Mondays are a very bad word

"But is this not a Tuesday post?" you ask.
"Yes. Sorta." answers I.

You see, I work in the twilight blurry spaces between the definitions of actual "days" as normal people call them. I make up my own hours of sleep and waking- nature be darned. With such a chaotic schedule, you think Monday’s bad fortune would not be able to find me. You'd be wrong.

I did give it the shake for 2 weeks, I will tell you that. But I couldn't run forever. Shortly after buzzing around and causing general Mondayness for the Green Dragon Rider, Mday flew its horrid destructive path to me. Heres how it went down.

Actual Monday day: A very good experience. It buttered me up like a fool. I went to the Marzolfs and played the cash flow game, Jessica H. came over and joined us, I had a crazy multi layer ice-cream cake desert that Lyndsi had constructed- twas beautiful. Twas bliss- nay, twas ignorance my good friends.

I should have caught on that something was up. Its obvious now- Monday was laying it on so thick it was ridiculous. How thick? How bout this: After leaving the Marzolfs, I actually heard none other then Mute Math ON THE RADIO. It was on the indiest of indie stations, 91.5 FM, and it was crystal clear. I got to hear most of the track "Noticed", a song among my favorites of all time, on the radio. It was good. It was too good.

But the even Monday grew tired of the sickening sweetness. I got home at 10:00 ish. So- think about this- is it possible for me to go to bed at 10:00 and wake up at 12:20? What is even the point? Monday decided to show me the futility. Basically, I layed in my bed waiting for it to be midnight:twenty. I got up. I read some online comics. I went back to bed, and waited again. The second the alarm beeped I snapped up and turned it off. Enough of this, I thought to myself, lets stop pretending to sleep and get to work already.

I got up and turned the coffee on for my folks and myself. I thought it a nice thing to do. I waited. It wasn't coming out. I looked at the time. It was 12:27. That coffee better start coming out of that darn whole soon, or I'm not going to get any. 12:29. I look behind the machine. Oh RIIIGHT... its unplugged.

Right before the coffee was done brewing, I remembered that I wanted to email myself a file at work. I ran down stairs and did the deed. When I came back up, it was about 12:37ish. Dad had risen. That was good. I didn't want to have to wake him- it was nice enough of him already to wake up and drive me to my work at 1am. I poured my coffee and we were out the door by 12:40. Perfect! I thought to myself, Today is going PERFECT.

Somewhere in a dark corner, Monday laughed at me. But it didn't protest my bliss. It knew that my fall was soon. It knew I wouldn't be laughing then.

We arrive at the door of [AwesomeCo].

"Love you dad!" I say as I give him a hug goodbye, "Thanks for driving me."
"No problem. Goodnight!" he answers, and climbs into the big red Ark. Just before he closes the door, I fall to the ground, struck to the core by a horrible epiphany.

"Nooooooooooo......" I whimper.
"What?" My dad asks, but then answers his own question before I break the news. "Let me guess- I.D. Badge?"
"Yeh-heh-hesss..."I fane cry. "MaaAAN!!"
"You'll have to have someone else let you in now; its too late to get back."

I knew he was right. I pulled out my PDA, and he through me his cell phone. I started digging through the numbers. I found my desk phone. I called it. I then got the number for the lobby and called it. As I was making this call, I caught the eye of one of my co-workers. He saw me and made a strange face, then nodded and started walking my way. I hung up the phone, and told my dad I was good. He bid his farewells once more, and drove off into the distance.

Big D., the co-worker who opened the door for me, answered graciously my apologies. "Everyone does it once or twice." He buzzed me through the few doors I need to get through to get to my desk. I felt so lame.

Our business has a laid back, friendly atmosphere. But that doesn't mean we take security lightly. Its an important company, and in every zone of the building you have to buzz to get in. You can leave, but you can't get back in without using your I.D. Badge. I can't go to the bathrooms and comeback with out using my card. I had to sheepishly use my co-workers once or twice. I combined trips.

Then I get on my computer and start checking through my email. A subject caught my eye and hung on the screen ominously. That CAN'T be for today... I thought to myself. It was.

Apparently, my co-worker T., the one that shares my shift, wasn't coming in today. Car trouble. What’s the big deal you may ask? Oh, nothing much. Only that he was GIVING ME A RIDE HOME.

So here I was. No ride home, and no I.D. Badge to let me roam around freely in the building.

