An update on the Lee-Man

Hi All:

I see I haven't updated this blog in a while, so it's time for an update. I know the many many folks following my exploits will want to know what the Lee-Man is up to, so here's the down-low.

I did get a job. I work for a company that does "I/O Virtualization". I have only been working there a few months, but I've already learned much about PCI and SAS.

If you're not technical, you can skip this part ...

The idea with I/O Virtualization is simple: you leverage one I/O card to work on several servers. Each server gets the impression that it has its own I/O card.

Okay, enough technical talk. This is not a work blog, but since my work is part of my life, I guess it qualifies via the back door.

Biking
On the biking front, I got a nice new Chris King bottom bracket for my Single Speed SiSSy. She used up her previous two bottom brackets, each lasting about a year, so I decided to get a bottom bracket that will last a little longer. The CK actually has a special fitting that allows me to use a grease gun to re-inject new grease in the bearings. And they are purty, being colored Pewter, which matches my Chris King rear hub. I just need to replace the crappy WTB front hub with a Pewter CK, and my SS will be set for life. Oh yeah, I also still need a custom Ti stem, maybe from Black Sheep.

I rode SiSSy up the hill behind my house this evening, after work. The BB creaked a little towards the end of the ride, but that's not unusaly with the EBB on my single speed.

If all of this sounds like a foreign language, you're probably not a mountain biker.

Everything
Besides life and biking, there's the new animals. We now have 3 German Shephard dogs and 2 tabby cats.

The oldest dog is Misha. We rescued her from the Larimer County shelter, in Colorado. She is lovely and smart, but old, with ... issues. LOL She is a real pain in the ass.

Then there's Cayenne. He's our most excellent German Shephard from TeMar kennels here in Oregon. He is smart, strong, brave, and not well enough socialized, so he scares the crap out of many people (including my neighbor Mark).

Cayenne was gaurenteed, which meant that if he had hip problems, we got another dog at half price. (It's not like you can return him!) Well, sure enough, he had hip problems, though minor. They are enough for us to get another puppy at half price, so we did that. Cayenne is just getting over a broken right rear foot. He broke it landing wrong while playing disc with Cyndi. He had a hard cast for 6 weeks, and now he has a bandage and 3 weeks of careful recorvery before he'll be close to what he was (running-wise).

Our third GSD is our new puppy Jalipinia (obvious named using a pepper theme, to match Cayenne). She is maybe 10 weeks old now. She has not quite master the whole inside bathroom bad outside bathroom good thing, but she's trying.

Then there are the two cats. We got Gar and Kicker from the Cat Adoption Team in Sherwood, OR. They are a great non-profit group that had quite a selection of cats. We didn't have much money at Christmas (since I was out of work), so Cyndi gave me permission to get a cat as my present. I found many great cats, but the two I picked had to be adopted together. They were loving, smart, seemed brave enough to handle our dogs, and they needed each other. Since I had room for 2, I took them. I love them so much. Many night one or both of them sleep on my water bed with me. That's nice, since Cyndi doesn't like the water bed and sleeps elsewhere. :(

I guess that pretty much covers the life of the Lee-Man for this installment of Boring Theatre.

Please continue to add those great comments, fans!

Sunshine on a cloudy day

I am feeling pretty good today. I think I may have a job. I have felt a little lost without a job.

It's funny ... when I first started working, I resisted labeling myself as an engineer. I would instead say I worked as an engineer. But, inside, I always thought "I'm more than that ... at least I think I must be." Even then I didn't want my work identity to be my true identity -- it was just supposed to be one of the many hats I knew how to wear. But some place along the line, it became most of who I am.

Deciding who you are is kind of hard when you don't have kids. When you have kids, you already know who you are (and the flip side, which is why you are here). But without kids and without a job, the question can loom large. I'm just glad I may be getting a job.

Funny that I may have missed a chance again (3rd time) to work for Google, but timing is everything, and Virtensys is a darned cool company (and local).

An Update

Hi!

I thought I'd update the cyberspace with what's been happening in Lee-ville.

Life

This has really been about my work. I was laid off in December from Wasabi Systems, a company in Norfolk, VA. I've only been laid off twice before: once as a dish washer, in high school, and once while working at Data General in RTP, North Carolina, in the early 90s.

