~ Fats Domino
Blue Monday how I hate Blue Monday
Got to work like a slave all day
Here come Tuesday, oh hard Tuesday
I'm so tired got no time to play
Here come Wednesday, I'm beat to my socks
My gal calls, got to tell her that I'm out
'Cause Thursday is a hard workin' day
And Friday I get my pay
Saturday mornin', oh Saturday mornin'
All my tiredness has gone away
Got my money and my honey
And I'm out on the stand to play
Sunday mornin' my head is bad
But it's worth it for the time that I had
But I've got to get my rest
'Cause Monday is a mess
Monday, February 23, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Do you ever have weeks...
Where you just can't think of a darn thing about which to write? I'm having one of those weeks.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
25 Things About Me
So I don't generally respond to "answer questions about yourself" type memes. The whole "Tag X number of people including the person who tagged you" thing is just a little too close to chain mail and threats of dire consequences if you don't pass it on for my liking. Normally I just hit the delete key or let them slide on by.
However, there's a "Post 25 things about yourself" thing doing the rounds on Facebook right now that seems to have taken on a life of its own and has apparently, even been mentioned in USA Today. So after spending a couple of weeks intending to ignore it if anyone tagged me, then another few days wondering if anyone was going to tag me, I received 3 requests over the weekend.
So what the heck, this time I decided to join in. And if you're interested, here are 25 things about me. (For the record, it was supposed to be "25 things you don't know about me", but if you've been reading The Gunsmoke Files for any length of time, you already know more about me than most people.)
Here we go then.
1. I've walked from one coast of England to the other, and cycled from one end of Britain to the other (Land’s End to John O’Groats). I’ve also hiked the Grand Canyon from rim-to-rim in one day, but despite having been in Colorado for 7 years, have yet to manage a 14’er. This year.
2. Quit my job at age 28, sold everything I owned and set off traveling around the world to seek my fame and fortune. I’m still looking.
3. Have a passion for spicy food. Put the toilet paper in the fridge the night before, and I’m set.
4. I’m a published author
5. Love movies, but rarely like what’s popular. If I had my way, it would be against the law for ex Saturday Night Live cast members to appear in front of a camera.
6. The only time I feel completely calm is when I’m on my bike.
7. I’m always writing. It may not make it onto a page, but it’s always going on in my head.
8. I bungee jumped at Skipper Canyon in New Zealand, at the time, the highest commercial bungee site in the world.
9. I’m getting back into photography and am learning to process my own film. Yes, film.
10. Once drank warm whisky and coke out of a can with a group of Australian aborigines on a beach at sunrise while we wondered how to get their truck out of the sand.
11. I’m a cop magnet while driving and have been pulled over literally dozens of times, only occasionally for a legitimate reason. When I was younger, my friends simply accepted the fact that when I was driving, we would get stopped by the police on some pretext or another. My most recent encounter was when a cop followed me for 3 1/2 miles, before pulling me over. I pointed out that I was perfectly aware she was behind me and had been doing 2mph below the speed limit the whole time. She gave me a ticket and said if my speedometer was faulty, that was my problem. My speedometer is fine.
12. Once played in goal for a soccer team that lost a game 26-0.
13. Completed 6 marathons
14. I suspect I’m the world’s worst gambler. I lose every...single...time.
15. Have hitchhiked or cycled around most of Western Europe.
16. Strongly believe the world would be a better place without mosquitoes, clowns or country music.
17. I’m an incredibly messy eater, particularly when wearing clean clothes. I don’t need a bib, so much as a drop cloth.
18. No two people in my immediate family have the same accent. Mine is an odd hybrid of Anglo-American.
19. I have a passionate love for the outdoors. Being forced to stay inside on a sunny day is the worst kind of torture.
20. I’m only a little over halfway through the items on my lifetime “to do” list. Need to get a move on.
21. I once lost about 50c during an evening playing Connect 4 with a Thai hooker
22. I’m a prolific reader. Having to wait somewhere without a book to pass the time is almost panic-inducing. As a last resort, I’ll even read the newspaper.
23. I’m trying to remove the word “hate” from my vocabulary as I believe it to be self-destructive. However, there are a very small number of public figures whom I despise with a passion.
