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They are expecting me to report in to work tomorrow.  I’m not sure where they got the idea I was even planning on returning.  Of course I’ve had to run this around through my head since I walked out on the job on Thursday.  It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m pretty sure I’ve made up my mind not to return to that hell hole.

So it’s back to helping my wife out with her graphic design  business, at least for the immediate future.  I think I’ll work on getting some new certifications to make the resume look a little more polished.  I’m so over being a software engineer.  That job has sucked the life of any real desire to engineer software.  I do still like working on small programming projects – but I’m done with monolithic ugly monstrosities.

Tonight we take the kids back to their Mom’s house.  We are going to head to the Cheesecake Factory for some heavy appetizers and a couple of beers.  Gift cards are great.    We’ll figure out what my next steps will be tonight and try to relax a little.  I hope my wife remains as supportive as she has thus far.  :-)

I did that just the other day.   I’d previously worked at this organization for nearly 10 years.  I quit a couple of years ago to pursue my own endeavors and hopefully be successful ‘out on my own’.  Well after trying for two years, getting by but by no means living rich – the opportunity presented itself to go back to work where I used to work.  I was requested by name to go back and work on a new project.  The caveat was that I had to help another group play catchup with their software development.

It’s a government organization and without getting into too many details – it was plainly and painfully obvious that I was spinning my wheels, accomplishing nothing, and getting flack for faults that are endemic to the organization.  The managers involved were only interested in producing a happy statistical variance that made it appear they were actually producing a product.  They have no concept that keeping the developers happy should be their number one job.  Give us what we need to do our jobs, keep us happy and we can be very productive.  I managed to suffer through the place for nearly 6 weeks.  In that time I’d received no real input as to how to accomplish my tasking, multiple finger pointing regarding access issues etc.  After that entire time I STILL didn’t even have access to email from my desk.  Last Thursday I just packed my bag and walked out of the building.

I still can’t decide what to do next.  They claim they’ll make it all better if I go back.  I am somehow sure this won’t happen.  My contract manager (yes I am/was a contractor) apparently can’t read and has annoyed me with his attitude, treating me as if I was a pluggable resource with as much respect as one might feel for a toaster.  I have no tolerance for idiots and every time I walk into that building I feel my IQ drop 50 points.

I accidently bought something.  I recently returned to my old full-time job after a  near 2 year hiatus.  No I wasn’t just playing and enjoying life on my riches.  I was struggling while helping my wife with her graphic design business.  In the end there just wasn’t enough work for the both of us to pay the bills – and I believe she probably thought it was a good time for me to get out of the house.  I can’t blame her in the least.  I can be a moody bitch.

As part of going back to that horrid new job I decided I wanted a new Motorola Droid phone.  I’m a teck geek afterall and my old LG Dare just wasn’t cutting it.  I needed something I could SSH into servers, surf the web, check on my Facebook news feed and read email.  The HUGE screen and speed coupled with the Android OS was and instant sell for me.  Installing applications is as simple as clicking and ‘BAM’ they are there.  Unfortunately I installed the Amazon application last night after having more than a few vodkas.  Within seconds (I later realized the next day) I’d ordered not one, but two ASUS netbooks.  Uhg.  I have to either uninstall that application or turn off that one-click purchasing.

I’ve always thought my computers need a breathalyzer before they let me do anything stupid.  However regarding the netbook – I’ve been thinking about getting one for a while since they first came out.  My HP laptop workstation is just too heavy and unwieldy and sometimes I think it would be nice just to settle down somewhere and write.  I’ve been wanting to try my hand at writing again but sitting at a desk to do it just doesn’t work for me.  It’d be nice to sit out on the back patio or in the zen room without 20lbs of steaming computer on my lap to type what’s in my head – just too uncomfortable.  I might keep one just for that purpose.

I’ve been thinking often lately about how much my ideologies and perspectives of life the universe and everything has changed.  It’s truly been something in the works for decades but the last couple of years I have become more understanding of the nature of what it means to me.  Dusty Bits occurred to me today on my drive home from work.  It’s apropos given my recent reflections on life.  It’s time to dust things off of a bit and see what’s under the layers of muck I’ve accumulated all these years.  I’m sure nobody is reading this as it’s just a blog lost in the morass of blah blah blah that clutters the Internet.  No matter, I plan on using this as a cathartic medium to get out of my system what’s been gathering for so many years.   It’s time to spew… so if you are so inclined, check in and see what makes it tick.

The day American stood still.