Bone

I got home late last night.

I supplement my income by working as a bookseller at a major chain store on weekends. It works out pretty well. I get a discount my addiction (books), I get a little extra money to help with gas for commuting and I get to work around said “narcotic”.

Last night we were completely rearranging a quadrant of the store. Most of the displays were so heavy we had to take them apart to move them. We probably moves about 450 hardcover books as well. I was so exhausted when I got home, that I passed right out. I could not even focus my eyes on the screen well enough to read my email.

Woke up today sore and cursing. Today I go back to my primary job, managing a local transit agency. I am also designing the agency’s new web site. Our current one is a joke, designed in FrontPage by a secretary that could not write JavaScript to save her life. Since I designed and wrote the personnel management software we use now, my boss was quick to allow me to take this project on. I am overhauling the look and bringing the functionality into the present, coding it in .NET.

There is something very calming about getting lost in silicon logic and wandering in that mental-space behind the screen. It is an escape from reality, and for all it’s frustations I love it.

The thing to keep in mind, Ellen Ullman says in her novel The Bug, “We are just plumbers.” We are just trying to create a solution from the structure already present, and often we scratch our heads and wonder why the hell our predecessors did it the way they did. Of course, they were just plumbers too, and asked the same questions of the one’s who came before them.

When I get to work, I am going to brew a BIG pot of coffee.