The news that came out this morning that Patton Oswalt’s wife, Michelle McNamara passed away has hit me a bit more deeply than one would expect. I didn’t know them, don’t know of anyone I know who knows them…I am, however, a big fan of Mr. Oswalt’s work. In fact, it’s an odd piece of timing; after getting up way too early this morning to drop the boy off for a scout overnight, I had plans to go back to bed, but it wasn’t in the cards, so I put a load of laundry in and crashed on the couch to watch his new netflix standup special Talking for Clapping (which I enjoyed tremendously, by the way – the birthday clown bit could be the new rat story), after which I checked the news on my phone and saw this story.

Here’s the thing, I guess – you get a bit of a feeling for people through their art, especially people like Oswalt, whose comedy is so based in storytelling and personal experience; I expect the Patton Oswalt we see on stage talking about his wife and kids is exaggerated a bit, but it seems pretty close to the real thing (especially given the stories you hear about him from others). And the guy I see on stage isn’t all that different from me – fortyish, intelligent, literate, geeky, obsessive, depressive, and interested in doing a good job in their chosen profession and being a good husband and father. It’s really easy to paste myself into that position, just as it was when this happened to a church friend a year or two back.

So yeah, empathy is kicking in here, as is more than a little bit of fear. I may have texted my wife (who’s off on adventures this weekend with the eldest) something to the effect of “Please Don’t Die, Okay?” this morning.

I hope Mr. Oswalt and his daughter and the rest of his family get all the help and support they need during what is surely a very difficult time. They have my sympathies.

We could all die any day
But before I’ll let that happen,
I’ll dance my life away

Yeah. Prince died yesterday. 2016 has been a pretty terrible year for losing rock and roll icons; icons that actually resonated with me, rather than old do-wop guys who were influential to the medium but, to be honest, meant relatively little to me on a personal level.

Bowie. Prince. Glenn Frey. Merle Haggard. Lemmy (yeah, last week of 2015, but he gets grandfathered in), not to mention non-musical folks like Alan Rickman and Gary Shandling.

Logically, I know this is primarily a symptom of the fact that as I get older, the artists whose work was positioned to hit the sweet spot of my own coming of age (early to mid 1980s) are hitting the age where death is a real possibility. Emotionally, it feels like a hell of a lot of heroes and formative influences are being yanked away with alarming regularity; that so many of them disappeared in the first quarter of 2016 feels a little too frequent to me, like the universe looked at the so-called “rule of three” and said “screw this, I’m cleaning house.”

Anyway, either way, it sucks. Like a lot of these guys, Prince came to me later than his true heyday; I always enjoyed the tunes, but when his videos were in seriously heavy rotation on early-days MTV, I was a little too young to really get how boundary-pushing (“Sugar Walls”? yeah, it took me years to get that one…) and competent the stuff was. It was only later when I got my hands on copies of “Purple Rain” and “1999” in my 30s after accumulating a bunch of life experience and twenty-odd years of musical training did I realize how well put-together and virtuosic all that stuff was, even with the early 80s synths and drum programming. God, the guitar playing on those records; so understated, but so freakin’ amazing – it was like when I really listened to Zappa the first time; that’s the only comparison I can make, and I don’t make such comparisons lightly. That eccentric little guy from Minneapolis with the unbridled love of basketball and pancakes was an irreplaceable talent, and seriously knew his way around a telecaster:

I don’t have all that many interesting Prince stories. When I was in middle school, a couple of kids in the neighborhood, inspired by the single off of “1999”, used to tease me about my torrid affair with “the girl in the Little Red Corvette” because it was funny when I got flustered and embarassed – this was before I realized that most Corette owners are retired real estate guys with greying ponytails who bought the automatic because they can’t drive stick looking to recapture lost/never had youth and not hot chicks (I was twelve or thirteen; “hot chicks” at that point were interesting, but largely theoretical to me) but the memory, weird as it is, has stuck with me for decades, even if I always liked “Raspberry Beret” better.

