The view

This weekend will hopefully be the start of my going around this state and getting my goodbyes out. And hit the skate parks I've enjoyed over the years.

As much as I'm over Colorado, I will miss this state quite a bit. I don't think the scenery can really be beat here, and Indiana sure doesn't have quite the vistas and starkness that Colorado can have. When I first got here, it blew me away just how insignificant these mountains here can make one feel. I'd spent part of my summers as a kid in the mountains of Pennsylvania but that never prepared me for what I saw when I first got here. I still remember the first time I got a glimpse of the Rockie Mountains, I was on the Greyhound outside of Limon (I now think it was Pike's Peak that I saw, perhaps Long's). It was off in the distance but still amazing.

Indiana doesn't have those overwhelming views of natural scenery. Not to say there isn't natural beauty there. I've seen places in Indiana that are as beautiful and peaceful as Colorado. Just not on as immense of scale.

My point here? I don't know if I really have one. Other than I don't regret having spent a large chunk of my life so far here. And I'm not ruling coming back to Colorado but I doubt it will be a town that ends in Springs.

It's the end

About a week ago I had my first session with a psychologist. Even before these recent turn of events I was considering starting to see one. If it's not been obvious over the last few years, I suffer from depression. Up until I got back from vacation I thought I had it under control with medication but I wanted to get some other stuff going on in my head taken care of.

As with any health practitioner, the first meeting is mostly working up a profile. Questions about medical history and mental health history. What surprised me (and shouldn't have) were all the questions about suicide. The thing about that is, I'm not sure if I think about killing myself that much. Most of my thoughts of suicide are not thoughts of doing it but disembodied voices in my head saying "he killed himself". It's been years since I've even remotely considered killing myself (and my firearm is staying in the box it's packed away in). but that other line goes through my head quite a bit when I'm in a heightened emotional state like I am currently. I'm not sure I really get it.

There were some other interesting things the shrink said I might consider looking at inside myself. Such has the fact that there does seem to be a pattern to the women I tend to get involved with. He's not the first person to mention that either.

I'm just bummed that I'm only going to be able to get a few sessions in before I leave for Indiana and my health insurance ends.

Confusion

One of the things I've never figured out in life is to when to bite my tongue or not. I usually default to biting my tongue when when doubt. Lately, I've been doing a lot of tongue biting. And my tongue is really starting to hurt.

This situation that I'm in right now is one of those times where I can't decide whether spewing forth all the pent up anger and frustration at the person I'm feeling it toward id even worth bothering. What goes through my mind is this something I'm going to regret more for saying what's really on my mind or am I going to regret the fact that I said it? And I sure as hell can't answer that question right now.

The big question, are these feelings of anger and frustration even really directed at this other person or am I just pissed about my own inadequacies?

I'm not sure if my head is even screwed on straight these days. I'm told that I am the only person that can let people affect (or is it effect, I always get those two confused) the way I feel. I'm not sure if I buy that anymore. It kind of seems like a cop out for people to be crappy to other people.

Like I have any answers at this point in my life.

Live long and prosper.

Blah

Abandoned House, Trinadad CO
Originally uploaded by surly monkey

I hate it when I obsess about stuff I really have no control over. For the last two weeks, I've felt like I have little say or control in what's happening around me. I came back from a vacation in Indiana and my life turned upside down the night I got back. The simple non-detailed explanation is that the wedding is off and I'm moving back to Indiana alone. There is quite a bit more to it but that's it for now.

I'm left with a lot of anger that I don't exactly know how to channel. There's a host of other feelings, such as betrayal and loss.

I've accepted the situation for what it is. That doesn't mean I have to deny feeling like crap about what has happened and I have a right to what feelings I'm experiencing right now.

Someday maybe I can get the lessons I'm supposed to learn from this. Right now I've got no idea what I'm supposed to be learning from this. Other than starting over once again. At least this time I'll be around my family and some friends I've had for years.

Long time

Oh poor neglected blog, how you've waited patiently for me to type something into your text field. And what do I do? Go off and ignore you for at least three months. and yet every night there you are in my bookmark toolbar just waiting for me to click on you. You never deserved this, did you poor little blog?

I'm in one of those weird situations where I really want to write about what is going on with me but I'm not sure just how public I want to make things just yet. So I'll go with being as vague as possible.

I'm moving back to Indiana sometime in September. I don't have an exact date yet but the lease here is up on Sept. 30 and I'm leaving sometime before that date. For the time being, let's just say I've given up on Colorado. It's time to go back.
Which means it time for me to go around Colorado and say my farewells to all of those I've known for the last 13 years or so, at least the ones I can track down. Thankfully most of them are still in the same town.

No promises but I may be here a bit more often than I have been.

Oh yeah, those sunflowers are from the Ludlow Massacre site.

So it goes

R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut.

I enjoyed your bitter coated sugar pills.

Thank you.

400 and evolution

According the the Blogger dashboard, this is post number 400. I don't really know if there is any real relevance to this but I just thought I'd mention it, if I were a real blogger I'd probably direct you to my Amazon wish list and say "buy me something". I'm not a real blogger.

This is an interesting map. It's a map of the where and to what degree evolution (as far as state standards) is being taught in the U.S. What I don't get is how in the hell my home state of Indiana is at the top of the heap when it comes to teaching evolution? Although I will admit that it seems I managed to get a pretty decent education out of my K-12 system back in Indiana. Of course, by this point in my life it's hard to remember what I learned then and what I've learned since then. I do distinctly remember learning about Eugene V. Debs in High School, and realizing after graduating that very few others knew about him. How the hell I even remember the name to this day is beyond me.

What strikes me as odd is that Indiana as a fairly well deserved reputation as a conservative state but unlike other fully conservative states, Indiana has these strange quirks. Like the evolution thing and that Hoosiers often tend to elect Democratic governors. Due to the industrialization of the north and central portions of the state there are also long, proud labor union traditions. Not mention that Indianapolis spat out Kurt Vonnegut who is the furthest thing from conservative.

Actually, when I think about it Colorado seems to have similar quirky tendencies. Maybe it's just that whole can't judge a book by it's cover thing.

Oh well.

My gimpy leg

For the first time in years I went to the doctor due to an injury. As I mentioned a few post back I fell trying to skate that ditch I cleaned out. It's still hurting and the pain hasn't seemed to lessen. So I made an appointment to get it checked out. Now I have to get an MRI (I've never had one of those, heck I don't even know if I've ever had x-rays other than the dentist) but the early diagnosis is that I've torn my meniscus. Joy. The good new is that the ankle portion of the injury is healing nicely and is little more than a pull and bruising.

Of course, I managed to secure extra time off this week but I'm hesitant to go skate in the condition I'm in. Although, if I pop enough ibuprofen and wear a my knee brace, I imagine I'll be OK. The doc did say as long as I didn't try to do a bunch of crazy stuff there's no reason not to skate, well unless it seems to cause more pain actually.

So I think I'm going to take a little drive down to Canon City. It near the Royal Gorge and I've never been there. And there is a skate park there that looks like it could be fun. Plus there should be some good picture taking opportunities.

No matter what I'm just glad not to have to go to work for five days.

Spike'll getcha

For whatever reason that picture of Spike cracks me up. I called it "Spike in a box" over at Flickr. I think part of it is because she seems to have the temperament that she would just jump out of that box and get you if she wanted (although I'm beginning to think that some of that is just an act). Of all the cats she has the raspiest voice. She is also the most demanding when it comes to accessing the bathroom and as she is a princess the toilet should be referred to as a throne in her presence.

I wasn't the biggest cat fan before I met Phrank. Don't get me wrong, I was never a cat hater but I was fairly apathetic to them. Dogs were my domestic animal of choice. But I can see the advantage of cats. And considering that one, if not more of ours act like dogs, I don't even really feel the urge to get a dog right now (that and we can't have them in this apartment complex).

Which isn't to say I wouldn't like a dog but dogs do require a level attention that cats don't. When I come home late at night from work, two of the boys whine until I pick them up. A dog on the other hand would require a walk and perhaps a treat or two just to calm them down. Walking a dog after getting off work is probably not the first thing I'd want to do.

