(RFW) Rambling From Work

I wrote this at work Friday and now (Sunday) decided to just publish it rather than leave it languishing in Drafts. What's the worst that can happen? That no one reads it anyway. *shurg* More (today) after the second triple-splat.

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(Written throughout the day in a proper spirit of thorough self-absorption.)

I WFH'd yesterday. This means I took a car in for service, enjoyed a couple hours' time off in a coffee shop while it was raining, got a ride home, did my job for awhile from home, did other things while home, was picked up when the car was done, got it and paid for it, and went home and worked some more until mid-evening sometime. When I work, I don't often remain focused on it for very long. This modern way of working at a networked computer has enabled my natural tendencies to blossom into very well-developed talents for inefficient multitasking. Therefore, I was on social media more than usual (I hesitate to say "a lot"), interacting however we do on both my Facebook accounts, Instagram, and this new one called Tsu. This in turn has led me to feel the day wasn't very productive. It was, actually. I not only got some important work done on a car, but helped a software engineer down in the Bay Area over a roadblock or two so that he could get a board I designed to work, as well as drove another board through its final stages of design. So it wasn't a badly used day but the attention I gave the great vacuum that is social media makes it seem in hindsight as though it was.

All of that was actually by way of saying social media exacerbates my feelings of loneliness and disconnection. But then, I don't think loneliness is the right word. Disconnected, yes, but not lonely. I have plenty of love, close up and personal, plenty of caring, plenty of quality person to person interaction. I feel disconnected, though. Hmm. Maybe I should go away and think about how I could have both. Oh, it has to do with what I feel disconnected from. Some of the outer world, that's what, some of my family, some of my interests and passions I am still challenged to make time for. Stuff like that.

Meanwhile, I wasted some time. Yes, that will lead to feelings of disconnection. Facebook, you know what that's all about. But Instagram? Out of a momentary curiosity I did a tag search on #jihad and found myself in a discussion, under a picture of Imam Khamenei, about Israel and the US being the source of all war while Iran is the only country working purely for peace. It was engaging for awhile, but I lost interest when it was clear my new friends, while young and passionate, were thoroughly concordant with the Iranian party line. After a few statements that are simply absurd, you lose interest. Or you argue and engage in increasingly acrimonious debate, but I'm not quite bored and immature enough for that.

That was supposed to sound humorously ironic. You didn't hear that? Sure?

And what's this Tsu thing? It's Facebook-like, the selling points being (a) they don't care what name you use, and (b) they have a scheme to split advertising revenue with the users. You gain percentages as your stuff is shared or liked or otherwise attracts eyeballs. That's no reason to join, for you know it will never amount to more than pennies. It's just a new place to see if you can build up a new crowd, a new place to again define who you are in that context. Like Ello, in that it's a reaction to Facebook, only better.

"Better." Is that like saying Cherry Coke is better than Cherry Pepsi? A poke in the left eye better than a poke in the right? Stalin better than Hitler?

And what family stuff do I mean? I'm really only referring to the piles and piles of old photographs that I really do want to go through. There's a portion of my personality that enjoys certain kinds of tedious work. not sure how to characterize what. But I sincerely look forward to going through the literally tens of thousand of slides left by my father and both grandfathers, not to mention a few deep stacks of ancient photographs and albums of prints, and I'm beginning to think I shouldn't put it off for too many years longer. I really don't want to look at every single picture. I will find ways to identify whole swaths that can safely be abandoned to obscurity. But there are gems amongst the pebbles and I hope to find them all, and to find creative uses for them all.

Example? When clearing out my father's final home, I looked through his father's slides and found a series of pictures he took when he retired from County service. He was a big cheese in Contra Costa County by the time he retired in 1958. I don't know what impulse led him to document the County facilities, but he did, and being County facilities, most of them are probably still there, changed only by the passage of time. I'd love to find every spot and do a before-and-after album of some sort. I'd probably have to request access to some of the picture-taking locations, but it would be a fun day to at least drive around and find out. And yes, that is the sort of nerd I am. But some people dig that stuff. And who's to say it isn't really worth doing, if done with unexpected skill and wit?

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So on that subject, I had taken some old family movies in to be converted to digital files I can edit and burn to DVD and give out for Christmas. I picked them up yesterday. These weren't really family movies. They were a) a 16mm reel my grandfather took of whatever people were doing at the Dixon Game Club in 1951, and the notes included a familiar name or two such that some old friends would love to see it, not to mention perhaps the people at the club itself, which is still around; and b) a film about that old of my great-grandfather performing his handwriting act. I am really looking forward to seeing those, and giving them out. Sadly, the DVD and thumb drive I picked up from the conversion place seem completely unreadable, and now I have to take time out of a weekday to go deal with that.

Urgh. Between that and trying to learn how to use Windows 8, I feel increasingly awash in the incompetence of others. Urgh!