As we've all recognized for quite a while, my current job is quite different from my previous one. Some of the differences are good (shorter commute, shorter hours), some not so good (narrower scope, less opportunity to influence an organization), and some just different. It was not uncommon for me to spend half of my work week in meetings and conference calls. Quite often, I would have follow-up discussions with folks in the western time zones as I drove home. Now, I have three meetings that typically total no more than two hours per week. There are others at work who appear to be keeping the pace that I used to keep. On more than a few occasions, guys have been talking on their cell phones while in the men's room. Next time you're having a phone conversation with someone who's on a cell phone, be grateful for what you don't know.

Working at that pace would be even more challenging in Nepal.

The other day, I listened to music from the Monterey Pop Festival box set. Some of the music is heartbreakingly good, notably Otis Redding. Other stuff has drifted into deserved obscurity. There were breakout performances for Janis Joplin, Hugh Masekela, The Who, and Jimi Hendrix. (Jimi does a cover of the Troggs semi-hit Wild Thing, one of the very few rock songs to feature an ocarina solo.)

This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal, pointing out the challenges associated with looking for a new job within a company. Because one is expect to have mastered the business, the article notes, one should prepare more for an in-house move than for an external one. Looking back, I can see lots of things that I could have done differently (better).

We call today John Phillip Souza Day. March 4th. ... March forth? ... It's a pun....

From the Dept. of Alternate Power Sources: Hand-powered iPod Shuffle and solar-powered trash compactor.

Both morning and evening commutes are in daylight. In many years this would be an indicator of spring. Instead, the weather forecasters are saying "early March 2005 will continue to feel like middle January...colder than normal temperatures and increasing chances for accumulating snows.

Even on my most difficult days at work, I stop to remember how easy and safe it all is. We owe a deep debt to those who put themselves in harm's way on our behalf.

Paraphrasing Paul in Romans 7, that which I should not do, I do; that which I should do, I do not. It's one thing to make mistakes or do things incorrectly. That happens, we fix the thing, and we move on. Sometimes, though, we disappoint people who really deserve better from us. The incidents, and I won't go into detail, were small, but telling. It's another day today, a chance to do better.

There's a bit o' brouhaha around Worcester. Dianne Williamson, a columnist for the Worcester Telegram, reports that owners have selected a name for the new baseball team - the Worcester Tornadoes. The speculation was fueled by the registration of the domain name worcestertornadoes.com and worcestertornados.com. (The sources I checked said that, while -does is preferred, -dos also acceptable as the plural form.) The 1953 Worcester Tornado is considered by many to be the greatest natural disaster to hit the region in recorded times.

With Photoshop, botox, and celebrity trial re-enactments, it's rare that we encounter something that is what it claims to be. The Really Big Button That Doesn't Do Anything is one of those things.

My job searches that are running in the background continue to be interesting. On Monday I received a call from an agency regarding a management position. After a bit of discussion, the recruiter set up a telephone interview for this afternoon. I asked the pay range for the position. I said a number. The recruiter said a number. The company's number was about 40% lower than my number. We concluded, with no ill will, that it wouldn't be practical to have the interview. Too bad. I had some new ideas to try in my interviews.

This morning's email, again looking for a technical documentation mangement position, suggests a senior secretary job in Rancho Cordova, California.

For our summer vacation last year, Sandra and I bought a jigsaw puzzle. We have a table at the camp that's well suited for such puzzle. Last year's selection, however, brought no joy. The pieces were cut in a way that they appeared as though they could fit in several different places. After a few frustrating evenings, we added the puzzle to the box of kindling for the wood stove. We probably could have used Glyphsaw Puzzle, brought to us by the folks at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). A division of Xerox, PARC has developed many of the key concepts and components that we associate with computing and networks.

I stumbled toward the end of the work day yesterday. For those of you who care about such things, I was using FrameScript to extract section heads from a FrameMaker document. When I wrote the section heads to a file, they kept showing up out of sequence. I spent at least an hour at day's end, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. Although I still don't completely understand why it works, if I scan the text flow, rather than the document, the section heads appear in the proper order.

In like a lion, out like a lamb. Or....

