Death By Loyalty, or Remembering to Live

It has been a month since I started with Costco, and a week longer since I left T-Mo.  I am still settling in at Costco, and will be for some time I think.  It is a very very different shop than T-Mobile EIT, better in many ways, and behind in others.  Like any org, it is simply different.  Since I like to collect knowledge and see the big picture I know I will be gathering bits and pieces for some time to come before I have a true feel for "how it all fits".  Since I think out of left field I hope to find perspectives helpful to others around me.

One thing that surprised me in the time since leaving T-Mo is just how much energy I held around my job.  I found, in fact, that I had been building a deep anger for quite some time, and that it had begun to grow in the last several months beyond what I could imagine.  It was there in front of me, but I never really knew it, or at least did not choose to acknowledge it.  I think my manager saw it...he did his level best to balance the ever-growing list of stuff coming down from above, running interference where possible, and softening the blow for the rest.  He's a good man, and a good manager.

The anger began in August 2012...or maybe earlier...as more of an annoyance or nagging feeling.  Our team had been shaved to 1/3 its already-reduced size, and then I found out how much income my skills should bring me in the marketplace.  Of course, my philosophy has always been, "you're worth what you're paid, and if you think you're worth more, then find someone who will pay you more and then you will be worth that amount."  The gap, however, was larger than I had imagined, and I felt I was slipping backwards, and that the business realities at T-Mo were unlikely to improve, and that some baggage I was carrying would hold me back nonetheless.  Thus began a slow smoldering, though I stuck it out because of the adventure of learning so much more new stuff.

By April we had been chest deep in a major effort to upgrade our monitoring game.  We had a few more bodies again, but there was sort of a stasis where things are lurching.  I had been neglecting my at-least-quarterly appointments with my doctor, critical in helping me stay on top of my "pre-diabetes".  I had also been neglecting refilling my ADHD meds on the poor logic of "if I cannot finish this one thing I've had on my plate at work for months then how can I take the time to see after this?"  Yeah...stupid.

I finally get to my psychiatrist for my ADHD scrips.  She takes my BP and it's high.  Not sky-high, but still, there it was...one more thing nagging at me.  I knew I was neglecting my health, but still did little in the short term, and time simply flew by between my remembering, "oh, yeah...I gotta get on that BP thing."

For some time I had been having sleep problems.  Not "can't get enough sleep", but instead that I sometimes slept a day away, even two days on one occasion.  I felt drug down all the time, and I had stopped my mid-day 3-mile walks because I was...wait for it...too busy.  My body was enforcing its own requirements, messed up as they were.  Still, I carried on.

By July I finally see my doctor.  I was already well down the road in my interviews with Costco and had just missed out on an even-better-paying gig at Expedia...like really really better-paying.  That's another story about introspection and impressions and team dynamics.

Anyway, at my doc's office we find my 12-hour fasting blood sugar was 241.  By about 290 I'm drowsy, but anything over 100 is negative.  Over 140, I think, is diabetes.  His first words were about insulin.  Five years I have been controlling this problem and I get off the wagon for less than a year and it all goes to pot.  I spent the rest of the day at the bottom of a bucket facing the truth.

This job is killing me...literally.

My blood chems come back a week later and most of the numbers are normal (iron at the high end but not over), but my A1c, the 3-month average of blood glucose, is 11.9.  Get to 6.5 and you're in pre-diabetes land.  Past 7 and it's diabetes.  Nearly 12 is syrup in my veins.  Now it all fell together, the sleep patterns, the energy levels, the pink film growing in the toilet (bacteria love excreted sugars).  The rest catches up...nerve damage, kidney damage, and beyond.  I dread the idea of losing either my freedom to walk or my ability to think through complex things.

By this time the anger has swelled, creating a lethargy of its own.  Finally the offer to join Costco comes, and after a round of back and forth I accept a job that gets me close to my salary goal while leaving room for growth.  I like growth.

Meanwhile, my closeout at T-Mo is going horribly.  Happy for me is helping folks solve problems, and that is where I centered.  Docs about stuff fell off the table because they just brought me closer to the anger, even though at the time it was more like simply hitting a wall when it came to even trying.  Embarrassing, really, and a crappy way to leave people who are expected to pick up my load.  But...