24. I once spent 5 hours in an Emergency Room while 3 nurses tweezed gravel out of my skin following a bicycle accident. The head nurse said it was the worst injuries she’d seen on someone who hadn’t broken a bone. 20 years on, my spine is still jacked up.
25. Coming up with this list was harder than I expected. There are a number of things I’m just not prepared to share with anyone.
However, there's a "Post 25 things about yourself" thing doing the rounds on Facebook right now that seems to have taken on a life of its own and has apparently, even been mentioned in USA Today. So after spending a couple of weeks intending to ignore it if anyone tagged me, then another few days wondering if anyone was going to tag me, I received 3 requests over the weekend.
So what the heck, this time I decided to join in. And if you're interested, here are 25 things about me. (For the record, it was supposed to be "25 things you don't know about me", but if you've been reading The Gunsmoke Files for any length of time, you already know more about me than most people.)
Here we go then.
1. I've walked from one coast of England to the other, and cycled from one end of Britain to the other (Land’s End to John O’Groats). I’ve also hiked the Grand Canyon from rim-to-rim in one day, but despite having been in Colorado for 7 years, have yet to manage a 14’er. This year.
2. Quit my job at age 28, sold everything I owned and set off traveling around the world to seek my fame and fortune. I’m still looking.
3. Have a passion for spicy food. Put the toilet paper in the fridge the night before, and I’m set.
4. I’m a published author
5. Love movies, but rarely like what’s popular. If I had my way, it would be against the law for ex Saturday Night Live cast members to appear in front of a camera.
6. The only time I feel completely calm is when I’m on my bike.
7. I’m always writing. It may not make it onto a page, but it’s always going on in my head.
8. I bungee jumped at Skipper Canyon in New Zealand, at the time, the highest commercial bungee site in the world.
9. I’m getting back into photography and am learning to process my own film. Yes, film.
10. Once drank warm whisky and coke out of a can with a group of Australian aborigines on a beach at sunrise while we wondered how to get their truck out of the sand.
11. I’m a cop magnet while driving and have been pulled over literally dozens of times, only occasionally for a legitimate reason. When I was younger, my friends simply accepted the fact that when I was driving, we would get stopped by the police on some pretext or another. My most recent encounter was when a cop followed me for 3 1/2 miles, before pulling me over. I pointed out that I was perfectly aware she was behind me and had been doing 2mph below the speed limit the whole time. She gave me a ticket and said if my speedometer was faulty, that was my problem. My speedometer is fine.
12. Once played in goal for a soccer team that lost a game 26-0.
13. Completed 6 marathons
14. I suspect I’m the world’s worst gambler. I lose every...single...time.
15. Have hitchhiked or cycled around most of Western Europe.
16. Strongly believe the world would be a better place without mosquitoes, clowns or country music.
17. I’m an incredibly messy eater, particularly when wearing clean clothes. I don’t need a bib, so much as a drop cloth.
18. No two people in my immediate family have the same accent. Mine is an odd hybrid of Anglo-American.
19. I have a passionate love for the outdoors. Being forced to stay inside on a sunny day is the worst kind of torture.
20. I’m only a little over halfway through the items on my lifetime “to do” list. Need to get a move on.
21. I once lost about 50c during an evening playing Connect 4 with a Thai hooker
22. I’m a prolific reader. Having to wait somewhere without a book to pass the time is almost panic-inducing. As a last resort, I’ll even read the newspaper.
23. I’m trying to remove the word “hate” from my vocabulary as I believe it to be self-destructive. However, there are a very small number of public figures whom I despise with a passion.
24. I once spent 5 hours in an Emergency Room while 3 nurses tweezed gravel out of my skin following a bicycle accident. The head nurse said it was the worst injuries she’d seen on someone who hadn’t broken a bone. 20 years on, my spine is still jacked up.
25. Coming up with this list was harder than I expected. There are a number of things I’m just not prepared to share with anyone.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
It was 30 years ago today
Actually it was thirty years ago last Thursday but seeing as how you probably aren’t reading this on the day I wrote it, it doesn’t really matter. Anyway, it was thirty years ago last Thursday that a young, fresh-faced and not especially ambitious young lad (me), set out to make his way in the world, beginning his very first day at work.
