Write the following in a list on this space about your boyfriend:

Doesn’t say “Goodbye” at the end of a telephone conversation

Sometimes ends a phone conversation so abruptly I’m not sure it’s ended

Less than 24 hours later, you receive a well-vocalized, punctuated “Goodbye” notifying the phone conversation’s end.

Hmmm. Must use this power, somehow. But, how?

So, I’m in like month two or so of the horrible computer plague known as DEMONware. As I’ve written before, it’s a bizarrely regressive system, like going all old school with an Atari set hooked up to a black and white TV. I couldn’t write any more yesterday about the time sucking, soul draining content of the meeting after meeting spiral with which the day had dawned. I couldn’t write on account of the pain, the haunting, aching throb. Here’s the deal on what I learned and needed a day to digest. Apparently, this “enterprise system” that promotes full “business integration” blah blah on it’s website is comprised of various modules that DON’T SPEAK to one another (or at least in a mutually satisfying language).

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, in the meeting we were talking about various reports that might be generated from the various databases for financial management (‘cuz, like I thought getting reports, like, you know, output, was the purpose of databases). Turns out (Even though, and here I’m just bluesky estimating, quite a few organizations, and by quite a few I mean every single fucking one of them, has to manage paying people) the payroll component (where the money comes out) doesn’t speak directly to the rest of the financial system (where the money comes from). Now grok this, will you. They aren’t sure if they can write a report that shows who got paid, how much and from what account on a single report, because those are different areas. Think about that. Imagine, a huge fucking multi-million dollar system, supporting a team of scurrying implementation experts, and quite a few well-paid consultants, for over a fucking year, and a fucking abacus is more efficient. Not only can my credit union tell me who I wrote a check to, when I wrote the check, which account was debited, and for how much, it can also provide an on-demand image of the check, all on the Internet. But DEMONware cannot tell me any obvious details, like annual salary on what account. (It will give me weekly (even for people paid monthly), and I have been advised by several implementation experts that if I multiply by 52, I will have the total. Oh.)

Words like integration, relational and fucking tools are lost in this database maze. I am not the databases’ master; I am slave, I must submit. If it tells me to open a new screen, I must. If it needs a numerical code, it is up to me to look it up on paper, as I must feed the machine. (I shit you not, after many help desk calls and discussions at meetings, they are rolling out tools to help with input and look-up and whatnot. And, what do you need when you have a fully integrated, web-based information system at your fingertips, according to the experts? Word documents to print out and hang on your wall, so that you know what fields mean.) Wasn’t there a whole magical computer movement when junk started getting, say, labeled and you, end user, could throw out your paper cheat sheet of codes? Did I dream that wonderful sense of freedom from memorizing shit and instead having intuitive tools that worked with me, the end user? Is that my Brigadoon?

But, my favoritest part of all? Imagine say a free angelfire.com or geocities.com website. Imagine a teenager with 1,000 friends, a gigantic buddy list, the ability to cut and paste every flash animation, icon, wacky font, color or widgit, available on other free sites, and full-sized jpegs galore of every day since junior high began. Now, picture that page loading, strobing banner ads and chockful of design-nightmare toys. As it loads, go make yourself a sandwich, IM thirty people, and just let that puppy load. Imagine now, a DEMONware inquiry page loading simultaneously.

GUESS which one would win?

The brightside? Thanks to this man, I now know where headquarters lie. So, if later in this life, I happen to be driving cross country, and there’s a mishap in Peoplecrap land, I will swear it’s a coincidence.

Back in the office, after a morning of back to back meetings. Same issues, same people equals a new formula for inertia. Actually, it’s the same old formula for inertia, the one where a body at rest stays at rest. In this case, no matter how many meetings you have to discuss doing something, it ain’t the same as actually doing something. Is there anywhere in the known universe where meetings are actually productive and there are direct results attributable to them? Doubt it.

By the way, I wish there were a gameshow scoreboard in every conference room. Then, whenever the same people who invariably comment or ask questions that pertain only to their tiny specific world with no translation to the larger world involving a group (you know, the people with whom you are having the meeting), you could press the scoreboard controls and create that annoying buzzer noise that universally means “wrong answer there, sport.” If I wanted to wake up early and jump into a conversation sans coffee about the one piece of paper that is important to you, I’d call you. Else, how’s about we keep it general. (The scoreboard idea is my compromise from writing that those folks could be stabbed with meeting quality, jailhouse shivs. Ever since that blogger got fired from Harvard for various unprofessional wackiness, I figure no reason to cause unnecessary suspicion over the quality and quantity of my psychotic nutbaggedness.)

