… when the only thing you can think about blogging is the appearance of several very odd and out-of-place porcelein sculptures in the lobby of your office building. Welcome to my world. The sculptures are actually kind of cool, but they should be on Pearl Street in Boulder, or perhaps in Cherry Creek. In their current location, they look like aliens escaping from a government testing facility. That’s how I feel at the end of the work day, so I may be projecting.

Yesterday night, around 9pm, I got paged because a server was down.

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: The monitoring system opened a ticket because the server “ancient-pos-4″ went down earlier today.

ME: What are you paging me?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: ‘Cause the server went down.

ME: It’s up now.

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: Yes, but when we try to log in, it asks for a password. We don’t know the password.

ME: Yes, but the fact that the server is asking you for a password means that it’s up.

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: Yes, but if we can’t log in, we can’t run the “uptime” command to find out how long it’s been up. If it’s been up more than two hours, we can close the ticket. If it’s been up less than two hours, we have to page you.

ME: When did all this actually occur?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: In the morning, around 10:00am.

ME: Why am I only now getting paged?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: We forgot.

ME: So you knew the server was up around 10:00am?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: Yes. But we couldn’t log in to ..

ME (interrupting): And it’s 9:00pm now.

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: Yes.

ME: And you haven’t gotten any other tickets about the server going down in between then and now?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: No.

ME: But you’re not sure whether the server has been up for more than two hours?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: No, because, like I said, we can’t log into the server to run the “uptime” command.

ME: Buddy, I can buy you a ticket for the Logic Train, but I can’t make you ride.

You’d think that being unemployed, with plenty of time on my hands, would have made me more likely to blog. Yet, it didn’t. I don’t know if that’s because, instead of being relaxed, I spent the entire time in crisis mode, or if it’s because when you sit around the house eight hours a day, seven days a week, you don’t encounter much worth writing about.

Either way, I’m employed again, back in corporate IT. I could kill myself. It’s good to be home.

It’s Monday morning and everything in the World is normal. Which is to say that it’s completely screwed up. Spinach is public-enemy number one in America, Muslims around the world are committing acts of violence to protest the Pope’s suggestion that Islam is a religion of violence, and the Alpha Centauri system still refuses to recall its planetary ambassador, Tom Cruise.

For me, though, it’s another thrilling week of job hunting. Job hunting is great fun, if “fun” is redefined to include shelving books in a library and several outpatient medical procedures.

Job hunting is just like being a sales rep with a single, dubious product, and no budget for swanky client lunches. Some people lie outright about their qualifications, which is very naughty, but everyone has to inflate their own personal wonderfulness a bit in order to get an interview, much less a job. And prospective employers do the same with their open positions. It’s important to remember that while you may be slightly under-qualified for the job you will eventually get, you will probably be underpaid and unsatisfied, too.

Today my “office” is a neighborhood coffee shop that offers free wireless. I’m here because there aren’t any neighborhood pubs that offer free wireless. Which is probably better for my job search. I’m not the only person using this joint as an office: there are some guys who get here early, set up a complete suite of office equipment at their tables, and stay all day. I can only survive until my personal environmental irritation threshold is exceeded. I have been hovering just below this level for over an hour, now, because I am (a) hungry but too cheap to buy anything, and (b) about to go into kidney failure but too grossed out by the bathroom. The threshold has just been blown to smithereens by the arrival of I-don’t-own-a-toothbrush-but-I-breathe-heavily-man, so I’m on my way out the door.

I’m looking for a new job. After seven years of my loyal service and/or web-surfing, the corporation eliminated my position.

I wasn’t unhappy about it. I had already decided that it was time to move on, and if they wanted to finance my job search with a severance package (a bribe the corporation gives a departing employee so he won’t swing by later with an assault rifle and 2,000 rounds of armor-piercing ammo), then so much the better.

The only problem is that every job I’m qualified for appears to involve, well, work. I know - I should be a good little American and happily work 80 hours a week, using my spare time to finish the basement and landscape the yard. But I’ve done a lot of work over the years, and I think it’s overrated.

People have been working since the dawn of history. Probably earlier, in fact, because even back then, there was probably a workaholic caveman who got to work while it was still dark. At first, everyone had the same job, gathering or hunting for food. People probably didn’t even think of it as work. It was just something you had to do in order to eat. Like picking a restaurant, nowadays. When enough food had been gathered, and everyone had eaten, then they just sat around the cave, drawing pictures on the walls and making tools.

Then someone had an idea. He realized that he liked making things more than he liked hunting and gathering, and it occurred to him that if someone else were willing to gather enough food for two people, he could make enough tools for two people, and both of them would be happier. “Hey, Thag. You know how much I hate gathering food, right? How about you gather enough nuts and berries for both of us, and I’ll give you this Ford Taurus.” And that was how the used-car-salesman job was invented. It is also interesting to note that the resale value of Fords is exactly the same.

Now here we are, twenty thousand years later, and we have so many different kinds of jobs that hardly anyone remembers that most of them are desperate attempts to avoid having to gather, grow or hunt your own food. Unless you’re a farmer, in which case you’ve made very little progress. Sorry.

In the past, you at least had the ritual of receiving and depositing a paycheck, and paying the bills, to remind you why you work. Now there’s direct deposit. And automatic bill-pay. You have to remind yourself that the reason you sit in a little box with a desk and drink eight hours of coffee, five days a week, is not because you are an incredibly dull person, but because if you don’t the bank will take your house. Your dullness is an unfortunate side-effect.

What scares me about losing my job is not that I won’t find another job like the one I had. It’s that I will. When I started with the company, my job didn’t pay very well, but it made sense. There was an obvious, logical connection between the work I performed and the successful operation of the company. After years of moving upwards in a company that frequently reorganized, refocused and restructured, any such connection eventually was lured into a dark conference room and tortured to death. I couldn’t have described my job without using a lot of made up words and acronyms, and I couldn’t have told you how it helped the corporation without using a shovel.