OK, that’s not entirely true either. I’d already seen service as a newspaper boy, a stockroom gofer and a milk deliveree but those were just part-time jobs, on the weekend and before school. No, on January 29, 1979 I set out into the big wide world to make my mark in the glamorous and adrenaline-filled field of...banking!
Yep, I thought you’d be impressed.
Ah, thirty years. Where have they gone? I of course, haven’t changed a bit, although the world seems to have moved on considerably. In those days, if you wanted to withdraw money from your bank account, you had to find time to visit the branch office during opening hours (which bore no resemblance to anybody’s work hours, including those of the bank staff), stand in line and wait while a cashier actually counted out the money and handed it to you. Imagine! I can’t remember the last time I set foot inside my bank and I doubt I’ve been in there more than half a dozen times since opening the account. But back in 1979, nobody gave a thought to ATM’s and how they would change our lives.
Or email, come to that. Way back then, if a customer wanted to communicate with us, they either came in to the branch, or they wrote a letter. The boss then hand wrote replies to all the letters we received; a dozen or two a day, before giving them to the secretary who typed them up, put them in envelopes and stuck stamps on them. At around 4:30, the office junior (me again) carried them down to the post office for mailing. If a client received a response in 3 or 4 days they were happy.
But then we started hearing about this wonderful invention called email. Get this…you could type a letter on a computer, hit a button and a few seconds later, the recipient would be able to read it on their computer. How cool is that?
Leisure time.
That’s how they sold it to us. With the implementation of email, we would all have a whole heap of leisure time, to travel, to further our education, to interact with our families. Yeah, how’s that working out for everyone? Nowadays I process 100-200 emails every day and have clients who complain if they don’t hear back from me within 30 minutes. The fact that I might have been in a meeting, or working with somebody else, or lying dead in a ditch somewhere apparently never enters their heads.
But in 1979, email was still just a futuristic fantasy. Who would be able to afford a computer of their own anyway? Actually, the bank for which I worked was quite technologically advanced in that we did have computers, and not just up on the second floor like most of our competitors. No, ours were right there by the tills. Not laptops obviously, or even desk tops – monitors were still some time away. No, these were big, noisy and somewhat scary appliances, about 4 feet high with a keyboard the size of a coffee table and levers, arms and spindles which clattered and banged away incessantly. It was hard enough hearing what the customers were saying through the layers of bullet proof glass which separated us from them without these darn things clanking away. Oh, how we hated them.
Fortunately, they broke down fairly regularly and for a few days at a time, peace reigned until Albert the Mechanic came to work his magic. For a mechanic Albert was, equipped not only with screwdrivers, but with wrenches, rags and oil cans. He also had toxic B.O. and a face like a pizza, but he was a nice guy and we all liked him. As with everything else, computers have moved on since 1979 and I often wonder if Albert the Mechanic was able to make the transition to writing code or if he simply went on to fixing traction engines or steam locomotives or something.
That other labor saving device, the cell-phone, hadn’t been inflicted on us either which meant that when you walked out the office door, you were incommunicado until you walked back in. “He isn’t here right now, can I take a message?” was a perfectly acceptable response to a caller. The idea of having to eat lunch while listening to a conference call was unheard of. No beepers, Blackberries or any other type of electronic leash. Nobody sat in hotel rooms sending messages to customers at 11:30 at night back then and if they had done, the customer certainly wouldn’t respond 5 minutes later as one of mine did a couple of weeks ago. Oh, those were the days. But here’s a funny thing. It’s possible time has fogged my memory, but I seem to remember I had more leisure time in 1979, not less. Go figure.
What will the workplace be like 30 years from now, I wonder. I’ll be 76 by then, and given the state of my savings account and a pension plan which is performing so badly I think I owe it money, there’s a fairly good chance I’ll be wearing a paper hat and interacting with my clients by asking them if they would like fries with that.
Or maybe not. Maybe one of these labor-saving appliances will actually save labor instead of simply adding to it. Perhaps right now Bill Gates is working on a device which really will give us more leisure time and less on the hamster wheel.
