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I’ve had one hell of a vacation, and yet I haven’t gone anywhere

I stink at vacation. My genetics simply haven’t prepared me for a world of leisure. For years after my grandfather left the Navy, he wore a sort of improvised uniform and essentially went to work every day with his own self imposed regular work hours in a machine shop of his own design, behind his home in San Simeon. It wasn’t a job, it didn’t involve any sort of commerce, but to him that job was as important as anything he ever did to earn a wage. He may have left the Navy, but he was still on duty.

Sure enough, when his health finally declined to the point that his work was no longer possible and that he was no longer ambulatory, he died soon after. It wasnt the health, it was the lack of purpose for the day that did him in.

My father was the same way, just 30 days after retiring to Idaho he died of a sudden massive stroke. He spent exactly one month off the clock and frankly it was probably the burden of dealing with “free time” did him in.

In his last week before the stroke he uncharacteristically just sat in a chair on the deck with a set of binoculars looking out towards the Grand Tetons and said to no one in particular “I don’t think I can take all this laying about” and ‘tsk-tsked’ himself at the shame of it all. My mom said that in the final month, he would wake every morning and just sigh, now that he had to face the incomprehensible torturous burden of “free time”.

He hated that phrase “free time”. He believed that time was unique in the universe of things, it could neither be created nor destroyed and while it was always used, it largely went to waste. He used to say that “unlike money, which can be created and lost over and over again, time was irreversible, irreplaceable and in very short supply”.

I’m blessed with having a job in an industry that I really love. I honestly think I would do what I do even if I didn’t get paid. My biggest challenge with this style of work is learning how to stop working. And with my genetic predisposition in the area of personal work ethic, it’s a bigger problem than you think.

Those of you who have been around this blog for a long time know that I work from my office in my home. On occasion I do travel to various places in my job but day after day, week after week routine is that I work from a reclining sofa, laptop in its proper place an office phone by my side. That’s it. My job is not physical, its mostly communicating and thinking. Yeah, it’s not a bad gig to have, but it does have its unique difficulties. Most people have to be motivated to go to work, I have to be motivated to stop working.

Like I said, I stink at vacation. I routinely stop accruing vacation and have to be told to go on vacation and use the time or lose the benefit. The best of my managers tend to note this mental defect of mine and schedule my vacations for me. The really good and smart ones just call my wife and ask her for the best dates for my vacation, thereby cutting out the useless and ineffective middleman in question. I make sure the kids and the wife get their time, but after the number of years I’ve been with the company I work for, that still leaves me with two more weeks a year to occupy.

Its hell.

This last break for example, I had quite literally forgotten that I had schedule time off for the end of the year. It was only after working half a day that my manager noted my presence online and asked “ Why are you here?” that I was reminded that I wasn’t supposed to be earning revenue for the next two weeks. So, after putting a few things away that I was working on and making solemn vow not to log on, check email or use various IM tools, I took vacation.

And what did I do? Go to a beach in Hawaii or go skiing like other normal people?

Nahhhhh.

Oh you know exactly what I did brother; I worked with computers, read technical magazines and other such nerdy technical things for almost the entire time of my vacation break from work,

Just-like-I-do-when-I-am-at-work…

And you know what else? I had a great time doing it too! I don’t recommend it for everyone, and I don’t mean to say that its better than going to a beach in Hawaii or going skiing, but I have to say that there’s something to be said for just doing something, not because you have to, but just for the fun of it. And yeah, computers, software, networking things together is FUN.

Now, I didn’t work with the same stuff I work with at work, I worked with other things that are decidedly “outside the lines” of what I do at work, but that’s precisely why it was fun. Yes, I'm exactly the kind of person who goes to Las Vegas with a stack of technical books and sits at the pool being generally annoyed because the rest of the people at the pool cant keep it down so I can read this exxciting article about "virtual machines".

I should be locked up.

For example, during this vacation, amoungst a host of technical things, I worked with a set of Legos. Lego Mindstorms that is.