In high school, I was a lazy-a$$ screw up, so I think they really fired me, but they didn't want to pay the unemployment insurance! LOL

At DG in North Carolina, I was the only engineer laid off out of 100 engineers in the kernel group, and I think part of the reason was politics (I think I pissed off my 2nd-level manager one day while driving!). That time, I found a job within a week and I never filed for unemployment insurance. And that still was very hard on my ego. I felt like I was not a good person.

But this layoff has really been a challenge. Actually, to be more accurate, it's been kind of crappy. I was really hoping this job worked out at Wasabi. I turned down a couple of other jobs for this one, including a rather lucrative and interesting offer from Google (I would have had to move to the Bay Area). And then when Wasabi had problems, we were told that everything looked good until March. That turned out not to be the case.

I must say that I really liked almost all of the people I worked with there. There was one guy that I believe was single-handedly destroying the code base, but other than that all the folks were super smart and nice. (Names left off the protect me!)

I immediately contacted Google and a company called Isilon, both of which had offered me jobs, as soon as I was laid off. I also talked to VmWare, which had offered me a job in the past. VmWare was not currently hiring, Isilon didn't like me as much as last time, and Google had to think about it. [Update: I may still talk to Google ... we'll see.]

I am hoping to stay in the local area, since my father is getting up there in years, and I'd like to be around him more than once a year. I am talking to a local company now about a possible job. I hope it works out.

Biking

I have not been biking as much as I should, but I rode the Single Speed today for 90 minutes in the cold and sun. It was fun and hard. I still have my summer (i.e. harder) gearing on the bike, and there was mud and snow up on Mountain Top road. I would have been grinning if it weren't for all the mud and the fact that I neglected to bring my front fender along for the ride.

Everything

I haven't been doing much on the "everything" front. The universe tries to teach me, but my dumb laziness seems to keep getting in the way. I have not picked up the Course in Miricles in quite a while. I'd like to change that.

Hello Again

I've decided to use this blog to talk about the spiritual side of my life.

It seems nobody reads this blog (though there's a pointer to it on my dot-mac home page -- he he -- I guess nobody reads that either! ;-))

So let the truth set me free ...

About that ... I must say that my friend in the Navy, Dave Bottom, once answered my question "How can I be a better person" with "be honest with yourself." He warned me it sounded easier than it was. He was right.

I started right away (this was 35 years ago) to try to be honest with myself. One might say that is when the philosophical part of my internal dialog began. I started asking myself "Is this honest?" and "what does honest really mean". Deep questions for a 17-year-old. ;-)

To this day, I am still trying to be honest with myself. (I wish I knew how to find Dave Bottom and thank him for that advice.)

So ... to be honest, I think I have a hang up with the name/word God. There, I said it.

And people like Dave Bottom are partly to blame.

See, I never wanted to be a "Jesus Freak." I really believe we each and every one of us have to find our own way to God. And I think organized religion is pablum, only useful for those that can't think clearly enough to make their own decisions. (See the Celestine Prophecy for an interesting story along these lines.)

Dave was a really smart friend I made in the Navy, while in school in Millington, TN. We learned about Carlos Castaneda and Captain Beyond together -- well, I learned about them from him. ;-)

After I got out of the Navy, I stayed in touch with him for a while, and pretty soon he was trying to spread the "good word" to me. Have you heard the good word? Yes, I've heard the dang good word, but it doesn't turn me on like it does you! LOL! I have too many damned questions, like why Christians say Muslims will go to Hell, and vise versa. (Don't get me started!)

So, back to God. I am trying to get over my hang up. I call him/it/whatever Nature, The Universe, Cosmic Order, ...

I bet God doesn't have to stop to eat dinner, but I do. Later!

I am, but I am not

I have been thinking about the I AM a bunch.

I think the real me is some part deep down inside, perhaps where the Voice comes from. That part of me has no ego, is only good, and is not the part of me I normally think of when I say "me". That part is the ego, the part that wants to be right, that wants to be liked, etc.

I feel like the I AM is the only part of me that is real, that will last, perhaps the only part of me that will live forever? The ego is fleeting, not to mention childish. ;-)

Why does this matter? I think I need to learn that the I AM matters and the ego does not. All thoughts that normally pop into my head are the ego, and a few are I AM. I need to near to care about the Voice and not care about the ego. All of the thoughts that come from the ego, good and bad, do not matter. All things in the normal world do not matter. They only have the value I give them. I do not even understand them! ;-)

Woo hoooo, that feels good!

