Given the general uncertainty about projects, along with a great number of folks in my work circles on the road for a bit industry conference down in Florida, my time in the office was slow in terms of actual PM work. I dumped a bunch of time into knocking out some online training prerequisites for a class I’m trying to take to knock out my continuous learning requirements for the next two years, and score another certification to pad the resume. I’ve got the application for the course in the system, though we’ll see whether they approve it, as I have the required certs for my position (this one would just be gravy), while many people in the organization don’t have what they’re supposed to. The fact that the course is local and won’t really cost the organization much of anything at all is a point in my favor, but I don’t really trust anything to be easy or working to my benefit or preference around my current workplace anymore.

Beyond work, I’ve been trying to fill my time with biking; I’ve knocked out 25 miles in the dirt in the last two days, but yesterday was a little tough, with some old-man muscle aches, and what I think is a failing seat bracket (the saddle tends to shift unpleasantly on bumpy terrain in spite of my constant tightening). It’s getting to be time to take the bike in for the usual annual tune-up I like to have the pros at the the local shop do, but that sort of thing is a lower priority in the budget than a few other things I have to have done first, which has eaten up the budget this month, and I can do a lot of the stuff myself, honestly. Anyway, I’m still planning on knocking out a few more miles today, before the usual predicted rain on Friday.

Some of the discretionary/maintenance budget went into buying an electric chainsaw (I got it at Lidl, the grocery store, of all places, for less than it would cost me to rent a poorly-maintained gas unit for a day) so I could saw up a downed tree on the property and hopefully knock down a couple of the smaller dead-or-dying trees I have, so I might get some more sunlight back there. I still felt guilty about buying it, though it filled a need*, and gave me a decent workout hauling wood around on Monday afternoon.

We do have some budgeted entertainment built into the weekend; it is, of course, Avengers: Endgame release weekend, and we’ve had our tickets sorted for a few weeks now. We’re getting together with a bunch of our nerdy friends at one of those cinema-cafe sorts of places Saturday afternoon. It’ll be nice to get out. It’s been a pretty stressful week or two for all kinds of reasons (work, finances, responsibility, the state of the world, brain chemistry, etc), and I hope this little adventure helps.

Don’t really have anything else lined up for the weekend, though I expect we’ll attempt to replace our burned-out garbage disposal either Friday night or Sunday, and I’ll probably see about getting some biking in if the weather holds, and maybe I’ll cook a nice meal that doesn’t include chicken salad; I made a huge batch Monday night with the idea that it’d cover my lunches for the week, which it has (along with a couple of quick dinners), though as good as it is (I make killer chicken salad), I’m growing a little weary of it after eating almost nothing else for several days.

That’s honestly pretty much it, other than the tunes I usually stick here. Hitting Pandora again rather than my hard drive this week. Not a terrible mix, though for some odd reason, it threw me *two* Men At Work tunes; I like me some Colin Hay, of course, but really? Also, I’ve got the usual Bowie/Donnas/Zappa thing I always get. Might be time to clear the channels and rebuild…

1. “For Those About To Rock” – AC/DC
2. “Sweet Revenge” – Bangs
3. “Shine on You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI-IX)” – Pink Floyd
4. “Two High” – Moon Taxi
5. “Down Under” – Men at Work
6. “The Man Who Sold The World” – David Bowie
7. “Life or Just Living” – Caveman
8. “The Great Salt Lake” – Band of Horses
9. “It’s A Mistake” – Men at Work
10. “Paradise City” – Guns ‘N Roses
11. “I Didn’t Like You Anyway” – The Donnas
12. “Somebody That I Used To Know (feat. Kimbra) (4FRNT Remix)” – Gotye
13. “Slepp Meg” – Lumsk
14. “Africa” – Toto

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* – maybe a little less guilty, as that order for the mixer from monoprice’s open-box list ended up getting cancelled, so they didn’t have it in stock after all, or somebody pushed the order button a few seconds before I did. I’m actually kind of fine with this. Was completely sober when I bought (and used) the chainsaw, though.

One might note from my short friday evening missive that I wasn’t really in the headspace for a great weekend. I managed to salvage some of it, but yeah, it could’ve been better.

Apart from paying the bills and a quick shopping trip with the spouse, I basically checked out Friday evening as indicated.

Saturday I did the usual grocery shopping and such, but laid low for most of the day until we headed into the city to grab a quick dinner and check out the Elle King show I had tickets for.