Lego Mindstorms is a deceptive piece of technology. If youre like me, you hear the word "Lego" and all you think about is the pain of stepping on them in the middle of the night when your kids don’t clean their rooms, but the “Lego” aspect is not what is really important here. Lego Mindstorms is a simple to use, create your own robotic system. It uses a software controllable cpu system that drives a set of sensors and motors that you can control. A bluetooth compatible, portable cpu system that uses an RJ-45 interface with gui driven software. Oh, sorry, I got carried away for a moment, Ill have to wipe the drool from the keyboard.

Home Robotics today has that same sort of vibe that was happening in the world of home computers in 1978. No one at the time took it seriously, and few had the vision for what it would eventually become. There were just a few whackjobs in their garages playing with things that looked to the rest of the world to be not much more than toys. But if you look 20 years in the future, and those same whackjobs transformed the world with their little gadgets and toys. My feeling is that Home Robotics will have the same transformative effect as home computing. I spent a good portion of the time off making something that would mop the kitchen floor.

Why? Why the hell not!

So yeah, a good portion of my vacation was spent playing with Legos, and yeah, I loved it.

Another part of this vacation was spent setting up another Slingbox. This makes now two for the house. The rule should be that if you have a Tivo, then you MUST have a Slingbox. Theres no sense timeshifting if you cant also placeshift as well. I enjoy sitting in Panera Bread and watching my Tivo on my cellphone, it freaks out the kids sitting in there with the ipods.

“Download to tv shows to my ipod”? Bah! how 2005 is that! (I don’t have an Ipod, I absolutely hate the interface; which makes me a complete and total culture heretic to the starbucks crowd and as nearly as unhip as Merv Griffin**.)

I cannot say enough good things for this little piece of technology. It works, it works very good and its addictive. I now have friends and relatives from all over the globe watching my Tivo in the wee small hours of the evening. If you’re wondering why your network bandwidth suddenly stinks, you can stop blaming all the “new AOL users” and start blaming streaming video from slingbox users on your network.

I also spent a good deal of time helping the kids get their new Xbox 360 going, and getting a couple of their friends who also got Xbox 360s for Christmas going on the network. I’m struck by the staggering weight of computer infrastructure going into people’s houses. Explaining to non-technical people “what a wireless network router is” and how to set up a WEP security system is quite an experience.

All worked out well, and its clear to me why television networks don’t have any ratings. They only time the kids watched TV over the holiday break was when they were waiting for their friends to join them online. Passively watching TV has as much attraction to this generation as listening to recordings of “Fibber Magee and Molly” did to mine.

If you’re wondering how much better the Xbox 360 is from the “old” xbox? Well, the xbox 360 is a great all around machine for the home. Think of it as a great high quality DVD player that also lets you play games and the price wont bother you as much. I think the video conference facility is the most underutilized under marketed part of the Xbox. I had a small video conference with a co-worker overseas who also had an Xbox 360. It worked very well, and with just a small amount of effort, Microsoft could easily create a set of software for the 'home office worker' that would greatly facilitate that world.

Oh, and wouldn’t every boring meeting and conference be that much more fun if you could entertain yourself in the meeting by playing a ‘first person shooter” game with your co-workers? Sure. I know, I had the same thought.

Thank god vacation is over. Its good to be back at work.

**- I once met Merv Griffin in an elevator at a hotel in Carbondale, Illinois. He stepped in with his dinner guests and one floor up, the elevator got stuck between floors. For one hour, I was both an audience and a guest of the worlds smallest “Merv Griffin Show”.

The hour flew by. He’s seems like a nice guy. He dresses funny, sort of like the “white rabbit” in “Alice in Wonderland”. He was wearing a suit that was somewhere between a floor length bathrobe, a Col. Sanders costume and something “Huggy Bear” would wear on “Starsky and Hutch”. Oh, and he was smaller than I thought he would be. But ever since that experience, I’ve had what I call the “Merv Griffin” test for all celebrities.

It goes something like this:

“If celebrity X were to be stuck with me in an elevator for an hour, what is the likelihood that celebrity X would not make me want to impale them in the neck with my ballpoint pen, just to get them to shut the hell up?"

Merv passed the test with flying colors. Depending on my mood, Donald Trump might pass the test but Rosie O’donnell doesn’t stand a chance.

Posted @ January 01, 2007 11:37 PM | Current Affairs

Posted by: GyorgLyquor at January 2, 2007 10:37 AM