I have a complaint. Why can no browser companies / web design companies come up with one standard way for browsers to interface with humans, such as the act of submitting a form either by pressing "enter" or by always having something that you can "tab" to and hit "enter" after that, without having to move a mouse around? Why can't they just come up with some standards for interfaces and everybody implement them the same way? Why why why?

That isn't how I was going to get into this weekend's diary entry, but I couldn't decide which way to get into it anyway so I went for the non-sequitur. Other candidates, more germaine to the subject at hand:

1. A friend used to have a .sig line at one point that was a quote from Kids in the Hall, saying, "What kind of a restaurant are you running here that you don't know how time works?" I had a weekend that must have come out of that restaurant.
2. When I was in college, I made the ill-advised decision to become an RA in the dorms. But it put me in contact with the RD for one of the three facilities at my esteemed university, who had an interesting habit: on Friday evening as he left the office, he took off his watch. He did not put it back on again until Monday morning. It was the only way he could force himself to relax on the weekend.
3. I have sometimes taken a nap before dusk only to wake in complete darkness, no lights on, and without an inkling of what time it is or how long I've been asleep. This is one of my favorite times ever, that of waking sometime just because it was time to wake, with no stress, no noise, no diversion, and no stimulus to give me any clue as to what time it is other than "night."

I fell asleep on the couch sometime in the early evening Saturday and awoke in complete darkness. It being Saturday and me being particularly lazy this weekend, I'd never put on my watch and I had no idea what time it was. Since it was a holiday weekend, there was also an almost complete absence of traffic on the street in front of the house, so any road noise that might otherwise have acted as a clue to what time it was couldn't help me. I wallowed in the darkness and quiet for a bit, then decided that I might as well get up, if for no other reason than I was dearly thirsty and there was cold, filtered water in the fridge.

I had two glasses. It was 10:30, meaning that I'd been asleep for maybe 4.5 hours. I returned to the couch, turned on the light, and read a bit more of the book I'd started that afternoon, Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch. It proves the maxim that any sufficiently realized obsession can form a more than adequate framework for a memoir, as it takes its format from important football matches in the author's life, then goes from there to the other stuff that was happening around the same time. I finished it tonight. It's good. I'm starting on High Fidelity next.

I had a completely miserable week, so I needed this weekend just to disappear into my apartment (I only stepped outside to move the car this evening, and to let the pizza delivery guy complete his mission tonight). We were supposed to be released from the office at 2pm on Friday, something I was aware of before I'd even left the house. This didn't happen because I was particularly slothful getting out of bed, it happened because after I woke up I discovered one of the machines I'm monitoring had failed early Friday morning, so I ended up attempting remote triage before ever leaving the house and didn't get into the office until around noon. I'd eaten a couple Twix that happened to be left in the fridge after a candy run the other night, which came in handy because I missed lunch dealing with that flaky server, which crashed in a different and worse way after I left the house, plus another server that we needed more licenses for by Friday night, but which nobody had bothered to figure out needed more licenses until Friday after lunch, at which point it was too late to attempt to get a PO cut. There was a package of graham crackers on my desk, so I ate those.

2pm passed. I was still in the office. The server crashed again and I tired of trying to fix it myself, so I called Webtrends technical support, who weren't able to help but had me start one last operation the results of which I was supposed to call them with whenever it finished. I also got on the line with their sales people, then with somebody from purchasing, then twiddled my thumbs, then finally got a return call from one of their sales people who was sending me the license numbers and would deal with the PO the next week (which was the right answer, but it took them 45 minutes to call me with it). And then the operation the tech support guy had me run finished ... at 8:10pm. I called the tech support number. They close at 5pm PST. I was SOL. I left a rambling, bitter message, sent off some email, managed a bandaid on the server that kept it from crashing over the weekend, and got out of the office at 8:30pm, only six and a half hours later than everybody else in the building.

Sneh.

Prior to that this week, I had a lovely Wednesday night where I slept all of an hour, and even that was fitful. Thursday night was better once I fell asleep, but I either didn't fall asleep early enough or had to wake too early Friday morning because I still needed about two more hours of sleep once I got up.

Before that, I'd been summarily dumped (via email, no less) by Ann, who doesn't see a future for us as a couple and doesn't think we should go out again - a decision I can't figure out if I want to fight or not.

I tend not to fight people. I don't like it. I only like having the arguments that don't matter, that it's really okay to lose, because there isn't any actual pressure involved and I can be as silly or obstreperous as I might feel at that moment without actually affecting anything important. Other people's personal decisions definitely fall in the category of things I'll walk away from instead of arguing.

I don't know why that is. I think it's a combination of having watched my parents fight all those years, never understanding how it was they could stay together when that much acrimony existed between them, and the knowledge that my own will, on things that matter to me, can't be bent at all. I'll argue things that other people might possibly win and run and hide if I know they can't win with me, because I'm terrified if I show how strongly I believe something I'll lose somebody who might otherwise have been close to me - and if I argue the things that they might win, maybe they won't think I'm totally impossible to deal with. For this reason I try never to argue about the things that actually matter to me.

And I generally attribute the same strength of will to other people. I have to, because if I didn't I'd be boorish and impossible because I'd always get my way. People who have experienced the imposition of my will don't think it's a very pleasant experience.

So I don't know why Ann thinks we don't have a future, and I think she's wrong, and I want to know why she thinks that, and I want to tell her how wrong she is, and I want to pick her brain like the neurotic I am and find out if it was something I did or said, and I want to go off in a corner and sulk and not have to deal with her at all. That's the easiest way. But it's not what I want. It's my natural reaction, to sigh, decide this was another one that wasn't meant to be, and walk away.

Am I always going to walk away? Is that who I am? Am I so afraid - of the reaction I might get from somebody else if I actually fight for what I want - that I'll just give up now, without a fight? And the next time, and the next time?

I don't even know that she's "the right" one, but I know that she's definitely not the wrong one, and she gave me that spark that I've only felt twice before. And I was summarily dumped twice before, to boot. By women who then vanished. Is it me? Is it them? Do I open a door they don't know they have, or that they don't want open, and the only way to shove it closed again (and keep all the stuff from falling out) is to kick me out of the way?

Is it worth it to try to change somebody's mind? Is it possible? Is it an exercise in futility, or just a way to salve my own ego? Is it sad and desperate and pitiful to tell somebody, "you're worth at least the effort of fighting to find out if you're worth fighting for?

Ehhh.

I don't like me when I'm like this.

So anyway, I had a weekend where I didn't actually wallow in pity or anything, but I steadfastly avoided thinking about or doing, well, anything. I watched a lot of TV. I read. I looked at far too much stuff on the web. I slept. I killed a whole lot of time, dead. I never put on my watch.

I do at least feel better for having had the weekend of nothing, and I'm not depressed or anything (I don't think), but I'd like a week where I have something positive happen for a change. Sigh.

link (2000-05-30)