The office suite dream (not so sweet)

IIn October, I had a dream that was surprisingly vivid after I awoke. 

I was in an office with a long and narrow hall. Entering one hall, a friend of mine, who used to work in the music business, was sleeping at their desk. They had been working a second job in the evening, related to the music industry, and they were tired. One office appeared to be unoccupied, but, going around the corner was a guy at a desk. He was annoyed that I barged in, but I just needed an empty space. Another (real-life) friend I couldn't find.

What is the meaning of this?

There appears to be two sources of this dream. One is a friend of mine who was complaining that they now have to share a space with another, both full-time workers, in order to facilitate a couple of part-time employees. The other involved my last job location at 10 North Pearl Street. I came back to work in October 2015, just after my hernia operation.

To say that I was disappointed would be a gross understatement. Everyone save for the secretary and two of the librarians had doors. The secretary at least had this fortress and was front-facing. The other librarian had a wall on one side of the cubicle. But mine was right on the corner. There was no way to sit without someone coming up from behind me. I was startled regularly.

On Day One, I requested a glassine attachment to the top of the cubicle. It would have made the walls about six feet tall, rather than five. And though I re-requested this at least twice more, I never got them. And because I was in this open space, visitors, repair people, and folks who got lost were always asking me for directions, which was truly distracting.

Finally, ten months later, startled one more time, I said that I needed to move. The only place I could go was this large storage area, actually only three meters from where I was sitting. And I was given this option early on, but I wanted to try to be geographically closer to the others in a team-like setting. Still, the move involved a loud discussion, during which I left the office for a time, lest I say something regrettable.

Going to the closet

So I got my move. People in the other department on our floor didn't understand why I'd move to a glorified closet. It's because I could be front-facing with no one coming up behind me.  I stayed there and it was tolerable. Well except that some anonymous person ratted me out for taking off my shoes while I was sitting at my desk, and it got written up. Such petty BS, and I'm pretty sure I know who it was.

Finally, an office with a door became available in November 2018. I was not all that interested in moving yet again, since I knew I'd be departing soon. But I took it anyway, and l left at the end of June 2019. 

For the last year and a half of work, I was seeing a therapist. They believed that it'd all be better once I retired. And I should note that I don't think much about the place. (And there's lots more I could note, but won't.)

But I was talking to my good friend in France in early September. She's a therapist. When she mentioned my former job,  I displayed a flash of anger she found surprising.It's not that I spend any real time thinking about the place consciously. But the subconscious must still be ticked off.  

holiday of many parents

http://www.pilgrimhall.org/f_thanks.htm nuanced
pilgrim religious freedom

The eldest niece: Although this tradition was born from the horrible deception and tragedy that came to the Native people of this land and we should never forget that, I am really happy that we have turned it to be for good, to be thankful for what we do have, for we never know how long we will have it, how long we will be here to enjoy it, and how long we will have those we love around us.


http://www.pilgrimhall.org/daymourn.htm
http://americanindiansource.com/mourningday.html
Text of Plaque on Cole's Hill
"Since 1970, Native Americans have gathered at noon on Cole's Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US Thanksgiving holiday. Many Native Americans do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims and other European settlers. To them, Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of their people, the theft of their lands, and the relentless assault on their culture. Participants in a National Day of Mourning honor Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection as well as a protest of the racism and oppression which Native Americans continue to experience."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2012/11/21/lincolns-historic-thanksgiving-proclamation-of-1863/?tid=pm_local_pop Thanksgiving proclamation that Abraham Lincoln issued on Oct. 3, 1863, setting the precedent for the national holiday we celebrate today.

March Rambling, about ME - oh, and other things

I may have mentioned (once or twice?) that it was my birthday this month. Thank you for the 70-odd comments on Facebook, and a couple tweets, not to mention comments at this blog. Dustbury cited my March 8, day after my birthday, post.

But the person who best got into the "celebrate Roger" spirit has to be Jaquandor. He answered my Ask Me Anything questions to him, AND he ASKED me an Ask Me Anything question before I even requested it!

