nags of a similar ilk

How is it that I have no luck burning CDs from a computer? I swear, I've burned maybe two CDs my entire life, and one of those was by accident.

And it's not for lack of trying.

When CD burners first came out for consumer use, I bought one. All of the instructions were written in broken English, but sufficient for me to try my hand at installing the hardware, then trying to get the software to work. This was back when I was actually still using the Windows platform, programming map editors as my first big project, so you can see just how far back this desire to burn CDs goes.

On that map editing project, we had a CD burner at work that I used to burn navigation CDs. Back then, I knew the difference among the red book, orange book and green book formats. I knew which one you wanted to use your music CD player as a data retrieval device, and could actually create multiple CDs that worked for music or data. Of course, that was with a stand alone CD burner that was the size of most stereo equipment, and was $2500 to purchase. Given the cost to burn one CD was $950 at the time, $2500 was a complete bargin.

So, my first attempt at CD burning: complete and utter failure, as well as a waste of $400 plus time.

Fine.

Years later, I tried again with some other CD burners installed on my various desktop systems. I tried with Windows (shudder) boxes, and with Linux boxes. Eventually, upon my conversion to the Holy Church of Mac, I tried on my OSX box.

And then I managed to burn my first music CD.

That was 4 years ago.

Four. Years. Ago.

That was after I messed up I don't know how many blank CDs to get there.

Now, all I want to do is backup my iTunes library to something other than the three external harddrives I have. Is that really so difficult to do? I mean, hello, I've seen Mike use these DVD-R blank media disks in his computer, which is really close to the same as mine. I tried inserting it colored side up, colored side down, blank CDs, blank DVD-R media, all of which my computer not only can write to (according to the system profiler), but is what the computer is requesting. I've bought (and tried the expensive media, and the cheap stuff).

Nothing.

All of it fails. All of it.

What the heck is it with me and burning disks? I swear I have a radiation field around me that ruins all blank media.

I just wish that weren't my super power.

Clearly, I'm not supposed to travel out of the country.

In a Truman Show-esque catastrophe, everything seems to go wrong when I do, or at least attempt to, travel out of the country. Take Italy with Mom and BJ: My luggage was lost, then delayed by a strike in France that affected only my luggage, and not my mother's or my brother's. My mother wondered who replaced her daughter with a changeling, when I didn't scream and have a fit, but accepted the loss calmly.

I ended up wearing my mother's underwear.

Our honeymoon beginning and end were so traumatic that I've been unable to transfer my written journal entries here without singing "My Humps" off-key at the top of my lungs to avoid the memories, which have thus far always caused convulsions and uncontrollable drooling. Even the travel agent commented that trip seemed cursed after I told her about the birds pooping on my head.

Yeah.

So, imagine my uncontrollable frustration this weekend when, after about fifty hours of sorting, clearing, cleaning, arranging, looking and shuffling, I am unable to find my passport.

I had it two weeks ago. I took it to Vegas Baby Vegas with me, because I hate using my driver's license for travelling. I see no reason why I should show a complete stranger my name and address and, hey, look, I'm heading out of town! See here? Here's my flight information! Call your buddies, rob my house!

A passport doesn't have an address on it, so, even though you know I'm going out of town, you don't immediately know where I live. Not that figuring out where I live is that difficult. I just like to make it harder than looking at a card that I handed you with detailed directions on how to get there.

I don't recall having my passport when I went to Florida.

I did have it on the one day between Vegas Baby Vegas and Florida. I remember dumping all of my bag contents on the floor and having it spill out on the floor. I even remember thinking, "Huh, that's not in the approved location."

I haven't seen it since.

I have an appointment with the Passport Agency on Tuesday morning. I've heard it takes two days to get a new passport, so I'm going to head up tomorrow morning to see if I can get in today, to receive the passport today or tomorrow at the latest.

I keep thinking, oh, it'll show up, just one more box to go through and I'll find it. At some point, I'll have to give up and accept it's gone.

Writing about leaving town is always an internal struggle. On one hand, I'm heading out of town, it's what's happening to me at the moment, I want to talk about it. On the other hand, it's an announcement, "Hey, look everyone, my house is going to be empty for a few days!" I hate that. This time, however, we have house guests staying at the house, feeding the doggies, maybe even petting them if Bella decides to STFU already (though, I'd be surprised at that).

Back when I worked at PDI, my group was in constant battle with the production engineering team. There were never more than four of us in the lighting TD group, and at least five in the PE group. It seemed we were always butting heads with half the group.

The fundamental difference between the two groups was that my group was trying to get work done, while the PE group was trying to build an infrastructure "the right way." The Right Way™ often meant "don't do anything until we build it and say it's okay to use," which inevitably took two weeks longer than my group had time. We were in production and production had schedules and we didn't have time to wait. If the tools weren't coming, we built the tools. If the problems weren't being solved, we solved them. Seems simple on paper.

Despite the near constant head-butting, I, thankfully, became good friends with Kevin Cureton who worked in that group. I miss Kevin a lot. I miss talking to him. I miss solving problems with him. I miss his stories and adventures and expertise and laughter. He has moved on from PDI to EA and I think from there, too. I don't know exactly where, as I've lost touch with him. I'm deeply saddened by this fact.

Kevin often went to bat for me when there was some conflict, and defending me when I was doing something totally bizarre but effective.

Thinking of the group, of the five people in it who I recall, I butted heads with 3 of them. One was a dick, one was an idiot and one was just clueless. Of the other two, one was Kevin, and therefore awesome, the other was Mitch Amino, who I liked very much, even though he was quiet and I think sometimes thought of me as near insane.

During one particular incident, I had wandered up to the PE group's area and told them I had implemented some feature that I no longer recall what it was. One of the PE group's people whose name I don't recall, waited until I left, then exploded about how dare I do this or that or something, that I didn't know what I was doing, what the frack did I think I would accomplish?

Kevin listened to his coworker rant. After he had calmed down, Kevin politely pointed out that I and my group keep about forty lighters from asking the five of them question after question after inane and clueless question. If the four of us weren't there, the five of them would have to provide support for the forty lighters that sat downstairs and have considerably less knowledge than I or my group did. Kevin then asked, did his coworker want to support forty lighters, because he sure as heck didn't want to.

The ranting coworker shut up.

And was pleasant to me after that.

I noticed the change and asked Kevin about it. He told me what happened, and I was grateful that I went from head-butting 60% of the group to head-butting 40% of the group. Very grateful. As grateful as Kevin's coworker was, because I was saving this guy many, many hours of work.

I think of this story as I sit on the other side. I know I should be grateful when I look at the modules being written in Drupal and see the modules that I have on my to-do list already written, just there for me to download. The modules that have been on my to-do list for over a year, sometimes more. I should be glad that someone else has put forth the effort so that I no longer have to.

And eventually I'm sure I will be happy and grateful for the modules and the completed work. But right now, I'm a little bitter that I wasn't able to actually write them. That my to-do list is a mile long and never seems to get shorter. And when I realize I finally have the time to these projects, I don't have the motivation.

Vicious cycle, this.

Just once, I'd like to have a project that's not full of a billion problems. A project that starts and ends on time. A project where the client and the developer are happy. Where I don't have to wrestle with arcane IE CSS rendering bugs. Where I don't have to beat down MySQL databases or Apache aliases or PHP casting bugs. Where I don't spend more of my time fixing problems, but rather I spend it creating things.

A project where I'm not up until 2:00 am two nights in a row because I'm trying to solve the problem before everyone gets into the office in the morning.

Just once. Is that really too much to ask for?

Might be.

It might be the world's most boring project.