This Day In Pain

I suppose the title is redundant: Mondays are almost always painful in some way or another.

I've been in mild pain all of this weekend. At some point on Thursday or Friday of last week, I strained my right forearm severely. I don't know how I did this but I've been incapable of maintaining a firm grip or lifting more than a kilo without shooting pains from the elbow to the wrist. Over the past couple of days, the pain has subsided and now only exists within the right wrist so I'm now wearing a wrist brace to prevent unnecessary rotation or twisting. I want this resolved by this coming weekend.

Anyone commenting on how this is affecting my love life will be duly bitch-slapped with my fully functional left hand.

Despite being a Monday, I was looking forward to work initially... I was hoping to finish off a couple of outstanding projects and generally get my act together on some others so I could cruise through the balance of November on auto-pilot. Alas, my office has conspired to thwart my best intentions.

The pantry ran out of hot chocolate again. There's a bazillion flavours of coffee in stock but no hot chocolate. OK, that's a minor issue... I'll either use my secret stash of hot chocolate packages hidden in my filing cabinet or break open my selection of herbal teas for the morning. I'll get through this, I thought.

Then I had to change my system passwords. It was not unexpected: we do this every 90 days for individual user accounts. Still, the powers-that-be still haven't quite got the synchronization between UNIX, Windows and PointSec down quite right. I duly updated my password and was then immediately locked out of the Windows systems with both my old and new passwords, although the UNIX systems worked will with the new one. After some work with the help desk folks, we managed to get me logged into Windows but the wireless network wouldn't work. We got that resolved and the PointSec, the hard drive encryption package, starting spewing messages about not being able to reach the recovery partition. And so it went.

When I finally got through that mess, I discovered the powers-that-be are pushing a MS Office security update which killed another 15 minutes and required another reboot.

At this point, I still don't know if my wireless works --I gave up and went to a cable connection to simplify the support issues-- and my gung-ho attitude for the day has been fully exhausted. It's not even 9:30 AM yet. Figures.

This Day In Pain

I suppose the title is redundant: Mondays are almost always painful in some way or another.

I've been in mild pain all of this weekend. At some point on Thursday or Friday of last week, I strained my right forearm severely. I don't know how I did this but I've been incapable of maintaining a firm grip or lifting more than a kilo without shooting pains from the elbow to the wrist. Over the past couple of days, the pain has subsided and now only exists within the right wrist so I'm now wearing a wrist brace to prevent unnecessary rotation or twisting. I want this resolved by this coming weekend.

Anyone commenting on how this is affecting my love life will be duly bitch-slapped with my fully functional left hand.

Despite being a Monday, I was looking forward to work initially... I was hoping to finish off a couple of outstanding projects and generally get my act together on some others so I could cruise through the balance of November on auto-pilot. Alas, my office has conspired to thwart my best intentions.

The pantry ran out of hot chocolate again. There's a bazillion flavours of coffee in stock but no hot chocolate. OK, that's a minor issue... I'll either use my secret stash of hot chocolate packages hidden in my filing cabinet or break open my selection of herbal teas for the morning. I'll get through this, I thought.

Then I had to change my system passwords. It was not unexpected: we do this every 90 days for individual user accounts. Still, the powers-that-be still haven't quite got the synchronization between UNIX, Windows and PointSec down quite right. I duly updated my password and was then immediately locked out of the Windows systems with both my old and new passwords, although the UNIX systems worked will with the new one. After some work with the help desk folks, we managed to get me logged into Windows but the wireless network wouldn't work. We got that resolved and the PointSec, the hard drive encryption package, starting spewing messages about not being able to reach the recovery partition. And so it went.

When I finally got through that mess, I discovered the powers-that-be are pushing a MS Office security update which killed another 15 minutes and required another reboot.

At this point, I still don't know if my wireless works --I gave up and went to a cable connection to simplify the support issues-- and my gung-ho attitude for the day has been fully exhausted. It's not even 9:30 AM yet. Figures.

Recurring Dreams

I've just submitted a large SOX compliance report so I'm rewarding myself with some quality LJ time...

In recent weeks, I've had a recurring dream. It's never precisely the same but the thematic similarity is unmistakable. Saturday morning, I awoke with yet another version.

( Dream behind the cut. )

The dreams all have the same basis: people not of my immediate family have moved onto the family farm without prior warning or permission. I discover their presence and attempt to figure out how to make the situation work. In one version, the occupying groups are refugees. In another, one is a restaurant chain and a not-for-profit co-op.

My general interpretation flows in two directions:

• I've been away from the family homestead for several years now and I'm unconsciously feeling disconnected from the home soil and the changes which have inevitably occurred since I last visited.
  
• I'm spending much of my time in real life negotiating my way through a variety of obstacles not of my choosing. It's an ugly job, someone has to do it and I'm the only one available: ducking the responsibility is not an option.
  

Any other interpretations I've overlooked?

Recurring Dreams

I've just submitted a large SOX compliance report so I'm rewarding myself with some quality LJ time...

In recent weeks, I've had a recurring dream. It's never precisely the same but the thematic similarity is unmistakable. Saturday morning, I awoke with yet another version.

( Dream behind the cut. )

The dreams all have the same basis: people not of my immediate family have moved onto the family farm without prior warning or permission. I discover their presence and attempt to figure out how to make the situation work. In one version, the occupying groups are refugees. In another, one is a restaurant chain and a not-for-profit co-op.

My general interpretation flows in two directions:

• I've been away from the family homestead for several years now and I'm unconsciously feeling disconnected from the home soil and the changes which have inevitably occurred since I last visited.
  
• I'm spending much of my time in real life negotiating my way through a variety of obstacles not of my choosing. It's an ugly job, someone has to do it and I'm the only one available: ducking the responsibility is not an option.
  

Any other interpretations I've overlooked?

DC Mainstream class #8

Tonight's class went reasonably well. It was the one I'd been dreading for a while but we survived.

The topic was thars. I hate thars. I'm not fond of dancing them and I hate calling them. Thars are awkward --ah, the joy of walking backwards--, they are unforgiving in square timing & synchronization and there's limited variations available at the mainstream level. We teach them because they're on the list and thus must be taught but they are called rarely. I've survived many a fly-in without a single thar call and would be quite content to see them fall off the mainstream list entirely.

All that said, they're on the list and so we must teach them. It goes without saying that professionalism requires they be taught with the same level of cheer and enthusiasm as any other call and we did our best. But I'm equally glad its over.

We'll do a few figures with thars every class to keep the calls fresh in everyone's minds but there are so many other calls which are more worthy of limited class time. The downside of teaching is that you don't get to pick & chose the material, just do the best you can with what you've got. Next week will be better.

DC Mainstream class #8

Tonight's class went reasonably well. It was the one I'd been dreading for a while but we survived.

The topic was thars. I hate thars. I'm not fond of dancing them and I hate calling them. Thars are awkward --ah, the joy of walking backwards--, they are unforgiving in square timing & synchronization and there's limited variations available at the mainstream level. We teach them because they're on the list and thus must be taught but they are called rarely. I've survived many a fly-in without a single thar call and would be quite content to see them fall off the mainstream list entirely.

All that said, they're on the list and so we must teach them. It goes without saying that professionalism requires they be taught with the same level of cheer and enthusiasm as any other call and we did our best. But I'm equally glad its over.

We'll do a few figures with thars every class to keep the calls fresh in everyone's minds but there are so many other calls which are more worthy of limited class time. The downside of teaching is that you don't get to pick & chose the material, just do the best you can with what you've got. Next week will be better.