Hopper Employed!

 

I started my fourteenth job ten days ago, after a ten-week layoff when I quit my New Jersey job for the move down here to Texas. For those keeping score, I was a

 

Temp

Deli worker

Student librarian

Pager programmer

Warranty clerk

Email Help Desk tech

Computer support tech at the HQ of a Japanese bank

Computer support tech at the HQ of a Canadian bank

Payroll admin for an auto dealership

Payroll admin for another auto dealership

Payroll admin for yet another auto dealership

Payroll admin for a mental health nonprofit

Tax return preparer

 

And now I m a “Payroll Coordinator” for a large soft drink manufacturer. The job is still 100 percent remote due to the Wu Flu, but they are looking to go to a hybrid schedule at the beginning of November. This, however, is taken with a grain of salt, as prior deadlines have come and gone. I could be remote for a while, and a kinda like it. I’ve set up an office in the carpeted front room of my new house, and it’s a thousand times better than the cold, dank dungeon basement of my old home workspace back in NJ.

The company has over 25,000 employees nationwide, so there’s a team of 47 people handling payroll. I am one of a team of 9 who handle disbursement from paycheck withholdings. Specifically, I pay dues to the unions that are pulled from employee paychecks. The difficulty is that there are 96 unions, and some require payment by the 10th, the 15th, or the 30th of the month. So there’s lots of spreadsheets and shared drive activity and WebEx meetings and such.

So it’s very Zen and once I get everything down it will give me the degree of freedom I had up in NJ. That’s something to look forward to. In the meantime, it feels great to be a contributor again to the family finances, in a proactive way!

Another Birthday Comes and Goes ...

Good Lord! So much has happened in the past week and a half! Hopper’s been so busy and has had so much going on that I haven’t even had time to walk or throw the weights around, eat clean and keto, get the girls to school in the morning, or even read, for that matter. Well, I still kept reading, if only late at night after everyone’s gone to bed.

Over the past eight or nine days, Hopper celebrated another revolution around the Sun, started a new job down here in the Lone Star State, and had a run-in with the big bad old Covid. More on the last two in the next few days. Here I want to talk about my birthday, as I generally do this time of year.

The girls made it fun and special. You see, Patch turned thirteen the day before I turned, well, several decades older than that. But imagine that! She was just a tiny little fetus still in her mom’s belly when I started this blog, barely past a tadpole on the evolutionary ladder, though ensouled she was. And it was a great blessing for me, for I tend to shun the limelight. Her birthday celebrations now overtake and overshadow mine.

For her we went to that sushi place in downtown Dallas not too far from Dealey Plaza. The girls did not pound as much raw fish as they did back in the beginning of August, and I switched entirely to a tame Chicken teriyaki and washed it down with two IPAs. We all had fun, and when we got back home she opened up her presents and put on quite a show for us all. For my part I bought her a new copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and a used copy of Dean Koontz’s Lightning. She read a couple of Koontz books in the past couple of months, and I recall enjoying that fantasy-mystery-thriller when I read it back in the late ’80s. As for Dracula, I decided to read it this Halloween (never having read it before) and she agreed to read it with me, akin to something of the bonding we did two years ago over The Count of Monte Cristo.

The next day, my birthday, was one of my last days of unemployment. We let Patch take the day off from school, too, since she has worked very hard, maintaining an above 90 average and doing very well on her volleyball team. So the two of us tooled around in the morning. We hit one of my favorite chains down here, Half Priced Books, where I scored my copy of Dracula and a gnarled, yellowed slim paperback on the German V-2 project during World War II, written by a German general and published in 1954. I am pretty excited to read both.

I let her pick lunch and she chose Boston Market. We did a few other errands but what was more meaningful was the conversations we had in the car: important ones, about life, philosophy, career choices, nostalgic reflections on the past. It was a day I’ll remember for a long time.

Of late I’ve been asking to be let alone my birthday afternoon to watch a classic SF movie. It started with The Day the Earth Stood Still, and was followed in subsequent years by Dune and Fantastic Planet. This year I chose 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It’s been ages since I’ve seen it and it’s quite different in style and tone from later Trek films. Plus the girls have been really digging on Shatner and Nimoy’s songs. You know, that whole ironic / sarcastic millennial thing. The movie held up, and I enjoyed my return to the Enterprise.

