-=> Quoting Damon A. Getsman to Nancy Backus on 08-Apr-2015 17:17 <=-

 NB>> Trying again to re-send this one... the second half of the response
 NB>> to the original message...   Once again, I'm running about a week
 NB>> behind...!
 DAG> Yeah I don't think I ever saw this one originally...  If I did I
 DAG> must've been horribly sleep deprived or something.  Didn't ring any
 DAG> bells. 

When I first sent the original one, you might have been running on a
sleep deprivation... I'm pretty sure that it was making it round at
least the bbses I call...  Possibly didn't make it to the west coast,
though... 

 NB>> New babies take a lot of energy and time, so I'm not surprised it's
 NB>> taking him time to get things together for you... Sounds to me like
 NB>> an exercise in patience and letting worries go...  ;)
 DAG> Yeah it turned out that he'd been way slammed with all of that, much
 DAG> like I suspected.  Though it has made me a bit leary of relying solely
 DAG> on this one mode of income.  

Now that you are clearly on the project and supplying input, likely
there wouldn't be too many glitches in the work showing up... but, true,
it's always safer not to put all the eggs in one basket...  :)

 DAG> I've got that handled, though, so it's all good.  It was, indeed,
 DAG> good practice in making sure that I'm still doing what I need to in
 DAG> order to make ends meet either which way.  An exercise in letting go
 DAG> of the things that I cannot change, and a bit of courage in knowing
 DAG> the difference, if I may insert a bit of serenity prayer wisdom.  ;) 

That's pretty much always appropriate, in my view... :)

 DAG>> know, especially when the airport has TSA and um.  Yeah you got a
 DAG>> pgp key?  *laugh*
 NB>> Nah... never bothered getting one..  :)  Never really had a need for
 NB>> it... :)  Usually have had some other reasonably secure way of talking
 NB>> outside an echo or email...  :)

 DAG> Eh, I was mostly joking with that point, anyway.  ;)  Some stories
 DAG> don't need any retelling.  Indeed it may be, at times, that in one's
 DAG> best interests it may be a good idea not to do so.  ;)  

Oh, I figured you were mostly joking...  

 DAG> That being said, I do advocate encryption for even the most mundane
 DAG> things, as it provides, hopefully, a little bit more headache and
 DAG> pain in the ass for the powers that be with their long microphones
 DAG> and wiretaps.  If it's implemented properly, anyway, which is tough
 DAG> in today's age of completely pwned hardware. 

I've not bothered...  I figure that the ones that it might actually
matter for (if there were anything to worry about in what I was saying)
would probably not find most encryption much of a hassle anyway, and it
would end up only being a hassle to the ones that I might be sending the
mail to...  It's certainly a hassle to me when I get something encrypted
that my software doesn't know how to decode...

 DAG> Yeah my meds have been stable since that last little [tiny] burp. 
 DAG> Wasn't nearly as bad as last time, and didn't throw me for a huge
 DAG> loop. I'm able to concentrate a little better now.  I was worried
 DAG> about how it was going until I actually pushed out some contract
 DAG> work today.  Now I've got the proof that I'm able to concentrate on
 DAG> things well again.  ;) 

That sounds promising...  :)    And certainly reassuring...  :)

 DAG> Looking forward to actually getting my nose to the grindstone on
 DAG> things a little bit more later tonight, as well.  First I have to help
 DAG> my son with a speech, though, and I do believe he requires my
 DAG> assistance on a few other things, as well...  If not tonight, I'll
 DAG> probably be getting up to 'burn the early morning oil' around 3 or so
 DAG> tomorrow morning, when I concentrate best.  I need to push out at least
 DAG> a few more hours on this real quick and start a flow.

You sound psyched... ;)  I'm sure that your son appreciated your help,
too.. ;) 
 
 DAG> I'd been slacking for a bit there; felt some burnout so I took a
 DAG> couple of days off.  Today has been productive, though, and I think
 DAG> I've got a schedule that'll allow me to devote enough non-burnout time
 DAG> to it so that I'll keep the ball rolling at this point.  ;)

Sounds good..   How are things going now...?
 
 DAG> Today I got to get my feet wet to a point where yeah, I know I can
 DAG> get back in the groove again, despite my time away from IT, and I'm
 DAG> certain that I can handle this work.  It was self-doubt, I think,
 DAG> that was giving me the most problems, after the amount of time that
 DAG> I'd spent away from IT on anything other than minor sysadmin stuff
 DAG> and coding in strictly one language on my own project. 

