Category: Remembering the bad times for the good I have now

I can’t see in between, but I can see when the sun goes down and the lights go out.

In the last 5 days I have been to more sporting events then I care to shake a stick at…. Sunday Cardinals – Giants game, follow on Tuesday/Wednesday with playoff Baseball with the Diamondbacks -Brewers.

I’m not gonna lie it’s been kinda awesome.

The part that was more awesome then winning two out of three of those games though is this little thought.

At Sunday’s Cardinals game, the crowd was in Cardinal Red (and Black) and while yes it was only the Giants they are a old rival from the days back in the NFC East.  And lets face it there are a fair number of New York transplants and people who while seemingly normal love the Giants.   After the Cowboys game two years ago and the Raiders game last year I had come to the opinion that Arizona sports fans would not measure up to these two “storied” franchises.  What I forgot about the Cowboys and the Raiders is that they have endured allot of losing in their time, not Cardinal levels of futility, but bad stretches and to a lesser extent the Giants have had the same issues in the past and I’m sure they will in the future that is just how these things work. While it’s easy to love a team when they are winning and going to the playoffs it takes a real fan to stick with them when the chips are down.  And after 5-11 last and off to a 1-3 start this year the Cards are defiantly in the “chips” are down category.  Things are looking up, but not that up, they are looking up though.  So what did I see on Sunday that inspired me to write this…. well I saw a “Red Sea” that stayed with their team the whole time, I saw parents and kids in supporting the Cards even if the dad (not Cody) was supporting the Giants just a little bit more.  And it made me realize, that while Arizona is a transient state and everyone is from somewhere else on home game Sundays we are all from Arizona at a Cardinals games.  Except for Raiders fans… those people are just mean.

 

Now while football is religion baseball is a lifestyle.

 

The last time I went to a playoff baseball game it was in 2001 and the Diamondbacks may or may not have won the championship that year.  It was a bought championship and honestly no one in tow cared we just wanted the championship.   Flash forward ten years and the only guy left on the field from the 2001 team is the third base coach and in the playoff hunt we are once again.  I don’t remember alot from the 2001 playoffs but I don’t remember the Diamondbacks ragging on the Yankees as much as the Diamondbacks were ragging on the Brewers the last night.  My favorite parts were the the “Will it sink or Float” and the sinking wedge of Cheese in the pool with the announcer coming on over the PA system and going something to the effect of “And the cheese sinks just like the brewers tonight” which I thought was very cool, the home team antagonizing the other team which for me as a Arizona sports fan is kinda of cool.  Also the Diamondbacks Legends race where the D’Backs mascot came out and beat up on the “german sausages” to clear a path for the legends was kinda cool.

Outside of the Suns Arizona has never really had this much pride in it’s pro-sports teams.  And well honestly the Suns are just pissing away what ever good will they had left, and I’m more then happy to see the Cardinals and the Diamondbacks move in for the local pride factor even if most of the support comes from people who already have a another team.

Hell there is even room for those stick wielding Canadians that are in town and are trying like hell to stay here.

 

 

Prolonging the magic….

I work in I.T. which I’m pretty sure all 3 of you know. I’m sure all 3 of you have called me up at various intervals in the last 7 years and heard me utter the following phrase “I can’t come out I’m on call”.

Call at Scottsdale isn’t nearly as bad as it was in Kingman. The call volume is much lower and I get paid to be on call. Lower volumes and paid or not it’s still damn annoying to be on call. Mainly because it puts my social life on hold for a whole damn week.

I know what your thinking right now… Wait when did Tom get a life? It happened a long time ago but those are details that you don’t need to know.

Finally this week I threw caution to the wind while “On Call” and said fuck it, I’m going to continue my social life “On Call” or not. Now I’m not a dummy if your going to talk the talk you have to walk the walk, so to that end I took advantage of several “perks” of being on call for Scottsdale. Namely a laptop (which is actually my daily usage computer for work) and a celluar broadband card (you know those nifty data cards you people with when your in the park because the park doesn’t have free WiFi yet). Laptop and Broadband card aren’t the only things you need when your on call you also need your pager (yes pager because in my particular line of IT work cell phones are still new fangled technology not to be trusted), Cell Phone (of course your personal cell phone because other then the random grandparent who doesn’t have a cell phone these days), blue tooth head set (have to type when your on call), and since you have so much crap anyway why not throw in a backpack for good measure. Oh and don’t forget the Keyfob because it looks really bad if you can’t dial to fix a problem when your on call.