The Mrs. made her version of my mother’s “lazy lasagna,” a childhood fave of mine, and the four of us ate at the dinner table. They let me, the birthday boy, choose the music, and I had Alexa play assorted Rush. That didn’t last long, and by the third song the little teen-aged ones commandeered our home spying slash music device.

How did Hopper do gift-wise? As always, pretty darn good. Patch gave me a $25 gift card to Half Priced Books, and my mother-in-law got me a Visa gift card. Little One gave me a hand-written gift certificate for me and her to do a night sky tour with my telescope – “One time only!” she emphasized. (It should be noted here that she is taking a class in Astronomy over at the high school.) My mom sent a card with $20 in it “to buy a chicken parm,” and I’ll probably get to that first afternoon I have off.

My wife did an admirable job, also as always. A bag of well-needed clothes, in this case, pants and shorts. Then, tickets to see the Dallas Stars hockey game on October 7 (forgive me uncle if you are reading this). Finally, she bought me this book:

 

It has become my latest obsession. More later, in a detailed post.

Anyway, such was Hopper’s celebration of the earth entering the same part of its orbit it occupied when I entered the earth, kicking and screaming, many, many revolutions ago.

Book Review: The Maracot Deep

 

© 1928 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 

This was exactly what I was looking for back in the cold, uncertain weeks this past January. There, on the dusky shelves of ye old book shoppe, it stood, untouched by human hands in years – The Maracot Deep, slim, yellowed, gnarled. The perfect cure to what was ailing me back then, only in the whirlwind of The Move to Texas I did not get to crack it until three weeks back.

This is exactly the type of book I would have bought from the Bookmobile, that 70s thing that would drive up to our elementary school every spring, where we’d enter in groups of two or three to peruse the selections. Did I buy Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes? Think so. One of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Martian paperbacks? Probably. Anything from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Not sure, but this was the type of stuff that was big with me way back then.

So it promised nostalgia and a quick read. And it provided both.

The story’s fairly simple and straightforward. Professor Maracot, famous Renaissance man of science in the late 1800s, along with his protégé Mr. Cyrus Headley and everyman Bill Scanlon, plan to plumb the depths of the bottomless seas while on a transatlantic voyage of exploration. Actually, to descend to about two or three miles if I remember correctly. Best of all, the bathysphere that he plans to do it in is completely decked out as any Victorian sitting room den laboratory combination would be. I absolutely loved that visual. All that was needed would be Peter Cushing as the Professor and Christopher Lee as Headley. I even envision this as a Hammer flick on the ABC 4:30 movie back in the day.

Along the bottom, at the edge of an abyss, the team encounters a tremendous crustacean monstrosity which severs their tether and air lines to the surface vessel, and the bathysphere plummets over the edge to the darkness below. Stoically facing their deaths, Maracot intends to continue his observations until the air will run out in a day or so.

Crashed on the ocean floor, in a dark lit up only by eerie planktonic fluorescence, at the edge of death – a face at the porthole! And so the Atlanteans are introduced. The three men are rescued, introduced into the society of Atlantis, the sunken world from Plato’s antiquity, and are set to marvel at the wonders of this undersea utopia – television-like devices that translate thoughts into images to make communication easier, translucent body-hugging deep sea diving apparatuses, negative-buoyant glass spheres, which our heroes use covertly to send messages to the surface.

Recently I was looking at some blog posts here from ten years back and came across an entry to the effect that I never liked the Victorian adventure novel. I am not sure why I wrote that. I understand memory is quite malleable, and over the life of this blog I’ve read stuff that has opened my eyes. But those bookmobile memories are certain, and if I also remember my science fiction movie regimen with any accuracy, I’ve always loved the Victorian man of science as well as the Victorian Man of Science adventures stories. And the main ingredient of such stories is an eccentric, brilliant scientist accompanied by his protégé and a blue collar man for the hard labor.

No women allowed. Except, perhaps, as a one-dimensional love interest. That box is checked off here in The Maracot Deep.

Despite the unbelievable aspects of the story – the Atlantean society as a whole wholly improbable, as well as the denouement of a battle of wits with … the devil! – I kinda enjoyed the story. Maybe it was the quickness of the read. Maybe it was the bookmobile or the ABC 4:30 movie nostalgia. But I’d definitely read more of Sir Arthur, particularly his Professor Challenger novels, and I’ll put them on the Acquisitions List in case I stumble upon them in those dusky shelves of the various ye old book shoppes I peruse.

