite his excessive recalcitrance, he was easily one of the least grateful customers I’ve had in a long time. And I don’t even expect a simple “thank you”, basic courtesy to another human being would suffice. Tuesday evening continued the hectic beginning of my week, when my truck and I were recruited by a friend to help her move. We finally finished moving everything around 11:30, when I crawled home to bed and passed out like a log.
Wednesday I finally garnered enough free time to polish off 7 habits of Highly Effective People and despite my early misgivings, I’m going to have to purchase a copy of that book for my collection for future perusal. I’m not even sure where to begin with my positive review, and it will most likely have to wait until my second reading. Suffice it to say that my mood and outlook lately have been unusually high.
Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all of the things I want to do. It almost makes me wonder if my bipolar is swinging manic until I remember that I used to actually DO everything that came into my head, and now I’m simply putting it into a queue for things to do when I have time. Especially after reading 7 Habits I find myself analyzing all of my little tasks and projects, trying to determine some sort of hierarchy. I’ve found my interest waning in areas of entertainment and other Quadrant IV (not urgent, not important) tasks, and focusing more on the Quadrant II (not urgent, important) tasks of self-improvement. I haven’t really watched any of my last six or seven Netflix rentals, though I did run them through the ripper for future use. I’ve also noticed that my once burgeoning urge to go back to some form of video game (mostly Dark Age) has nearly disappeared. I might eventually go back to see some old friends, but I’m unlikely to stay, and certainly not going to get addicted.
Hopefully I’ll find time this weekend to address a few of the tasks on my list, and I’ll have more interesting stuff to report. I’m also seriously going to try composing at least one work of fiction a week, which will be posted somewhere on site, I’m just not sure where yet.