Wired News:“It’s the most evil thing on the Internet, according to some of its victims. But it’s not a virus, a scam or a raunchy porn site. It’s a[n IE] toolbar that is installing itself without users’ permission — then taking over their systems and making it impossible to uninstall.”I had to do some registry-diving to get rid of this about a month ago. I nearly brained the husband for downloading and installing it, but then thought better. Good thing, as apparently it happened without his knowledge or consent. If only Justice was as happy to bend old laws to persecute these bastards as they used to be about teenage hackers.

I actually have a valid excuse for the past week and half of neglect — which is rare enough to deserve notice. My rock solid work schedule has been fiddled with by higher-ups than usually do such fiddling so that I can participate in an ‘interesting and exciting new initiative’ that’s going on at work. It’s extremely strange for a lowest level employee to get any positive attention from management where I work, or at any such workplace. Stranger still, this program I’m participating in is actually interesting and exciting, particularly compared to my normal duties. To such a point that I filed away the up-to-date resumes that I typically carry with me, out of long habit, to make room for the flood of paperwork this entails.

I’m not going to go into details, not out of secrecy or anything, but simply due to the amount of things I would have to explain in order for this new change to seem as significant as it is. Suffice it to say that if this goes company-wide, the front line grunts of the company would basically disappear, replaced with more empowered customer relations agents who could serve any and every need a customer might have. It remains to be seen if this new breed of super-agent would have any corresponding increase in pay, though…

Like I told you, no new year’s resolutions here. I’ve been working 4/10’s recently, which leads to a lot of somewhat unexpected side effects. Main among them being that during the work week I have approximately 4 hours every day that I’m not at work, asleep, or in the car. So some things tend to fall by the wayside, such as, well, everything. But then I have 72 uninterrupted hours every week in which have to do absolutely not a damn thing, and that’s something I’ve gotten used to far too quickly.

Basically, my entire lifestyle has changed, though not necessarily for the better, or the worse. It’s simply a matter of priorities. My main priority during the week is work, even when at home my main task is to get enough rest to be able to make it through ten hours the next day. I have to be at bare minimum pleasant to over 200 strangers, not all of them pleasant themselves, while also doing my actual job, which can be insanely complex in itself sometimes.

Then I get three whole days to do whatever I want, such as squish two large databases into one or rewrite old scripts and HTML from scratch or watch 5 hours of last week’s TV or have sex for two hours. All of which I did today. So, you know, it balances. So far.

Yeah, yeah. I know what you’re thinking, but trust that I don’t make new year’s resolutions. But I’ve been thinking about this lately, and why not now? I’ve finally just accepted that there’s not going to be a good time to start writing again. I’m not going to wake up one day and suddenly not have a thousand other things to do that are usually more important and sometimes more enjoyable. Having something to say, knowing what it is, and stating it to the best of my ability — currently three separate and equally difficult tasks — those aren’t magically going to become one instant flash of reflex again.

I can’t wait for that to happen before I start writing again, because that’s a whole chicken-and-egg thing, and tangentially, the whole concept of the chicken-and-egg problem just irritates me. Some random molecules somehow managed to organize themselves into a functional unit called a cell, somehow managed to survive and replicate and gradually mutate into even more functional units called organisms, and a few kajillion generations later there was a chicken. That, or one day somebody said ‘let there be chicken.’ Either way, the answer is neither.

The point is, I’m also not going to reverse the process of becoming less and less interesting to my own eyes, day by tedious day, by simply sitting around and waiting for something to happen that will never happen unless I put some work in. I’m going to have to talk about things that are important to me, or avoid doing so by talking about things that are interesting or amusing to me, knowing that eventually I’ll get back around to the important stuff. Not that there’s anything specific I’m avoiding right now other than the ennui I’m currently laboring under that I’m either much too young for or at just the right age for.

Anyway, to close this out the way my comebacks traditionally have, which is clumsily: I am indeed still alive. I’m just fine, actually, though I can’t explain why I’m not really as happy as I was those few months ago, or as sad, or as angry, or as anything. This despite living in a house I really shouldn’t be able to afford, having much nicer toys, and finding myself disliking my job and the people around me less and less. The only thing I seem to be more is tired, though for once in the physical sense only.

So I’m just going to hop back into this and see what I find out, and I’m going to do so with no more fanfare or introduction than this, and relisting the site at Dave’s place, though I honestly don’t know or care at this point if anybody still pays attention. Which brings another point to mind, I don’t think this will any longer qualify in anyone’s mind as a blog, though I make no, and have never made any, promises about what it will be. There’ll be talk of what I’m currently doing and thinking, and if things keep happening to me that make me think of how funny they would be if only I were at more of a remove from them, probably those kinds of stories as well. But expect nothing more than words, and you shall receive them.