Grade: B+

 

Oh – WARNING! The book, and the man who wrote it, is a product of its time. As is anyone who permanently resides in the vaults of history. They should be judged on their merits in their time, and not by our morality or what passes for faddish morality. The case in point in The Maracot Deep is the word that shall never be spoken is indeed spoken by a character. And I must confess I found it shocking. Do I wish to cancel Sir Arthur? Not a chance. I don’t play those games. But I felt it needed to be pointed out. There are two other minor instances of a character using dated slang for people of the Chinese persuasion. But that was it. A product of its time.

RIP Norm MacDonald

 

One of my absolute favorite comedians, who died yesterday after a private, 9-year battle with cancer. The wife and I were both huge fans, going back to Norm’s time on SNL in the late ’90s. I have no idea of how many insomnia-fueled hours, especially at the height of the Wu Flu, I spent at the writing desk watching his videos and laughing out loud while the whole family slept.

RIP …

Book Review: The Stars, Like Dust

 

© 1951 by Isaac Asimov

 

Like thousands – perhaps millions – of SF fans around my age, I cut my teeth on the works of Isaac Asimov. By the time I reached the Golden Age of Science Fiction – that’s twelve for a boy – I put away six of his novels. Santa had brought me five in a package deal on Christmas:

   The Bicentennial Man

   Nine Tomorrows

   The Gods Themselves

   Pebble in the Sky

   The Caves of Steel

and I read each and every one, one after the other, by that summer. A sixth my mom bought me after I broke my arm the following year:

   I, Robot

and I remember the agony of trying to dive into that anthology of stories and being unable to because I could not hold the paperback open with my injured paw. But after a day or two I was able to keep that paperback book open (man, does that sound wimpy!) and knocked that one out.

As an adult sometime in the ’90s, in a fit of nostalgia, I read Asimov’s novelization of the movie Fantastic Voyage. I also tried my hand at his much-praised Foundation, but only got about a quarter in before losing interest. Curious.

Since then I’ve read a scattering of his short stories here and there, plus I reread most of the aforementioned books. To mixed success: The Bicentennial Man I loved; Nine Tomorrows I just couldn’t get back into. About a decade ago I read The Robots of Dawn and was almost moved to tears at the revelations near the end of the story. I think it’s reviewed somewhere on the Hopper. But then I started its sequel and dropped it in boredom. I also gave Foundation a second try last year, and still could not take to it.

So, for me, Asimov was perhaps my number one favorite SF author as a kid. As an adult, I find him a hit or miss proposition, probably around 50/50.

It was with this feeling in mind that I bought The Stars, Like Dust at a used book store a week and a half ago. Truth be told, I picked it up because it clocked in at a manageable 231 pages, and I was a little sick of reading epic nonfiction tome after epic nonfiction tome.

Well, did this book fall into the beloved Asimov of old or the how’d-I-ever-read-this-guy category?

A little of both, with a slight edge, maybe 60-40, towards the sad possibility that perhaps I’ve outgrown Asimovian fiction.

The tale starts out exciting enough, with young college student Biron Farril awakening to a radiation bomb in his room. After narrowly escaping, Biron is encouraged to flee the earth (a nuclear wasteland which happens to be home of a respected university). His father, a “Rancher” – a regent of an agricultural planet, I suppose – has been executed for treason and the powers-that-want-to-be are convinced that Biron is next on the kill list of the powers-that-be. What follows is a whodunit slash futuristic political thriller that shows Biron’s growth as a man of courage and intelligence as he solves who’s behind his attempted assassination and plays the great game of espionage of interstellar politics with finesse.

All well and good. Not the level of a Tom Clancy or John Le Carre, but it certainly would snare the interest of a Golden Age fan.

Me, not so much. But … why?

Perhaps I could say my reading tastes have evolved, have become more sophisticated, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I’ve revisited many books from my past and have enjoyed them yet again. I think the problem I have with Asimov is that he’s a product of his time. He is eminently readable. He deserves every accolade hoisted upon him. He was groundbreaking, for his time, in a field that is constantly evolving because the science of science fiction constantly evolves.

But … everyone in this story talked and acted straight out of the ’40s, as if they lived and grew up in Queens, New York. Especially Arta, the female protagonist, a tough-minded princess who immediately falls in love at the feet of an immature Biron. The revealed bad guy could be seen a mile away twisting his moustache. And though there were some fine instances of behind-the-scenes machinations I did not see coming, it was a fairly straightforward story.

