Chapter Five

     So, mid-day Harry's looking at a car that's parked in front of his drive way and thinking "How do people think this is okay to do?" Well, maybe it is case of dashing to a neighbor's door to drop off a package and the car will move shortly?

    If that is not the case, Harry is thinking "How do you reason with a person which lacks the social skills to know you don't park in front of another person's drive way? Well, let's see how long this bout of driveway blocking goes on for - 5 minutes, ... 

    One could reason with them, perhaps, but let's hope it doesn't come to that.

    And if it does come to a confrontation - it won't involve any reasoning - it'll be a request to move your car so I can pull out of the drive way - 10 minutes ...

    At this point it might be 5 more minutes, or 20, or longer.

    In the end, it was over an hour and a note was left on the windshield. Better to leave a note than reason with someone about such a behavior.

    But to leave a note, you need a windshield or other means of displaying the note. And it leaves a memento for the person to reflect on, to think about to consider.

    Like Oswald says, "It's chaos out there, be kind."

Chapter Four

     Working for the Woman was the way Harry made sense of the change in thought he had. When a person is working for the Man, they are working for a large organization, hence the position is one with less individual initiative. Working for the Man also means for some - the police - which casts an odd light on his contributions to unsolved crimes.

    Working for the Woman  was not the work he did directly for the women in his life,  his sister, his wife, or his daughter.

    Working for the Man wasn't an evil in Harry's mind, it just had limitation he had grown weary of. And maybe it wasn't the work so much, as the organizational style of working for the Man. Granted, Harry would be the first to admit working for the Man had advantages. Just in the possibility of getting something grand done requires an organization to generally pull in the same general direction. 

    Working for the Woman  can still require an organization to pull in the same direction, too. Working for the Woman allowed more nuance and discussion  in making choices. This did not mean one got less actually done. How often had working for the Man been a show of just doing something because you must not be standing around idle. The Woman requited one to be more observant and take action that might make the smallest of differences on the surface of the situation, but made larger impacts possible.

    Maybe there was room for both. Maybe since the beginning of work, they had been there all along Man and Woman.

    Efficiency and Exploration. Working for the Efficiency, or Working for the Exploration?

    One way or another, the way he worked needed changing, and it did.

Chapter Three

 One job lead to another and then another. Interviewing hospital patients and their family members to understand what were their concerns as a family regarding the recent diagnoses they were living with. Setting up computers and networks for individuals to communicate with their colleagues with. Changing the tractor feed printer papers on the OKIdata 391.  Doing data review and cleaning for survey research. Cooking Jobs (too many to mention),  Installing software on bare metal and virtual computers so Harry's colleagues could do science. Harry moved data for pay and heartache.

In all these jobs, the pattern, and what did and didn't fit the pattern was part of the job.  There was the job too, actually getting the job done, like feeding tapes to an SL8500, or pulling machines out of a rack and working with others.  Or Harry thinking he was working with others, and then he realized that what Harry thought was the case, was now not that at all.  The silliness of the confusion - or - confusion silliness - is the sensation that Harry had toward then end when working for the Man.

Then the pattern of one job then another job stopped.  The Man said,  "We don't need you no more."

Harry was left with a pattern of not taking jobs, or not investigating situations, environmental or otherwise, for the Man. There was a lull. Harry was fine with the lull. It has been a long time since he was able to kick back and take in life the way he wanted. No doubt there was a transition but he managed.

Until, Harry didn't mind working for the Woman.

Chapter Two

 With two hours of consulting work complete, Harry saves his work, and closes his laptop.  There's not much here to be considered 'actionable' thought Harry.  This heist was well-planned and clean. The FBI would be conducting interviews and maybe that'll lead to some break in the case. More likely he thought, someone might start to brag, or start to sell what they stole. At this point, all Harry could do was provide some creative possibilities for the investigators in the field to consider.

Chapter One

 'Fishing' for Harry was a way to get away from his desk. He could have posted anything, but 'Gone Fishing' was good enough to get the point across to most.  And the rest that didn't get the point could well, 'Go Fishing' with him if they wanted to better understand Harry's need to get away from his desk.

Please no tears for the state of Harry's desk. Harry had a nice desk. He had the whole ergo setup,  He had a nice monitor, and of course the sit-stand bits all worked well.  It wasn't the desk that chased him off to 'fishing' it was the 'fishing' that lured him away as it were.  

With the new day sun just breaking the horizon, 'fishing' meant beginning an environmental data collection set for his sister. Yes, Ophelia had signed on to assist in a case regarding contaminated stormwater runoff flowing into the bay. Harry thought it ironic, she signed on and here he was collecting some samples. It took about 3 hours, but in time all twelve samples were collected. His pre-printed labels made it easy to mark the vials for processing.

Once done he packed it in, and dropped off the samples for processing at Beta Analytical.

Having now made a good start for a Thursday, he decided to drop by for coffee at Stand then Sit Cafe. The 9:30 - 10:00 o'clock time was ideal. The early morning rush hour was now passed, which meant the barista would be rested and ready for Harry's drink order.

Entering the Stand then Sit, Harry let's out a greeting: "Hey Kat"

"Hey Dad. How's it going?" 

Good, good, good. And you?"

Typical Thursday, what would you like to drink today?"

"A drip, please"

Kat prepares the drip,  letting out a "- got any plans this weekend?

"Not much planned -  did you want to come over to dinner on Saturday?"

"Oh, not, Saturday, I've going out with Clio"

"Concert tickets?"

Kat confirms with excitement, "Yes! Clio has tickets to the Tallest Woman on Earth at the Roman"

Wow, that's great!"

Harry side steps the next customer placing an order at his left, and waits in the zone.

Harry's mind wanders, noticing the faded decal on the floor 'Be Here Now' and thought it a good affirmation, too bad about the prior business, they ain't here no more. But they left a mark.

"Trish - Latte!" followed by "Harry - Drip!" is announced by Kat.

Harry says a kind "Thank you" and a "bye" to Kat as he grabs his drip.

    I

Prolog

 "You want to see something tomorrow..?" Harry repeated.

"Yeah, you been going on about this a while, and so I want to see something, by tomorrow." stated Ophelia

Wait, wait, wait, by tomorrow? Harry repeats.

on repairs - adventure awaits and so too inertia

 First, I think most of us are familiar with the fact repairs take time, usually longer than new installs.  And it commonly takes longer to remove the current piece (or what keeps it in place)  than it does to reverse the steps once you've gotten to the replacement stage.  Perhaps this is a generalization on hill-climbing, where to climb a hill takes longer than to fall down that hill.

Today's repair was a  single handle cartridge value replacement to stop a leaky faucet. This is not a difficult repair at all.  (I had the needed cartridge model from having replaced this years before when it was leaking at the stem handle. So I had that as a head start. )

As to the actual replacement done today, initially the set screw that held the decorative handle to the valve stem was stuck. This set screw didn't not want to budge. No. When it finally did, I considered that I might have snapped it. And then with the set screw removed - the decorative handle took minutes and minutes of prying it and nudging it off with a screw driver tip, plus a hard vertical pull.)

After these stuck pieces were separated, the rest was textbook (erh, YouTube step X).  And it reminded me of how much plumbing repairs can be like IT repairs. (Yes, it usually takes longer than you thought it would.)  Specifically, the bit about getting the parts corroded and stuck to move, so one can advance with the needed replacement.  In IT repairs getting to the replacement can be stymied by the inertia in the system. And you can place blame, but really it is just inertia in the system.  While adventure awaits, inertia is always there, too.