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Maybe They're Right I loaded a copy of Windows 2000 today on a machine at the office. It had all the components including Microsoft Access, IE 5, FrontPage, Publish and some others. Four CD's. Around 500 megs of data. One of these days I'll load it here at home, but the prospect is not exciting. There's a lot I'm going to have to learn and maybe actually use, since it is so web centric, Word to web and back to Word with embedded Excel. Powerpoint with internal video, Netmeeting over the Internet, all of it up on a web server somewhere. All wonderful stuff. I think I'm going to jump ship and find another job. Something simple where I put little pegs in little holes and sip weak coffee that's brewed down the hall on a hot plate near the water cooler. Peanut butter sandwiches and an apple for lunch bagged in brown paper and tucked in the coat. Simple. No thinking. Talk about birthdays, the coming weekend and the weather: forever. I picked up my laundry this evening and then went next door to buy a bottle of soda. While I was in the store a man asked the store keeper the price of a bottle of Windex. $2.45. The man walked out and met me on the parking strip as I left the store, saying he was homeless and needed money to buy a bottle of Windex. I was not in the mood to finance a bottle of overpriced Windex for the gentleman and declined.
I don't have many rules about giving money to people who ask for it on the
street. Mostly I don't, but every now and then, depending on the person,
And maybe with that dollar goes the parting thought that one day maybe I'll get to the point where I can't load whatever version of Office is current at the moment. Maybe there's no longer a need for people who know something about binding drivers to boards, the pedigreed of a .dll or where the on/off switch might be located on a laptop. Maybe one day I'll look at my desk and decide I can't sit down anymore. Maybe. One day. How many rent checks do I have in the bank at the moment? What happens if one of my body parts goes south as I just happen to be going north? And although they get you all pasted back together, you find you just can't quite focus on day to day events? The brain loses adhesion and slides into the ditch. Do you ask strangers for Windex money in the parking lot? I don't know. Today I was the guy with the dollar, the sun was shining and the wind wasn't too cold. But you never know. They say the weather's changing. Maybe they're right. |
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the temperature, the direction of the wind, the condition of my Karma, I
remember that I too am a part of the human condition and fork over a buck or
two. You can't buy much for a dollar, but a dollar seems to be an acceptable
donation by the people who ask. Some say don't give them any money
because they'll just spend it on booze and drugs. If I were living on the
street, I would probably spend it on booze and drugs too. Booze and drugs
don't make a lot of sense if you've got a job and responsibilities, but if
you're going down that last slide sleeping under a blanket in a doorway,
booze and drugs make a lot of sense out there in the cold.
So I don't begrudge the money. Spend it on food, spend it on whiskey,
spend it on Windex, what the hell.