So here I am back at work staring down the drab gray pseudo-cloth covered walls of my human cage, the cubicle. I don’t know how, why, when or where it became standard practice to lock otherwise intelligent & productive people in these spirit-killing boxes but I really wish this insanity would end. I’m sure I could be amounting to a far more productive human being if I were inspired by the world going on around me rather than staring point blank into this eye-straining & soul sucking LCD for 10 hours each day. I’m always left wondering just how anything got done back in the good ‘ole office days of telephones, typewriters & ashtrays. Imagine actually communicating with another person to accomplish some goal instead of getting carpal tunnel syndrome from mindlessly point & clicking your way through the day.

I may be hypocritical since my profession makes me a large part of the problem. You see, I feed my family by writing & correcting computer code all day long each & every day. This gives me tremendous insight into the current question at hand because as one in tune with zeros & ones I can attest to the fact that it’s all really quite pointless. I am convinced that humanity could get along nicely without incorporating computers & the internet into damn near every facet of our daily existence. Sure, we still need them for help with medicine, math, science, communications & transportation, but do we really need them constantly installing & updating applications that we could really handle ourselves? Do I need 2 desktop PCs, 3 laptops, cellphones, PDA, iPhones, webcams, Bluetooth, etc… everywhere I go? I am a walking electromagnetic field! Is being constantly connected a good thing? I’m beginning to seriously doubt it.

I’d like to revert back to the “Dark Ages” of walking into an office with coffee & newspaper in hand, greeting my coworkers with a hearty “Good Morning” while I stroll into my office (with real walls & door!), kick my feet up on my desk & call my clients to see how I could help them this fine day. From where I’m sitting, that sounds like science fiction. Instead, I get to sneak into my cubicle long before anyone else shows up, boot up my PCs, check e-mails & websites & hunker down to stare into the depths of line after line of computer code.

My phone never rings, and if it did I wouldn’t answer it. Partly because no one should be calling the programmers directly (all calls get filtered through management or QA) but also because it’s been so long since I’ve had to deal with person-to-person contact that I wouldn’t even know how to talk to someone let alone figure out how to answer this damn modern office multi-line phone! And don’t even dream that I actually speak face-to-face with anyone. Again, no one is allowed direct access to the development group because all they do is waste time complaining about non-issues or requesting something stupid to be added into an already overblown bloated application. So by design, the nature of my work makes me less capable as a human being. I suppose that could help me relate to the machines I am supposed to be programming but in realuty it really just makes me sad and not care about anything I’m doing.

Instead, I waste countless hours pretending to code, grumbling at the screen, while I daydream about being outside in the really real world (and God forbid the SUN!) doing something cool & exciting like piloting a sport fishing boat, being a sports photographer or even renovating a 1970 Hemi Cuda. Why is it everything else requires great skill whereas programming only requires human sacrifice?

Ok, so enough of my self-pitying rant, but let me leave you with these thoughts. One - do not go into computer programming! and Two - if you are a sport fishing/scuba boat captain/photographer/muscle car renovator and you are kind & willing enough to train a motivated apprentice then please contact me! I only require a tremendous salary, but we can negotiate!

peace~

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