He also linked to the March 8 post, AND he wrote a whole post for me. Yay! The first YouTube clip in his piece features Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, as Roger, and others, in a wonderful comedy segment from the movie Airplane!

Here's some weird trivia. The winner of the game show JEOPARDY! episode on Friday, November 6, 1998 was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, in a celebrity tournament. The winner of the JEOPARDY! episode on Monday, November 9, 1998, the next one aired, was MOI. Kareem and me - likethis.
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5 ways robots can improve accuracy, journalism quality

Melanie's grandfather and her humanness.

SamuraiFrog needs help, and is getting it. Huzzah!

An Olympian with a physical disability; no, not Oscar Pistorius, but Olivér Halassy.

Some religion, and any philosophy that claims certainty, creates a false sense of security that leaves people sucking their finger rather than going where the finger is pointing.

Mark Twain Captured on Film by Thomas Edison in 1909. It’s the only known footage of the author.

STRIPPED: The Final Kickstarter Push for a feature documentary on the world's best cartoonists: Talking about the art form they love & where it goes as papers die.

Ken Levine's comment about the late Bonnie Franklin, and her TV show ONE DAY AT A TIME falling between the cracks prompted the question about why some shows remain perennially popular while others fade out? "It doesn't necessarily seem to be question of quality." Interesting responses in the comments section

The day Andy Marx and his grandfather Groucho saved ‘You Bet Your Life’. In the comments, an interesting link to a story of how much of our cultural history depends on one person's decision to preserve something instead of throwing it away.

When going back to edit your writing, how do you determine what to keep and what to weed out?

EXTERIOR: Suburban Buffalo -- KFC -- Afternoon -- Winter. My, some people are...









http://boingboing.net/2013/03/04/inside-the-prosecution-of-aaro.html

Feb 1, 2013

Question

August Rambling: Punctuation, Crowdfunding

Listen to the KunstlerCast podcast #212: Health & Technology Update. James Howard Kunstler gives listeners an update on his recent health issues, and discusses the importance of advocating for oneself when dealing with medical professionals, rather than taking their word for it.

My favorite new blog: Grammarly, from which the accompanying graphic was purloined. I'm also fond of this one about an English professor who wanted students to punctuate the sentence: A woman without her man is nothing.
The men wrote: A woman, without her man, is nothing.
The women wrote: A woman: without her, man is nothing.

That’s Progressive, Charlie Brown: On Schulz, LGBT Issues and Integrity.

Someone I know sent me this edition of the comic strip One Big Happy Family. Actually, I have a MUCH better percentage.

Here's an article about crowdfunding. Even though the topic is Role Playing Games, and I'm not a participant in that world, I thought the discussion about why people do or do not choose to fund a project is right on. As someone who has funded a dozen Kickstarter projects, I recognize the insight.

A Date With a Countess

Mary Ann Cotton, Britain’s first recognised serial killer

Dinosaur poems, including one by Carl Sandburg.

Status of the Shark Infographic

The Doors Sing "Reading Rainbow" Theme (Jimmy Fallon as Jim Morrison)

Keyboard Waffles. (But if they were REAL nerds, they would have spelled nerd's correctly!)

Take that, Nazi scum! How Moses became ‘Superman’ and other exciting tales from the annals of comic books, a Jewish-American art form.

NYPL Eases the Way For Searching 1940 Census

The National Archives releases census records once a decade, and on April 2 it is making available the information from the 1940 census. But the records won't immediately be searchable by name.

For those whose relatives lived in New York City, the New York Public Library is aiming to make it simpler to search this holy grail of information about what life was like during periods such as the Great Depression and the lead-up to World War II.

The library is launching an online tool to allow users to type in names and, potentially, locate census forms listing a host of details on every person living in the family household at the time of the census.

More HERE.

So, it appears I've turned my old blog...

into my new home for all my links!
I LIKE IT!

