I thought I was going to have a clever title

But it turns out, the song that I thought I was going to borrow the title of, sending the readers on a small scavenger hunt to discover an obscure but enjoyable song, doesn’t actually exist. Instead I will be blunt-go listen to some Morrissey. With the Smiths, or solo, you choice. I’m surprised how much he means to me. Here, try this on : Greatest Hits (Dlx Ltd Ed)

Back to my original subject. I am experiencing a significant amount of  stress from trying to achieve both a career launch and being a full-time caregiver. I admire the men and women out there who appear to be able to accomplish both tasks, but beating myself up won’t make it happen. If beating myself up and wallowing in self-pity were success catalysts, then high school would have left me sitting on a giant pile of money watching over my vast empire. Time to be honest with myself and acknowledge that I am  choosing to focus on caring for Max, and that is my career right now. If I can muster up a little extra from day-to-day, then that’s fantastic, but the quality of our time together is my only real baseline for measuring success.

But what about money, and my fondness for the comforts it brings? Well, we know we can make do with only one salary, and if I have to sacrifice a few luxuries to make it through, then that’s what I’ll do. I need to look at it as a contract position, that will last until Max heads off to school, which will be September 2012. There’s always a chance that something will change, and we’ll look at pre-school, but let’s take that one step at a time.

Unrelated: Futon mattresses are currently on the top of my “You can go straight to hell” list. Moving one is like trying to wrestle a drunk manatee up a set of stairs.

This is a mess of unrelated things

Which, I assume, my last post was as well. the unfortunate outcome of blogging while tired on a malfunctioning keyboard. You don’t know how essential your friend the space bar is until he stops working. Oh well, I’m back on my normal keyboard and (relatively) awake.

It makes me laugh my angry and dismissive laugh when I see the repeated references to Apple, and specifically the iPhone, as “overhyped”. Really? How many millions and millions of phones do they have to sell before the hype level is scientifically determined to be the correct amount? What is the adequate hype threshold for a consumer electronic product? If you need a good example of this kind of nonsense, check out Gizmodo and the majority of their sad iPhone coverage.

At the heart of it, people want to see something rise up and be great, and then they hate it for becoming great and they yearn for its destruction. They’ve found one minor issue with some of the phones, and they want to ride it to the angry mob with pitchforks and effigies of Steve Jobs. Microsoft has seen the opportunity in scoring a few cheap points and they referred to the  iPhone 4 as Apple’s Vista.  If the people amused by that comparison could logically compare the two things, they’d remember what an unholy mess of unwanted and unuseful garbage Vista is.

In other news, I’ve added another band to my no listen list. Sorry Doug and the Slugs, but you were terrible examples of Can Con gone wrong, and the world is better without your “Last of the Red Hot Fools” or “Makin’ it Work”. especially the second one-I hear that noise on the radio and I change it to the next available station. I don’t care if it’s static or a sermon about the jesus, it’s got to be better than those damn slugs.

More About Anonymity and Sleep deprivation

There were a couple of news items recently that were in the vein of people rioting at the thought of losing their internet secrecy. One was pointed out to me by one of you faithful readers (Hi Roy!), a story about the harassment a female gamer receives if the nerds she games with find out her real name. To me,this actually supports my belief in online identification. If the lonely stalkers were held accountable to what they were doing, held to the same standards and rules that a real world stalker would, the incidents of harassment would drop dramatically. They are hiding behind a convenient fallacy that things on the internet aren’t really real, so they can do normally reprehensible things without feeling guilty.

The other story was Blizzard trying to introduce real names into their Warcraft forums. Again, I think this would eliminate the majority of the bloated nonsense that clutters the web. The players can maintain their escapism into an alternate identity within the game, but forums are public areas where real people interact.

On the parenting front, Max’s sleep pattern has become unstable again,so we’re running on low sleep juice for everyone. Things I lose when I’m tired: the ability to make an omelette, and the capacity to fully follow a recipe. Thankfully, the family likes my hot egg messes, and forgetting the olive oil in homemade hummus makes it ‘low fat’. Ta da!