Ups and Downs and Everything In Between

I’ve finally had a run of a few good days in a row. It’s been crazy at work, especially since I have to stand on my feet the whole day. That’s not so hard when I’m doing it, but I’m exhausted whenever I come home. Combine that with the fact that I’ve been slightly down because I miss Sara a lot it’s been difficult for me to do anything productive at home.

One of the reasons I think I had a good day today is because I’ve acted on some good habits. I’ve learned a bunch of new tech stuff in the past week or so and it occured to me that I should probably write all this stuff down. So I sat down after work and tried to remember exactly what all this new stuff is, and then add it to my growing so-called knowledge file. This is a plain text file with a simple format that basically stores every little tidbit of knowledge I learn or deem useful enough to have at a moment’s glance. Some random excerpts:

Operating modes refer to the state of the processor. There are three operating modes that the PMU can be set to:
* Run single - the processor is awake and running
* Idle - the processor is asleep
* Sleep - the computer is asleep and the power light is pulsating

New in Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” on portable (laptop or notebook) computers is an option to read the number of charge cycles of a battery inside of system profiler.

If Mac OS X hangs or freezes on boot at the blue screen just prior to the appearance of the Login Window try moving or renaming the /Library/Preferences directory and restarting.

I also finally got a good night’s sleep yesterday evening for the first time in about a week. It seems that even though I usually only used to get somewhere betwen 5 and 7 hours of sleep a night, the whole on-my-feet-for-the-whole-day thing requires a bare minimum of 8 hours of restful sleep in order not to come home feeling exhausted.

And I really would like to be able to come home and spend my evenings in a productive manner, whether that be pushing on with personal projects, blogging, or something. New workflows are always difficult to settle into, so I’ve returned to my previous strategy of trying to find ways to organize the workflow and make things faster and easier to do.

For now, sleep.

I hope it is because I have not written lately that I feel so “ugh.” My trip to California was interesting; it was both exciting and disappointing in different and similar ways. As was my first day on the job today. I left work feeling awful for no easily explainable reason, even though I felt just great for the first half of the day.

I feel a little bit like I’ve just joined the CIA.

On a brighter note, for the first time in my life I am now in possession of a piece of paper that says I know something. (Two more similar pieces of paper are en route as I write this.) Having never graduated middle school and having had very little save disdain for such pieces of paper, this new acquisition is an odd one. It says that I am officially ACHDS certified, which basically means I know things about the Mac OS. But let’s get real: who didn’t know that I knew that anyway? I certainly did, and I didn’t need a piece of paper to tell me that.

As things stand, I am convinced that beaurocratic red tape will be the downfall of human kind (if greed doesn’t get us first). That said, I do understand far more clearly why I have been told, time and time again, to get my GED, especially since “it would be no problem” for me. Perhaps not surprisingly, this makes me even more resistant to the idea of actually getting my GED. If it would be so easy for me to do then it is not worth my time. It would be more beneficial and more pleasureable to spend my time doing things that challenge me, things for which I must exercise at least some modicum of mental effort, in order to accomplish.

And that makes me an arrogant bastard, because it means that whenever I am in a situation that I find ridiculous or stupid or wasteful I think of the people who are creating that ineffeciency or slowness or waste as stupid and worth less than I am. (Note I did not say worthless.) I sometimes think I should feel bad about that. Ultimately, however, my conclusion is always the same: feeling bad about such things is stupid and wasteful and my impatience and arrogance is ultimately justified because I am both faster and more knowledgeable than these other people. (Even if these other people get paid more than me for doing equivalent jobs, but that’s a whole ‘nother story that has more to do with a genuine lack of experience and negotiation skills on my part than anything else.)

So fuck it. To prove to myself that I am correct, to prove just how capable I am, I force myself to be extra patient and extra nice with these people and in these situations. Doing anything else would negate all my greatness. The aforementioned routine is what I expect to encounter for at least the next two weeks, and I am not looking forward to it.

And now I am done masturbating my ego.