Also, strangely enough, my first purchase from a dealer’s room at a con was a copy of Prince’s “Batman” soundtrack on cassette at a Star Trek convention in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre PA at some point in high school. I’m sure there were a bunch of other more interesting things around (dealer rooms were a little more wild wild west back then – I can only imagine the interesting and illicit bootleg crap I could have gotten my hands on instead!), but for some reason, that’s the thing I gravitated toward. I listened the hell out of that tape, and for some reason, “Arms of Orion” sticks with me the most all these years later, even though it wasn’t even in the movie (which blew my 15 year old mind back then).

So yeah, my Prince stories aren’t all that cool, compared to the couple of people I know on social media who had the opportunity to meet the guy over the years. Whatever.

Going back to the heroes thing – Prince was one of those guys, along with Bowie, who, even if I wasn’t necessarily cognizant of it at the time, passed on the lesson that there were ways to be “a man” beyond the traditional stereotypical definitions of masculinity, and that “weirdness” could be a virtue to be reveled in, celebrated, and admired. I think I, and whole generations of people, needed that kind of example, and I appreciated it, even if I wasn’t always conscious of it.

It’s really a shame they’re gone. There are plenty of people out there carrying on the example these days for weird kids to look up to, but guys like Prince set the standard.

Oh yeah, it’s friday. Random ten:

1. “Best of Both Worlds” – Van Halen
2. “So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)” – R.E.M.
3. “Livin’ On A Prayer” – Bon Jovi
4. “Summer of ’69” – Bryan Adams
5. “Never Say Never” – that dog.
6. “Thunderstruck” – AC/DC
7. “Lord of the Blacksmiths” – Falconer
8. “Little Hell” – The Badlees
9. “Ironic (live)” – Alanis Morrissette
10. “Iris” – Goo Goo Dolls

first of all, I am happy to report that my work concerns I mentioned last week aren’t really concerns; it looks like they got things locked down, and the fact that I made some noise about it during the dog and pony show Q&A was appreciated by the people that matter. One less thing to worry about…unrelated to the stupidity that comes up every weekend when I’m slightly unplugged because I’m on airplanes or on leave (I’ve dealt with a bit of that this morning already).

oh well. Trip was decent otherwise. Got to get some face time with people I rarely see in person, which always helps future interactions. The presentation was long and dull, but it included all the right things I needed to hear to indicate that the project, at least in these early stages, is heading in the right direction.

Airplane experience was thankfully shorter and relatively painless, other than the unfortunate pizza encountered in Newark airport while my plane was delayed, and the delay coming home when a previous passenger on the plane got their luggage stuck in the overhead on my connecting plane.

Par for the course, really, though on one leg of the homebound trip, I shared the plane with a cowboy in a tuxedo. I don’t get it either, but it was a novelty.

On my free afternoon while out of town, I did finally catch Batman vs. Superman, which wasn’t as terrible as I expected it to be; the real tragedy is that there’s a really *good* movie in there trying to come out, if only director/DC movie grand poo-bah Zack Snyder wasn’t constantly trying to suffocate it under shot after shot of spent cartridge casings falling to the ground in slow motion. Affleck wasn’t awful with what he was given, Henry Cavill is still a charisma vaccum. The real highlight is Wonder Woman, in the ten minutes of screen time she gets. Go see her movie next year, feel free to skip or rent this one.

The weekend was pretty full. Gaming with friends on Saturday (this was the session where I finally figured out 7th Sea‘s mechanics – now I just need to really digest the world), taking care of the usual business on Sunday – laundry and trying to deal with the sprain I got in my back from all the airplane seats.

Watched a couple of movies too – Moonwalkers, aka “Ron Perlman and Ron Weasley drop acid and fake the moon landing”, and Final Girl, which is an amazing inversion on horror movie cliches, and you should definitely watch it.

