Flashes of Panic

I’m about to whine in a boring and uninteresting way. Nobody wants to read it, but this is where I can do it, so just skip on to the next entry, OK?

Frustration is bottling up in a way I really don’t like. In fact, I think if a spammer (just to pick an irritant at random) was to show up here, I might reach physical violence. I’ve already considered throwing things twice today, and I haven’t anything here in the office that’s safely throwable. (Well, there are four or five computers nobody would miss—SuperMac, anyone?)

Let’s start with tech support. After all, everyone else does. We have this one program which is a perpetual drag on my days. I will not name it, because I don’t want this page coming up in a Google search, but for various reasons the installation procedure has become more complicated than it should be. This is a bad thing, because over enough installations users will find some way to fsck even the simplest procedure. I spend a lot of time on the telephone talking people through this installation. This is particularly difficult because I need to describe things to them which are best visualized (that is, after all, why it’s called a Graphical User Interface.) I don’t know what they’re seeing, so I have to guess or prompt them to describe it until I hear the right hook. Today, after spending upwards of half an hour talking to one woman (including inadvertently shutting down all my running applications) it developed that we’d sent her a Windows serial number for her Mac software.

To top it off, the author of this program apparently has a very high level of insecurity about whether his program actually works the way it’s supposed to. It’s very widely used in the field, is cited regularly in papers, but he figuratively wakes up nights wondering if there’s a bug somewhere which is producing incorrect results for everyone. He’s developed this insecurity into the program itself, a sort of pathological reduction of expectations, so in addition to the installation problems, every so often someone asks when they’ll be able to get a “final” version. Damned if I know. If my analysis is right (and it might not be,) never.

If I was a good programmer and understood the field in which this program is used, this would be a grain of sand around which I would produce a pearl of a program, and we could forget this thing and move on. But alas, I can’t code that well, nor do I understand the field (though conveniently, we publish a Made Easy-type book on the subject.)

And then there’s the spammers and malware-spewers… I’ve been in on them before. Word is that even though Microsoft is allegedly fixing zillions of security problems in Service Pack 2 for Windows XP, they’re blocking those with “unlicensed” (i.e. illegal) copies of Windows from installing SP2. So, say, half the Pacific Rim is going to toddle along with the same insecure installation they had before and saturate the rest of us with zombie-relayed spam and viruses, just like they are now. Thanks for nothing, Mr. Gates. With all the bird feces I get in my inbox, I can’t imagine what it would be like if we weren’t bouncing, filtering and deleting like mad. I think I’d go down to the basement and unplug the T1.

Last but not least, of course, my foot is jacked up. I’m following the rule of thumb I learned years ago: if it hurts two days in a row, take two days off. If it still hurts, take a week off. If it still hurts, get professional help. Well, two days didn’t help, so tomorrow I start the week. It’s not like it’s something sudden; it’s been aching all along. It’s just gotten worse over the last week, and called attention to the fact that it’s not getting better.

Injuries are something you deal with when you run a lot. The frustration is just the sheer length of this. I’m tired of all the contortions I go through to fight it off, the taping, the brace, the goddamned sock every goddamned night. I’m tired of icing. I’m tired of doing half-assed training to keep it from getting worse, and while I appreciate the sentiment of the person who helpfully commented that maybe I was “doing too much” even for “an elite runner,” (a) I’m a long, long way from elite—a full five minutes off Olympic Trials qualifying at 10k, just to pick one example—and (b) in order to run that 30 miles per week, I endured a patient (and tedious) buildup starting in January. Going back and starting from zero feels far too Sisyphean even for this sport.

I know I should be finding something else to push me towards recovery. Acupuncture, new orthotics, this new sonic therapy thing they’re doing. I just feel like I’ve reached my capacity for “something elses.” I already published the list of things I’ve tried. When do I say, “Hold, enough?” When do I ride the bike down to the Connecticut and just see how far I can throw my spikes and become another sedentary American like everyone else?

And, oh, yeah—it looks like this site is currently inaccessible. The host is being DDOSed. See malware, above.

So, yeah, frustration. Usually when I’m this wound, I go for a run. Guess what! My frustration is recursive! Maybe another dunk in Puffer’s would straighten me out again. Or something… a few hours on a project which interests me and occupies all my attention, no distractions. Flow. I miss it like a home I’ll never see again.

OK. Tantrum over. Back to work.

Now playing: 1000 Umbrellas from Skylarking by XTC