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filling the void

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Elation

Today has been a most wonderful day for me. But for a snag in the municipal communications grid, this day has been very good to me.

First, the fact that I arrive 45 minutes "late" bothers roughly 0 people. It's not like the old job where I not only had to be there like 30 minutes early to prepare and get changed and whatever. Here, I can get in at 11 if I wanted. As long as the job gets done. FlexTime is a good thing (tm).

Work was jus t more of the same, but towards the end of the workday is when things start to get exciting. As I am about to leave, put in my last 15 minutes before I head out to the subway, I roll on over to my friends office, on a whim, and asks him if there's any place to find something like a corporate knowledge base, of documentation repository or something like that. Docs on how the ATM switches work, or how to connect a cellular transceiver to various antennae and such (I work for one of the worlds largest manufacturers of phone equipment). There isn't much of that, unfortunately, but he hooks me up with a link or two for the intranet.

What he does do, however, is walk me through a lot of it personally. It turns out we have all this old equipment sitting around, for troubleshooting any of the old stuff that's still active out in the country. Not much of this stuff is still around, but some telcos still have it around in various places. Not only do we have it all sitting in our (freakishly large) lab, but this guy has personal experience with it, installing it, troubleshooting it, and he knows what each things does, how it connects to other parts, what's good, what's bad, and stories about how things were done "back in the day" (10-15 years ago). We walk around the lab and he explains, and I following him around and nod and point and ask questions, my eyes the size of dinner plates.

Very cool stuff. As an avid reader of documentary books about the early telephone and computer hackers of our day, I've always wanted to see this stuff up close, and know how it works. Preferably without breaking a path locker open in the street. I was loving it. We're doing other systems tomorrow \^_^/

I had planned to drop by my old job to return my keys and some work clothes and such after work today. Said and done, I go over there. I figure I'll chat up a couple of friend, be out of there in 30 minutes or so, 45 tops.
I, of course, stay for something like 2½ hours. Turns out a very good friend of mine is keeping a blog, so we swap urls. She's a much better writer than I am, and her readinghabitss are quite different from mine, so the prose, if there is such, will probably be alot different (and better) in her blog. She blogs in swedish though, so that might be a problem for a lot of people.

So I stand around and talk with her for like 10-15 minutes. Then I start making my way around the park. All over the place are people who seem genuinely happy to see me, and are wondering where the hell have I been, and telling me how nice it is to have me back, even if it's just visiting.

This really warms my heart. I spend a pretty long while discussing work and the DaVinci Code with a friend and this new very pretty girl at the entrance. We have all read the book, and she still has 40 pages left. We make nice and don't tell her the ending. Good book, that is. Maybe not thick on fact, but it could very well be quite true. I guess we'll never know.

I get two new phone numbers from people who want to stay in contact, now that I'm not working there any more, wich is also very nice. I got to spend some time with the girl I mentioned in my last post aswell. She, and her cute friend. (I just reglected on how if I had referred to these people simply by the first letter in their names, they'd all seem to be more or less the same person. Strange how that is)

I made a push for a party this saturday with everyone I spoke to. Hopefully, we'll manage to hook something up. Would be nice to see there people without the work clothes. (You have a dirty dirty mind, it's not what you think. Ok, so some of it is, but far from all of it..)

To top the evening off, my mom breaks up with the boyfriend, so I suppose he'll be moving out fairly soon. I suppose he's an ok guy, but I want a lot better for my mom. I'd support her descision either way, but I think she's doing the right thing.

Right now, I'm dog tired, and I'll fall face first into my keyboard unless I remedy that sleepyness. Therefore, I like you with another cool word that gets used way to seldom in speed of today: pox.

Maybe I should start some word of the day think here. Just to have some filler for the slow days, if nothing else. Speaking of passing time, check out bash.org if you haven't already.

Also, and this is worth repeating, the soundtrack of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is really really good.

Ok, now the words are flowing together, time to get some shut eye.

Later!

-Markus

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