Not that I had many roaming minutes anyway. Today everything happened at once. One of our most reliable servers didn't get its files on time. We waited till they were supposed to be in, then we got on the phones to call the company. The contact field in the call up sheet was blank. We had never had to call this company for this file- it usually completed first, so no one really knew off the top of their head the number or contact name. D. looked for a long time and couldn't find it. He decided he'd have to wake up one of our guys on call. But first he went outside to take a smoke. When he left, I opened several search windows and a few internal web sites. In 6 minutes, I found numbers and contacts for the company in another document. When he came back, I casually showed him the list. "Where'd you get this?" he asked. I told him. He kept looking at it and shrugged his shoulders. "Well, operations... lets call them. Why not." So he called them. I overheard his conversations while I sat and logged down some other server jobs. He got someone, but no one was sure they were the contact he wanted. He had to keep spelling out the file name. "Yes, you send us this file." he kept saying. "Yes, normally- every day, 2am. This is the first time its not been here." They'd say they’d call him back.

Every time they'd call him back, it would be another person, but they would ask about the file name and not know if they handled it. It was frustrating D., I could tell. Finally a big higher-up called him back and asked him what was going on. He explained it, and the guy knew what it was. "Okay, thanks. We'll try to get it out to you... otherwise...well, I guess we'll just do with out [service name] today...".

He called us back later saying he "Thought he might have found it." D and I joked that perhaps it was under the bed all this time. The file was supposed to be in at 2. It came in at 6:50something.

That was just one of the issues today. D was working the phones much harder then I was with a few other companies that were having issues. Something confused us because our servers processed a file earlier then we thought possible. The lightened holiday schedule apparently caused the mainframe to come back up faster then normal to process the files, and it took them. Our monitoring software wasn't even watching till 8, and it had already finished at 7:08. This little issue caused much confusion.

By 8, things were back on course. The late late file was finally processed and that basically finished what I had to do. My friend and fellow brother in the Lord, R., gave me a ride home- even though he was going the other way. So it all worked out. And now- I'm going to make some calls and lay my head to sleep.

For I have faced Monday, and I have overcome. Now I must rest.

Thanksgiving

Today is thanksgiving.


I should know, I've been checking it out since 12:20Am and I can say with total confidence that it is legit. So, act accordingly. Eat turkey and stuffing, eat cranberries and pumpkin pie (or Blueberry, if you so please). Spend hours in conversation with your friends and relatives around a common feast. Hang decorations if you want. But most importantly, reflect to yourself and others what you are thankful for. If you live in this country, you shouldn't have to look to far.

Inspired by my friends around the homeschool blogosphere, I present to you a list- inferior, but similar, to theirs. In no particular order of, I am thankful for

1. My family, whom I will expound upon later
2. My wonderful job that has been given to me as a gift in spite of myself
3. Agape and all the lessons learned, both in and out of the classroom
4. Hannah, who evangelized Tim Burton to Abs and I, and for always having a new post, layout and music video on her blog. :D
5. Kiaya, who writes like other people breath and is never short of good conversation
6. Mr. and Mrs. G, who feel like family after one short year, make excellent Mexican food, coffee and forgive me cookies (even if there was nothing to actually forgive), and do amazing big bird impressions and play some mean jazz (but not all at the same time).
7. Brad for being the coolest, most stoic friend yet still being crazy, and for realizing how awesome musicals are and for inviting us to stuff.
8. Leah for being cool, being fun to work with at church and for having a dad who has an amazing truck I want to buy
9. Living in a country with freedom of religion
10. Living in a country with a free market
11. Living in a state with such low taxes and such good people
12. Being able to do conduct whatever buisness I want to (within, sadly, certain legal bounds)
13. Craigslist
14. Aluminum cans
16. Large transformers and their copper, but not their bloody thick iron
17. Turkey
18. Stuffing (the mix of cornbread crumbs and other ingredients put into fowl on special days)
19. Stuffing (The action, done to ones face, often with the above noun, also on special days)
20. Poetry
21. Cranberry sauce
22. Cliches, Making fun of
23. Cliches (that are actually true)
24. Online comics
25. Eisley- the band, the family (seen here with the producer in his backyard), the blog
26. Google (Whom I love irrationally)
27. My office computer, with its freshly christened dual LCD screen glory
28. Blogging
29. The funny pirate ducky on my desk (Its a ducky with an eye patch- its funny!)
30. Lists
31. The postal service (The band- I could do with out the actual system)
32. Pandora (the site, not the notorious box of ill-repute)
33. Optimism
34. Optimists
35. Being able to see all the sides of an issue
36. 88.9, WERS radio
37. Hours spent waiting for a manager to call work so you can populate thanksgiving lists
38. Abe, for being a genius and for his current obsession with satellites and the International Space Station
39. Joy for her never ending enthusiasm and never ending theatricality
40. Spelling theatricality right on the first try
41. Moriah for her quiet charm and wit, and for being deep
42. Abi, for being so mature and still crazy-random, and for getting along with me despite our attempts to kill each other a few years back
43. Jennifer for being such a role model to me, for the conversations we had last time she was over, and for introducing me to Regina Spektor
44. Josh for being a solid good brother, for pushing himself so hard and becoming teh mast3r of kung fu and for being the baddest baldy ever
46. Mom for being such a staple of love and affection all my life, for bringing me up and keeping her humor despite us all, and for the little bit of Streeter she has imparted into me
47. Dad, for all the priceless experiences he has imparted to me- working, camping, sanding, doing business and talking politics together. I've learned more from him then probably either of us will ever know.
48. Coffee so strong it can retard your very tongue
49. Coffee brewed so fast it can retard your attention spa- Ooh! I love this song!
50. Puns (No matter how ostracized I become from society for them, I still think they are hilarious)
51. Bosses that actually call so you can stop populating thanksgiving lists
52. The diverse and hilarious cast of characters that make up my work, all of which you could easily incorporate into a comic strip
53. Readers of this blog that sprinkle the globe and span the country (who ARE you guys?)
54. 42, for confounding us and creating the second question- what is the ultimate question?
55. God, for never being fully understandable, but always there. Because his mercy his greater then his judgement. Because he loved a wretch like me- to the point of his death, even death on a cross.

