I had another peculiar dream last night. I could probably guess at where the genesis of it came from but, why it went were it did, and the reasons for it escape me.

I either quit or was fired from my current job. I think I quit, because there was no angst in the dream, so I presume my departure from this job was not acrimonious. Anyway, I was looking for a new job. My boss from Wheatheart called me up, and asked if I wanted my old job back. This was kind of a peculiar revelation to have occur, since in dream time, I'd only been out of work for a couple of days. I've had a lot of job related issues come to the forefront lately, so this makes sense. I'm pretty sure that this beginning to the dream comes for the travails of Mandy, of MandyCam. I've been keeping loose tabs on her lately, and she lost her job unfortunately. Then she got another offer only a few days later. I should check her site today and see if she decided to take the new job. Point for later.

Anyway, back to the dream. I go back to Wheatheart but the place is nothing like how it really is. The production building is HUGE! W're talking airport hangar huge. And its not finished. The back corner of it is missing, as if the building was not finished. And the office area is nothing like it used to be either. There are all these hallways, and dingy passageways. The guy who was my boss, and who hired me again in this dream, is the president of the company. But for some reason his office is down in a basement that the building never had, and its back in a winding series of hallways, in the black-brown, ugly colored room, where he has a half a cubicle. My office is where it used to be, in more or less the same place, plus a bunch of halls that don't exist, and rooms that were never there. And its filled to the brim with junk! Mostly computer stuff, floppy disks, manuals, stuff like that. The desk is the clunky old wood one I had when I first started there. I remember the computer being a piece of junk in the dream, but it had a 15" LCD monitor. I couldn't figure that out at all, in the dream or now in consciousness.

Back to the substance of the dream, on my first day there, the place was over-run with auditors and accountant types. For some reason they assets of the company were being appraised. As the dream progressed I discovered that the company was actually in bad shape, which makes sense since the farm sector is depressed right now. So then why did I get hired, if overall they're in trouble? I was completely bewildered at this place, and wandered around all day with a stupid look on my face. Towards the end of the dream the president called together all the workers and explained that production was cut down to three days a week, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. And oh yeah, Grant is back. No one seemed to care about me but the three days a week was hotly discussed. After that meeting my boss led me through this labyrinth of hallways and we discussed the particulars of my new employment. This stuck in my brain, besides the dinginess and the fact that the president was in a half cubicle in the basement. He offered me twice the salary that I used to get there.

So I'm hired but I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I try to clean up my office and the computer I got. The person before me had filled the hard drive with peer-to-peer downloading programs, like Kazaa, and Bearshare, so the Start tray was full of spyware. I spent a bunch of time trying to remove all of it. Then I went out to examine the building, and found the gaping hole in the rear wall. I watched some airplanes take off through it. Then I took my lunch and set it down on a pallet of 7-Up cans that were in the middle of the floor. I don't understand why that was a good place for my lunch, but I left it there.

I don't really remember the order of what happened when in the dream so I can't really say what, if anything happened next. I can't even really say that the order of things I've mentioned is how stuff appeared in the dream. I just remember clips from it, as if I were remembering scenes from a movie. Nonetheless, it was a weird and wacky dream.

Toodles!

I just lost my desk ornament. :-( I had a 20" Big Blue filter housing sitting on my desk beside my monitor. It did a nice job of 'framing' my monitor because on the other side I had my one computer speaker (I only have one that works) and my lava lamp. Without the filter housing I've moved the lava lamp to the right of the monitor, leaving the speaker on the left. It just doesn't look right. I think its because the filter housing casted a shadow across my monitor and now I don't have that. I'm really not sure what is making this look wrong but I don't like it. My desk needs more ornaments. In case you can't tell, this is a hint for Christmas. :-)

I don't really have anything to rant about today. The day has been kind of low key. I finished up the redo's on the shop drawing package I was working on from Monday. Now I have another package to review and revise. This one isn't as voluminous as the last one I was doing. Truthfully the only point of contention is the necessity for mag meters to monitor flow in the system. Magnetic meters are kind of overkill on a system as small as this one. The typical paddle wheel meters we use are more than adequate. On all the systems I've done so far, we have just gone with these paddle wheel devices, and there has been no complaints. My understanding of things was, a mag meter only becomes necessary in high flow situations. Relatively speaking, this is not a high flow situation. It's only 60 usgpm. In the water treatment area, that's not a real high flow situation.

I've been listening to new albums lately. I have to give a thumbs up to the new Christina Aguilera album, and probably an open palm to the soundtrack from 8 Mile. The Christina Aguilera album is good. I'm not really picking up any really flashy singles from it. I'm sure there will be some. Overall though its a very artistic album. Its got a very soulful vibe to it. More than a few of the songs are giving me a Mariah Carey feel. It's pretty good. I'd recommend listening to the whole thing from start to finish. Its good. The 8 Mile soundtrack was a bit of a disappointment. I had high expectations, and its not bad. That's why I can't say its a thumbs down. The songs done by, or in collaboration with, Eminem are all good. They have his usual pop and zing, and they grab you right away. But the material he's not in, seems kind of flat, or displaced in the collection. Maybe the fault is mine. Maybe I was looking for an Eminem album, and this is not. Perhaps I'll listen to it again and maybe I'll revise my opinion.