And, for the chick who thinks she’s in charge, the word is “USE.” “UTILIZE” is the most over-utilized (yeah, that’s a joke) word in meetings. I don’t utilize reports I use them, the same way that I don’t utilize a spoon to eat my cereal.

I really should be trying to purge myself of a morning of meetings by actually doing something besides writing here. But, one more point of order — A big shout-out, or whatever the young people say, to a fellow D-Rob. I always knew at heart that I was an adolescent boy (thus explaining the over-active and immature libidinous thought patterns), but now I have the synchronous nickname to prove it.

Another morning and I’m up at dawn, because I never went to bed. Why? Because I was watching a stupid movie. That, and screwing around with web design. Why? How the fuck should I know.

I’ve barely made any effort all weekend to make any human contact. I was supposed to go to a party. I got in my car and drove to the neighborhood, but never parked. Sometimes, I just get so convinced that I have no ability to socialize. So, of course, I act that out and don’t socialize. I could easily be a hermit, I think. In fact, one reason I don’t spend enough time writing something “serious” is that I think I could easily step into an intellectually masturbatory haze in which I retreat from all human contact. Which, would be pretty fucked up. I would have to face that I don’t enjoy my own company THAT much.

I mean masturbation is fun and all, even the virtual, intellectual kind, but every now and again a girl’s gotta get the real deal. You know, intercourse, social and otherwise.

Tomorrow, I shall strive to not be a freakish hermit and seak some kind of company.

(The worst part, because of course this is like my junior high journal right here, is that I can’t be with the boy I like. I need physical contact to remind myself that there’s an outside world.)

For days my mind has been a jumble of contrasts: California versus New England; work-quitting; sleep-wake; man-woman; love-what? hate?; death-life, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I know it’s bullshit, and I also know that when I get moody and introspective nothing comes of it (other than my ability to demonstrate the profound reserves of my utter bitchiness).

The weekend was a contrast to life back east, and I wasn’t prepared to jump right back into work and bad weather.

Then, there’s Pat. I was thinking about Pat, because either as a kid or an adult, I generally knew where she stood. And, then, probably more often than not, I would force my actions in the opposite way. Not just rebelliously, but deliberately, determined not to end my life with a laundry list of regrets or might have beens. I wonder what she would think about M., about my probably foregone likelihood (Jesus, could I hedge that more?) of moving west. No doubt she would be skeptical, but simultaneously open to my doing my own thing. Who knows if she’d be happy for me (of course, if she were here right now, she’d be a pain in the ass and not tip her hand, so I still wouldn’t know if she were happy for me).

It’s not so much that I feel alone or ungrounded. It’s more like I’ve lost a soundtrack, rather than, say, the actual script.

With all previous relationships with men, she wouldn’t necessarily give an outright endorsement or dismissal of the guy. No, it was an undertone, an understanding, a catch in the conversation to let me know. Actually, she was like that about every friend I ever made. Nancy, who she hated absolutely from the age of 11 into adulthood, for her, any mention would be followed by a pause, not exactly thoughtful, and maybe an intake of breath and then a flat statement of her name or whatever. Leaden, I guess would be the best characterization. By contrast, Kevin, who I also knew from junior high and am friends with to this day, would engender a pause and then questions–where was he living, where was he working, when would he be home (east), what happened to his old girlfriend and my old roommate, how is his mom? When Kevin’s dad died, she called me (a rare occurence, since she was clearly the one to be called) immediately and made sure I had all of the particulars of the services. When Nancy’s dad died, she was far more abrubt, the reference made in passing with no real push for me to attend anything. I guess, in short, subtlety was not my mother’s strong suit. You generally knew where she stood, regardless of her protestations to the contrary.

The amazing thing was she often had an uncanny knack or laser really for spotting the good ones. There were students and friends and random folks that had all the appearance of strays, and she would champion them as the underdog and find something special, and usually turn out to be quite right about them. By the time I was in college, I had met a few old students who singled her out as the teacher who stood up for them or taught them when others failed. (I used to joke with her that her annual performance reviews from school always mentioned that she was a patient teacher. My joke was that she never wasted that patience at home with her own kids, so she could have plenty at work.)

But, that same laser for identifying the misunderstood was also fucking deadly. You crossed Pat and you had an enemy for life. Back to Nancy and Kevin–interestingly when my mother, herself, died, I heard nothing at all from Nancy or anyone in her family, all of whom had met her, except the estranged father of Nancy’s child, who hadn’t actually met Pat, I don’t think. Kevin lives in California, but he stood by me virtually and essentially, calling every week or more frequently, checking in unobtrusively and just talking and being around. So, even post mortem, Pat called that all pretty correctly, the good egg and the bad.

So, what would she say about my life as it is today? The friends I have made through comedy? And, M.?