OK now that we have our “On Call” kit built lets go out to dinner on a Friday night at (rolls 100 sided dice for dinner location) Rula Bula! And for kicks lets round out our party with the usual D&D sterotypes (Ogre, 2x pixies,rouge on a motorcyle, and a Paladin). OK good so we have our party established (IT Geek, Ogre, 2x Pixies, rouge on a motorcycle, and a Paldin in a pear tree) off you go to dinner…… ***BUZZZ*** ***BUZZZ***

FUCK! the pager just went off…. and you are like a block from Rula Bula!.

Drop off your party and tell the rouge on the motorcyle that you have to work. The Ogre gets the laptop booted before he bails, thank you Mr. Ogre. Once again you are alone and call into the help desk to find out what the problem is, oh this is a two for one special and you are going to need to dial in. So you find a nice parking lot and log into your laptop and fire up the broad band card which con…. dammit it won’t connect.

Reboot the laptop, login, restart broadband card (throw the dice to see if it will connect this time….) and nope no connection. Repeat this act 4 more times in the next 10 minutes. While rebooting also throw a dice for how helpfull the report from the helpdesk is… not very.

So at this point it’s very apparent that your laptop isn’t going to work with the broadband card, start looking for a Starbucks. Hey look a Borders! They have WiFi and are always quiet on the inside. OH look all the inside tables are full, but there are a few out side that open it’s only 100 degrees and you won’t be dialed in for long. You sit down and start looking for WiFi score you found some! Your finally logged in to work have your bluetooth rockin this problem (throw dice for ambient noise…) This is when you notice the following things… The water fountain built in to the ground… the two guys who are far to faboulus to the left… and the two women who have hair cut to a #1 blade… both couples are not being quiet neither is the water fountain and (roll for help desk volume) the help desk is speaking in a very soft voice as well.

Damit…

Your quest for a quiet place begins again… after several minutes you find (roll for location…) the drive through of a Bank of America. So with laptop, bluetooth, and empty drive through you begin your quest to start fixing what ailes your caller. So starts your saga… (roll for time to fix problem…) 1 hour later in the same bank of america drive through you finally fix the problem (roll for problem fix…) by rebooting the whole damn server.

You close the laptop, and deposit all of the items into your back pack of IT trinkets and stash the bag in the truck. You find your way to Rula Bula! to rejoin your party. Upon rejoining your party you sit down (roll for action….) and drink the Ogre’s beer.

The Ogre is not pleased.

City by the sea….


Flashback to the summer of 2004…. Young Tom had just gotten involved with a little project at Kingman Regional called “PACS” he was playing Star Wars Galaxies way more then was healthy and his girlfriend had dumped him earlier that year because he didn’t want to join her during grad school rather choosing to build a life in Kingman and join her once she finished. That was in late January early Feburary.

It’s July 2004 the dark side of Catalina island. The first day of what would be 4 day stay on the dark side of Catalina. Young Tom is sitting under a palm tree drinking a Guinness Irish stout that he bought earlier in the day for $9.00 at the two harbors general store (which really amounted to highway robbery with sales tax). It’s late in the evening and Tom is talking with his friends Sabrina and Tim about “What makes you and adult?”

Among the ideas bandied about between the three while Tom drinks his Guinness while Sabrina and Tim drink something that involves rum are… a mortgage, children, car payments, thinking about retirement, and marriage… ultimately all rejected because one of us can name one person who has one of the above items but yet we considered them to be not adult. I barely considered myself an adult at the time I was 25 job, mortgage, and thinking about investing but honestly I still thought of myself as a kid.

Why were we drinking? Well that part is easy there were 7 adults and 6 kids. And someone was not having any part of the kids (his name rhymes with mom). Sadly the 6 Guinness wouldn’t make it through the night as I shared with Brandi and we were dry by the morning. It was a long 3 days after that.

Flash forward to 2007 young but slightly older Tom is sitting on his back porch thinking about his life. No girlfriend but friends he wouldn’t trade the world for and thinking to himself as Rage Against the Machine plays in the background (Renegades of funk) am I an adult? Young but slightly older Tom would say yes only because as he was grilling a steak earlier in the day walked through his grass and pulled up weeds.

Young but slightly older Tom doesn’t know if that makes him an adult but it makes him alot more like his father then he would would care to admit to.

The one where Cody learns just how depressed I was.

