King Of The Hill

Barring any last-minute change of heart, I am fairly confident this won't be my final HoB post for 2009.

Then again, my honest intention is to swing by here at least a few times a week and let you, the reader, take a peek at the slow, painful destruction of what gray matter I have left...put another way, I envision something akin to the polar opposite of watching paint dry...

Except with very little paint, and even less excitement.

Having said all that, I've got a built-in excuse -- I've been so busy that I'm feeling increasingly like a pinball going from one gravitational bumper to another. But, in fairness, that's not to say I haven't smiled here and there between those bumps.

Since my return from the Land of Thanksgiving, I've been incredibly inundated at work with legitimate balls-to-the-wall priority projects. Some of these said projects are high priority because they've been pushed to the back burner far too often or simply because they involve high-stress situations (deadlines) or high-stress clients (clients who are either under immense pressure on their respective ends or simply clients who are difficult people and exist, in part, to make sure my existence is as miserable as theirs).

Whatever the reason, the collective shit hit the collective fan over the past ten or twelve days and I was the one assigned to keep the fan shit-free, as is increasingly typical.

Well, the fan got a little bit o' the brown stuff, but I managed to scrape it off before the mess got overly difficult to handle and cleaned it up as good as new...or as good as can be expected.

And in the process I managed to pull a few rabbits out of my hat, which, I'm actually happy to admit, I didn't think I could do. I've heard it said that you find out most about a person when he or she is under the most severe adversity, when he or she is faced with immense pressure. Based on that logic, I found out a lot about myself, I must admit, I didn't know.

My apologies for suckering you into a convoluted self-shoulder-pat on the back, nothing to see here, move along...

But in the meantime, all is not particularly perfect in Boogie-Ville. I've been in the process of working on my corporate website re-launch (which should arrive sometime around the first of January) and our corporate e-mail migration. The former is self-explanatory -- hopefully -- and the latter refers to us switching our corporate e-mail to a new server. Fortunately, the new hosting entity won't be as limited as its predecessor; unfortunately, that migration process took from 11AM to 1AM last Sunday (not yesterday) and the kinks are still working their way through the system. So invariably, beyond the simple changing of mx headers, which are the internet's way of communicating to e-mail servers around the world where your e-mail should eventually arrive, there were lots of issues for which I was prepared but hoping would not appear.

They did.

In either case, a consultant and I fixed many of the issues and everything got resolved. Put another way, I'm far from concerned that things won't get resolved -- I have that "everything will work out properly" mechanism in my psyche and my daily life, but eventually, the continued focus required to balance so many flaming knives is difficult. Juggling one flaming knife is easy, but the more there are in the air, the harder it is to make sure none of them land, business-end first, in your foot.

So endeth the psychology of flaming knives.

In either case, the other stuff I'm handling -- filing some paperwork with a City agency to comply with a judge's order on behalf of a client, assembling the layout, content and art for our new site, and dealing with a couple of other stressful, high-pressure situations -- is, after all, par for the course.

That, and the Giants are playing atrocious football.

On the other side of the coin, last night's season finale of Dexter really kicked ass...it was the kind of electric finale that the Sopranos and Seinfeld wished they owned... And this was only the season-ender. If you have Showtime and you're not squeamish -- the show, after all, focuses on blood and a serial killer masquerading as a police scientist and a loving husband/father -- I highly recommend a full viewing. Really, really intense, worthwhile TV.

I was hoping to wind down a bit this week, but since I'm going to be out of action Friday to focus on completing our website, I've got to insure everything gets done this week in four days instead of five. Between that and assembling all the new PC parts -- motherboard, power supply, RAM, graphics card, an array of drives and the ever-popular Thor's Hammer CPU cooler -- my guess is I'll be doing a lot of sleeping with my eyes open as per usual.

Oh well...at least I didn't get anything crappy for Chanookah this year..like a dreidel, socks, or socks with a dreidel motif. And if you happen to celebrate Chanookah, hope yours is a celebration and festive. If you don't, here's to hoping whatever annual gift-giving ritual you observe -- Christmas, Secret Santa, the Kwanza-Fest or Festivus -- rocks your world and makes you happy to be alive...

In the meantime, I'll be back at some point soon, so keep your eyes peeled for more gray matter meltdown.

And please, no flash photography ;-)