Toodles!

Today has been one of those throw away days. Its been a day where I worked dutifully the whole time but, at the end of the day, there wasn't a whole lot to show for it. I was busy, my mind was active, but I didn't really accomplish much. If you asked me what I did today, I would be really hard pressed to give you an answer.

Of note, I returned to my book. I wrote about a page and a half at lunch, in about 1/2 hour. I have trouble getting started, and then I have trouble quitting. I hate having a day that is so segmented. I work for 4 hours, eat lunch and write for an hour, come home and exercise, eat, and then the evening is free. The routine is good for me in a way, but I also become a slave to it. If I don't follow the same pattern, things feel 'off' and uncomfortable. The book is coming along really well, and I'd like to dedicate some more time to it. But I'm only really effective in writing, if I do it during the day. At night there are too many distractions from the TV, from the internet, from video games, for me to concentrate. I could turn all those things off but as I was sitting there struggling for the next sentence, my mind would be on whether there was something more fun out there to spend my time on.

Now for today's joke:

A wealthy playboy met a beautiful young girl in an exclusive lounge. He took her to his lavish apartment where he soon discovered she was not a tramp, but was well groomed and apparently very intelligent... someone with lots of class.
Hoping to impress her, he began showing her his collection of expensive paintings, first editions by famous authors and offered her a glass of wine. He asked whether she preferred Port or Sherry.
She said, "Oh, Sherry by all means. To me, it's the nectar of the gods. Just looking at it in a crystal-clear decanter fills me with a glorious sense of anticipation. When the stopper is removed and the gorgeous liquid is poured into my glass, I inhale the enchanting aroma and I'm lifted on the wings of ecstasy. It seems as though I'm about to drink a magic potion and my whole being begins to glow. The sound of a thousand violins being softly played fills my ears and I'm transported into another world."
"Oh my," said the playboy, obviously impressed at his conquest's errudition and poise.
"Yes... Port, on the other hand," she continued, "makes me fart."


Toodles!

Today's post to the blog is late. This is not due to any fault of mine, or because I have nothing to say. No, there is a reason why I'm not getting to this until now. It has to do with my newest pet peeve; consulting engineers. The more I have to deal with the engineering profession, the less I am liking it. It seems like every time I turn to the profession, they are letting me down. I can't recall the last instance I had with someone acting as a professional engineer, that was a positive one. I am increasingly forming the opinion that engineers are an egotistical, self indulgent, petty little group of people that do not work for their supposed purpose, which is to protect the public, but rather act in a manner that serves only to foster their own self interest.

I don't pretend to be perfect. I gave that pretense up awhile ago. I do, however, try to be as good as I can. I give my best effort, as often as I can. In whatever I do, I try to provide the best service that I can. I'm working at being a good person, who does good things. I slip up, I fail, I make mistakes, but its always in an attempt to do better. I am fighting against my self indulgent, nihilistic impulses. That's why a day like today is particularly grating.

I'm not going to go into the details, lest I give away the identity of today's particular enmity. As I've come to learn lately, you have to play your cards close to the chest at all times. I'm trying, real hard, to believe that good is in everyone. I'm trying to believe that given the choice between doing the right thing and being vindictive, that everyone will do the right thing. It's getting really hard. So many people act out of spite, and malice these days, that its hard to believe. I'm trying, but nevertheless I don't think it would further my interests to splash sulfurous vitritude on someone, over the internet. So I will leave it at, I have been on the business end of an upbraiding by an engineer. And after some careful consideration of the specific substance of the complaint, I have found that the majority of it lacked any substance at all. There were a couple of points that rang very true, but their exclusion was not my fault, through negligence or mistake. There were a couple of changes that were necessary, and I would gladly have made them, if approached in a friendly manner. But the majority of this complaint was just hyperbole. Had the careful review of the material been made, as it was suggested it was, then it would have been obvious that the material requested, had been provided. So I had to eat my hat, not because I was wrong, but because the engineer had to justify his involvement.

I will never be a consulting engineer. I have been in those organizations a few times in my colorful, and storied career, and I realize that background is not for me. I can't be that exactingly precise about things. I can't make an issue of an overlooked detail, that when considered by an average individual, would be perfect common sense. I can't insist on exact, precise clarity in every point, when careful reading of the whole document will reveal the same truth. Maybe there is too much of the writer in me. I expect someone to read the whole document that I produce, and not just one line here, and one line there. I find repeating myself endlessly, boring and unnecessary. But that kind of relentless repetition seems to be the hallmark of a professional engineer. Maybe I can't be a professional engineer. Maybe that slavish adherence to precision will be my undoing. I can not force myself to insist on removing thought from the process. My brain won't work that way. I always fill in any gaps in something I encounter, with my own good sense and judgement. But apparently that's not an option. Everything must be spelled out, to the very last point. So maybe that means I can't be a professional engineer. But I think there must be a place in the world for a gifted individual who, against conventional wisdom, will think and use his brain.

I must go now. I still have many pages of material to review, to satisfy my accuser. I probably typed longer than I should have anyway. I won't get finished this afternoon anyway so I figured I might as well do a blog entry.

Toodles!