A small list I know, but there is of course a never ending supply of entries and I had to stop somewhere.

On number 53- honestly, this is crazy. I've seen a viewer from Australia last month and I get regular hits from North Carolina. Thank you for reading! Please don't be shy in the comments; if you enjoy anything or disagree or are even alive, let me know. I'm curious who reads this.

Have a happy thanksgiving everyone!

A low quality update

A gap in the site
Has been closed at last
Other worldly might
Hath brought it to past

Another random post here.

I switch shifts next week- on to 1am to 9am. Hurray for weird hours!

Today was great. It actually got wicked busy for a bit- its Friday and since there is no trading on the stock market tomarrow, Fridays are often slow. But we had technical issues tonight. I probably can't go to deep into them, but it was great to see how [AwesomeCo] handeled it. A job "blew up" (a term we use around here that just means it didn't go through- but its more fun to say) and when we started trouble shooting it we realized it lead to much bigger issues. It was a flurry of activity for awhile- all on call techs were woken up, the day time I.T. and network gurus were brought in. I felt weird not doing anything- though I haven't administered a network quite of this scope, I still felt thats where I should be and it was hard to sit their and let them do all the troubleshooting. Not that I could have been much help- I don't really know the first thing about the way this network is laid out. Anyway the issues were resolved probably within 2 hours. It was impressive. After that, the only noticable difference for the evening was that one server had its jobs an hour late- which is not biggie.

I also got an official nickname now from D at work. D is a character- a master of colorful language and an artist of sarcasm. I believe he was a truck driver in his past life. I kept asking why we couldn't do things this way or improve efficiency by turning on more notifications that way.

"Its like your first frick'n week here, and your already trying to run everything Governor!" came the jesting reply. And from that point on, he would occasionally address me as The Governor. He made it official tonight by putting it on the white board. Funny stuff.

Break for random-

If time is currency of affection
What is the decider of its direction?
Trying to refrain from past mistakes
Eating my words with land o' lakes

Haha, okay so I guess I was to lazy to try and make that one work. Maybe later.

Oh- heres a funny thing. My friend's Jake posted a peice about going to a concert with a friend and not understanding on his life why anyone would want to pay money for a concert and not at least react to it- a head bob, a finger drum- something, anything! I mentioned to him that I am the same way, but I have a friend (meaning B rad) that is stoic as they come, and yet still enjoy music as Bloody flaming awesome. He replied back, saying "Yeah I guess, but bive bucks he dances in his room like a little girl" or some such. Well. I thought that was funny, but never would I have thought it to be so.

Then what to my wondering eyes should appear- but Brad himself admitting to all that was theere. There. *cough* Anyway...

He testified plainly on Hannahs blog to having random outbursts of singing and dancing.

I'm glad I didn't take you up on that bet Jake, or I guess I'd be out 5 bucks.

Totally uncalled for.

Okay. Here it is- my story of employment. About 3 billion years late in coming, I know...

