Book of Days: asher553

Omar came in to work around mid-morning wearing a suit. "Dressed up for the mosque?" I asked, knowing he wasn't. (For that, he normally wears his dark-blue jalabiya, which always reminds me of the gown worn by the Emperor in the Apple Video production of 'Foundation'.)

"No, an interview!" he said, confirming my unspoken suspicion. After last week's revelation about the future of Ken's job and mine, there was a good deal of talk among the four of us in the IT shop, and Omar revealed that he has been dissatisfied with his position for a while, and has been looking. Today he shared that he was one of three candidates short-listed for a position he's interested in, and that he will find out on Monday whether he is the successful candidate. I am optimistic for Omar's chances, because he's very knowledgeable and good at his job, really smart, professional, and just a super nice guy.

If he does get the job, that will be bad news for the Portland IT shop, because he'll be a big loss. But it could also potentially be good news for me, because somebody will have to fill Omar's position. (At least, until that position is eliminated too.) I've had my share of gripes about the job and the company, but if I were offered the chance to apply for Omar's position, I would definitely go for it.

In the IT field, as in any other profession that requires a specific body of knowledge and skills, there's the part that is inherent in the job itself - the basics of how to do the various basic functions that make up the job. That's the part you can learn in trade school, or college, or even from books.

But the other part is the part that's specific to the environment - the structure of the company and its policies, the particular way things are set up and configured in the company and on the site, and most especially the people you work with, in your department, and throughout the company, and people you do business with outside of the company. All of those things are unique to your company, your office, and your particular job; and no amount of schooling or self-study can prepare you for that.

So, having invested six months learning the ropes at my current gig, it does seem a damn waste to throw that all away. I won't know until next week (and I'm off Monday and Tuesday for the Jewish holiday) how Omar's interview went, or how the company will decide to proceed after that. But at the moment, it looks like there might be a possibility for me to stay on. [450]

I was one of those kids who scored really well on aptitude tests - the kind of tests where you have to pick the next shape or symbol in a series, and that kind of thing. If having a high IQ automatically translated to good grades in school, I ought to have been a straight-A student; but it doesn't, and I wasn't. The things you need to be successful in school - or in life - have very little to do with having the kind of intelligence that's measured by those tests.

I graduated high school with B's and C's on my report card, and joined the military, where I spent a total of 10 years active duty in two branches (USAF and USMC) as an enlisted man. The things I learned in the military helped me far more than any college or university would have. I took college courses throughout my adult life, mostly in subjects that interested me, but never earned a degree.

Eventually I went to tech school and earned an entry-level IT certification, and these days I work in IT. Sure it would have been cool to become an astronaut, or win the Nobel Prize, or discover the cure for cancer, but I'm OK with where I am now.

Now I work providing technical support to engineers. Part of my job is setting up laptop computers - regular laptops for the admin workers, and high-performance computers for the engineers. Suppose a new engineer who's just joined the company comes to the IT department, and I set him up with an engineering laptop. It's going to be a brand-new, top-of-the line, high-end machine with one or two terabytes of storage, maybe 64 or 128 gig of RAM, fastest processor and graphics card, and all the latest engineering software, Matlab and AutoCAD and so on. And that engineer can go and do amazing things with that computer.

But now suppose that computer gets a virus - or malware, or even just a bad driver update. Now there's a million garbage processes running on that computer, tying up all the resources so that the computer takes 20 minutes just to open Outlook. Now that laptop won't even perform as well as an ordinary admin laptop, and the engineer can't get anything done.

Your mind can get viruses too. If you are dealing with traumas, anxieties, dysfunctions, or any of the millions of issues that can mess with your mind, then it doesn't matter how high your IQ is - you're not going to be able to accomplish much in life, not until you get rid of the mental malware and debug your brain.

Fortunately, a human being is not a computer, and as individuals we have reason and free will to make our own choices in life. And as members of the human community, we can draw on the experience and wisdom of the past, and we can plan and create a better future. [489]

COUPLE SHOT DEAD OUTSIDE WEDNESDAY NIGHT OUTSIDE OF CAPITAL JEWISH MUSEUM.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/408769
'Initial reports indicated that one of the victims was a staffer of the Israeli embassy in Washington. Later reports clarified that both were employed by the embassy. Eyewitnesses said the shooter shouted "Free Palestine" before carrying out the attack. The suspect has been named as 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago.'

ISRAELI EMBASSY EMPLOYEE AND INTENDED FIANCEE NAMED AS VICTIMS IN SHOOTING ATTACK.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/408781
'Yaron Lischinsky, an Israeli Embassy employee in the US, and his girlfriend Sara Milgram, have been named as the victims of a Thursday night shooting attack in Washington, DC. Lischinsky had bought an engagement ring and planned to propose next week.'

