I'm having a hard time letting go of the urge to beat the shit out a music teacher. I'd never thought one would deserve it, but I now know of one who merits such treatment.

My kids school is doing an operetta, school play thingy. There is a district wide organization which helps with arts stuff in the Buffalo schools and they are overseeing this little production. I knew my daughter got involved which was great, but Number One Son tried out. He just turned 9. He and a friend went down to the "auditions." Each was sent to a group of older kids, 11 to 13 years in age. That can be intimidating in and of itself. The advisor who apparently thinks he is at fucking Julliard looked at my son and simply commanded "NEXT", giving him no instruction, no direction, just placed him on the stop. My poor boy got nervous and sort of collapsed into himself and started to cry, given that he was surrounded by no support at all which made that feeling even worse. The older kids mocked that, until my darling daughter appeared and threatened beatings all around. Lovely girl, she is capable of some intense mood swings, but upon hearing of this lioness like response, I immediately upped her allowance.

My son held it together until he got back to class until he got to his teacher and had a good cry. I'm angry because it took a little bit for all of this to get to me, but I also want to slap the shit out of the play director. If the fuckstick doesn't want to help and encourage young kids who have a genuine interest, then what the fuck is he doing working for schools. This jackass set my son and apparently 4 or 5 others kids up to fail simply because he couldn't be bothered to give a shit.

The inherent beauty of all of this is that at a school function from a couple of posts ago this weekend, I was, er, able to voice my displeasure to the school principal who had the miscreant in her office.

I believe I told her something about what kind "of a shell of a man browbeats 8 and 9 year olds for the sake of a school play."

Godfuckingdammit

Well, that was a fun work week. The Big Kahunas decided to institute a entire new billing system first thing last monday. I got to spend last sunday helping prep the damn thing. It is a decent piece of software that will be a great use once everybody gets over the heebie jeebies with it. Trouble is, every department feeds off of it, so one fuckup can reverberate for quite awhile. Then, there was the change of servers for the internet. Sunday was the day to pull the plug on the adelphia server and connect with the Time Warner --- GADS, what a pain in the shorts. The big bosses hit part of the email of adelphia.net account holders without realizing that more than half the folks didn't use that email so they had no idea how stupid we were about to get. Of course, it didn't go smooth. Compounded by the problems with secure sites, that mole hill became in mountain in double time.

Just about everything about it blew. Peeps, if your net connection got fubar'ed last weekend into this week, lemme know. I figured out how to give credit rather quickly (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

Wednesday I headed out to one of the call centers to pitch in with some troubleshooting on the billing system. During the lunch break, I broke bread with some of the folks who work me in Buffalo and we told some war stories of what customers were telling us. The center's manager heard one line from the conversation and immediately thought I was slamming her call center and ran to tell the dude I interviewed with for a job late the week before. What the hell?? Not only was that a little junior high for my tastes, but does the allegedly professional women have such an opinion of me that I am stupid enough to insult an operation while I'm in the middle of that operation. The fact that she said nothing to me left a sour taste in my mouth. If the smell of superstition is going to be stinking up the place, I'm wondering if I should really head over to the new spot.

In my current stead, there is a chance my office might be relocating to the confines of West Seneca in just remote enough to make me underwhelmed at the prospect of going. But alas.

Short vacation coming up, taking the eldest to NYC for her birthday in June. In 11 days, we head off for a long weekend of savoring Manhattan. It's been a little over 1 1/2 years since I've last been and can't' wait.

My younger sister is taking my daughter to see the Color Purple while we are there. She announced that she (the sister) is getting married at a place near WestPoint called the Garrison in October. Never did a solid drive like that on my own before, but first time for everything.

And how was your week?

My kids' school did a neat thing to celebrate the springtime weather. Some parents and kids got together and built a maypole, creating a nice day outside as well as a excuse for a picnic in the sunshine.



The peak of the maypole




Great day to savor the spring weather

Yo Time Warner/adelphia.net subscribing peeps,

It's not an outtage. It's the formal untangling of Adelphia and the restitching of Roadrunner. Sit tight, engineering types should be through messing with us soon. Watch the mail, the shift from adelphia.net to roadrunner.com is up for this week too

Back to your regularly scheduled estrip

Alright, I know I have a few more miles on me than some of you all, but damn, who knew.

Four straight twelve hour days have feeling like the loser in a bar fight. We've been short staffed and the solution seems to be to have me fill in. At 43, I'm not too old for much, but apparently I pay for it the next day. All the final pushing to get shake off the Adelphia and implement the Time Warner (especially all the Road Runner Technical goodies) are getting implimented over the past few days and should finish by the middle of next week. This is a good thing because my supervisor's supervisor is about to explode. Given her turtle like physique & demeanor, that will not be a pretty thing. The result of the changes has had me tossing modems and dvrs every which way. When my muscles stop aching they might be in a little better shape. But what price. I've picked up work tomorrow just early enough to wreck any chance of roller derby tonight and in at 7 on monday (we need your computer skills...bitch, please). They need me to be better caffienated at that hour. Can office coffee successfully run through an IV? I may just find out.

Interviewed for a slighty different position within the company that has my interest. I must have put on a good show since they already called my direct boss. Might be kind of nice to head to the waterfront provided the pay is right.

Anybody up for a matinee on a rainy day? Popcorn for lunch seems like a good thing