I’ve been diagnosed with STS

Admittedly, it’s a self-diagnosis, but I recognize the symptoms. Restless sleep, lack of energy upon getting up in the morning/i.e. listlessness and utter apathy/ennui regarding going to the work place.

Short-Timer Syndrome can suck.

It isn’t technically STS as it looks like I have a couple of months left on my contract, according to what my boss says they have a funding source identified through September. What is really bringing this on is probably a combination of the heat and a desire to be with my wife in Cloudcroft. And aside from going up this weekend, I’ll be moving up there in early August.


Robert Frost said something along the lines of “The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.”

That’s how I feel. I’m fine until I get out of the shower, then when faced with the daunting task of dressing and getting my butt out the door, I don’t wanna go.

I’ve been making tentative plans to move to Cloudcroft in early August, they became much less tentative and a lot more definite yesterday. I met with my boss to discuss the concept and he didn’t have a problem with me remoting in from NM (DSL is being installed today!) with the understanding that he’d probably want me back down here for crunch time on the project. No big deal there, my parent’s have a spare bedroom with two or three beds. For that matter, one of them will be my bed from my condo as I won’t be taking it to Cloudcroft.

So it’s pretty well settled! Boss doesn’t mind me working from NM, so that’s pretty cool!

I need to get up there to be somewhat settled when the semester starts at NMSU/Alamogordo in the middle of August. I’ll be taking photography and math, said flavor of math waiting to be determined by a placement test that I’ll be taking Monday.


This weekend I’m going up to say goodbye to two astronomers, Scott & Atsuko, collectively known as Scottsko. I’ve talked about this before, so I won’t dwell on it. I envy their moving to Hawaii and look forward to visiting them. A thought just occurred – my parent’s 50th anniversary is next 4th of July, my sister and I were talking about sending them somewhere special…. maybe we could send them to Hawaii, Russ and I could go with them (for traveling) and pop up the mountain and see Scottsko! Sounds like a plan to me! Of course, that would mean leaving Celeste in a kennel for a couple of weeks which would not be fun.

The party is Monday night, and I think it will be bright time (near a full moon) so I’ll probably be spending some time doing some photography. I have to remember to pick up my tripod from my brother. And I’ve got to remember to take my frickin’ polarizer filter! I wonder if they are effective at night? There’s one way to find out…. :-)


Russ is working Monday night, so I’ll drive up to the observatory by meself and park in the lower lot. I can’t get on to a full night schedule, I’ll have to drive back Tuesday AM and be back at work Wednesday. So Russ will come home, waking me up, and I’ll leave. Sucks, but that’s the way it is for now.

I’m definitely a night person, not an all-night person like Russ, but I typically prefer to be up until 2am and sleep in until 10am or so. It’s a great schedule for me, we’ll see how long I can do it once I’m up there. Since there’s no telling what I’ll be doing for income once I’m there, there’s no way to prognosticate what my hours will be like.


So that’s about it for now. I leave you with this parting thought….

“When in confusion, when in doubt: run in circles, scream and shout!”

Spam Cleaning

I have some specialized email accounts, I don’t use them for normal correspondence, they receive certain mailing list stuff. For example, one gets sample certification test questions, things like that, one was a regular email account but I don’t use it any more because it attracts so much spam.

I was cleaning out said account, over 800 messages with 98%+ spam, and I came across some interesting subject lines. I won’t bore you with the details, particularly since I didn’t open the email, but I found them amusing.

Free Fruck Buddies
Spock Alert (Fascinating, Captain)
Stocks Discovered (wow! It must be confusing for those guys on Wall Street if they just now discovered stocks!)
Dating Site For Kin (must be a Louisiana site)
Good Riddins To Thighs (prefers wings?)
Pony Rides 25 cents (how do you ride a pony via the internet?)
Real Generics (as opposed to fake or imitation generics?)
Sleeper Stock Alert (this could make me ZZZZzzzzz…..)
Wanna Get Laid Toni (why ask me? I’m Wayne, ask Toni)
All Mens Needs This (the ability not to use a superfluous S?)
Hard As Rock 12 (is it located between Rock 11 and Rock 13?)
King of Pharmacy 78cm (must be pretty good if he’s only 30” tall)
But use it usefulness (hmmm…. rather Zen)
You are cordially I (more existentialism!)
Make your wife happy (I’d like to send out a bunch of these that when you open it it says ‘Take out the trash and clean the litter box’)
Become Significant (what am I now, chopped liver?)


Obviously I’m kinda tired/brain-dead to come up with tripe like this.