1 February 1999: That's Why They Call It Stress

Monday, 1 February 1999:

That's Why They Call It Stress

Well, barring the unanticipated, it looks like March 1 will be my first day at Apple. Naturally, Apple would like me to start a little earlier, and Epic would like me to stay a little later. I guess that's business. I think this span of time feels just about right to me. Much faster and I think my head would be spinning, and much slower and I think I'd go nuts waiting for the shoe to drop.

It's strange to be doing this. Every time I've moved before, or started a job (my one job to date), I've been mainly working within the bounds of academic schedules, which are of course set, widely-publicized, and quite rigid. And, of course, have lots of built-in free time. None of that really applies here; the timetables are based on what the three involved parties can negotiate. I hope what's been hammered out is amicable to everyone.

Of course, this is strange for many other reasons.

I think I recognize the pattern of emotions I'm going to be feeling over the next month:

20% of the time I'm going to be scared out of my wits that either I'm going to screw up and something will go disastrously wrong, or that something will go disastrously wrong through nobody's fault whatsoever.
10% of the time I'm going to realize that I can manage all this, and everything will work out fine, and I'll be relieved to have it over with, but there's basically no cause to worry.
The rest of the time I'm going to either be trying to put it out of my head so I can focus on something else (like relaxing; have you ever tried to 'focus' on relaxing? Yeah, sure), or else I'll be trying to work through the list of things I need to do to make everything work.

I'm going to spend a lot of time in the next month saying to myself, "The reality is..." and explaining to myself why my worst-case scenario du jour can't really be all that bad because "People will understand", or "So you pay another 50 bucks and it gets taken care of", or whatever. And I'll never entirely convince myself because by then it'll be time to move on to the next thing.

As Mike was saying at work today, that's why they call it 'stress'.

Yeah, so I watched the Super Bowl yesterday, and was none too impressed. Atlanta just seemed a little overwhelmed, and were just not quite able to get things done when it mattered. Denver was just a machine and rolled over them. It was not a particularly good game (unlike last year's Super Bowl), and I was not especially impressed with the commercials this year.

The rest of Sunday was pretty laid-back, mostly involving laundry, watching TV, and reading various things. After the game I got together with Karen and her SO to hit Michael's Frozen Custard, where I updated them on the Apple saga.

Today - was foggy.

Really, really foggy.

They shut down the airports in Madison and Milwaukee due to fog.

It was not so bad when I drove in in the morning, but by noon was very thick, and had only thinned slightly by the time I drove home. Really quite impressive, and kind of neat, if you like fog. I usually do, but of course part of my brain was thinking, "What if it's this foggy when it's time to go to California?" Aaagh!

We got a new QAer on our team at work, and I said hi to him. I told him and his mentor that I'm doing my part to improve the developer-to-QAer ratio on our team, which got a small chuckle. I continued to fill in people who weren't aware that I'm leaving. I'd expected GossipNet to be more efficient than this, but that's life.

Watched the last two episodes of season three of Homicide that I hadn't seen: "A Model Citizen" and "Happy to Be Here", and they are probably the two worst episodes of the season. They feature Bayliss being really dumb in one of the silliest love stories I've ever seen on TV, Lewis also being pretty dumb in return (and I don't believe a scene of their reconciliation was ever shown, which makes it all even dumber), and Munch being, well, sort of Munch-like dumb. Plus we get the unending saga of Beau Felton's marriage disintegration (which really should have been handled as more of a gradual reconciliation rather than the trauma is developed into).

They also have some interesting bits with Gee, and with Pembleton bailing Bayliss out of his dumbness. But they're too little to save two episodes which are better left forgotten. Ugh.

However, if you get Court TV, this would be a good time to jump in on the re-runs, as they're about to do the "Cradle to Grave" two-parter, which is good, and the excellent "The City That Bleeds" three-parter, which is followed by several good standalones which put things together after "City". Of the remaining episodes, I'd say only "Colors" - a somewhat ham-handed prejudice story involving Bayliss' brother - is a weak story.

Also, if you're into cartoons, you can do worse than Batman Beyond. The theme music is amazingly cheesy (though kind of amusing once or twice in that it's a quasi-parody of the 1960s TV show theme) and the incidental music is not a lot better, but the writing and animation are pretty much what you expect from the folks who did the previous Batman cartoons. I'm enjoying it.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)