Journey without distance ... it's a play on words, like almost anything you try to say using language, since language falls so short of full communication. I digress (muchly).

I have decided to simplify this a little, and let the voice speak for itself, as much as possible.

So I'm going to round out my background by saying there's this voice, and if I sit quietly and ask it questions, it answers.

How or why it got this way, well that's for some other blog (or never).

"What" the voice is ... also perhaps not important. What's important is what I ask it and what it says.

It's not something spooky, by the way. I don't think it's ever talked to me when I didn't think it was just my own idea, or maybe when I asked it a question (recently), but never uninvited. It doesn't feel strange, it feel like "home", like the truth, like the ego-less answer.

What I've noticed recently is that this voice, which has always been there, may not be "me". I put "me" in quotes because I mean the little "me", the ego. The part that wants to get ahead in the world, and to impress people, and to look good. I always thought "I must be smart, because I listen to this voice, and it's always right!".

LOL! LMAO!! (I'm laughing on the inside.)

Now I'm entertaining the idea that "I" am not "me". ;-)

I am, but "me" does not matter.

I'm starting the Course In Miracles work book. I'm on the 3rd day now. There are 365 days in the workbook, one lesson for each day of one year. The book says you don't have to believe, and I don't, so we'll see how it works.

A Journey Begins ... anew

Hi!

I don't know who will read this, or who might care, but I wanted to record the journey I seem to be beginning. I know it will sound funny, but the Voice told me to do it.

First, it seems like some background would be appropriate.

I am about half ways through my life, so one might call this my first true mid-life crisis.

I have a pretty good job, a nice house, a great wife, and two great German Shepherd doggies.

I live in the great Pacific Northwest, where I was born and went to College after 4 years in the Navy.

I did okay in high school, at least in Math and Music (I played the flute). I hated how boring school was, so I was not interested in College. That is, until I spent four years in the Navy and discovered how low the pay is for non-skilled labor. I worked as an Electronics Technician, so I decided to go to College to get an EE degree, which I did.

Most of my life I've been looking for something, though not sure what it was. In high school, I once heard how psychedelics expanded the mind, so I wanted to try them. Sure enough it opened my mind, but it also had some negative side effects (duh!). I found psychedelics to be self-regulating: either I killed myself or I stopped doing it. So I stopped (many years ago now).

In the Navy I met some great friends that helped me look for that something ... I started reading metaphysical books. I read many books, and bought many more, but nothing seemed to answer all my questions. None of them made me believe them.

Some of my friends, even from the earliest days, seemed to find answers, but they were always too easy-sounding to me, particularly when they involved well-established religious institutions.

Segue from the earlier part of my life to the middle part ... I grew up and got married a second time -- this one for good -- and found a career wrangling software. I began to make more and more money, so that I seem to have enough to live my life, but I certainly never struck it rich. My wife and I moved around the country chasing the right job, but it got harder and harder each time we moved to feel at home and make new friends. We started in the Northwest, then a week after getting married we moved to New Jersey, for gosh shakes! Who woulda thunk it!

From NJ, we knew we had to find something better, so I took a job in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. NC is nice if humid (and lots of bugs), but it wasn't home. So after a few years I got a chance to move to Colorado and I jumped on it. We loved Colorado, made many friends (it took years, but we did it), and I took up Mountain Biking, which I still love dearly. Then everything changed.

First, right around 9/11 (*the* 9/11), my mother died. It was kind of expected, but it was still very hard. (She died of Cancer.) One of my favorite dogs of all time, Captain, died about the same time of Cancer. Then, about a year or two later, I had a serious crash in my Land Rover as a friend and I drove home from Moab to the Denver area. We could have both died (but we were fine, unlike the car). This series of events, together with my wholly unsatisfying job, made me start to question, again, why I was here and what I was doing. Did anything matter? If so, what? Not having children meant that we could not loose ourselves in making their lives better, so I felt adrift. Classic mid-life crisis, I guess.

The final blow to my imaginary feeling of happiness came when we finally got the chance to move back to Oregon. The job turned out to suck, it rained for 40 days in a row (and yes, the nights as well), and I did not get along with my family, which was the main reason for returning. I was very very depressed.

That kind of brings us to now, and here I am!

My wife decided to start bringing the piles of book boxes out of the garage, so that we might get at least one car in there this winter. Lo and behold, all of my meta-physical books are in piles in the living room, and I saw "Journey Without Distance".

And that's where I'll continue next time ...