This week? paperwork, some music, and getting the girls ready for another dance competition. woo.

I know I bitch about work a lot here, but I don’t generally bitch specifically about the way my organization does things. Today I’ll make an exception, names concealed to protect the guilty.

As I said yesterday, I’m travelling out to the midwest for a day-long Dog and Pony Show/Kick-off meeting for a big, multi-million dollar, multi-year modernization project of an ancient business system. This kind of thing has actually, totally by accident, kind of become my career, as anybody who’s a regular reader here probably knows.

It’s safe to say that I know a little about how to make one of these things work.

Going over the agenda for tomorrow’s meeting, I noticed that the discussion of “Change Management” has been stuffed into the dead zone right at the end of the presentation, where everybody’s watching the clock instead of paying attention to the material.

If this is any indication of the relative priorities of the program, I’m a little worried. Change management (the process of getting everybody in the organization, including those folks doing the modernization work, invested in making things work, and getting everyone excited about the effort) is the kind of thing that makes or breaks a project like this; if the organization isn’t invested in making things happen, and leadership isn’t giving their all to sell the idea, the effort’s going to wither on the vine and the project will fail.

This is especially important for a project like this, that failed exactly that way about a decade ago, largely because those doing the work weren’t “on board”. I really hope they have priorities in order. I’m not in charge of this one, though I work pretty closely with those that do, especially the guy at the top; anytime I get their ear, I hammer on the change management stuff first (even before I start telling them where my actual systemic priorities are), because it’s the most important.

This agenda doesn’t fill me with confidence that my message has been received.

I really don’t want to be worrying about this, especially when there’s all kinds of other cool stuff going on in the world, like this teaser trailer for the Doctor Strange movie:

Astral Projection! Eff Yeah!

This looks pretty great. The Doc’s one of my favorites. Cumberbatch’s “Doctor House” voice is a little weird, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

Feeling maybe normalized again after a rough emotional week. In between running kids to formal events, rehearsal, and Irish Dance Spectaculars, I got a lot of video game time in…knocking out wave after wave of HYDRA goons and demons in Mid-Town Manhattan in Marvel Heroes can, in its own way, be meditative.

On Sunday after my shift with Irish Mystique, the girls and I had a nice dinner out with friends, just chatting and eating sushi; it was nice.

Like I said, last week at work would have been a banner performance. This week, so far, is a bit more normal. Somebody screwed up the batch timing on the mainframe side over the weekend (why, in modern times, are we still dealing with overnight batches? Or mainframes for that matter? the whole business could run on my phone processor…more on this later), causing an interesting hiccup; we’ve also been chasing some errant “space” characters showing up in fields – like something is dropping into two spaces over. My theory, as posted on social media yesterday:

today’s testing adventure: files are failing because of a seemingly random number of spaces showing up in key fields.

I just know we’re going find out that somebody near the mainframe brought their toddler to work over the weekend and the kid’s been banging on random keyboards….

Anyway; no confirmation on that yet, but honestly, at this point, nothing would surprise me.

Also on my plate yesterday – a big dog-and-pony-show/town hall meeting all day on Thursday in Columbus OH; notification of which was passed to me after close of business on Friday. I don’t really feel like doing a 48 hour drop-in to the midwest, but this meeting is actually relatively important to what I’ll be doing the next couple of years (another decade long modernization project like I wrote about from 1998 through 2013), and maybe fixing some of those parenthetical issues from the third paragraph of this post.

This is still theoretical, because nobody’s approved my travel authorization yet, and my flight leaves around 2pm tomorrow. we’ll see. I’ve done my due squeaky wheel dilligence.

Oh, and it was raining fiercely this morning, and the interstate was filled with erratically moving big trucks. I survived.

Happy Friday, folks. I hope it’s happy for you, at any rate.

Consider this your semi-annual “depression sucks” reminder, because my system is totally reminding me.

