Kitties in the Mist

My colleague has been called away on business and has asked that I maintain her post at the feline sanctuary. Below are my observations on the indigenous cat tribe:

Upon entering the sanctuary, I'm astounded by a lack of greeting. Previous visits to the habitat prompted a welcome by the chief of the tribe, so the lack of any fanfare this time had me concerned. I decided to venture forth, to make sure that no catastrophic calamities had come upon the cat clowder.

I first checked the main living area of the habitat. Environmental changes over the past year had left this area with heavier foliage than typical, making it more difficult to tell if I was being watched.

I ultimately decided not to brave the jungle to find traces of the tribe and instead check their nesting and feeding area, located up a steep incline from my location. As I begin my ascent, picking my way through the tribal decorations that litter the slope, I note that the animal carcass that serves as a makeshift throne for the chief is also vacant.

At the top of the hill, I make my first sighting of the tribe. The chief comes to greet me, unaware of any concern on my part. We exchange the custom greeting of his people before venturing to the feeding area of their habitat. As we approach the area, I pass another member of their tribe. This one is slow to respond, as he is concentrating heavily on the smooth surface of the wall of the cave that houses their water supply. Perhaps he intends to decorate it in some elaborate painting? Further investigation is required. The sweat from his furrowed brow has run down his face to his mouth, resembling drool. Clearly his mind is fast at work, as noted by the vacant stare. Fascinating.

Entering the feeding area, another member of the tribe follows us in, this one the hunter of the group. He quickly seats himself at the trough that the tribe shares, looking at me expectantly. Clearly, hunting has not been fruitful for the tribe. I check the cache of supplies that my colleague keeps for the habitat and find a suitable meal for the cats. With the food distributed, I do a quick headcount of my wards. The three males of the tribe busy themselves with their meal, whereas the lone female is missing. The female is the least personable of the group, so it isn't in and of itself unusual for her to hide in my presence. Still, I must complete my headcount before I depart.

Found her!

Little League

Recently, my little brother Jacob finished up the season for his Prep League team, which had me reflecting back on his baseball career.

Jacob has played baseball for several years now, playing on his middle school team, as well as several years in Little League in addition to his latest season in Prep League.

He even has his own baseball card.

He's not the greatest player to ever step onto the field, but he can (and has) played every position and plays just as well as the rest of the team. But more importantly, he gets along great with the other players and actually seems to have fun at the games, even when they lose by 20 runs. So, for the most part, I actually enjoy watching him play. I don't even care if the team wins or loses, so long as Jacob is having fun. And that's the way it should be.

One thing I've observed over the years is that the parents seem to take things a lot more seriously than the kids. The kids are goofing off in the dugout, rolling around in the grass, and just enjoying themselves, whereas the parents are sitting in the stands and shouting at the kids, at the coaches, at the umpires, at pretty much anyone.

That is, when they're actually paying attention.

It's as if the parents are a bunch of retired baseball coaches and umpires. Whenever the coach makes a change on the field:

• "Why are you putting that kid in? He's terrible!"
• "Why are they taking him out? He's on fire!"
• "Why is he on first? He can't catch!"

Whenever the umpire calls a pitch or a play:

• "That was a pretty pitch!"
• "That was low!"
• "He was safe!"
• "Safe? He was out!"

You don't even need to be able to see it to know it was a bad call.

I can understand that every parent wants their kid to do their best, to play the longest, to win the game. But it isn't a team of Willie Mays and Babe Ruths. Sometimes you just expect too much.

That isn't to say that there aren't some injustices though. The umpires do make mistakes. The coaches do sometimes make some bad choices. And, yes, there's even a bit of politics and favoritism. A kid whose dad owns the team or coaches for it is more likely to get play time. Same for a kid whose parent has some influence in the community or is just good friends with the coach. Heck, Jacob's team this year kept two players on the bench for the entire first game of the tournament in favor of a couple kids who didn't even come to half the games. Why? No clue. The boys they put in didn't perform any more spectacular than the two who didn't even get to participate. And the team was finishing up a losing season where everyone who showed up got to play every game previously, so it wasn't as if winning was a major goal, nor was there precedence on benching players. Sure we ended up winning that game, but that doesn't matter for the two kids who didn't get to contribute.

I get that not every player gets to play every game in professional baseball. But when the point of the game is to mold these kids into ball players, not giving them a chance to learn, grow, and improve is just counter productive. And putting more pressure on the kids for the outcome of a game that in the grand scheme of things doesn't really matter, isn't really fair. The kids are going to have their whole lives to learn life isn't fair. Do we really have to start this young?

Though I suspect some of the parents start younger.

