Musings from “Life Is a Road” author–Daniel Meyer
Archive for March, 2008
Back…
Mar 31st
I’m back from the San Antonio bike show (South Texas Motorcycle Show). It was an interesting, but not lucrative, trip. I’m pretty sure we spent more on corny dogs than we earned as a vendor. There are reasons for this…some related to my “product”, and more related to the show itself.
This is the first show of this kind I’ve attended as a vendor instead of an attendee or guest and it makes for a completely different experience.
More later…for now I’ll leave it with an impression and a couple pictures…
The impression? Well, showing up at a motorcycle event without a motorcycle is just SO wrong on a fundamental level. I’ll not do it again.
But where else, mind you…can you get a “Hot beef sundae”?
Mashed potatos, gravy, beef, cheese, and a cherry (pepper) on top.
Mmmmmmm…..
I was a vendor at this show…usually I’m a guest or attendee…this was a different experience…
That’s Mrs. Dragon behind the table.
Yours truly, with the wife, awaiting throngs of fans with their money just itching for some books…
More later…
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
San Antonio this weekend!
Mar 24th
Hey all!
I’ll be at the South Texas Motorcycle Show in San Antonio, Texas this coming weekend (Friday March 28 through Sunday March 30).
I’ll have a booth in the exhibitors area and will have books on hand. I’ll be signing, swapping stories, and generally mucking about in motorcycle stuff.
Y’all (that’s a technical Texas term) come on down and see what’s going on!
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
A Damn Near Thing…
Mar 21st
I almost killed him. It was a matter of inches.
Righteous indignation, relief, surprise, and maybe just a taste of fear are still throbbing through my system.
Not fun…that.
I was working on the wife’s car today. It’s six years old already. Sheesh. Where does the time go? Seems like just yesterday I was gasping in horror at the sticker price. Anyway, simple stuff on the surface…a tail-light was out, the headlights needed adjusted, time to replace the battery. Standard fluids/filters. Should be no big deal.
Of course, the cars these days. Gotta tear the trunk apart and get out tools just to get to the tail-lights. Then ya gotta go buy a “special” bulb as the one that has been used in every single dual-filiment tail-light for the last 60 years has been replaced with a “new” one. Gad. Ah well. Needed to buy an air filter too.
So, running to the autoparts store…idling up the alley in “Big Iron”… the 450 horsepower, 4×4 Dodge truck.
Out of one of the hilly driveways shoots a neighborhood boy on his bicycle. Maybe 7 or 8 years old. Hey, helmet and elbow pads! Cool! Safe, right? Heh…no, plastic and fiberglass won’t help a bit when you get parked on by an 8000 pound truck.
He hadn’t looked…didn’t slow down…and would have been dead if I hadn’t already been covering the brakes. I’m guessing my front passanger-side wheel would have run right over his torso.
SCHREECH! I stopped. Good thing I keep the brakes in top condition…anything less than maximum performance and it would not have been enough.
I missed him. Barely. Skin of teeth. Small numbers of millimeters. Faced with the grill of my truck he couldn’t turn into the alley so he crashed into the fence across the alley. Heh…hate to laugh…but maybe that’ll help make a lesson stick.
“Mom” rushed out…saw the entire thing. I imagine she sprouted about 10 gray hairs right then and there. She was scolding him…apologized to me…and dragged the kid and his bike off to a fate I can guess at. Earned a few of those myself…back in the day.
She and I know just how close it was. Hopefully he does too…but he’s at the age where mortality simply isn’t a question.
It was all but death…right there in the alley.
I’ve driven a multitude of vehicles millions of miles. I’ve seen a lot, massive experience…good driver yada yada…
More than half a million miles on motorcycles, and all the incidents and close calls that entails have taught me to take this stuff as it comes.
We missed. Incident over. That’s what mattered.
Non-plussed, it was off to the autoparts store.
Yeah. Non-plussed. Heh…I had to get the clerk to find the light bulb I needed…my hands were shaking so bad I couldn’t read the numbers on the old one.
Non-plussed. That’s me!
Y’all be safe…and hug ‘em if you’ve got ‘em…or maybe beat their little asses…whichever is most appropriate at the moment.
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
Pillage…then burn.
Mar 20th
Yah know…even I get days off every now and again.