I’ve had what one might consider a pretty good week, all told. Work is going amazingly well – I’ve been hesitant to say anything, for fear of jinxing all the really successful testing and operational interfaces and paperwork that makes sure that my people get paid next year (and still saves a decent fraction of my microscopic fraction of the federal budget over the previous year), and I ended my week a day early, after getting a nice pat on the head from the CIO of the agency for a job well done.

Shame my nervous system’s not letting me enjoy any of it.

Oh well; it’s a busy weekend involving formal wear and costumes and dancing and live music and such. I hope I can cope.

Yes, I know there’s going to be post-production work done on this scene to add something in the background; probably some trippy surrealistic Ditko-esque nightmare portal to who knows where…

But, all the same, I kind of want to imagine that this scene from Marvel’s upcoming Doctor Strange, shot in NYC this weekend, is going to go into the movie as-is.

With a properly peppy uptempo musical cue.

Leading into the film’s climactic musical number.

So as you may have gathered from my last post here and the occasional dispatch from social media, I was in California last week. the photo you see above (and any other photos you might see in this post) is not representive of the views I enjoyed while spending my week in the area around Long Beach. Mostly, my view consisted of drab industrial parks, drab public sector conference rooms, and the uncomfortable back seat of a rental Buick Verano (there it is above, cameoing in my photo).

My inaugural trip to California was largely dedicated to organizational budget meetings, which is just as exciting as it sounds. I spent nine or ten hours a day sitting in a conference room talking purchase requests and funding obligations with people who were just as excited about it as I was. You didn’t miss much, and I shall speak no more of it.

Otherwise, I spent a bit of time wandering around downtown Long Beach, where my hotel was located. It was kind of dumpy, with lots of empty storefronts, homeless people, and folks smoking pot openly all over the place (I’m assuming they all had their weed cards in order). All in all, it wasn’t very exciting. It’s what I could manage without having access to a rental car of my very own; not that I was particularly enthused about driving on the Southern California freeways, which gave off a definite Mad Max vibe, only with fewer marked exit ramps.

I did, however, get to finally experience the wonder that is the In-N-Out Double-Double, Animal Style, which was pretty good, but still, you know, fast food. Also, on Wednesday, after a particularly grueling 9 hour budget session, we took a drive past the slums of downtown toward the prettier end of Long Beach where we were actually able to observe the Pacific Ocean:

There it is. Getting there involved us getting stuck for a bit in the setting up for the weekend’s Long Beach Formula E race; though stop-and-go-ing through pit row and a couple of course turns while the guys were painting the finish line on the road was kind of cool.

the only other business worthy of discussion was the whole airplane thing. I kind of hate airplanes. As someone over six feet tall with wide shoulders, they’re unpleasant. Also, flying from the east coast to the west and back involves a lot of time making myself small so as not to seriously inconvenience everyone else on the plane (if you’re over six feet tall with wide shoulders, this is a fact of life nearly everywhere); roughly seven hours each way, not counting layover time in Minneapolis and Atlanta (normally I like Atlanta, but not when I have to sprint from one end of terminal A the opposite end of Terminal B in five minutes to make my connection all while dodging the beginnings of a fist fight at the gate…seriously). It was unpleasant, though offered me the chance to watch a couple of movies and read a couple of novels. I also have a couple of drink cart-shaped bruises on my left shoulder to show for the experience.

Anyway, I’m home now. I took a day off at the end of things, and spent the weekend sleeping off the jet lag and getting my sinuses back in order after all that pressurized tube time, just in time for pllen season to hit Virginia – woke up this morning to find the trees had had all kinds of sex all over my car, leaving the normally shiny black finish a dull yellow-green.

Yay.

It’s been a hell of a week.

I’ve been riding the emotional rollercoaster, given the time of year (I miss my dad). A variable subset of the children have been, shall we say, difficult this week (spring break is coming), though it’s never quite the same problem twice, so it’s hard to nip in the bud. A bunch of changes at work I’ve been kind of expecting (but not quite) are about to start happening, and we still don’t have a good idea of how things are going to shake out; all I know is that my boss is retiring at the end of July, and before that, I’ll probably be re-aligned (this isn’t a bad thing, because it means structure) and really have no idea how that’s going to look. Also, the latter part of this week has involved a lot of the contractors that work for me hustling for money – they make a decent case, but I try to be a good steward of my .00176% of the federal defense budget*, and don’t want to just hand it over unless it’s really necessary.

I’m feeling wrung out, not unlike, as I said sort of poetically on social media, a dish cloth.

I just have to say, thank goodness for my friends, who really are looking out for my best interest. Some folks offered welcome sympathy, and then there’s Ed, who kept the metaphor going, in exactly the wrong-but-right sort of way:

Happy and dry, ready to complete your purpose in existence again!

You can’t help but smile at that. My friends are awesome.

Anyway, I still spent most of the week when I wasn’t at the office hiding in the bedroom with a book; for someone like me, that’s actually comforting and rejuvinating. I think I’m almost ready to start coming out of the shell again a little bit.

Coming up, though, I’ve got some more strange, unsettling pattern breaking. Monday, I have to go to Carson, California (which is the crappy government office area of Los Angeles County) for a week of “mid-year” project planning sessions. Nobody I talk to actually knows what that means, but I’m going. At least I have a hotel on the beach. Looking out at the Pacific Ocean ought to at least be a novelty, and if I manage to find some time, the maps tell me there’s an aquarium near by to check out.

That’s my life right now. Here’s a list of the tunes Pandora kicked out while I was checking emails this morning:

1. “Head Over Feet (live)” – Alanis Morrissette
2. “Glory Bound (live) – The Wailin’ Jennies
3. “Waiting for a Moment to Call Our Own” – The Badlees
4. “Losing My Religion” – R.E.M.
5. “Pumped up Kicks” – Gnarls Barkley
6. “Bohemian Rhapsody” – Queen
7. “Crazy Train” – Ozzy Osbourne
8. “True” – Spandau Ballet
9. “Sound and Color” – Alabama Shakes
10. “Renegade” – Styx

Not bad, I guess, though I’m beginning to lose faith in Pandora, as it recommended I add a Nickleback station to my feed. Nobody needs that.

___________________________________________

* – yes, I did the math. It’s important to me to know exactly how non-influential I am; it puts things in perspective.

It was damned cold this Sunday morning while I poked around the Irish Festival waiting for the girls’ show time to come up. Didn’t stop me from drinking Guinness like everyone who wasn’t waiting in line at the Irish Coffee stand.

Anyway, the girls did a masterful job with the performance I saw (they had some hiccups on Saturday while I was handling other things, but I’m pretty sure nobody noticed but them). The biggest novelty was the fact that their performance on the First Day of Spring was blustery and cold, while they were in shorts and tank tops going into the Christmas parade they marched in back in mid-December.

Weather. pffft.

Otherwise this weekend, I did a bunch of laundry, took care of some shopping (where I had a 99 cent dish sponge ring up at $5045.00; we all had a nice laugh), and made a quick drop in at the local library system’s comic-con where I said hello to a few friends exhibiting. they always get a decent turnout at these things (because, I suspect, FREE), but it brings in a lot of the kids, and introduces them to a lot of neat stuff happening in the area.

In between a lot of that, we binged Daredevil season two in a couple of decent spurts over the course of three evenings, and yeah, it was pretty good, if occasionally a little heavy handed in it’s themes (not exactly out of place in comics, though, right?). Some nice touches connecting it to the rest of the MCU, and they didn’t go too overboard on the Frank Miller misogyny, but managed to jam in a metric assload of ninjas, which was par for the course in 80s Daredevil comics, and thus pretty appropriate.

My favorite bit was this line, which I will present completely out of context (though you might consider it a minor spoiler), which made me laugh and laugh:

So yeah. Weekend. Welcome to Monday.