Dogs I've Known: Koda

I had intended to post about a different topic today, but I decided instead to talk about my little brother Jacob's dog, named Koda.

Originally, my dad had two dogs: Sam, a German Shepherd that we raised from a puppy, and Dinah, a Golden Retriever/Labrador mix full grown dog that we inherited from some friends that were moving away. Dinah was a few years older than Sam and didn't have much time left in her, so we wanted to find another dog to help fill the void and keep Sam company, because a bored dog is a destructive dog. While weighing their options, they finally decided on getting another German Shepherd. They're good for protection and are also good with family if you raise them properly.

So, Jacob (my brother), Claudia (my stepmom), and Dad (my dad) went to talk to someone who had a litter of German Shepherd pups. Jacob picked the runt of the litter and immediately fell in love with him. And so, a new dog joined our family. Jacob named him Koda after a character from the movie Brother Bear.

One thing I have observed about dogs, the younger dog always targets the older dog and torments them to no end. I don't think it's bullying, just playing. It probably also signifies a change in leadership, because once the younger dog can best the older dog in wrestling around in the yard, it seems to become the #1 dog in the yard.

So Sam and Koda would gang up on poor old Dinah when they weren't busy wrestling each other around. Eventually, Dinah passed on, leaving just Koda and Sam, and again, Koda would worry the snot out of Sam.

One day, Koda poked around in the bushes around the house and found a kitten, which was soon adopted into the family as well. And thus, Koda became sort of the unofficial keeper of Katie the cat.

Eventually, Sam passed on and a new puppy was adopted, also named Sam, in honor of the one that came before. And it was interesting to see the roles reversed. An older Koda suffering the playful torment of a younger Sam.

While Sam would try to hog all the attention whenever people were outside, I was always a bit more partial towards Koda. I'd make sure to pet him, even if I had to go out of my way to do so, and I'd shoe away Sam if she got too aggressive. And I'd always make sure to give him a dog bone, when no one else noticed.

Koda passed away Sunday morning. He was outside playing with Sam, laid down, and just never got back up.

We've had a lot of dogs over the years, and they always leave a mark on you. I just wish they'd stay a little longer.

Working the Weekend

For the better part of the last decade, I've worked at East Carolina University in the Information Technology & Computing Services department. It is hard for me to talk about my work. Typically, when I go into details about what I do, people's eyes tend to glaze over. So I don't talk about work much.

The simplest way to describe what I do is to compare it to the job of a 911 dispatcher. Your typical IT department is broken up into various teams that specialize in different aspects of the IT field. Some work on software, some on hardware, some on programming, some on data storage, some on networking, some on telecommunication, and so on. Pretty much the same way your emergency services break down into police, fire, paramedics, etc. So when something happens and one of those systems goes down, I'm the one who identifies the problem and contacts the appropriate response team.

Since there's no way to predict exactly when a problem might arise, our area has to be manned 24/7, which means that we have staff on hand on nights, weekends, and holidays. And while we thankfully don't rotate shifts anymore, in the interest of being fair, we still rotate weekends and holidays. So, every three weeks or so, I find myself working the weekend.

I feel like the last man on Earth sometimes.

A basic weekend at work for me goes like this:

Saturday:
07:00 - Pull into parking lot 30 minutes early.
07:10 - Convince myself to get out of the car and go inside.
07:13 - Load morning backup tape.
07:15 - Enter command center.
07:16 - Get shift turnover from 3rd shift employee on duty.
07:17 - Try not to get run over by 3rd shift employee fleeing the building like it's on fire.
07:18 - Make sure help desk call agent is active.
07:19 - Boot up antiquated laptop.
07:25 - Log into antiquated laptop.
07:30 - Check email and shift report.
07:32 - Check event logs for servers.
14:50 - Perform a walkthrough of the building.
15:25 - Submit shift report.
15:30 - Wonder where 2nd shift employee is.
15:35 - 2nd shift employee arrives.
15:36 - Pass on shift turnover.
15:45 - Go home.

Sunday:
See Saturday.

A typical weekend is very quiet. When nothing breaks, and no one has a reason to call into the help desk, I find myself with about eight hours to kill. While it may seem nice to essentially get paid to do nothing all day, that's not really the case. Since I have to stay alert, I can't really do anything too distracting, which more or less eliminates games, movies, and such from the list of things to do in my down time. So that pretty much leaves reading and browsing the web.

On a particularly dull weekend,
you can reach the end of the internet by 9:30.

Of course, then there's the weekends where things don't always go smoothly. The help desk phone ringing is not necessarily a bad thing. It breaks up the monotony of what can be an extremely long, boring day. Plus, the average call is usually a simple problem that can be corrected, such as a password reset. As for the rest...