I enjoyed the show (she’s relatively dynamic on stage, and the band sounded great, as did the opener, Barns Courtney), though being a club show in Richmond, the usual issues with unpleasant crowds applied (I’ve spoken of this in the past – Richmond crowds can be, especially for mainstream pop shows, pretty rude, entitled, and tough to deal with). Combined with my lovely wife not being particularly familiar with the music, and the general personal space issues inherent to club shows, we ended up cutting out a little bit early to beat the crowds and be much more comfortable at home in bed.

Easter was mostly low-key; other than a couple of quick trips out, we stuck around the house. We finally completed the IKEA table hack to make a proper sewing machine environment, though I was largely out of sorts, having not slept particularly well the night before. I was more difficult to deal with than usual (apologies, family), but eventually settled in to watching some stuff on television, including a bunch of Letterkenny and finally spinning the Into the Spider-Verse blu-ray I’ve had for weeks. Both were entertaining.

You’ll see my other post today for an indication of where I am in terms of general attitude and outlook; I’m hoping the weather will cooperate for the week (it looks to) so I can get some bike time in again and hopefully find my happy place. Other than that, it’s looking pretty quiet right now, but…who knows.

After getting word a few weeks back that the huge project I’ve been working on for the last two years was having it’s go-live date bumped to the right…again, with a vague “July…maybe?” indicator for when we’d finally deploy this new functionality, over the last week or so, the general tenor of discussion around the project has taken a much less optimistic turn; it’s still unsaid at this point, but there’s not really talk of “when” any longer. I’m not sure we’re at “if” yet, but I know it’s on people’s minds.

Today’s Monday status meeting was largely about tying up loose ends and putting the whole thing in stasis, to be picked up later once the folks in the rarified air of the senior agency and department suites decide what to do with us, but all indications is that it’s going to be a long wait. The meetings are being canceled until there’s something to report. Given that the last date was July, no realistic date is expected until after the fiscal year changeover. Of course, to get to that point, we’ve got to go through budgets, contracting and resource allocation, and all that, so really, who knows.

What I do know is that the back-end guys are rolling our test box back to production condition, and there’s talk of, in the meantime, working on smaller production fixes that were going to wait until after the changeover. I’ve kicked up the possible impacts to my friends in Washington who are shepherding “my” pet project (since nobody around here wanted to pay for it) to simplify this whole business; that one was building toward a post-deployment landscape; now adjustments have to be made which is probably going to hose that up too. Plus, I’m kind of pissed that we’re kind of on the edge of having wasted the last two years on something that’s now uncertain to happen at all.

Combine this more gradual shift with the sudden, unanticipated release of some HR information before management was ready to talk about it (a bunch of “common use” IT functions are getting bumped up to the department level rather than across agencies) thanks to some errant email traffic, it feels as if some significant changes might be on the horizon, especially given the low-level rumors that my agency may not be long for the world (which are starting to feel a little more solid), I don’t really like the uncertainty.

That said, as a two-decades’ member of the public sector workforce, if circumstances seriously change, the powers that be will find a place for me, even if it might not quite be a place I’d choose for myself; I’m better off that certain people who would find themselves completely out of a job if their project was suddenly canceled.

Even so, these circumstances aren’t particularly conducive to worry-free living, with no anxiety about what might be coming along next.

Today has not been particularly awesome.

I woke up quite sore from seemingly overdoing the exercise. Oh well. After the morning ablutions, I checked the messages, learned that the wife of a dear friend in the fandom/music community passed away on Thursday evening.

Kinda went downhill from there, with all kinds of little things tripping off anxiety and general ill feelings.

Anyway, hope your day was better; I think I’m just going to take the rest of the evening, and perhaps quite a bit of tomorrow off.

See you on the other side.

This week, all told, hasn’t been too bad, at least from where I sit on Thursday night. The weather’s been absolutely gorgeous, allowing me to knock out a good thirty miles on the bike (my usual stretch of the Virginia Capital Trail) over three days, though Thursday’s ten miles hurt something fierce. I’m not sure I’ve overdone it, but I know that I’m not in peak condition just yet; but I’ll sort myself out in time. I could, I think, use a day off to recover (other than my usual 200 push ups a day in the office to keep from murdering someone through the phone line) and rest; this works because it’s supposed to rain and such Friday.