I mean, that would be nice, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it?
OK, that’s not entirely true either. I’d already seen service as a newspaper boy, a stockroom gofer and a milk deliveree but those were just part-time jobs, on the weekend and before school. No, on January 29, 1979 I set out into the big wide world to make my mark in the glamorous and adrenaline-filled field of...banking!
Yep, I thought you’d be impressed.
Ah, thirty years. Where have they gone? I of course, haven’t changed a bit, although the world seems to have moved on considerably. In those days, if you wanted to withdraw money from your bank account, you had to find time to visit the branch office during opening hours (which bore no resemblance to anybody’s work hours, including those of the bank staff), stand in line and wait while a cashier actually counted out the money and handed it to you. Imagine! I can’t remember the last time I set foot inside my bank and I doubt I’ve been in there more than half a dozen times since opening the account. But back in 1979, nobody gave a thought to ATM’s and how they would change our lives.
Or email, come to that. Way back then, if a customer wanted to communicate with us, they either came in to the branch, or they wrote a letter. The boss then hand wrote replies to all the letters we received; a dozen or two a day, before giving them to the secretary who typed them up, put them in envelopes and stuck stamps on them. At around 4:30, the office junior (me again) carried them down to the post office for mailing. If a client received a response in 3 or 4 days they were happy.
But then we started hearing about this wonderful invention called email. Get this…you could type a letter on a computer, hit a button and a few seconds later, the recipient would be able to read it on their computer. How cool is that?
Leisure time.
That’s how they sold it to us. With the implementation of email, we would all have a whole heap of leisure time, to travel, to further our education, to interact with our families. Yeah, how’s that working out for everyone? Nowadays I process 100-200 emails every day and have clients who complain if they don’t hear back from me within 30 minutes. The fact that I might have been in a meeting, or working with somebody else, or lying dead in a ditch somewhere apparently never enters their heads.
But in 1979, email was still just a futuristic fantasy. Who would be able to afford a computer of their own anyway? Actually, the bank for which I worked was quite technologically advanced in that we did have computers, and not just up on the second floor like most of our competitors. No, ours were right there by the tills. Not laptops obviously, or even desk tops – monitors were still some time away. No, these were big, noisy and somewhat scary appliances, about 4 feet high with a keyboard the size of a coffee table and levers, arms and spindles which clattered and banged away incessantly. It was hard enough hearing what the customers were saying through the layers of bullet proof glass which separated us from them without these darn things clanking away. Oh, how we hated them.
Fortunately, they broke down fairly regularly and for a few days at a time, peace reigned until Albert the Mechanic came to work his magic. For a mechanic Albert was, equipped not only with screwdrivers, but with wrenches, rags and oil cans. He also had toxic B.O. and a face like a pizza, but he was a nice guy and we all liked him. As with everything else, computers have moved on since 1979 and I often wonder if Albert the Mechanic was able to make the transition to writing code or if he simply went on to fixing traction engines or steam locomotives or something.
That other labor saving device, the cell-phone, hadn’t been inflicted on us either which meant that when you walked out the office door, you were incommunicado until you walked back in. “He isn’t here right now, can I take a message?” was a perfectly acceptable response to a caller. The idea of having to eat lunch while listening to a conference call was unheard of. No beepers, Blackberries or any other type of electronic leash. Nobody sat in hotel rooms sending messages to customers at 11:30 at night back then and if they had done, the customer certainly wouldn’t respond 5 minutes later as one of mine did a couple of weeks ago. Oh, those were the days. But here’s a funny thing. It’s possible time has fogged my memory, but I seem to remember I had more leisure time in 1979, not less. Go figure.
What will the workplace be like 30 years from now, I wonder. I’ll be 76 by then, and given the state of my savings account and a pension plan which is performing so badly I think I owe it money, there’s a fairly good chance I’ll be wearing a paper hat and interacting with my clients by asking them if they would like fries with that.
Or maybe not. Maybe one of these labor-saving appliances will actually save labor instead of simply adding to it. Perhaps right now Bill Gates is working on a device which really will give us more leisure time and less on the hamster wheel.
I mean, that would be nice, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it?
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