As I closed out and left T-Mo I found there was something nagging me at the back of my mind.  One more thing to draw it all together.  It took some time before I realized it was my late brother-in-law, Stu.  Even now as I type I tear up...because it was all so avoidable, and he was so cool and funny, and so in love with his sweety.  I wanted to see him in his 60s and 70s, a man much like his dad and the rest of Lisa's very cool family.

Stu died suddenly just before Thanksgiving 2011.  His wife arose from bed, leaving him sleeping while she made breakfast.  She returned a while later to find him on the floor by the bed, already passed on.  Everyone cried.  I gave part of his eulogy and it was the absolute hardest and saddest thing I have ever done.

It turned out that Stu a congenital heart defect that seemed to be the prime contributor.  For the previous few days, however, he had felt like crap.  He had just changed his blood pressure med...41 and he's on BP meds...and he was thirsty all the time and feeling generally bad.  He was supposed to schedule a nuclear stress test, but had been too busy to make sure it was scheduled, and likewise too busy to deal with the feeling-like-crap-on-a-new-med thing, which should have been an urgent sign of problems.

Did you catch that?  Too busy.  Feeling like crap.  Needing to take the time to take care of his own health but putting it behind his work.  In many ways it was like a mirror for me.  A good man with a loving family too busy to take care of himself...and Stu had died.

In a very real sense I had to not just leave T-Mo, I had to run.  Drop everything, stop trying to fix it all even past by "last day", and run.

I do not blame T-Mobile.  They're good folk trying to make it all work on a lean-for-now model.  I do hold them responsible in some ways.  That was thanks to co-workers reflecting the same feelings.

I did not hold T-Mo more than a tiny bit responsible when I gave notice.  I'm an adult, and I should be watching out for my health.  After I gave notice, however, folks came out of the woodwork with the same workload and balance-of-life complaints.  It's a Western, particularly American habit to think or at least function in the mindset of "I am not getting my work done", versus "I have too much work to do and so cannot do it all".  Even though we know the truth we still blame ourselves.  Crazy.

The responsibility bit came after I gave notice.  Many others there expressed the exact same concerns about their jobs.  Good talent had been bleeding out the door for a year, but us die-hards held on.  People I thought of as having it more together than me said much the same.  So, it was not just me, the broken-Scot I have carried for many years now.  It really was a broader problem.

Since I left my feelings have run up and down the track.  I thought and reflected and talked to myself around this or that, and began to dig out the feelings and put things together.  I was, and still am to some degree, angry.  Not mad...not an "I blame you" anger...just anger tinged with sadness.  Anger at myself for letting things go, and anger at T-Mo for driving staffing levels so low that it's burning out their best.  I miss working there...the comfort of the familiar really, but I do not miss dying there.  I am sure there are any number of companies in the same boat, focused so much on some imagined labor-dollar target that they waste their investment in skilled talent.

I am okay with my mortality.  I just don't want it too soon.  Like many if not most I want to see what happens in the next several decades.  I know the time will come when I will be ready to lay down for the last time, when the world, as interesting as it is, begins to repeat itself for the fourth or fifth time, when many whom I love have passed on as well.

I hope to have many cool and interesting jobs and roles in the years to come.  I just do not want any of them to kill me.

My Aunt Lorine

I married into a good family.  Fun and funny, smart, and very very cool.  I have always considered myself very lucky.

My own family is full of good, sweet, honest people.  From my earliest memories I draw good feelings, despite the challenges from losing my dad at such a young age.  When we went to East Texas we were always welcomed with warmth and love...all the things you need when you're young.

My family...the generation before us...were older than most, at least compared to my peers.  My mom, the youngest of four sisters, is 46 years my senior.  Today she is the last of her sisters.

Today my Aunt Lorine, whom I saw as the most elegant of my aunts, passed away.  Her late husband, Carl, a former Scouter, was a model for me as a good and kind and funny man.  The two of them were the best of people.

All my uncles served their roles for me in place of my missing dad.  My aunts provided the warmth and love any family should enjoy.  For a few lucky months I lived among them full-time, at a time when it really counted.  Good people, in a good place, doing what family is supposed to do.

This is the way of things.  We come, we grow, we live, and we die.  Along the way we are touched by those who love us, and we touch those we love.  Hopefully, we remember to cherish those moments and feelings...they are the only things that are truly real, more concrete than the solid objects of our everyday world.