I've Got A New Drug Blog

I am now blogging at: www.rogerogreen.com. That's ROGER O GREEN dot COM.

Since I'm pretty sure I NEVER quoted or even paraphrased Huey Lewis and the News in five years on this blog:
I Want A New Drug
ROG

Five Years

Stealing the idea from Bacardi, here's Five Years by David Bowie.




Frankly, I'm surprised I made it here. Five years of blogging every day, at least once a day. I have to work REALLY hard NOT to blog MORE than once a day, but I was reasonably successful; only 367 blogposts in the last 365 days, and I'm sure one of those was a prominent death that JUST COULDN'T WAIT.

But the other reason I'm surprised I made it is that, last summer, I got REALLY discouraged. I'm not one of those people who cares about having hundreds of hits a day. When my monthly numbers dropped from 4109 in May 2009 to 3041 in June, it didn't bother me overmuch. But when it sank to 1575 in July, THAT was really bothersome. What did I do wrong? I started posting notices of my blogposts on Twitter and Facebook, which actually did help a little, but I am not great at doing that regularly.

BTW, #1: I signed up with some service on the web to automatically post my blog post links to Facebook and Twitter. Instead, it was posting annoying advertising stuff to my Twitter account. So I canceled it, as soon as I saw it on my blog sidebar. Sorry about that.

BTW, #2: two people asked me why I have two Facebook accounts within 30 minutes when I went to the comic book show in Albany last Sunday. It's easy: I started one, using my work e-mail, then I couldn't find it. so I started ANOTHER one with my home e-mail. Now I know what both of them are. If I had the time, I'd just cancel one, but since there are people on one who aren't on the other...well, it'd be work. Someday. When I retire, maybe, or take a long vacation where I actually just play on the computer. That is to say, not any time soon.

Then I noticed something: this blog, which had been on the first page of Google, disappeared from Google. It didn't just fall off the first page; it seems to have vanished altogether.

Now, *I* can be found on a Google search. My Twitter and my blog on the Times Union can be found in the top 10. One of my Facebook pages and even my seldom-used Library 2.0 account - check out the vintage of the picture - are in the top 30. Even comments, articles I've written for other blogs, and specific pieces from the TU blog show up. But not this one.

This has pretty much forced a momentous decision.
ROG

You just can't have too many computers

I had the idea for my presentation for the Underground Railroad conference months earlier. But on long-term projects, I procrastinate. (Or, conversely, I do it right away, because I know I tend to procrastinate.)

So it's the Monday before the Saturday of the conference. I've taken the day off from work. The plan: in the morning, finally watch Hurt Locker on DVD. In the afternoon, go to the library and work on the presentation. Neither of these things happen, though; the daughter is home sick for the 10th time this school year. and as usual, she's not SO sick that she's sleeping, but rather needs regular attention from daddy.

So it's now the Thursday evening before the Saturday of the conference. I blow off Bible study and choir, stay at work until 8 pm and actually get the presentation into some sort of narrative shape. It's not finished, but it's quite far along.

So it's now the day before the conference. I dig out the thumb drive I was given which I had never used, and copy the program. My intention is to finish it up at home on the wife's laptop. Except the wife's computer doesn't seem to have a cursor anymore.

So now it's the morning of the conference. I still cannot get the laptop to work. As for my desktop computer, not only is it slow, it is so old that it actually doesn't have a compatible slot for the thumb drive. I'm thinking I may have to go to the downtown branch of the library; the local branch doesn't open until 1 pm, and that's too late.

Then I play with the daughter's new Netbook that her aunt and uncle just gave her for Valentine's Day. I can't get the Internet to work on it, but the word processing is fine, and the presentation is finished Just In Time.

Eventually - I have no idea how - I've gotten the cursor to work again on the wife's laptop. I mean I'm a Luddite, but not as bad as this guy, at least most of the time.

So here's the question: do you consider yourself technologically savvy, or do you go around screaming when technology fails? I'm not a screamer, but...well, let's put it this way: DON'T hire me for IT.




ROG