Let's go back to the 911 dispatcher analogy. Your typical caller would be someone with a serious problem. Heart attacks, gunshots, robberies, etc. Then you start getting the calls that aren't really emergencies, stuff you wouldn't dispatch a unit to respond. Nasty paper cuts, sprained ankles and the like. We get those types of calls too.

The severity of a problem determines what I can do about it, the bigger the problem, the faster the response. If the network goes down, or a critical server crashes, I have an on-call list I can use to get someone working to restore everything. If the display cable on your monitor is messed up and everything has a yellowish tint, sadly, I cannot page someone to take a look at it. Some people understand that not everything is considered an emergency. Others, not so much.

Based on a real conversation.

Those who know me can all agree that to call me a patient person would be a lie. I once yelled at a baby for crying. But when dealing with the people on the help desk phone, I do maintain a professional demeanor, no matter how hostile the person may be on the phone.

Also based on a real conversation.

And no matter how much I want them to just get to the point.

You guessed it, based on a real conversation.

Oh, and in case you were wondering about the types of people who call 911 because McDonald's was out of chicken nuggets, or because their mailbox was looking at them funny? We get those too.

*sigh*

Dreams I've Had: Dying in Dreams

I've always heard that it is impossible to die in a dream. I'm not sure if that's entirely true. Personally, I've always been curious as to what would happen if I died. Not just from a religious standpoint, discovering which, if any, philosophy is correct regarding an afterlife and our existence in the universe. But also seeing how those around me carry on in my absence. Did my life have an impact on anyone else? How are they coping with my death?

I've had some near death experiences in my dreams, possibly triggered by those thoughts.

One memorable dream involved me driving down a deserted road at night, on my way home from somewhere. Leaping from the darkness, a buck would find itself on the road in front of me, with an unavoidable accident to follow.

My first clue that it was a dream:
Everyone knows that all deer-related accidents happen while driving in reverse.

In the wreckage of my car, I'd find myself impaled by the antlers of the deer. Though difficult to see, I can tell that the deer is still alive, and that I won't have much time until it wakes from being stunned, with the inevitability of it thrashing about trying to get free. I have my old flip phone, so I can still make a call, but given the circumstances, I'll probably only have enough time to make one call before my end. Also, given my condition, I don't imagine I can manage more than calling the first person on my contact list.

For the longest time, this would have gone down in history as the most awkward phone call ever received by the Andy's restaurant on 10th street.

"Can I get a bacon cheeseburger and an ambulance?"

Thankfully, I've made more friends since then.

I would always wake up before the deer did, or at least I can't remember anything happening after fumbling with the phone, so I'm not sure if I would have died in my dream. It certainly hasn't been my only brush with death in a dream. Or encounter with a deer, for that matter.

Helpful Hint: Never approach a northbound deer from the south.

Welcome to My World

It has never been easy for me to express myself.

When I was young, I didn't really talk. In fact, I've been told that the first few years of my life were mostly in silence. My twin sister would do most of the talking for me.

Of course, she was using me to get the things she wanted.

Eventually, I found my own voice. I still didn't talk much, but when I did, I made it clear what I wanted to say.

Oddly, when I was little, I called my Grandma "Mom" and my Mom "Patti"

I've never really outgrown this mindset. I don't talk much. When you're socially awkward, you don't get many opportunities to do so. I find it difficult to talk to people that I don't know, and even with most people that I do know, I rarely delve into anything personal. I can ramble on about a movie I saw, or some news item that might be worth discussing, but I don't really talk about me, my thoughts, or my feelings.

I realize that it can come across as kind of cold or arrogant when someone is talking to you and you don't really respond. But I am listening, trying to learn about the person who is talking to me. Once I know them, I know what subjects I can mention, what mannerisms they accept, what offends them, what they want from me in the conversation.

Even then, I don't talk a lot. It isn't disinterest, or lack of attention. I'm just trying to figure out what to say.

It can be exhausting living in my head.

I've learned a great deal about the people I spend time with, but I feel that I've never really given them the opportunity to learn about me. I do try sometimes.

Some don't want me to dwell on unpleasant things, even if I feel the need to vent.

Based on an actual conversation

Others aren't interested in listening at all.

Sadly, also based on an actual conversation

That's not to say I don't have people I feel comfortable with. I do have a friend that I feel I can talk to about anything. We just don't always get the chance.

It makes for an interesting conversation, since you never know where it will end up.

Which is why we're here. This seems like an interesting experiment. An opportunity to open the door to the inner workings of my mind, share my thoughts, vent my frustrations, and maybe share a bit about myself and my journey. And who knows, maybe I'll write something worth reading.