Diary of a LAN Manager

For eons, the great unanswerable question has been, "What is the meaning of life?" (The answer is 42, for all you non-Hitchhiker's Guide folks.) But these days, the question has become, "when does life start, and when does life end?" The latter half of that is weighing on everyone's mind. At what point do we declare brain death? For me, the distinction has always been when artificial life support is needed to keep the heart and lungs going when there is a total loss of cognitive function, as evidenced by a lack of measurable brain waves. But what if the body has the ability to breathe on its own and its heart pumps gamely along without artificial intervention, yet there does not appear to be any brain activity? Is that dead? Terry Schiavo's husband thinks so. Vegetable=Dead. Any so-called response is just a reflex, not a cognitive reaction. She's dead, so let's hurry up and bury the body. For seven years he's fought with his inlaws to have th

Taking a week off from work always sounds like a grand idea. Then comes the part where you actually are expected to go back, on time if possible, and resume the daily grind. Of course, it's never that easy. No one is indispensable, but it's amazing how many things can't be done if you aren't there. So a whole day is spent cleaning up the messes, calming down the masses, and trying to locate the surface of your desk that HAS to be somewhere under the groaning mound of trade publications and important notices, not to mention wading through the rubbish in your e-mail to find that one message that is of vital importance. Of course, if we're ever honest with ourselves, we know that most of this crap doesn't matter. In five years you won't remember why the decision over how much to spend on printers or scanners or computers was so important at the time. It won't matter because no matter which ones you choose, they won't ever please your customers enti

Swimming in infinity, drowning in self-pity. I'll be glad when this weather goes away. I need for it to be spring. I'm tired of winter. I'm tired of being cold. I hate feeling like this - useless, stupid, frustrated. Next week I'm taking off and going somewhere, anywhere - anywhere but here. I won't take my computer. I might take my iPod. I'm going away with the family to regroup and regenerate. I will not come back more exhausted than when I left. I can't- I have a full schedule working for the tech team at church ( www.hopepark.com ), helping with Easter services - all six of them. I get Friday off because we weren't sure we'd be back by then, otherwise it would be seven services. So I get to hear the music and the message six times instead of being in the choir standing on the stage making a joyful noise for seven services. Somehow I think that's an okay trade-off.

I try to like my job. I really do. Most of the people are great. Some are not so great, but that's just life, and I can accept that. It's just that with these latest shifts of power, I don't feel very capable, and my opinions and knowledge are being questioned and tested on a daily basis. I'm tired of explaining why an out-of-the-box HP PC is better than a home-built ASUS POS PC. I'm tired of explaining that laser printers are not ever going to be the best choice for printing these friggin' claims. I'm tired of fighting the same battle every day and never feeling like I'm gaining ground. I'm weary to my soul right now, and there's no end in sight.

So I'm a geek. Sue me. Last night, while updating my iTunes with Joshua Tree , I decided to watch the latest teaser trailer for Star Wars. I had the sound muted on the laptop so that U2 wouldn't be playing aloud at the same time. As I watched the now-silent trailer, the scene opened to Luke Skywalker, standing outside his uncle's home, staring into the Tatooine desert, and I unconciously began to hum the theme to the first movie. Heather looked at me, puzzled, wondering why I was watching it in silent mode. After she gave me a two-minute refresher course on i-Tunes, I stopped Bono from singing, and restarted the trailer. I have a bruise on my shoulder from where Heather punched me because I had "known" without ever seeing or hearing the trailer that THAT is what would be playing for that scene. May the force be with you...

Stress? What stress?! Another week has flown by in a whirlwind of panic. Just as soon as I get one person well another becomes deathly ill, and another day was spent waiting in an emergency room for some good news, or at the very least some answers. We got lucky and got both - not appendicitis, but a ruptured cyst, and eventually the pain will go away and the kid can go back to school and we can get back to normal, whatever the hell that is. I don't know normal anymore. It doesn't exist. She started hurting Friday, so I picked her up at school and took her to the clinic. Three hours later they said it was not her appendix, and that it would stop hurting in the next 24-48 hours - if not, bring her back. So I did what I always do when I can't stop panicking about something - I cleaned the house. I did the dishes and the countertops and the dusting and the vacuuming and the laundry and the ironing and the bathroom and God knows what else. I don't remember. I was on autopil

Life's like an hourglass, glued to the table... March is here, with a snow flurry and a little black ice to announce its arrival. Last night I danced in the snow like a kid - then I got back to work unloading nearly $200 worth of food from the car. Amazing how much it can cost to feed three people, but to be fair, the pantry was getting a little low. You can only make so many meals out of one can of chili beans, a can of tomato sauce, instant mashed potatoes, and some pasta. This morning I slept an extra hour since the kid was out of school, and dreamed some pretty weird dreams. Unfortunately, I've forgotten what they were, except that they took place in a school-like setting and I was being lectured by someone in a white lab coat ( I woke up once, but slipped right back into REM and the middle of the same dream, I suppose, as if I'd hit pause). We somehow managed to miss out on winter, but I'm ready for spring. It's time for a rebirth, a renewal, and if I'm luc