Sitting here working on a task I just think I realized one of my sources of being grumpy at work. Before I get into this realize that I understand that my being unhappy with this is kind of thing is silly. It doesn't stop me from being grumpy but maybe now that it's out I can deal with it better.

What I realized is this, everything I work on is fluff, eye candy it's non core important type stuff. Let me draw on an analogy of making a car, what I do is maybe design the interior of the car, the dashboard, the things that you would interact with that aren't associated with actually making the car move. They are the things that while important fall quite short of things like making the car actually move when you press the gas pedal or stop when you press the brake. Lately at Sprockets it seems I get all the non critical tasks that have indeffinite deadlines that get tossed back into the shadows to only be remembered when I look at my list of items that I have to do and realize that something I did three months ago still hasn't been pushed out for people to use. Realize this too this is the same work I was doing almost three years ago, it's just that three years ago things like interfaces and designs were critical because we didn't have any of that and it had to be written. The reasons why things keep getting pushed back basically boils down to the simple fact that we attempt to do something none critical, get it mostly done and then are suprised with a little emergency that puts other people in DefCon 1 and suddenly the non critical is forgotten.

It has the effect of making you feel like what you are working on isn't very important. So you start to feel useless, and then the feelings of apathy start to form up in the bottom of your gut. I mean what's the point really to get something done immediatly if there never is a priority for it to pushed out for people to use. Granted the things that push the things I work on back are problems like saying your car can go 0-60 miles an hour in 4 seconds when actually it has a top speed of 40 mph. See what I mean it seems so petty when you talk about it but when it happens, over and over and over again it starts to get a little old and greatly affect your motivation to get anything done.

For this reason I was touring around the interweb trying to find new blog content to read. Sure I could read news, sure I could read reviews about cars or electronics or the best shaving cream to use but why bother. BOOOOOORING. BBBBOOOOOOORING. So I choose instead to try to find more blog jems like The Hot Librairan, which reminds me I could always just read her old posts from the beginning and roll forward.... yeesssss, that and I'll find more blogs. Because like Tivo watching blog reading I have found is addictive, I find that I am in a constant search to find more blogs about other peoples lives. Not so that I can live vicariously through them, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO so that I can be a big nosey fuck with my big nosey nose. Eerr could you believe that for me reading a nice well written blog has a feeling of a novel or short story and I do love to read. If I could somehow put the books I want to read somehow on a webserver so that I could read them online at work I'd do it in a heartbeat...... wait a second that's not a bad idea. Hold on there conductor lets stop this train of thought before it leaves the station. My only point was that in my blogourney (blog journey) I found a blog done by a woman who was doing volunteer work in the Sudan. She's done with her tour of duty there so no more entries, but it's really interesting nonetheless. I also found a blog off of a blog of a british guy teaching english in Japan that is about some guy who is volunteering in Vietnam. Some guy who linked to some guy who then knew this other guy who's brother went to ... that last sentence was too hard to follow. That blog could be good stuff, not so sure but what I found that was better was a link he posted about a Eco Resort on an island called Phu Quoc. No AC, no fridges, no TV's and all that but it's like $45 a night for a bungaloo that sits not 20 yards from the beach. It sounds wonderful! Now it's just the getting to Vietnam and then to Phu Quoc that may be a little more difficult, "Da Nang me Da Nang Me, I'm gonna get a rop and HANG ME~!"