I don't want to rehash anything much about the whole Agape thing, because really I can't say much and its all behind me now. But it is important to appreciate the full scope of the following stories impact that I simply remind you that I was pretty miserable for a bit after I left. Agape and its people mean alot to me. And so even though I decided to "make the best of it" and I trusted God would eventually birth something from this, I had absolutely no suggestions for him. I had screwed things up pretty badly.

To compensate academically, my parents and I eventually worked out a more aggressive education plan at home. This will probably prove to be another wondrous work of Gods will; I ended up getting more organized and completing school faster as a result of leaving one. Odd.

While doing school on a Tuesday, I got a call. I picked it up and my friend Tim C. who used to go to my church was on the other line. I talked to him for a bit asking him all sorts of questions- he had just got back from Peru and was engaged, so I had a few for him) but eventually he told me "Hey, Zeke- actually, thats not the reason I called you. You remember my brother, Mike?"

I told him of course I did. I had met him on occasion and thought he was cool, but I had never really been friends or known him very well. Tim continued,

"Well, he works for a company, [AwesomeCo]- not sure if you have heard of it- doing I.T. stuff there, and there is an opening in the company right now. He thought of you and asked me if I could touch base and see if you were interested. It pays around such and such a year and is a full time job. Its in Salem. Are you interested?"

I asked him a few more questions, but of course I conceded that I was indeed interested. He gave me his brother's email address and I dropped him a line with my resume attached.

Mikes reply was short:

Sounds good man, when can you come in for an Interview? Are you free tomorrow?

Let me know. What are you looking for as far as salary is concerned?

I was dumbfounded. I talked to my parents, and then got back to Mike and set a time and day for the interview. My dad was a bit skeptical at first- he is, wisely, concerned that about me being able to finish my education. But this job's hours were 2nd shift- 3pm to 11pm- which is ideal.

After my dad was on board, which didn't take to long, he suggested that I try to make the best impression possible. We literally went to JC Penny and invested in some nice clothes, including a suit jacket and a TIE. Yeah. It was pretty funny. For the first half of the shopping trip, I just couldn't take it. It was too foreign to me- I am a WalMart-by-choice shopper. I bawk at even the most severe of sales at JC Penny's. But in the end, my dad knew it was important and he was fronting the cost. It took me awhile to get over that and the general sticker shock and actually look for something. Once we did, it still took a bit to decide what I wanted. We were looking at ties for maybe 10 minutes, having a conversation between us and the sales guy that went something like this:

Dad: "But now does this color go with that shade of blue? It doesn't clash with this, does it?"
Me: "I like this cause it really makes the colors pop. But its so clear, it almost makes the outfit look top heavy..."

Then we looked at each other and gave out a nervous laugh before I finally yelled "What are we DOING??" It was a strange but hilarious moment.

I went to the job interview and learned more. The people there were really nice and I got to know a bit more about the company and what I would do. I went in with the mentality that I had to fight to convince them of my technical ability. We ended up, however, not focusing on that very much. They seemed confident in that (for what reason I do not know) and instead talked more about the hours, what I wanted out of this job and so forth. It was good; I informed them that 3 to 11 was fine, (ideal, actually) and let them know that I was interested in this job because it would be a steady income but still give me the opportunity to learn some new things.

Days passed and I came in for another interview. Long story short, they hired me.

Now sit back and look upon this for a second- God took me out from some amazing people for awhile to deal with some things. But it left a void of fellowship and other things. Not only did he fill it, he gave me a job that makes me more money a month then I did on my own self employment all of last year. There is no way I can boast in this. I didn't even look for it. It came to me. And the people here are really great, too. Its amazing. This blessing was totally uncalled for.

So that is that. I have a full time job. But what exactly do I do you ask? The official job title is Batch Production Controller. But what does that mean?

Well, to understand this in context you have to realize what [AwesomeCo] does. [AwesomeCo] is a huge company that was actually started by [Awesome Oil Co] during a slump in the oil market, but now it has grown into a company that manages 15 TRILLION dollars of assets. Our division is a big part of that.

We're called [AwesomeCo] finance and we are an acquisition. Formally called [JustAsAwesomerCo], the founders of this company (most of who are still working here) found a great niche market- the overnight accounting for the stock market, basically. Every night, companies drop files on our servers that have all their trading information for the day. Every night, we run it through our systems- over 20 top of the line Power Edge servers and a Tandem mainframe- and spit it back out to them before the market opens so that they can trade on it. Over 90% of the securities exchange market goes through us. We are a relatively little company with a huge impact- if we went down, so would the market the next day. Because of that we have totally redundant servers in a different part of New Hampshire that will take over in the event this one goes down- complete with battery and generator backup.