As far as the science went, I did enjoy how the ships “jumped”, i.e. entered hyperspace to traverse vast distances of interstellar space. This was done by comparing three coordinates found in huge books – I immediately thought of the thick old telephone books we had as kids. I thought Uncle Gil’s device that messed with one’s mental facilities –disorienting sights like colors never before seen implanted in the victim’s brain – was neat. I wish the political situation was more fleshed out, the worlds and alliances were stated and explained, but perhaps Asimov saved that for his Foundation series, of which The Stars, Like Dust is but a prologue of a prologue.  

All in all, though, it was a quick read, better than, say, watching the same amount of your average TV fare. And I’ll still try Foundation again in a few years.

Grade: B.

 

[As a side note, Asimov wrote over 500 books, roughly split equally between fiction and nonfiction. It’s said he wrote a nonfiction book in every category of the Dewey Decimal System except 100 – philosophy and psychology. Anyway, I did read his excellent book on the atom, Atom (1991) and about half of his comprehensive work on physics, Physics (1966) and even cracked his work on Biblical study, Asimov’s Guide to the Bible (1968). All good, readable stuff.]

Book Review: Frankenstein

 

© 1818 by Mary Shelley

 

I originally read Frankenstein as a sophomore in high school, nearly forty years ago (!).I think it was the first book I read in the bath tub. Don’t know why that sticks out in my head, but it does. There is a more important theme when I think of that first read, however. Two, actually. First, a probable fact that every high school student realizes fifty or sixty pages in: the monster * in the source material, Mary Shelley’s wonderful novel, is NOT Boris Karloff. Not the big lumbering lug with the flat top head.

No, the creature – never given a name by Dr. Victor Frankenstein in the book – is remarkably intelligent and articulate. It even observes a family in the woods and learns to read, putting away a trio of works that would defeat any millennial college graduate: Paradise Lost, Plutarch’s Lives, and The Sorrows of Werther. I found the revelation that the monster is an autodidact extremely intriguing.

The other is the creature’s complete soulless antagonistic campaign of vengeance against the young, egotistical doctor. The creature is the first emo monster (and perhaps that’s a product of the time it was written, more later on that). Because Victor, as the “Creator,” as the “Father,” immediately disowns his creation, the monster turns against him. Couple that with the fact that Victor refuses to create a mate for this abomination, said abomination eventually murders several of the doctor’s extended family over the course of two or three years. The two track each other cat-and-mouse style all the way to the North Pole, where the novel begins and the story is told in flashback.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are some deep themes here. Pardon my snarkiness (“emo”), but the book does give plenty of material to reflect upon. The immediate thought that came to me during this reread half a lifetime later is: What if God, the Creator, disowned us, man, the creature? Now, I realize that God would not – could not – be God if He took such a stance, but what if we were created by a lesser god? Could such a thing be possible? If it was, what would mankind do as a race? What would each of us do as individuals?

(I don’t know about you, but I don’t think such an existential crisis would rise to such a passionate detour towards the all-out embracing of evil. I’m more of a “living well is the best revenge,” so perhaps I’d read the rest of the Great Books of Western Civilization that the monster failed to do, and live my life accordingly. Or at least I’d like to think so. But it’s a thought experiment, and we all think more highly of ourselves in our thoughts than we are in reality.)

Rather than delve into the book “high school essay-style,” here’s a few random ideas that floated through my brain as I read the novel:

- It was a fast read. Much faster than I remembered way back when. The novel clocks in at 284 pages, and I was able to polish it off in a week without neglecting my other obligations. I recall it being somewhat of a drudge back in the early ’80s.

- SPOILERS! As far as the ending goes, I did not recall exactly what happened. I did not remember Victor dying aboard the ice-bound ship in the Arctic, nor the monster stooping over the corpse after stealing onto the vessel, nor his fleeing into the snowy wastes. I always thought the two fell into the water, hands on each other’s necks, and sunk down into the deeps.

- But that was how the movie ends! I think. No, not the classic 1930s Boris Karloff film. The remakes in the 90s, the ones more faithful to the original source material. I remember one on TV and one theatrical release (with DeNiro, I believe, as the monster), both in the mid ’90s. I seem to recall enjoying the TV version better, and I think that’s how that version ended – with the two antagonists sinking into the depths in a perpetual embrace of hatred and vengeance.

- This observation struck me: everyone, especially the men, are so histrionic! No stoic Man-with-no-name Clint Eastwoods in Mary Shelley’s Europe of the 1810s. Men weeping in their best friend’s arms over their best friend’s deaths. Men exclaiming vows at the drop of a hat, calling down the battalions from heaven to right perceived wrongs. No manly control of emotions. I suppose that’s why it’s called the Romantic Age.

