Fire Escape

I have a new project - one in which will let me out of this closed-in office.  I am reconfiguring approximately 300 Motorola Minitor pagers to the narrow-band settings, namely for the firehouses.  Excitingly, this new task, which comes on the heels of a multitude of other time-sensitive projects, will allow me to get out of the institutional environment and into the wild.  I will be traveling around the county and meeting all kinds of new people on my journey.

However exciting this may seem - to elude my captors, and flee into the night - the feeling is haunted by persistent anxiety from the other forsaken projects.
The link between the EMS tablet units and the new communications infrastructure equipment I am installing in the ambulances, the database records pull for the inmates' information system, the state integration to our CAD servers for the Sheriff, and most importantly of all, the actual replacement of the CAD, which is scheduled this month - all will go on hold (well, maybe not the CAD replacement).  The Hydra-like atmosphere here is one of loom; when one task gets finished, two more spring up, and it always feels like I am not catching up, but furthering myself from the finish-line more by the second, as piles turn to hills.

Theres not enough time, captain!

The mental break will be welcomed, however daunting that looming, growing mountain may be.  And hopefully after I am finished with the reconfig I'll be ready to climb and conquer once again, refreshed.

My office is pretty small, has no windows, and always, always, the server fans running in the background.  So the days when I have a lot of office-work, or systems on the bench, I am slowly driven mad by the subtle hum of server fans, and the brief whirl of hard-drives spinning, clicking, circling.  It numbs me, so that when the phone eventually rings, I am startled out of insanity and hope diligently that the human on the other end is requesting my presence, somewhere else, out of this prison.

I'm being dramatic here, but I will indeed enjoy getting out of the office a bit.  Plus, I will be learning a lot more about the Motorola system.  Getting out will bring a bit of Zen, a sufficient palate-cleanser after a series of cookie-cutter days working on the bench.  We shall indeed see!