We didn't get nearly the snow that was predicted. I measured a bit more than five inches. After breakfast, I'll get the snow blower going, clean the driveway and yard, and go to work.

A new Dilbert calendar appeared in the break room yesterday. Ed Yourdon's Inverse Dilbert Correlation Factor says that the morale of an organization is inversely proportional to the number of Dilbert cartoons posted in the office area. It's too early to say if this is a harbinger of difficult times, but it's worth watching.

For some, this may seem strange and a bit unsettling. For others, it may be a ray of hope. One friend, for example, has had her depression treated successfully with ECT, so this may be a more controlled method for delivering relief.

In case your spiritual side is in need of development, a local Unitarian-Universalist church is having a discussion on BioSafety Level 4 Laboratories next week. I've been affiliated with the UU church for nearly 50 years, back when they were just one U. I'm very fond of the denomination and wouldn't want them to change. But they certainly can make you roll your eyes every once in a while.

We're looking at a good bit of snow tonight and tomorrow, a foot or more, with a high water content. Sandra and I will bring our laptops home this evening in the expectation that we'll work from home tomorrow.

Today is Marley's Gotcha Day. We picked him at a vet's office eight years ago, the day before he was scheduled to be, um, well, you know. He'd been found walking on the side of the road in a town west of here. He was first taken to a shelter, but that shelter went out of business. The vet took in some of the dogs and placed an ad in the paper. We saw the ad for a couple of weeks before we made up our minds. We drove out to see him, took him for a walk to get acquainted, and brought him home. He thanked us by eating a little plastic wastebasket that I kept in the back of my car. Well, he didn't really eat it. He chewed it to pieces until it was unrecognizble. We wondered what we'd done.

My mother lived with us at the time. A lot of his care would fall to her. She'd never had a dog. Nevertheless, before long, she had trained him to wait for his dinner until she gave him the command to eat. Every afternoon she made a salad for our dinner. Marley enjoyed the broccoli stalks, tomato tops, and bits of carrot trimmed in preparation. They became good friends.

We also celebrate Marley's birthday today. He's not always at his best around other dogs, so we won't be having a party. Because he was a stray, we don't know his exact birthdate. When we brought him for his first physical, our vet estimated that Marley was a year old. So, we've set his birthday at February 29, 1996.

News on the business wire this morning is that Federated Department Stores is buying May Department Stores. It could mean the passing of another store chain, Filene's. A few years ago, Federated bought Jordan Marsh, another Boston institution. We're still grieving over the changes at Spag's.

I traveled quite a bit in my previous job. Our Cupertino office was a frequent destination, but I visited all but one of the offices (Orange County CA) in the U.S. and Canada. As with the rest of my work there, I did some good work and not so good work. I met many good people who are still my friends today. For most of the time that I was with the company, I was an American Airlines Gold member; one year I was Platinum. The elite status helped a lot when traveling with family. We could get through check-in lines much faster and have access to resources at the airline to help with changes in schedule. This was particularly handy when Sandra, my mother, and I were coming home, sick, from a vacation in the UK. Similarly when I flew with my father to his brother's funeral in St. Louis, we had to make several changes to get around a big snowstorm in the midwest. And, sure, the upgrades were nice. Today my Gold status expires. Also, most of the company offices that I visited have since closed.

For the Eats, Shoots & Leaves file, the price list at a local car wash includes:

SUV,s & trucks $1.00 extra

Recently we were talking with a friend who is using a MIDI sequencer as he composes music on his computer. There are others who are taking a more academic approach.

Even though I'm comfortable at my current job and know that my position is funded for a couple more months, I keep an eye on the job market. I have a number of automated searches running that look for various combinations of keywords: technical writer, documentation manager, etc.

This morning, one of the searches found an administrator/technical writer job. Requirements include good technical writing and process mapping capabilities. The person would be developing and maintaining procedures in a software quality assurrance team. Oh, and by the way, the person would also order office supplies.

Another job that was suggested by one of the searches is that of movie extra. "All looks needed." What's the phrase, a great face for radio?

The signals from the dog satellite are particularly strong this morning. Marley is pacing the floor, keening. When I let him out, he walks out to the back yard, turns around, and comes back in.