Harry's Ruminations

Perhaps I came out of the womb worrying. Pehaps it's learned behavior. Luke 12:25 says: 5  And which of you by worrying can add a  single   [ a ] ( C ) hour to his  [ b ] life’s span?   26  If then you cannot do even a very little thing, why do you worry about other matters? What does this have to do with 2011, anyway? I worried alot this year.  I worried about myself, my wife, my kids, my parents, my job, my church obligations.  And, frankly, I freaked-out.  Often.  So often, that yesterday and today, I talked myself through "this is usually the part where I freak out," because the triggers were all there. Self-awareness is all that I have sometimes whenever I see fear, rage, selfishness, hate, guilt, jealousy, betrayal, disappointment, anger, etc. building.  I finally can see it coming  and I believe I can choose something different. In summary, in 2011, I stopped believing life was fair.  The church-...

Some things are stories. Some things are not.  There are facts I remember about my idiosynracies and ticks, and those of my fellow humans that just don't go anywhere.  They're kinda just...there. These are those: I once roomed with a guy D.E.F.  D had this curious Pavlovian response to riding in a car for any length of time > 2 minutes.  He'd go to sleep.  My other roomie once took him on a road trip from Georgetown, Kentucky, to Jackson, TN.  D slept the entire way there and the entire way back. I hate the blue ring optometrists use for glaucoma checks.  Basically it goes like this: They dilate your eyes, you can't open them for love or money, and then you need to open like a droog from Clockwork Orange so the optometrist can move this DEATH MACHINE towards your eyeball.  Really, it looks like a scene out of a Bond Movie, complete with bad dialog.  Only here the thing--it's not Sean Connery's penis they're going to ginsu, it's YO...

When I was about 5 years old, my mom decided to drop me off with my aunt at her office while she did business in town. As my aunt worked in the District 10 Department of Highways in Jackson, Kentucky, her job was utterly regular and somewhat dull unless something extraordinary happened-->lots of overtime, somebody got fired, that sort of thing. View Larger Map  As it was the middle of summer, nothing like that happened. Anyway, my mom rented a VHS video of Pound Puppies  and dropped me off.  My Aunt took me to the big conference room in the middle of the cinder-block building and plopped me in front of the television, daring me to move. Of course, I moved.  I was a fat, indolent kid, but curious as hell.  The room was fascinating--there was a huge map on the wall showing the toll plaza at Slade, Kentucky, an IBM PC/XT with a Daisy Wheel printer in the corner, and the TV itself.  The TV was a pretty big jobber for back then--probably 25", and a...

I'm rolling off a 16 month stint as the sole proprietor of a Java library used internally where I work.  Yep, it was an almost unheard-of situation within corporate America: I had no project manager, no marketing rep, no support staff, no unique testers.  I was responsible for API design, test plan, interfacing with multiple teams, delivery, support, infrastructure.  The works. In short, I loved it. I loved getting to code 6 to 12 hours a day, every work day, working through design decisions, collaborating with other teams.  I'd go to bed noodling on design problems, I'd often get insight into them over coffee, then I'd have them implemented by that next night.  Most of the people I worked with were colleagues of mine from way back.  My only mandate was "make them happy," and take care of my own stuff.  I had a project manager for the first month or so; once he was satisfied I had my stuff together, the reigns were off. (Insert maniacal laughter ...