Last to remain, besides my mom, Grace, is my Uncle Vivian, husband to my late Aunt Maxine.  In his prime he was, I believe, a grocer.  In the war he was a Quartermaster...fitting to his calling.  All of this might be wrong...it's something I remember from my childhood.

Goodbye, Aunt Lorine.  I love you, and thank you for the gift of your love...and for what you and Carl meant to us all.

Lack of regulation proves the failure of regulation?

Wow...a failed financial industry specifically protected from any regulation would not be protected by a regulatory system that failed to prevent the last failure?  Hmmm..."Wow...a crashed commercial airplane specifically protected from any inspection would not be protected by an inspection system that failed to prevent the last crash?"

Humans are humans no matter where they work and what they do.  Some will selfishly abuse the trust of others for profit alone.  We have plenty of financial instruments that are regulated that remain safe and successful...thanks to their ongoing regulation that helps prevent abuse and makes abuse punishable.

It simply blows my mind that some in Congress argue against regulation like it was regulation that failed...when there was no regulation...thanks to Congress!

A freshly deregulated mortgage industry only set the stage for a downturn.  The main act was the derivatives market that rode on the flood of poorly-written, dishonestly-sold mortgages, a significant portion of which were doomed to fail before they were signed!

We do not need draconian regulations...we just need reasonable oversight and transparency to ensure the instruments being written or sold meet reasonable standards for risk, that they are made in good faith, and that those who seek to defraud investors will be subject to appropriate civil and criminal punishment.

Even with the rotten mortgage industry that grew out of the deregulation introduced in 2000 our problems would have been a fraction of what we have experienced.  The wholesale gambling and outright fraud that emerged in the mortgage derivatives industry multiplied the mortgage-based problems many times over.

We are a great country, with the competency to establish markets that balance freedom and regulation so as to pursue economic opportunities while punishing if not preventing abuse.  It does not have to be perfect, but we have lived through the grand promise and catastrophic failure of the "wild west" markets.  Now it's time to grow up and be responsible about profits, but not hungry with greed.

Laments Over A Thing

Ah, the end of the day...what was a melancholy day reflecting on things and people gone by. Not a bad day per se...just one to think back. I was lamenting the loss of a friend, and the leaving of a colleague and, later in the day, the impending loss of a thing. I'll start with The Thing.

The Thing in this case is a laptop...yes, a computer...my work computer no less. Yeah, I know...a computer for God's sake.

This is going to get geeky...at some points very geeky by some folks standards. So, if you don't care for geeky tech talk skip this one...or read it and see how much makes sense. Maybe I explained it well enough to work! Maybe.

It started when I started with T-Mobile, on 26 December, 2006. I get a laptop within a couple of days. It takes some time to get admin access so I can install software...I have to be able to install software because I support software, at least in that role. It's common among the app support crowd.

It also takes time to get wireless so I can carry my laptop around the office without needing a network cable...and time to get VPN access so I can access the systems I support from home or elsewhere. Again, all common stuff for app support folks, but at the time required a lot of time and work to get set up. We call that a "process problem"...it has been largely addressed since then, though not perfectly.

Along the way I hear of folks who get loaner laptops when their laptop dies...and they cannot install software because they don't have admin on the loaner. VPN might work or might not. Fixing the broken unit takes too long. This all adds up to a nightmare for someone whose job relies on this one tool. The result is that we become Very Protective of our laptops and desktops, and hoard spares for the few teams under some senior manager with the ability to have at least one local admin on each who can grant local admin to the borrower.

Confused? Yes. You should be. It was a mess. A process mess, or lack of process mess. Nightmare == laptop or primary desktop dies.

I'm self-sufficient for the most part...I've pulled laptops and even subnotebooks and now even cell phones apart to their bones and put them back together again. I figure I can manage in the face of such challenges.

Sure enough, some months after I start, laptop starts to die. I figure out it's a problem with the power module inside the laptop...beyond reasonable repair. I don't want a nightmare, so I go hunting for a replacement.

We have one somewhere...I find it. Rather than reload all my stuff I simply swap the hard drives. Start up new laptop with old hard drive...same model and all.

The computer names at T-Mo are taken from the asset tag, a little bar-coded label on the lid of the laptop or on the case of the computer. Well, when I swapped drives I ended up with a laptop with one label and another name...and no, I cannot rename it even with admin because it will break certain critical bits of software. I figure if anyone asks I'll beg forgiveness...the folks who matter (boss, co-workers) know, so that's all that really matters...I guess.