Last Friday I was going to take a “comp” day…basically this is an undocumented day off to make up for those extra days put in at some other time. Yeah, I’m on salary. I haven’t made any overtime in a couple decades. Best as I can calculate…they owe me about 8.2 million comp days…
So…
1) Friday was going to be a comp day. I was not supposed to be at work.
2) Friday is “business casual” dress.
3) A project at work suddenly became “urgent” (urgent is totally artificial, the issues and time-table are arbitrary, but there ya go).
4) Another “urgent” thing required a sort of spur of the moment meeting…
5) An eagerly awaited package arrived in the mail Thursday.
Thus it came to be…contrary to even the “casual Friday” dresscode…me wearing a black T-shirt that says, “Rule # 1, Pillage THEN burn” to a 7th floor corporate board-room meeting.
Not sure if that did my career any good…but I really don’t see what the problem could be…it IS part of our corporate SOP anyway…
Shirt is courtesy of Schlock Mercenary, and highly recommended for your next board meeting.
(click the pic for details)
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
Report back…let us know!
Mar 18th
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, an aide said. He was 90.
He changed the world…many may never understand just how much.
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
17 Years…
Mar 17th
Yesterday was me and the wife’s 17th anniversary. Wow. 17 years gone by, just like that.
17 years and and the emotions…the lust…the drive…are as powerful as they ever were.
When we were first married, I thought I understood what my role was and what was expected of me, and more importantly, how to integrate that new role into my core…how to protect and provide…without sacrificing the man within…without killing the spark that drives me.
Like all of us, I soon learned that I didn’t understand at all.
17 years and I’m still trying to figure it out.
(raises glass)
Here’s to figuring things out!
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
Ashamed of my profession…
Mar 15th
Not sure when, or how it happened…but we have become the impediment, not the enabler, in the Information Technologies world.
When, as a group, did we stop *asking* what folks needed to get their work done…and start *telling* them what they’d be allowed to have?
I work in the support of the news production business. I build and configure systems and workflows to allow the news guys to collect, process, and publish (to paper or the web) the news. It’s a dynamic business, requiring flexibility and state of the art systems.
Somewhere along the line, corporate IT management has decided that they *KNOW* the news biz, and that instead of us supporting the news guys, that the news guys are somehow subject to the IT management’s whims.
Instead of working with them to find out what’s needed, we are modifiying infrastructure systems to some idiot’s wet dream of a “standardized” platform.
The latest example is in email…yep, corporate IT standardized the email platform. Without warning, they’ve moved accounts and set a purge to 45 days.
News information, contacts, email in support of stories and investigations…all that, they have somehow determined are subject to a corporate 45 day max retention policy.
Whack. Gone. In my case, systems information, contacts with my vendors, instructions, procedures etc.
The decision was made without consideration as to what’s needed to do the job…”we” as IT never even asked. Arrogance. Impediment. Idiocy.
Just the latest in us, the supporters, getting in the way of them, the do-ers.
I’ve no control over this…and nobody’s listening anymore. It’s a damn shame, really. We “were” the best in the business…now we are not even close.
Our users now have to figure out ways around the “system” to get the job done. All that energy and creativity which could be used to make our news products better, more dynamic, and more profitable, instead, consumed in an internal fight to acquire the needed resources to get the job done.
I can’t even begin to explain the sheer frustration I’m feeling…KNOWING how much we could help them, and instead, watching as we hinder. Over, and over, and over again.
And the money is flowing out of the company like water to fund this debacle…
I’m thinking I need to go find something productive to do.
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
If ya’ just gotta have a gate…
Mar 7th
Check out this gate!
I love this concept.
Thanks to Jim Murtagh for the pics!
Hmmm….
Plasma Cutter———check
Welder—————-check
Cut off saw———–check
Steel, muscle, blood—check
I’m thinkin’ I’ve just gotta build something like that. Now, if I can just figure out where I need a massive gate…
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
Hey, winter!
Mar 4th
Well, I missed it this year. I predicted winter would be on February 21 and 22. Instead, it was on March 4th.
The pic below (thanks Mike) was the scene at the farm this morning…several inches of rare March snow. Winter is here! Last night? Thundersnow! Cool!
And the bright side? It’ll be gone by this afternoon. I expect I’ll be riding my motorcycle to work tomorrow!
Gotta love those Texas winters!
Y’all take care!
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer