man cold

Unintended disconnect

I’ve been sick the last 6 days and finally starting to feel better. This was a hard one this time as I had seasonal allergies on top of the usual symptoms from a cold. The last thing I wanted to do was pick up a piece of technology let alone look at a screen, so I had an unintended disconnect from the online world. I can’t say that it’s been all that bad, but I do feel eerily disconnected from a lot more than just technology. The last 6 days I’ve done hardly anything other than lay around and binge watch (then watch again after falling asleep) some older shows.

It’s going to take me a few days to get back into the normal routine as I’ve returned to work today after a few days suffering. My usual thing is to work from home during a sickness, but my aversion to anything technology forced me to just take the time. After more than a year at my current job and taking almost no sick time, I’ve accrued quite a bit of it according to my last pay stub. I said screw it, I’m taking sick time because they are giving it to me and I really didn’t have any motivation to focus on anything. Of all the years I’ve been in IT to some degree, I’ve rarely been so disconnected from everything; at least not without a lot of stress. This time, no stress, not a care actually; it was quite relaxing despite having a horrible cold.

Yeah, I hear you all now, a “man-cold” isn’t serious stuff…..blah blah. For almost two days I was at the point where the pressure in my head felt like it was going to explode and nothing helped. Hot shower with steam, no relief. Vicks in hot water with a towel over the head, didn’t make a dent. Nasal decongestant spray, 12-hour no less, barely let me get through the night without getting stuffed up again. Things were so bad at one point I almost went to the doctor, something I never do usually, because I was almost convinced that it was a sinus infection. Well, it wasn’t and pushing through the pressure I got out on the other side and feel almost back to normal. It bothers me that this time it didn’t have the pre-requisite two days of my throat being on fire indicating that a cold was on the way.

I have it down to get around to my normal Monday post, Three Things Thursday and hopefully I won’t miss my Weekend post. Then again, having them down doesn’t mean they’ll get done, so no promises. Being offline, so to speak, for a few days has me evaluating my reliance on technology in general as actually is possible to survive without being connected. I realized this as my wife continued to use her phone after we went to bed last night and was still on it two hours later when I was woken up by the dog. I’m not sure she got anything productive out of those two hours and I’d rather not be slave to things like that.

Man-Cold and The Shack

I missed last Monday’s post. I was sick with a man-cold and didn’t feel like writing let alone doing anything to be honest. My wife doesn’t get it, when I’m sick, just leave me alone. I’m content being miserable by myself and don’t need to be checked or waited on. For the most part she does just let me be, unless there are things that need to be done and she isn’t able to do them. Reluctantly I forced myself to push through things when all I wanted to do was just go to bed. Two nights last week I did just that, in bed by 8pm, in a row. I was asleep by the time she came up and laid down; not even an explosion next to my head could have gotten me up from my sleep.

Now, more than a week after feeling the start of the man-cold, I’m finally starting to feel better but still not quite 100%. My back teeth are floating though with all the water I’ve been drinking. My nose is still blocked at times and things that I can normally dismiss in the office are making me nuts. When I can hear things around me even with headphones on, either I need new batteries in my noise cancelling headphones or I’m way to focused on the noises around me to care about the music in my ears. Anyway, I wish it was still the weekend, but my area is getting 14″ of snow according to the last forecast Tuesday into Wednesday so at least I’ll be working from home at least the next two days away from all the people who don’t understand how annoying they actually are to me.

The wife and I got some time to go see a movie yesterday, dropped the daughter off at the grandparents house and then came back to have dinner. We decided to see The Shack instead of Logan because it was my pick, and I’m not terribly interested in seeing Logan to begin with and can wait until it shows up on Netflix/Hulu. The movie was profoundly sad and depressing with a very strong emphasis on God without being overtly religious. In fact, there was one line in the movie that said religion was too much work and all he (character portraying Jesus I assumed) wanted was friends. A father was saving his son from drowning and while in the water his daughter was taken by a pedophile. The movie was about his journey from blind hatred to forgiveness to faithful acceptance. Overall I enjoyed the movie and its message as it didn’t focus on any one religion; it focused on the faith. Lets just say that the last 45 minutes, the theatre was “dusty” and the “dust” kept getting in my “eyes.”

It’s been a long time since a movie had that kind of impact with me. The last movie with such impact was Passion of the Christ, which was brutally in your face. No dust in the air with that one, but I wouldn’t want to see it again. I’m actually surprised with myself for having seen two movies in as many weeks when for years I’ve said movies are a ripoff and not worth the money. We used a gift certificate two weeks ago and had free “birthday” coupons for Sunday’s movie outing, so we only paid for food. Not too bad considering the food is decent and relatively enjoyable. My movie going, unless we get more gift certificates, won’t be continuing. A $3k fence installation to start in April is sure to make sure of that.

Have a good week, for those in the northeast, stay safe and don’t get buried in the snow. As long as you have plenty of bread, milk and eggs, you can make snow day French Toast. I’ll be working and snow-blowing tomorrow.

Exit, Cold, Enter, Almost a week down

My last day was last Wednesday with my old company. It was interesting being there telling everybody essentially the same thing.

Yeah, I’m heading out. Going to an architectural design and infrastructure control software company that is only 30 minutes from home blah blah yadda yadda this that and the other thing…….

I got to the point, where I was just staring at a white screen of an empty inbox, that I was thinking what the hell was I still there for? It was that point where I shutdown, handed my laptop to the dude next to me and turned in my mobile phone. It was a crappy iPhone, so I didn’t have an issue getting rid of it.

Last Monday I started to feel the beginnings of a stupid cold. My luck of course, I would get a stupid cold before my first day with a new company. You only get once chance for a first impression, so I did my best to make it seem like I wasn’t sick and washed my hands so much they were pruned all day long. I’m like a little child when I’m sick and no one in my family likes to be around me when I’m sick.

Now that its been almost a week, I’m feeling much better. It’s a good thing too because there is a huge security audit next week that I’m pretty much running. Nothing like being thrown to the wolves, wearing a meat suit, dipped in gravy and tied to a tree outside the wolves den. My new manager said “information security is the same everywhere, don’t need to know the systems to protect the data.” Uh, OK, apparently that’s how its going to be.

Anyway, I’m now almost a week into the new job and I’m really liking the challenge of learning totally new systems while at the same time owning something that I have no clue how to own. I’m holding my own despite the challenge. I’m finding it hard to find the time to get online and write, however I think that will subside once the audit is complete next week.