You can see why The Loaner Nightmare can drive lots of choices, but I also have a hangup on something akin to continuity. I like that I carried the same drive forward, with all my stuff on it, to a new laptop. I've done this at home with our home system since 1997. It was a Windows 3.1 system on MS-DOS 6.2, which I upgraded to Windows95. Along the way I either move the drive into a newer, faster computer, or copy the whole drive to a new, larger drive. Over the years I have moved us through a few boxes and a few hard drives, as well as upgrading to WindowsME and finally Windows XP Pro. I actually have files and programs on there from the late 1990s.

I take a certain perverse pride in carrying this "drive image" forward from an old 386 on maybe a 20MB or 40MB drive to a P4-something on a 400MB drive. I still look on it with some pride, but I think it has really come to a point where it will not move forward. I imagine we'll buy a Windows 7 desktop sometime, or I'll convert the computer into a Linux server and let our personal laptops use it as a resource.

The laptop, however...it has a future. Well, had. Laptop 2 goes kapoop...I just made that word up, based I'm sure on the Germanic kaput, but better describing my feelings about it. Off I go hunting for a replacement.

Now, 1 and 2 were Dell Latitude D600 laptops. Not bad little machines, but old when I started and on the way out. Now, in 2008, D600s are out, so I turn up a D610. It's cool...it has bluetooth, so I could use it to play music through my snazzy stereo bluetooth headset that I also use with my phone. Downside...bad bad downside...the max screen resolution is 1024x768! Why did we ever buy a laptop with such a stupid old display??? BT is cool but not that cool. On to the next find, another D610 without bluetooth but with a display supporting 1400x1050 pixels.

Hmmm...I've pulled these things apart before...maybe...yep, that's what I'll do. I swap the good screen to the laptop body with the Bluetooth and, voila!, Frankenlaptop, my own creation from one body, another screen, and my precious hard drive. I am happy.

The D610s were on the outs by then, too, so again, the mismatch of the system name to the label on the lid to the serial number on the base won't really matter. Plus I have by then scrounged yet another power supply and more RAM and two extra batteries, and enlisted one of my former laptops as a battery charger at home...I am flush with freedom from having the batteries and so on. Living the dream...in a desperately poor sense of "the dream".

Now it's simply time to retire the D610. I have filled the 80GB drive too full, and the thing is slow, but it runs and runs and runs. The Word, however, is down...it goes.

Now I have this nice new HP EliteBook 6930p, a dock with its own power supply, a screen running at 1400x900, and no Bluetooth. This matters now because I tether my laptop to my phone for internet access on the road. Now that I've rooted my G1 I've gotten it to wirelessly tether via Bluetooth, saving tons of battery live over the WiFi sharing on the phone while getting our fast 3G speed. In a very real sense I now rely on my laptop's Bluetooth for my internet more than anything. I can work from the vanpool as we roll homeward, or answer support calls from my slower 2G Dash while surfing via my 3G G1. No Bluetooth is a setback.

Still, I am settling into the new laptop. Getting admin was easy now that our processes are improved...just tap the local "ITA" (person who maintains the desktops and laptops) and, poof, local admin.

Now I want to relegate my D610 to desktop duty at work, something I can use over a slow connection since the apps I support now are very very network-chatty. Better to remote-desktop to the D610 at my desk and run my apps from there; better and safer. It's also my own built-in backup laptop, just in case the new one turns sour. The Word, however, is that the D610 goes, once and for all, no options allowed. Damn.

So, it has served me rather well, but now it's time to move on. No more spare batteries (for now) or erstwhile battery chargers (great use for the cheap laptop with the busted screen), or angled docking assembly that lifts the laptop level with my second screen.

So, that was my last lament. It matters far less than the other two, but in many ways it has a big an impact on my daily life these days...well, sorta. The people matter more, even if I use the laptop all the time, and I do men all the time.

Sayonara, wabelhlp0232677. It's been a great run.

About my mother, on her 90th birthday

Today is my mom's 90's birthday...she is _still_ over twice my age.

I love my mom...not that you'd know for as often as I (don't) write...but I have long been proud of her. After my dad passed away in '69 she was left with four kids from 3 to 12(13?) and her single income. She had been the single income for some time since my dad had heart problems...but now she was truly a single mom.