One time, a financial analyst asked me to estimate the number of hours expended for a particular project. I calculated, to my dismay, that I had spent 542 hours cajoling, begging and threatening three other people into performing 84 hours of actual labor that would have taken me 40 hours to complete had I been allowed to do it all myself. And that doesn’t include the 7.3 hours of drinking it took me to get over the whole affair.

Until I’m able to figure out how to get paid for doing absolutely no work at all, such as by working for the federal government*, I am going to try to find a job that provides me a decent paycheck, good benefits, and the satisfaction of knowing that I’m actually producing something valuable. And then I’m going to win the lottery, photograph the Yeti, and develop a weight-loss plan which doesn’t require eating less or exercising.

* If you’re a hiring manager for the federal government, please note that this statement does not reflect my actual view of the federal government or any of its parts, and was, in fact, almost certainly inserted by evil hackers. Please hire me.

That’s right, SpoonFighter needs a new career. SF is currently is no longer employed by a larg-ish technology corporation, and would like to do something that is, primarily, not corporate and, if possible, not technical. He would like to try his hand at being a fabulously wealthy playboy, but has not seen any openings for such a position in the paper or on Monster.

Accordingly, SpoonFighter is taking your suggestions for career possibilities, and is open to anything short of “Suicide Bomber.” (Terrible benefits, unless you count the 70 virgins which are supposedly waiting on the other end. However, I suspect that with the upswing in the popularity of suicide bombings, virgins will be on back-order for a long time.)

In a completely unconnected side-note, SF’s department is having a fun little layoff this week. (But no pressure.)

So hit that comment button and tell me what sort of career I should pursue.

… I’m a Moron.

You know that classic CLM* where you’re replying to an email with some smart-ass comment, intending it for a single person you trust, but instead you hit “reply-all” and send it to the whole company? Yeah - I did that, this week.

I put my own special sauce on the standard entree, though. In a panic, I sent out an apology to everyone. Then I checked my inbox. There was a message from the email system stating that (for technical reasons I won’t go into) the email system blocked my first reply, the one I was worried about. But it happily sent out my apology - which included the original email and my smart-ass comment - to everyone.

Nothing bad appears to have happened, other than having my techie-street-cred cut in half for being such a bone-head. I received a handful of emails from people saying that they didn’t get the email for which I was apologizing (no one did), but that they agreed with my comment and were glad someone actually said it. I can only hope the VP agrees.

* career limiting move

It’s warm, and Spring is just getting started here in Denver. We didn’t get a Winter this year, just an extra three months of Fall. I don’t mind one bit. Put a half-inch of snow or ice on the road and my 30-year-old BMW handles like a 2,000-lb, greased water balloon.

Usually I see at least two State Patrol cars during my commute, but today they are nowhere to be found. I put the peddle to the floor and let all 98 little carbureted horsies run free. Oh baby! I’m even able to get into the fast lane and do a little passing. So what if I’m only passing a mattress that’s fallen off the top of someone’s car. I take what I can get.

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Life is finally settling down, and I can think again. With thinking comes reflection. And with reflection, blogging.

As I’ve already blogged, work has been kicking my tail lately. But just when I thought I couldn’t take any more pressure, Bureaucracy rode up on his big red horse, Red Tape, and roped the Bucking Bronco of Progress. Now everything’s moving at a comfortable crawl again. Yee Haw.

This morning, I find that I’m suddenly aware of the passage of time. It’s all around me. People who were young and beautiful when I started working here now look tired and old. Boobs, butts and stomachs have sagged. Hairlines have receeded. Dogs who participated in “Bring Your Puppy To Work Day” have died of old age.

Most of my friends have had children. SpoonFighter Jr. is in the oven. (Please don’t tell Mrs. SpoonFighter that I just referred to her as a kitchen appliance.) I look in the mirror and see lines and bags around my eyes. My laptop battery only lasts two hours, now. Damn you, Time!

Speaking of Time, I bought a watch. I haven’t owned a watch since the Soviet Tank Crew watch that ran for two glorious, revolutionary years in college, before rusting right off my wrist. (I thought it was waterproof, so I wore it while swimming at the beach, once. When I got home I discovered a very small fish swimming inside the watch glass.)

I bought this Invicta, from Woot. If it sucks, please don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. My life is made meaningful by new toys, even if the new toy is a watch. I am eagerly counting the minutes until it arrives. When it does, I will strap it to my wrist violently and continue counting the minutes until the thrill of thrill of “new toy” wears off. Then I will buy something else. That is the cycle. That is Life. Ommmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Mmm. What else….

1) New Music: I recommend Mick Sterling’s power-Soul/Blues/R&B. A coworker turned me on to him today.

2) Pool Halls: I recommend Table Steaks, at 20th & Sheridan, in Denver. IMNSHO*, pool halls should be nasty, dirty and thick with cigarette smoke. Hell, I want to feel like I’ve second-hand-smoked a whole pack of cigarettes when I’m done. The men should be looking for a fight and the women should be skanks. Table Steaks does not disappoint. Beside the fact an hour here will give you lung cancer, this place is Skank-O-Rama. All of the women here are FFCs*, women just barely hanging on to the edge of non-obesity long enough to land a man, get pregnant, and balloon to 300 lbs. They wear low-rise jeans and belly-exposing tank-tops so you can get a good look at their “muffin tops” and both sets of cleavage. Oh baby. Get itchy jes’ lookin’ at ‘em. Yep. If you’re looking for a Pool Hall, this is the one.

* IMNSHO: In My Not-So-Humble Opinion; FFC: Future Fat Chick