I can't believe it's been almost two months since I left for my last assignment.

As always when this happens, I come back to a world changed in subtle ways, and I'm still in the "OK, what's different" phase of returning to the real world. Nearly two months of being head down over complex systems hardware without access to the outside world has made...

This weekend I was asked to consult on a fascinating issue.

$_client_company has legacy systems that still rely on VAX, believe it or not.

They moved to a new building, and when they brought the old systems back up after the move, the unit turns on, but does not boot, does not self check, etc...

They had been working on it for about a week.

I wish I could take credit for this, but it was actually one of my guys that put together a hardware debugging platform so we weren't dependent on native outputs....

The assignment I was supposed to ship out for has been delayed, so I'm at loose ends at the moment, which means that now, at 2:45am, instead of sleeping, I am sitting on my balcony drinking licorice tea out of my cat-shaped teapot while my brain is taking inventory and replaying all of the ways in which I have fucked up close relationships with others over the years.

Yes, the fun never stops.

Most recently, I have fucked up a long-standing relationship with an American poet friend of mine, who is...

Mrr.

It's nice to be back in my own space (inasmuch as corporate housing is ever one's own) but one real downer about the space between assignments is that we use this time to do the sorts of paperwork that make one want to go after one's own eyes with an icepick.

Over the next few days, for example, I've been asked to formalize an evaluation of the performance of one of the folk who worked with me during my last assignment. New, bright kid, fresh out of college and has no real idea how the world works....

Just a little over two months ago, I packed a travel bag, boarded a small passenger plane, and flew with a small crew of techs and security personnel to a new worksite.

When I arrived, they asked for my telephone and anything that could be used to send a message out. They were serious enough about this to search me after I had told them I'd surrendered everything.

And thus began one of the most intense, but rewarding projects I've ever worked on. Everything I've done up until now pales in comparison. I...