Today’s post title ties into the fact that the project I’ve been working for two years and change, it seems, is getting bumped to the right again…already. I still don’t have a go-live date, but it’s probably going to blow out my contract year at this point. Oh well. My biggest problem is that the other project I got started (with help from some folks up in DC) is probably going to be finished before this one is, which is potentially going to hose up all sorts of things, because this project was originally supposed to go live back in October…it’s almost a year late, and it’s really damaging my calm, since none of the delays are my fault (hell, I’m done at this point, and have been for a while)…argh, anyway.

That last paragraph came to light this afternoon, which did a lot to kill the high spirits I woke up with after another successful Open Mic hosting gig at Castleburg. The usual crowd brought their usual “A” game, and we had a bunch of new faces show to do their thing, including some poetry, a talented songwriter (with a song about digging up Elvis, which was a ton of fun), and a guy who picked up the bass just a few months ago to come up with something to do for retirement, and came out to share his progress, an he was damned good. I’m ridiculously proud of the community I’ve had a part in fostering; we have a ton of fun, people tell me how much they dig the friendly and encouraging atmosphere, and the management likes me, because the folks who show (on what would normally be a pretty quiet night) buy lots of food and beer. This is always one of the highlights of my month, and they pay me a little bit for my trouble (and cover my bar tab), which is always nice.

I guess that makes me a professional? I dunno.

Anyway, for the Easter weekend, I’m hoping to take it easy. I’ve got a bunch of paperwork to do on Friday at work (though I expect they’ll cut us loose early), although the kids are off of school tomorrow. The big event is that thanks to my WNRN membership, I scored a couple of free tickets to the Elle King show in town on Saturday. I really dug her first record (“Exes and Ohs” was ubiquitious, and pretty great), and her new one, Shake the Spirit is pretty damned good too. I’m looking forward to getting out with the lovely wife for date night.

In any case, that’s about it, except for the music – kind of appropriately full of modern indie women; I’ll take it.

1. “Lavaroth” – Valentine Wolfe
2. “C is for Corpse Camp” – Mikey Mason
3. “What Do You Hear in these Sounds” – Dar Williams
4. “DMZ” – Leslie Hudson
5. “Wasted Years” – Iron Maiden
6. “On The Sea” – Efenwealth Wystle
7. “Hang on Me” – St. Vincent
8. “That Train” – The Badlees
9. “Never Land” – The Long Losts
10. “The Speeding Ticket Song” – Danny Birt
11. “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)” – Florence + The Machine
12. “Shane” – Liz Phair
13. “Phree Burd” – Beth Patterson

So…I spent most of Thursday waiting for my office phone to get fixed. A problem I reported to the trouble ticket gods three weeks ago. Now, I have a dial tone, but no phone that works. It seems my organization is on the cusp of changing over to a new Voice over IP system, but when they started changing things, everybody forgot that my building was there, and killed my line. I say “they forgot”, but that doesn’t entirely explain the eight pallet loads of new phones to be deployed at a later date currently residing in the storage side of my building.

So, I have an old-fashioned analog phone line at my desk, but no old-fashioned analog phone to plug into it. Oh yeah, new phone number too. Oh well.

Otherwise, the week’s been relatively quiet, beyond the adventure I posted about the other day. This weekend should be low impact; for me, anyway – less so for the children – the youngest is performing in a choir at the district fine arts festival on Saturday, and the middle one is going to the prom Friday night. I’ve been scrambling to buy corsages and such the last 24 hours. Oh well; it’ll be cool.

Oh, and the other night I proved that I probably should not have a beer and browse monoprice. I bought a mixer. I got a really good deal, but I probably shouldn’t do that.

Anyway….music. Lots of friends.

1. “Looks Like Rain (demo)” – SJ Tucker
2. “Waking Up In Vegas” – Katy Perry
3. “Don’t Turn Your Back on South Dakota” – Jonah Knight
4. “(Listen to) The Flower People” – Spinal Tap
5. “Flutterbye” – Dirty Metal Lefty
6. “Hot Cha” – TMBG
7. “The Bells” – Valentine Wolfe
8. “Drinking With Satan” – Mikey Mason
9. “Carving Knife” Leslie Hudson
10. “Dark Arts” – Errand of Mercy
11. “Undertow” – Genesis
12. “Supernova” – Liz Phair

So, I took a day off of work today and spent it at the elementary school volunteering as a “positive male role model” as part of the WATCH D.O.G.S. program. It’s the kind of thing I probably should have done sooner, as my youngest kid is but three months short of moving on from elementary school, and my oldest is in college, but hey, whatever. I’m not sure it’s even been around that long.