It's easy to get the jitters when you've been out of the field for a
while...  Now you can see that you'll be doing fine, after all.. :)

 NB>> Look in the phone book for City Hall, and start there.... or call your
 NB>> local branch of the library and ask there where to start... ;)  One or
 NB>> the other should be able to at least point you in the right direction,
 NB>> if not actually have the answers about bikes, kids and sidewalks... ;)

 DAG> I still have yet to do this.  I've been asking around, though, and
 DAG> it seems that perhaps it's not illegal in this portion of the city to
 DAG> be letting my son (and even myself) bike on the sidewalks.  This is
 DAG> very good news.  Traffic around here gets pretty hectic when workday
 DAG> traffic is about. 

That is good news..  It probably would be good to get it nailed down for
certain, but if others are right, that's already a relief...  :)

 NB>> Signed and sitting in your lap, even without details seems pretty
 NB>> substantial to me...  :)
 DAG> Oh, it was.  I've just gotten in the habit of not counting my
 DAG> chickens before they're hatched to the point where I refused to let
 DAG> myself count on it.  So I was still fulminating a bit about the lack of
 DAG> being able to work in my chosen field and everything.  Now, though, I'm
 DAG> immersed in discussion with the other developers, and we're steadily
 DAG> chipping away at some problems, even while they're being prioritized
 DAG> and moved around a bit.  It's not nearly so bad now that I've gotten to
 DAG> the admin panel and been able to examine the layout of the project a
 DAG> lot more.  :)  I even got some billable hours in.  ;) 

Sounds quite good...  :)

 NB>> And it'll take up some of that nervous energy that is getting you so
 NB>> revved up... ;)
 DAG> It does help quite a bit for that.  Now that I've got what should be
 DAG> a good balance between the different things going on I'm pretty
 DAG> confident that I'll be able to keep my nervous energy to a minimum.  I
 DAG> do need to work on making sure that I'm getting out for a bike ride or
 DAG> something between my running days, though.  I'm so used to being able
 DAG> to work on my upper body and other areas on my running 'off' days so
 DAG> that I can burn out some of that energy.  Just got a tire repaired on
 DAG> my bike, so it's definitely time to start putting some new miles on it.
 DAG> ;) 

That sounds promising, too...  :)

 NB>> We all do have our days of fogginess...  :)  Last week (and to some
 NB>> extent this one as well) have been rather short-circuiting for me... a
 NB>> couple of days too full with unexpected problems, and a couple more
 NB>> where the brain didn't quite want to function well enough to answer
 NB>> messages... and voila... days behind...  ;0   I'm almost catching up
 NB>> now... only a day behind now... ;)
 DAG> What worries me at times is that it seems to go in stretches. 
 DAG> Definitely when I'm battling issues with my meds.  That doesn't seem to
 DAG> be the case now, though, as proven by a day of successful work, so all
 DAG> is good on my front. I hear you on the short-circuited times.  That's
 DAG> why my correspondence has been up and down a bit lately, too.  At least
 DAG> it's not due to massive technical hardware failure or anything of the
 DAG> like this time.  ;) I even managed to get a huge bite out of my
 DAG> standard email taken care of.  

As long as the short-circuitings can be gotten past, you should be doing
just fine... ;)  

 DAG> As you can tell (and probably share in
 DAG> common with me), I write pretty verbose messages in my correspondence. 
 DAG> So when I'm feeling too drained by life, work, or whatever, my inbox
 DAG> piles up a bit.  

I try not to be TOO verbose... but sometimes there just is a lot to
say...  ;)    And I see that this one got fairly long again...  oh,
well... ;)

 DAG> I had quite the backlog in there... Managed to get
 DAG> through all of it except for one last message that needs to be written
 DAG> now, though, and I even managed to get a few messages out on one of
 DAG> those dating sites.  ;) 

Sounds good..  ;)

 DAG> Best wishes and hope you're doing well and out of the fog! 

Mostly out of the fog at the moment... but am about to be off on a trip
for most of next week, so I'm sure I'll be way behind again, even though
I'm just about caught up for the moment...  ;)

ttyl       neb

... Wisdom is the ability to discover alternatives.

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