The other night while having dinner with friends, Cody made comment about how much calmer I have been for the last couple of months. To which Curtis replied something to the effect of “You didn’t know Tom when he lived in Kingman”

I think Curtis and Brandi were really the only ones to comprehend just how badly I was depressed in the first part of 2005. So for the rest of you I’m posting here tonight stuff from a journal I started at that time and it’s still around. You just have to know where to find it 😀

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A by the numbers kind of guy… [May. 3rd, 2005|04:59 pm]

I’m a very analytical person…. given my chosen profesion I guess that isn’t much of a surprise to anyone here. As a direct result of this I occasionaly find some intersting facts.

Today I have found one of those intersting facts.

The diffrence in cost of living between Kingman and Phoenix is not nearly what I thought it is.

At my current salary I can live in Phoenix for about the same. Granted I timed the house here right and I would drive more in Phoenix but it all works out. It’s true for all the cities around Phoenix too… Mesa, Tempe, Chandler. Only place that I need to make a significant jump in Salary is if I chose to live in Scottsdale… yeah I don’t think that town is really my speed. I’m probally more of a Mesa/Tempe kind of person.

I don’t know intersting fact.

I guess the next thing to look at is the wages in Kingman… I used to attribute the wages in Kingman to a lower cost of living. However armed with my current information I tend to think it now has more to do with supply and demand. I.E. There is a limited supply of jobs so the employeer can bone you on a salary if they want. Which if I were an employer I would do in a heartbeat.

Hmmm I must be frustrated or stressed… I think I’m just stressed I have my review tommrow and reading my boss is like reading fucking arabic…(easy if you know him, total mystery if you don’t) I think that has alot to do with my stress. I don’t know in the past it’s always been easy I’ve always worked closely with the person doing my review… I haven’t really been worked with the current boss much.

It doesn’t help that I don’t have the highest opinion of him either. In both a technical, profesional, and personal sense.

It may have something to do with the fact I’m also listening to Nine Inch Nails right now too (new album out today “With Teeth”) It’s better then I expected.

I think I’ve lost my mojo… [Apr. 9th, 2005|06:55 pm]
Not in the austin powers sense of the word… ok maybe… but not in his sense of using his mojo. Anymore my pickup line is “got a job?” A full set of teeth helps too.

I’ve just got this whole malaise thing going on… for about 6 months. I’ve written about it before how I feel like I’m in highspeed neutral. Yeah that malaise. The good news is that I’m almost free from this Damned PACS admin job… now if only I could figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

Ah and there is the malaise… see when I went to school I had it all figured out I would get my degree, get a good job, get a house, and live happily ever after. I got the degree, I got the job, I got the house… and now I’m bored.

I only have to support my self so money is not a issue for me (ok let me clarify that, money is a issue but it does not drive my day to day existence). I think the best way to explain what I’m feeling is the good old heiarchy of needs (atleast according to the western world in the 19th centruy). Once you have food and shelter taken care of the next thing you work on is your self. One of the things that a person may do to self acualize themselves is be creative in someway (I’m a creative person… none of you have ever see any of it… and I doubt any of you ever will) I guess this whole thing with the blogs and what not is another way. I think the most telling thing is the following incdent that occoured several months ago.

Hot GE Field Engineer Heidi:”What do you want to do when you grow up?”
Me:”I have no clue, you?”
Hot GE Field Engineer Heidi: “I don’t know either”

Being a computer guy pays the bills but it’s not full filling in the save the world one idiot at a time way I had hoped. It just seems like there should be more then what there is in my life.

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Cuz there is no saftey in numbers, when the right one walks out of the door.

I know that somewhere down the line I’m going to look at all of my blog titles and try to remember what the hell I was thinking and I will have no clue.

Been in a real mood as of late… don’t know why just am. I figure if I keep up like I have been by the end of next work will be looking for an excuse to get rid of me.

The work situation has improved dramaitcally but I’m still not happy. Basically it boils down to two things.. 1. My boss is a idget. Consdering it took me 10 years to realize someone was a idget before I’m getting better since I’ve only known him for 3 months now. 2. I’m done.

I just don’t care about the hospital anymore… I like the people I work with outside of my department hell I actually look forward to having lunch w/ alsnappa and her husband (never thought you would see that one would you) The rest of my department is just a bunch of spineless geeks. But I work in I.T. so I guess that is to be expected.

Yes I’m still looking for other work a couple of nibbles but nothing worth mentioning above and beyond that. I’m not exactly what you would call a happy person to begin with but once upon a time I actually did enjoy working at the hospital. I think that was before I became “responsible”. I’m 25 I shouldn’t be “responsible” I should be “just there” when your 30+ and have kids then you are responsible.