So, I gave an enthusiastic introduction the morning announcements as the strains of the titular Baha Men tune faded, gave a ton of high fives to the younger ones, and got kind of quizzical, amused looks from my youngest child’s friends. Oh well, she was proud I was there.

My duties according to the schedule they gave me had me helping out in 40 minute shifts in lots of, for whatever reason, 2nd grade classrooms. I ended up tutoring a bunch of math, worked out pretty well – I got a kid to understand “borrowing” in subtraction, so I nailed the good deed for the day. I also covered cafeteria duty, supervised recess, and helped out carrying some things.

Although I’ve been the father to three kids through elementary school (or nearly so) at this point, I shall never get used to the fact that I feel like a giant as I make my way through elementary school classrooms (the furniture is so small); and, I’d probably never have the patience to be a legit elementary school teacher; it’d be way to draining for not nearly the reward I get for managing adults working software projects, who are, honestly, not that different in terms of maturity or excessive dramatic license when it all comes down to it, but in the end, I’d rather make the low six figures that I do rather than a fifth that for what’s honestly more work.

Having spent some time on the teacher side of the “chalk line” myself, even if it was only a little less than a year, I have great respect for teachers, especially since I did it for just long enough to wash out. These folks are, frankly, heroes, for putting up with the crap they do for the little reward they do it for, and deserve our respect (I’m definitely buying a teacher a beer the next time I hit Castleburg) and appreciation. One of the second grade teachers I worked with today was having an extra hard day, and it was my pleasure and honor to spend a little while serving as a sympathetic ear for them this afternoon.

Anyway, that’s what I did today. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be back to dealing with the vagaries of program management.

As I posted on social media earlier today, I don’t know what those folks at Goblins and Growlers shared with me on Monday night, but it hit me really, really hard by Tuesday afternoon. I have spent the last 48 hours or so in a semi-comatose state, waking only to use the bathroom and cough up green mucus. It’s not been fun.

Unlike Goblins and Growlers at Strangeways, which was a blast, and I’m looking forward to sitting down at the table again to roll some dice and hammer some monsters via my dwarf cleric avatar, Darrak Hammerforge. ‘Twas nice to actually do D&D 5E as a player rather than a DM for once.

Since then, however, beginning with the 20 minute drive home from the brewery, the illness has taken me. I made it through the day at work on Tuesday, though I pretty much passed out in the titular viral coma from Tuesday afternoon through Thursday around noontime, and I still don’t feel great. I am going to fight through the relatively light workday Friday (once again, I’m posting this Thursday night – yay time manipulation!), because I’ve got to head out to SBC for the eldest’s semester dance concert, and bring the youngest home, since my lovely wife is staying out for the weekend for a girls’ weekend and cat settling in.

I’m not really looking forward to the drive, but it’s gonna happen (and I’ll get a couple of episodes of The Adventure Zone in), and I’m looking forward to seeing the kid dance, of course, because she rocks it.

Like I said, it’s been a pretty quiet week, apart from the coughing and hacking. I am planning on hitting the twice-monthly Music Jam at my friend Whisky Dave’s Three Brothers Distillery (recently featured on Moonshiners: Whisky Business!) down the road in Disputanta on Saturday (I’ve been meaning to visit the distillery forever), and playing some tunes if the voice holds out.

Otherwise, I’m just going to try to make it through the weekend, and be healthy by Monday morning.

In any case, here are some tunes off of my hard drive. My buddy Jonah is going to hate that I’m pointing out tune number one on the list (from the forgotten first record), though the rest of it is pretty decent, including a few other friends (and people I wish were my friends):

1. “Go First” – Jonah Knight
2. “Expatriate” – Alison Crutchfield
3. “Dark Horse” – Katy Perry
4. “Not That Kind of Story” – SJ Tucker
5. “Take Out The Trash” – They Might Be Giants
6. “Mesmerizing” – Liz Phair
7. “Madalaine (demo)” – Winger
8. “Dream” – Imagine Dragons
9. “Backyard” – Of Monsters and Men
10. “Mtn Dew” – Madison “Metricula” Roberts
11. “Modern Man” – Arcade Fire
12. “I Bet It Stung” – Tegan & Sara
13. “Howl At The Moon (Sha-La-La)” – The Ramones
14. “New World Man” – Rush

The six of you who look at this space regularly probably missed out on the usual random playlist on Friday, or much of anything lately. Occasionally I step away, sometimes on purpose, sometimes because the office got busy, and decided to block some php code that lets me update things around here from within that network. Oh well.