Well, in my reserved, taciturn way I enjoyed the re-read, probably better than the first time through. I perhaps expected a little more in terms of philosophic debate, but what is served up is some quite interesting food for thought.

Grade: B+

 

* = Please, please, please, don’t make the rookie mistake of calling the monster “Frankenstein.” It is never named in the novel. Frankenstein is the man who creates the monster, Dr. Victor Frankenstein.

Labor Day 2021

 

Well, I was able to celebrate Labor Day authentically and unapologetically, because now I am employed again! Well, will be, in two weeks.

But more on that later, much, much later (if at all).

How was our Labor Day holiday down here in Dallas, our first holiday in the new home?

Not bad. In fact, pretty darn good.

The girls had both Friday and Monday off, giving them, in effect, a well-deserved four day weekend. And to reward all their hard work these past three weeks – adjusting to new schools, new schedules, new studies, new sports – the Mrs. decided to enable their newest obsession: Thrifting! On both Friday and Monday they disappeared for five or six hours. Friday to go to this giant outdoor flea market thing, and Monday to hit three or four area thrift stores. My girls have great, well-defined styles, and they know exactly what to look for when they’re out thrifting. But the big surprise had to be Little One snagging a Huffy bike – looks like it was mint in 1970 – for $60 cash. A great way to celebrate her learning how to ride a bike a few weeks ago (she, at age 16, is a late starter …).

Friday night we journeyed out to the local bar & grill to celebrate the job offer acceptance. I was craving some wings, and I had ’em, too, first wings in nearly two months. Washed it down with two giant mugs of ale. Little One revealed to me she had just listened to Led Zeppelin II, and that resulted in a long conversation of the pros and cons of what I am trying to convince her: that Zep was the greatest rock band that ever existed.

Saturday was errands. Since Texas is big, there seems to be a half-hour drive between stops. So we’ve been trying to cut down on the number of errands we run. I took the little ones with me in my new used 2015 Accord to the recycling center, then the trash center, then the local Krogers for sandwiches and snacks. You see, I was quite excited to watch the Texas game at 3:30. My brother-in-law is a huge Longhorns fan, and years ago he passionately encouraged me to watch them should we ever make it down to Dallas. So I’m here, I’m missing football, and since the NFL is anathema to me, I decided to check the game out.

2:30 came around and I had my chips, soda and sandwich ready. The Wisconsin – Penn State was finishing, with Wisconsin down 10-16 and looking to march downfield with a few minutes left.

Then, the cable went out.

Actually, our internet service went out.

Suffice it to be said it was not my finest hour. After 90 minutes troubleshooting the Indian techs – two of them – on the other side of the phone were unable to help. A technician would have to be called out. How soon? Earliest: Tuesday, 4 pm. To compensate for my trouble, they’d credit me … $10.

Well, it took a while to get the blood pressure back down to normal. And later that night I had to say several different versions of the Act of Contrition to assuage my guilty conscious.

But the day took a turn for the better. Patch and I went to a local volleyball court and practiced her serve for an hour. That translates close to a hundred serves. And it worked, as her over-the-net rate improved significantly. We drove to a nearby Chipotle to get dinner for everyone and I got myself two Modelo tall boys at a gas station. I drank them lovingly in the heat and humidity of my back patio and enjoyed the stars. Later, we all played a few rounds of Uno at the dining room table.

Sunday was a busy day. In the morning we went to our new church. Then my wife’s cousins came over to see the house and we all had some drinks and snacks. After they left the girls went out to toss the volleyball and ride bikes. I met two more of my neighbors while watching them ride around. I spent an hour doing dishes and cleaning up after the little party when the Mrs. took the girls out for ice cream.

Monday I had the day all to myself as the ladies were out thrifting. I walked in the morning, lifted some weights. Read over a hundred pages of Asimov’s The Stars, Like Dust, and finished it. I also started researching my new company. Had some wings for lunch, then went upstairs and hooked up the old DVD player. Ancient technology! Good thing we kept it. We wanted to end the girls four-day holiday with a family movie, but by the time they got back and we ate and they showered and got all ready for the upcoming week we only had time to slip in The Office Season One and watch the first two episodes.

All in all, a great weekend. Some minor downs but a lot of major ups.

Back in Corporate America

 

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