In 1973 she bought the house on Clermont...this at a time when it was still difficult for a woman to get credit much less a mortgage. She had to keep her bills and cards in the name "Mrs. Paul T. Harkins". Somehow she managed it...and at last we were in a house of our own.

My memory of my childhood is that we never wanted for our needs. We were clothed, fed, sheltered, cared for when sick. Again, a remarkable feat considering the challenge of her position.

In 1978 she traded in the old Ramler American for a brand new Chevy Malibu...so now we were in our own home and now in a new car.

I went to Skyline High School in Dallas, Texas, starting with the 9th grade. I did not do well, and would not qualify for the magnet programs offered by Skyline. This meant I had to go to my local high school, Woodrow Wilson.

I went to Woodrow for one day...the first day of school. It was small and cramped compared to Skyline's bright, wide hallways. I entered a bathroom where some kids were lighting up a joint...something I never ever saw at Skyline, though I'm sure it did a few times. I basically did not care for Woodrow, and I wanted back into Skyline.

My mom went to bat for me, taking me to Skyline the next day. She went in for a private meeting with the principle, Mr. Guzick. She managed to convince him to bring me back to Skyline. I was and am still thankful for her effort.

Mr. Guzick later said "your momma begged to get you back into Skyline" (or something very close to that). I thought, and should have said, "momma? She's my mother...she has earned the title, as a widow raising four kids, buying her own home and later car, and all the while keeping us clothed, fed, and healthy. That deserves respect." What I remember more is being angry at how he said what he said. I don't know if he meant to be mean, but I know how I read it.

Yeah, my mom has her faults, like anyone. I knew that even then, but that did not quell my admiration at her accomplishments. So, she's not just my mom...she my mother.

90 years old this 24th of September. Very cool!

Men and diapers?

Okay, so here's a commercial now playing... "Uh oh! Dad's changing the diaper!"

So, from 1994 to 1996 I changed more of my daughter's diapers than my wife...you can ask her. I figured it was one of my duties...I'm a man, more than up to the task. Really, I'm a parent first, more than up to the task for my part.

If you're a man, and a father, and you think diaper-changing is for someone else...anyone but you...then you are a chicken or, worse, a coward. If you are a man, an adult man responsible for siring a child, then this is your task, too. You share in the work and responsibility.

No excuses, especially "I work all day and pay the bills". So what? This is something that means something more...something core...something central. It's you caring for your child at the most basic level, doing what needs to be done that simply must be done. This is you, being a man, being a father, and doing it well.

Sportsmanship and a Christian school

So my wife and daughter return from a volleyball match between my daughter's middle school and a renowned Christian school in Seattle...a school that, in fact, recruits even at the middle school level for players. In comes our school's volleyball teams (7th & 8th grades) and they are immediately booed and heckled by boys and girls alike. No intervention by their coaches or present teachers. They are known for this...they have a reputation for this kind of behavior.

Talk about wearing your Christianity on your sleeve...this is the ultimate. Attend a renowned Christian school and get coached on how to intimidate opposing teams with unsportsmanslike conduct?

You know the question...

You feel it coming...

What would Jesus think? The Lord and Savior per Scripture. What would He say?

Yep...come to our (public) school and see how we treat our own hecklers. We ask our own to leave when they engage in such behavior. We pay attention and work to promote good sportsmanship in our teams and our supporters.

The lesson? Well, they creamed us...no doubt they are good...why not simply be that good and win? Why must they engage in such shameful bad behavior? Why not just be good and be happy about it?

So much for being a school for the King.

The Introduction

Any good thing starts with an introduction...well, not any good thing, but many do!

Anyway, here I am.

I came to the internet early...compared to most folks at least...late in 1992 when I signed up with something called, at the time, seanews.com. It's very different now. The server I used was, if I recall correctly, seanews.akita.com, running some sort of BBS-ish software on what I believe was OSF1, a Unix variant, as part of "Seanews Public Access". Since then it's been a non-stop adventure!

I'm in the United States, up in Washington State, on Whidbey Island, in a little village called Greenbank.

I'm originally from Dallas, Texas, part of a family that's been in Texas since it was part of Spanish-ruled Mexico (1820).

I've been married since 1988...yep, to the same woman.

That's about all I care to write right now.

More current, relevent information can be found on my website, currently http://www.bigfoot.com/~scoth.