I did some stuff anyway. I played some tunes at Fantasci with the Humdingers in Raleigh, which was a nice little con with some very friendly staff, but absolutely dead in terms of merchandise sales. I did get to play with the full 5 piece band on Saturday night, though, which was cool, as the junior Humdingers are pretty talented. I did end up coming home from the con on Saturday night; missing karaoke, but otherwise did okay, getting to sleep in my own bed, and hang with the fam at the Church Hill Irish Festival in the city on Sunday. I also left my book of tunes at Humdinger Central, but I’ll grab it some other time, and I can mostly reconstitute from digital archives anyway.

The week at work was relatively uneventful. The usual project delay garbage, my office phone being down for some reason (which honestly isn’t a big problem for me), and whatnot. I also did the quarterly dog and pony show* with my various customers to give them the state of things and talk schedules, which went well enough, and I don’t really have to think much about it for a couple of months.

I did take the day off on Thursday to chaperone the 5th grade field trip to Washington DC, where we checked out museums and walked some of the memorials, including some I’d never actually been to before, including the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (“The Wall”) an the Korean War Memorial, which is kind of neat. The kids had fun, and I got a nice change of pace.

The weekend that just passed had some interesting events; I played the open mic at Väsen Brewing in town Friday night, knocking out a few tunes, seeing some open mic friends from other events, and enjoying the tunes from house band Weekend Plans. The room itself was a little cavernous, so I’m not sure exactly what folks heard what *any* of us were laying down, but it was fun, people (those who were paying attention, anyway, not that guy sitting front and center staring at the projected video on the opposite wall) said nice things, and I’ll probably do it again sometime.

Saturday was a new experience, tailgating and shouting along with the River City Red Army at the home opener for the Richmond Kickers Soccer Club with friends who are big fans. We had a blast, and we’ll likely do it again soon. After the game, we popped over to Castleburg for dinner and caught a set from Sweet Something, a great jazz combo.

Today I’m just taking it easy, doing laundry and helping the youngest put together a D&D adventure she plans on running with friends over spring break, and planning on making some vegetarian curry for dinner later.

The coming week should be uneventful, but as usual, one can really only hope for the best there.

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* – Sadly lacking any actual dogs and/or ponies.

So as I write this, it’s Thursday night (I stage these posts for publishing later sometimes!), I’ve just paid the bills, which, as sometimes happens, isn’t all that fun, particularly when things get staggered to the point that all kinds of stuff hits at the same time. Oh well; I shall just have to focus on the positive: That I had a tune published by the FuMP this week, that I had an absolutely *kick-ass* open mic last night where I got to debut a couple of original tunes that went over well, and I get to go play rock star this weekend at FantaSci with a bunch of my musical friends.

That’s gotta be enough to get past the badly staggered bills, the ten pages of bullshit memo my boss and I have to help another department address, and the fact that the weather’s still swinging wildly between the 20°s and the 70°s and screwing with my sinuses.

Not much else to report, I guess; tomorrow is work and then driving to North Carolina, finding my bandmates, and playing a show. Then doing the same thing more or less on Saturday. Oh, if you happen to be around Durham and want to catch a show, here’s where I know I’m playing:

• Friday, 8pm – Magnolia Room
• Saturday, 6pm – Magnolia Room (full band, featuring the junior Humdingers!)

Otherwise, we’ll be vending all weekend, and figuring out the way thi first-year con operates.

So anyway: tunes. Not a bad list pulled off the damned hard drive while I type, including a few friends. Enjoy:

1. “Flood I” – Sisters of Mercy
2. “Day and Night” – The Jim Carroll Band
3. “Lame Claim to Fame” – “Weird” Al Yankovic
4. “Take Your Time” – The Clarks
5. “Why I Had To Go” – Bishop Allen
6. “Skin Tight” – Winger
7. “Kenesaw Mountain Landis (live)” – Jonathan Coulton
8. “Harry Pottter’s Three” – Danny Birt
9. “Poem of War” – SJ Tucker
10. “Little Red Button” – Foot Pound Force
11. “Black Mirror” – Arcade Fire
12. “Girl with One Eye” – Florence + The Machine
13. “Love Shack” – The B-52s