EMBASSY SHOOTER'S MANIFESTO.
https://toniairaksinen.substack.com/p/shooter-manifesto-why-two-israeli
Reproduced at Toni Airaksinen's Substack blog. More here:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/purported-manifesto-of-dc-shooting-suspect-appears-online/
The shooter's view that the Western world should have acted more firmly against Israel is widely shared by the intelligentsia and technocrats of the Wesst, and was recently enunciated by the leaders of the UK, France, and Canada:
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/uk-government-take-concrete-actions-israel-stop-war
'The UK, France and Canada have jointly promised to take "further concrete actions" if Israel does not stop its renewed military operations in Gaza and fails to lift restrictions on humanitarian aid reaching the strip.'

EUROVISION POPULAR WINNER YUVAL RAPHAEL PERFORMS 'NEW DAY WILL RISE' AT HOSTAGES SQUARE.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/408819

'A Fine and Private Place' is the first published book, and first novel, by Peter S. Beagle. Written and set in 1958, it is a love story set in a graveyard. The main characters are Jonathan Rebeck, who left his career as a pharmacist and now dwells, with no living companions, in Yorkchester Cemetery; the recently widowed Mrs. Klapper, who meets Jonathan in the cemetery and strikes up a friendship with him; Michael Morgan, a recently deceased professor; and Laura Durand, also recently departed. Other characters include a cynical raven, who brings Jonathan food and news of the outside world; and Campos, the guard, who works from midnight to eight (literally the graveyard shift) and who plays an important role in the ending of the story.

In the world of 'Fine and Private Place', the ghosts of the deceased linger on the earth - confined to the limits of the cemetery - for about a month or two before they finally transition to wherever it is that their spirits go next. (Jonathan Rebeck is one of the few living people able to see and converse with the ghosts.) What stays on, temporarily, after death is the person's own memory of who he or she was - the body, the clothing, the experiences, the feelings. And it is during this short-lived period after death that the ghosts of Michael and Laura meet and fall in love.

FPP is a love story, but it's also a bit of a mystery. There are questions around the circumstances of Michael's death: Michael says he was poisoned by his wife, but the widow and her lawyer insist it was suicide. And the future of Michael's romance with Laura depends on the outcome of the widow's trial, because if she is found innocent, Michael will be judged a suicide, his body will be exhumed from the Catholic cemetery, and his relationship with Laura will be sundered forever.

I loved the book, and it kept my attention to the end, although I found the pace uneven at times. Chapters 11 and 12 should have been the pivotal chapters: the couple finally confess their love for one another (over and over, in fact), and Michael's killer finally confesses to the crime. But I found the writing and the dialog longwinded and tedious here, and the characters started to lose my sympathy. But the final chapters, 13 and 14, rescued the story for me and made it a very memorable and worthwhile book.

Peter S. Beagle is probably best known for his third book (and second novel), 'The Last Unicorn'. His grandfather was the Hebrew writer Abraham Soyer, and his uncles were the painters Moses, Raphael, and Isaac Soyer. You can hear the writer's native ear for Jewish dialect in the heavily Yiddish-inflected dialog of Mrs. Klapper (with generous use of the subjunctive "should", as in "you want I should ... ?").

Also less well-known is that he is a folk musician/singer, which plays an important role in his second book (an account of his cross-country trip with his good friend, artist and fellow musician Phil Sigunick). His love of folk music will be very much in evidence in 'The Last Unicorn'.

Now 86 years old, Beagle is, thankfully, still very much in the world of the living. Following a long legal dispute, he finally regained creative control of his works. Most of his books are now available in print, e-book, and audiobook. You can visit Peter Beagle's homepage Beagleverse [https://beagleverse.com/] for the latest on the writer.

I'm now working on Beagle's second book, 'I See by My Outfit', and enjoying it greatly.

I started at my present job in Portland last December. The commute from where I live in Hillsboro is about an hour by public transit, and when I started the job I was going to work in a nearly empty office building. The upper management had also decreed a full remodeling of our office space, so the four of us in the IT shop found ourselves transplanted a couple of times in the ensuing weeks.

Now, with the game of musical chairs ended and the remodeling nearly finished, the bosses have ordered a return-to-office for the workforce. (Future lexicographers will no doubt document that the initialism "RTO" entered the mainstream vocabulary around the early-to-mid 2020s.) In practice, I think most of the staff are going to be allowed to work from home 1 or 2 days a week, but the leadership have been very clear that the expectation is for in-office work to be the norm once again.

The IT crew supervisor (i.e. my immediate boss) is an extroverted, talkative dude about 10 years younger than me, with longish hair and (seasonally) either a short beard or a mustache; I believe he moonlights as a jazz guitarist, and he certainly looks the part. He has a family that he's very devoted to. He's very knowledgeable about the IT field, obviously, but he is the antithesis of the stereotypical introverted IT geek. So with the rush of people back into the office, he divides his time between IT troubleshooting and supervisory duties, and chatting with buddies in the office that he hasn't seen for 3 to 5 years.

I'm not quite as outgoing as this guy is, but I am definitely welcoming the return of living, breathing humanity to the workplace. I've always been a bit of a loner by habit and temperament, but the past five years have brought home to me how much I value being around other people.