At this point I show up do my job and leave… no more, no less

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B.A.S.E. Jumping [Mar. 9th, 2005|06:29 pm]

I haven’t felt like jumping off of a cliff for the last 2 days at work now. Which really is a good thing in my mind (and probally most of yours too)

So anywhoo I had strange experince at work today, a new position was posted at the hospital today “Network Engineer” for the first time I didn’t feel anything about it. I didn’t want it when the subject was brought up I actually could care less. It’s kind of amazing really what a change of perspective that peace will bring to you when you’ve made those oh so important decsions.

I hate looking for jobs you have to talk yourself up so much, and lets face it I’m a pretty quite guy who doesn’t like to talk about himself at all. I guess if I want to move on I need to get over that just do it.

Kind of odd since I do the blogging thing ya know.

And now something completley diffrent. So has anyone ever wondered what happened to a particular teacher for Jr. High or High School that had a significant impact on your life? For me that teacher is Ken McChesney, he was my lit teacher in the 7th grade. He was one of the few teachers that actually took a active intrest in me acidemically. I was always one of those students that did well enough to not need help but not so well that I needed something extra to do. Ken was the first teacher and until John Kitts at M.C.C. the only teacher that provided me with feedback that I could actually use in my day to day work.

Ken left Kingman in 99 or sometime around then and since then I’ve always wondered what he has done since and if he has helped anyone else in a similar fashion

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Fear and Loathing in my own little mind…

Today was actually a not bad day… it’s amazing what kind of differnce you attiude can have when you make peace with something that is really bothering you. Of course it’s not the peace the KRMC wants but that is the kind of peace they will be getting 🙂

Hi Alsnapa… I’ve had a revelation or 40 find me outside of work or find bdcruser/ceconix one of us will fill you in.

Yeah that is all that I have going on I planted a tree in my front yard this weekend.. it’s a twig tied to a stick… it actually looks really pathetic right now… hopefully it will look better once it actually starts to grow.

And here we thought Alsnapa would be the first one to talk about plant life and the yard.

I not picking on you alsnapa… ok maybe I am… ok fine I am it’s not may fault that you have not been around to get your daily drubbing of me.

I would pick on someone else but everyone who lives in town and does the LJ thing has seen me alot more then usual so TAG YOUR IT!

is it out of me?

Nope… still have some in there… but I will let it build for the next time

Hey A.j. Gets out of Park Rangers and Machine Gun school in a couple of days and will be crashing here. What are the thoughts on a KID FREE evening for adults? Dinner and either bullshitting or your choice of a game since all of mine are on the computer.

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A fine day in the dung heap…

So after my last vent session I took a couple of nights to get some perspective on my situation at work and my general frustration with the sitiuation I decided that I should talk to my boss to see if there was anything that we could do or he could do.

That was 8:30 last night (tues) At 8:45 I get a call a doctor cannot find some images in PACS.. so after going back and forth with the on call guy on what to do I finally roll into work. The images that weren’t there were actually there just not where they were supposed to be. I took down the numbers for the studies and helped the doc with some quesitons he had. My main problem with this is that it’s not my job to train the DOCS or the RADS. I write it off and go home to bed.

Today I talk to Shawn, I tell him how frustrated I am in my current position and I may be technically qualified but I’m not clinically qualified. Translation… A right clavicale and right shoulder are the same thing to me. Turns out there are two seperate things. I use the above situation as a example of how things are not flying with me.

Shawn’s response to all this.. the above was a situation to sell the doc on PACS and oppurtunity for process improvement in x-ray.

At 1:34 PM March 2, 2005 I offically decided that my time at KRMC was done. I don’t think I can deal with a PHB for a boss who is all talk and so far very little action.

So my boss is PHB I’m in over my head and x-ray is struggling to keep things going (there are other issues going on other PACS but we won’t go there for now)

About the only good thing to come out of today was the the Radiology Director and I both agree that I’m not the man for the PACS SA job. Which is fine except he doesn’t have a PACS SA in mind and it would likely be a I.T. position and we have enough problems getting technical help I don’t about another clinical person.

What now? I’m now “Actively” seeking new work. Ideally not in Kingman but I will deal with Kingman if that pay is enough. At this point I don’t know how much that is, Kingman is seriously lacking in many things. About the only thing that Kingman is not lacking in is friends and family and if I didn’t have them right now I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have made it this far with my sanity.