So for now I'll stick to the cats. At least until we move and I make the mistake of walking into the shelter.

Oh yeah, French Toast.

Teh Kewl!!1!

Somewhere in the back of my head I though about typing a whole post in l33t 5p34k but then I decided that the only people who would be able to read it were probably not going to find this little corner of the Internet. I'm sort of surprised that I can read l33t (well as long as it's true l33t and not that obscure l33t stuff), I guess it's mostly from lurking here on the Internet since before the days of AOL. I can only thank the BSU VAX/VMS cluster for that (scary to think that there are a few of you who remember that).

Enough geekery, I'm losing my kewl. What kewl you ask? Yeah, good question. Actually stuff like l33t fascinates me. Being able to witness a major shift in the way the world communicates as I've seen (and to a degree participated) in the last fifteen years or so has been pretty amazing. To watch this new forms of slang and idiom evolve out of the revolutionary changes in communication leaves me with a sense that I'm witness a major change in our evolution of a species (which I realize seems to be a bit of a bold statement but I think future history will back me up on that).

The fact that the letters we used to write that took days if not weeks to be delivered can be retrieved in a matter of moments many times is a big shift. That we can have instantaneous letter like communication through instant messaging software is also a big shift. I don't think we're at the point to know exactly how to use it wisely yet but it is here now and we might as well get used to it.

The wrap up to this is that when I use a typed slang like l33t, somewhere in the back of my mind I'm aware of this amazing shift that we as a species are going through. And in some twisted sense it give me comfort.

Special people

Today was special person day on the phones. Most of the special people were of the "might be riding short bus with the square wheels that go round and round" variety. I may get a bruise on my forehead from too much head-to-desk action but I can deal with these special people (and I think fairly pleasantly (especially when I remember that most people haven't the foggiest when it comes to computers)). But there is a second kind of "special" caller that usually ends in frustration and sometimes a supervisor call for me. I don't have quite a catchy name for them but it has something to do with entitlement and the false premise that the customer is always right.

The company I work for is not an email company. We offer email as a complimentary product that you can choose to use when you sign up with us or as the case with most customers the company previous to us. No matter which company a customer originally had, it was laid out in the Terms of Service that email was for entertainment purposes only and explicitly not for business use (there is a good reason for this and it goes back to the fact that we are not an email provider). As we all know, no one ever reads the TOS (myself included) but it's in there.

Anyway there are a handful of customers that come through that seem to think that the email is more important than their connectivity. Of course these people are the ones who (according to them) their entire livelihood depends on their email address they maintain with us. If email was truly that important to their survival, one would think they would invest a small amount of money into a plan with an email provider instead of our rinky-dink email service that was really designed for grandma and grandpa to get email from the darling granddaughter (who may or may not be named Nikki). It's like asking for Coach leather seats in an Escort. And are these people special, as in their time is more precious that everyone else and they are "model customers that you don't want to loose my business". Here's the thing, in the how many ever years they've had high speed Internet with us, they've never had a problem with it. And they're not calling because they can't get online.

I offer this up: a quick scan of my contacts in my Gmail account list a whole two who use an Internet Service Provider email address (and one is AOL the other is Earthlink). In this day in age there is no reason to be dependent on an ISP provided email address.

Perhaps it's just me. Maybe it's because I've had my Yahoo! email address for over ten years at this point and I don't understand the reason people are beholden to an email address that can change for any number of reasons (moving, canceling or the company selling). I don't get it.

I also don't get why people can get so work up over something they weren't even aware of just a few years ago.

Although I wonder what would happen to me if I had to go more than a day or two without the Internet.

Sufjan Stevens almost made me cry

So I'm sitting here on the floor in the living room and listening to Sufjan Stevens and I find it hard to write anything. Partly because I'm always at a loss of what to write about but mostly because I get lost in his music. Yeah, I know that his music is pretty much on the soft side and can easily be considered wussy music by some. I don't care. I've come to the conclusion that he's probably one of the most talented singer-songwriters and all around musicians creating music.

I know this much that when I listen to one of his albums, it moves me. Some times bordering on tears, other times what I can only describe as a feeling of joy. Beyond that the music has an intricacy resembling a spiderweb (and you can find yourself caught in it). The music doesn't rock but it has this quality to it that I can't put my finger on it.

