I’m having one of those days, you know, THOSE days that the comic strips talk about and comedians make the most out of to use as material for months at a time. Nothing too terrible, just an accumulation of things that have sidetracked me today that have put me in a funk. I’m sure I’ll get over it soon enough, I’m just a bit down at the moment.
Sometimes my online life is like an iceberg. For every hour you see me on, I’m actually on another 5. Sometimes I’m on here for 20 hours a day, getting sleep where I can, but always at hand and always working on something. From my actual job, to comic books to blogs, to 500 little projects I’m doing on my own, there’s always stuff to occupy the time if I need to fill it.
Today was intended to be half work (doing 9.5 hours) and half clearing off my editing computer of stuff I’ve recorded off of my DVR. That’s still legal, don’t worry, much like transferring things to a VCR. That got sidelined, however, at 7am after a scheduled 90 minute nap and I walked into the computer room and found my main monitor had turned itself off. With moments to go before I really needed to check in for work, the thing would only stay on for 20 to 30 seconds at a time.
Thankfully I had an IM client on the TV editing machine, which has a monitor on the desk and a “TV Monitor” across the room, and was able to IM someone to make my tag for me and then quickly replaced the defective monitor with the one on the desk from the TV computer and was able to do my shift. It killed my plans to edit on the TV computer for my secondary project of the day as now that computer was only feeding a big screen about six feet away from me.
Even in the old days when I had decent vision that would be impossible for me to deal with and still get projects done. While I can see the screen and I can make out exactly what everything is (having memorized windows for the last 20 years), I still can’t read the tiny print well enough to do anything. So my editing plans quickly converted into plans to catch up on a bunch of little projects I needed to get done.
I did buy a new monitor, it’ll be here Tuesday, though in my haste I didn’t think to measure the one I had now. I’m pretty sure the old one was 25″ and the new one is 27″ so I’m going to have to find a bit more space on the desk. This is going to be interesting.
The rest of the day was spent divided between little projects, two hour naps and work. For some reason, without the distraction of two big computer monitors, I did get a lot done today. I’m still getting used to using the keyboard and mouse on the left side of the computer to control the monitor on the right, but it’s not too bad, every so often I do grab the wrong keyboard and wonder why everything I’m typing didn’t come up, and with the lack of the TV computer I caught up on nearly two weeks of podcasts that I had fallen behind on. All in all, pretty good.
Then dad called and… the voice is the same. The voice brings back bad memories, but right now that voice is attached to a man who has good days and he has bad. The malice that was there in the past is gone, since he really doesn’t have control over himself at this point in time but my memories of that malice are something I have to get by whenever we talk. Dad and I, while living in the house together for all these years, didn’t really talk much before this. He wasn’t around when I was a kid (neither was my mom), so those lasting times and family bonds that most people get just aren’t there. Talking to him was difficult before this and now that his mind is going and he forgets, it’s hard to get more than a few minutes out of him. It’s heartbreaking in a way and it’s getting more and more difficult because we didn’t really have anything to say to each other before this and now, I don’t know.
I’ve got to step up and change again, I know, to make things easier but at a certain point I can only change so much.
Sigh.
Two more hours of work until another scheduled nap. Let’s see what blows up while I’m sleeping.
Jim