Because it is imperative that this data get out every morning, there is a night shift that exists to babysit the automated system. I am training with them right now- every night, they monitor the system and check everything. We actually have a checklist where we go down a list of commands that are supposed to be run and make sure they were. If any of them are held up, we find out why. Sometimes its because the client hasn't sent us their data. Sometimes its a server glitch. Whatever it is, if it goes wrong, we have to get on the phone and get it resolved.

Right now, the department I am in supports three or so different applications. Their is the main one I told you about that does the data for most of the market, another one that is just for broker/dealers, and a brand new one which has come about because of some new regulations for the industry. The company has another program they are rolling out soon that has to get approved by all the regulating bodies. Once thats done, I'll move from the night shift to my 3 to 11 position. Right now, I'm on the 10pm to 6am shift. I'm cross training on backups and some other stuff. After a week, I'll move to the 1am to 9am position and train there. By the years end, the new program should be rolled out hopefully, and I will head up supporting it on my own shift. I'm pretty excited. Its cool stuff.

The greatest thing about it here is the environment. Everyone has been really nice and its pretty laid back. They have catered food every day for the people on the more sane shifts, and because I'm working after that they slip an extra 8 dollars a day in the salary for meals. They also have those awesome little individual serving coffee machines and a huge plethora of roasts to choose from- including such amazing flavors as blueberry and my new personal favorite of the season, pumpkin spice.

You do work here, but there is alot of in-between time when your waiting for files or stuff just isn't breaking and there isn't much to do, and thats when you get to utilize the broadband and blazing fast computers. Intel and I have had our differences in the past, but I am happy with my Pentium 4 hyperthreading system with two- count 'em, two! gigabytes of memory.

There is quite a bit more about my job that I'm sure I've left unanswered. But you get the gist. I waited for a bit to post this anyway, because I wanted to get a good feeling for what I'll be doing, but I figured if I didn't post it soon it would be pointless. If you guys have any questions though, feel free to ask them in the comments. I'll probably blog more about work in the near future.

Till next time everyone!

Edit:

Self-censored content:
My apologies to my new employer [AwesomeCo], who is amazing. Three days after I posted this, they called me because their web-crawlers flagged it for getting to close to revealing operational stuff and the company by name. They were really nice about it and simply let me know what I needed to change. All is well that ends as such.

---Z

Poetic musings

Free Fall

Life starts in the womb
A tower so strong and so tall
And from birth to the tomb
We are all in free fall

We all fall different
And we all fall the same
We fall in unique and predictable ways

Depending on season
And our number of days
Sometimes our life falls together
Sometimes we fall away

But we all fall-
This is the one "Same"
Sometimes we think we are static
But it is never that way

-_---_-__-

Mental Vental Beta

A breather from the triumph
A lull in the break-neck pace
I need to take my doughy lumps
Less the soup be to sweet to the taste

But sour I can not make the soup taste
Even if I tried, I can't wipe this grin off my face
And no one would for this show me hate
But I shouldn't be reckless and cause an opposite state

I watch and read the lines alive
With unspoken meaning they ebb and dive
Like the waves of a dangerous ocean
Taming with meanings not yet spoken
A rough yet true field where hearts are broken
From nebulous meanings bestowed in token

Sit I there with a distracted concern
Not quite sure of what I've learned
But knowing still that trouble lies
In the admiration of innocent eyes

Sit I again with face aglow
From phosphorus light I do well know
Reading posts and drinking in
I feel attached but distant from my kin

Reading and weighing whats before me
I choose to pass on a possibility
A possibility to do good but with high risk
Of commiting greivous error if I miss

For my words are not arrows trimmed so well
They fumble in my hands my friends will tell
They sometimes maybe hit the mark
But but are dangerous enough to kill from afar

And this reason I choose to wait
And air my words at a later date.

(The post is crud; I know it well
but please do not to the world this tell.)
---_--_-
Eighh... so the mental vental is just a sort of random thoughts and reflections on things thinly veiled in crude poetry with sloppy composition. It was fun to write though.

Free Fall was inspired basically from the talks around K's blog about the deep questions and what not, especially as I've felt a sort of subtle transicion myself as of late.

And yes all; I WILL blog about my new job soon. I kinda want to average out a few days of what its like so I can more accurately tell you what its all about. Its for the good of the content here, folks. Honest.

Heh.. maybe I do take these posts to seriously. Anyway... It is a fun job I'll let you know that and I love it so far, but it does keep me a bit busy. Allegedly though, when I get into the routine, it slows down quite often which means I might have actually MORE time to blog and what not. We shall see.

More later.

(And by later, I mean an undetermined, non-defined stretch of time.)