Sufjan Stevens is from Michigan and there is a strong Midwest feel to his music. I can feel my Indiana roots when I hear his stuff. The fact that his two of his albums are about/entitled Illinois and Michigan is not lost on me as well. Not only that but there are reference to Christian symbols and stories scattered throughout his songs that leave yet another Midwestern feel to the music.

Watch this guy, he's going give us some nice gifts I think.

Go figure...

Well, I did make it to that ditch I had spotted. This time I showed up with a push broom, five gallon bucket and a dustpan with the intention of cleaning it up. Apparently there was a lot more sand in the bottom than I really realized. That and it really doesn't take that much to pile up as I discovered today.

So I managed to clean up the part closest to the road back to the ramp, which you may not be able to tell by the photo but that's a good amount of territory. I go put the broom and stuff away and grab my skateboard because I want to try it out. So what happens when I drop in the first time? Yep, I fall. My front foot stays on the board and my back foot drags and I pull a muscle and twist my ankle a bit. I didn't even manage to get to the steep wall. The thing is I'm not even really that surprised at all. Not that I expected it to happen but it is pretty typical. Oh well, maybe someone will stumble upon it and enjoy it. And I'll probably go back and try to clean the rest of it. Although it's going to take a few trips. So if your driving down south Hancock in Colorado Springs keep you eye out for it.

Oops, I thought it was only a couple of weeks

So I'm going for extended hiatus here. I just checked and it's been over two months since I've put anything up here. Dang. And to think I thought I'd start doing it more in 2007.

I really just haven't had the motivation to write anything here. It's not that there isn't anything happening, I'm just not into the whole recapping it thing. Perhaps it's because I deal with the Internet all day at work.

Speaking of work, I did get a promotion already to what's called Tier 3 tech support. It's a higher level of high speed Internet support and we do the digital phone troubleshooting (it's not VOIP). I'm also learning about the drawbacks of working for a large corporation as a opposed to a small or mom and pop type establishment. The flipside being the pay is really good and a great health insurance plan that allowed me to had Phrank (without going into detail, we had perfect timing getting on the plan). Another bonus is that I don't have to deal with video (or billing) calls if I don't want to. Those video calls are getting transferred out away from me. The only calls I get that escalate into supervisor calls are video calls (I actually had a lady demand a supervisor when I told her that it would cost her 29.95 to have a field tech come to her house and program her TV remote).

A month or so ago I got a new phone that has a camera, that's where the photo came from. What you can't make out is that one of those mountains in the background is Pikes Peak. When I took the pic I was more interested in the colors (and I was surprised how well they came out when I got the pic on my computer).

I did manage to get a closer look at what may be the best ditch to skate around here. It needs a bit of cleanup before I can skate it but it's nothing a push broom can't take care of. I'll try to remember to get a few pictures of it next time I'm out there.

Anyway, I'll try not to let three months go by next time. If there are any of you left that is.

QA

It's like I forget this thing is here it seems. I just looked and it's been a month to the day since the last time I put anything up. And to think that I was going to start doing it some more.

Let's see, we made it through the holidays relatively unscathed but afterwards have been a bit, well, something.

One good thing is I seemed to have settled into a bit of a groove at the call center. Today I had what's called coaching (it's where my supervisor sits me down and goes over how I'm doing). It seems I'm doing fine other than I talk too much. Apparently, I have an ability to calm down most angry customers or at least not let them escalate the calls. Now if the company could get enough people on the phone to keep people from waiting an hour to talk to me.

I still feel sorry for some of them. It's kind of amazing just how much people depend on the Internet now days. Heck even ten years ago it wasn't like this. I was still using dial-up and residential high speed Internet was something that I read about on Usenet. Now the livelihood of people hinge on it (both Phrank and myself wouldn't be doing what we're doing if it weren't for it). Of course most of them accept that there can be disruptions in service and they're the ones who I seem to have the most sympathy.

Completely unrelated, I think I'm ready for winter to end. Or at least the snow to melt all the way out of the bowls at the skate park. For some reason the snow just piles up on the good transitions.