Too Many Internets

As mentioned on twitter, mine has been an absurdly slow realization that I am now employed by an IT firm. When flown out to interview, I was aware that this was a healthcare software company, but it was a cool company, doing good things, and I was just along to help out. I’ll be in a customer support role, it just happens that I’ll be supporting software for them.

As I prepare to wrap up my first week, which has been jammed with big-picture orientation, it has been a sluggish, crusty awakening to the technical aspects of my new vocation.

It was a little bit from, “This is the company-wide, customer-viewable, development tracking program. Here are the various logs and notes you’ll be responsible for both generating and keeping abreast of,” and a bit more from, “I suggest changing the background of these terminals to red, to remind you that any coding here will change what’s happening in that hospital.”

Really, I think I stopped and did a mental double take when I found myself thinking, “Well yes, I’ll have to look into orienting one of my two monitors into portrait mode, since it will be so convenient to see more code at once.”

Now I’m pretty certain I’m up to this, and pretty sure it’s going to be fun, rewarding, etc. But this self-paradigm shift is giving me a bit of whiplash.

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For particulars, I now live in Madison, WI, and am employed by “Leading Healthcare Software Developer (LHSD)”. I’m in a technical support role, which will be direct and frequent interaction with customers, as well as occasional small-time development. And some other things, since they just refer to us as the jacks-of-all-trades. I’m right now at the end of week 1 of several months of intense training and orientation. They’re particular about blogging, and I’m now particular about being employed, so don’t expect very many details or stories from my day. Not that you are already, since I’m a fairly poor blogger. But I just wanted to check in, and confirm that I’m going to be out here for at least 2 years. And at present, drunk on the kool-aid, I could see that going for quite a bit longer.

steven Tell

On the advice of a rather good friend, I’ve spent a good portion of the previous night trying to, “just fucking do something.” That’s my paraphrase, not her words, so I perhaps should not have used the quotation marks. Regardless, her point was thus: to use this extensive block of time that I have being unemployed, when not lamely glancing over job listings, to actually produce something. My lazing about funneling hours into a wide variety of video games should rather be spent doing calisthenics of the mind (or hands) for which I am terribly sore.

It really struck me as something that needed to be done as I wandered the physics department today, passing active classrooms and considered the real possibility that if I stopped into any of them, I would be thoroughly overwhelmed by how little I remembered or understood.

So! I am going to try making a definite effort to do something, and document it here. I am bound by severe deficiency of funds, though, so it won’t be anything spectacularly sculptural or food related. But I’m going to do something, dammit.

In that spirit, while sitting on a bench, under a tree, next to the University of Connecticut Center for Undergraduate Education, waiting to inquire about rescheduling an appointment with a career services advisor, listening to ‘Take Time’ by The Books because it shuffled into play, marveling at serendipity and enjoying the last gasp of late summer New England warmth, I wrote the following line.

(Not this one.) Since I’ve been turning over in my mind concepts on which to base a play existing solely as a frame for an out-of-time monologue of physics or mathematics, I’ve pieced together a number of fairly ridiculous sentences. This one, though, really reminds me of the awful constructs forged by pseudo-scientific mystics who co-opt quantum theory in an attempt to throw more veils over the meaning of life. So I just had to share:

‘The whole of the vastly numerous but ultimately finite permutations of human interaction rest on a manifestly stable superstructure born from the collisions of infinite fractal possibilities.’

Now, if that junk is out of my system, hopefully something useful and neat will make itself known.

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I’m really hoping to stick around longer this time, and perhaps do a little more than just link blogging. If you (yes you) wouldn’t mind leaving a brief little thing in the comments (a non sequitur would be best!) I would be quite appreciative, if only so I may have some impression of my current audience. Or, given that I probably know each of you personally, a non sequitur could also be delivered via phone, tweet or in person. Thanks!

steven Tell ambitions, flubjub

So much for that posting renaissance I had hoped for a few months ago. The aforementioned trip was excellent, I took far too few pictures (this has been true for a long while now) and I really have no motivation to write about any of it right now.

However! I do want to put this space to some use, so I’m going to work through my backlog of Firefox tabs that I’ve been holding open in order to blog at some later date.

Such date is now!

steven Tell excuses

Sorry about that! The semester came to an end, which ended up being busier than I anticipated. Then I headed home to Lexington, where the wireless was inexplicably spotty (terribly caustic for motivation, that). There was also, a great deal of socializing (again, unanticipated) which kept me away from my computer without providing much fodder for my purposes here.

However, I do have some entries brainstormed. I’m also getting ready to head out on a ~10-day road trip which will surely be fecund with inspiration.

Also, to that end! If you have any secrets you’d like to pass along about Portland, Maine, please do so!

steven Tell apologies