From the Brain of Matty

rant (07.10.04 12:44 pm)

I'm going to rant.

On Thursdays I have two lectures in the morning (9-11am) and then typically spend the rest of the day working on whatever sysadminly issues there are at ITX which I've neglected through the rest of the week. Thursday afternoons are my only real time to do it.

This morning, when I woke up at 8am, my wife insisted that I take the car, so I could drive myself to my lectures, and then drive home again to take her to work by 12:30, so she could stay in bed. Now, I'm a nice person, and I did it, but the reason she gave was "that's how we normally do it". The thing is, as I recall the past few Thursdays, it's actually gone: she drops me to uni, I do my uni stuff, I do my ITX stuff, she goes to work, after work she comes to uni to pick me up, we go home. But I didn't feel like causing a stir when it wasn't necessary, and she really did need a few hours' extra sleep. (She was asleep again by the time I left.) The last thing she said to me, before going back to sleep, was: "I need to be at work by 12:30".

So, I drove to uni, did my thing, worked like a demon on these gods-damned hated awful computers (trying to get roaming profiles/samba logins/user permissions sorted out, if you really want to know), and drove back home to take her to work in time for her to be there by 12:30. She said, "I thought we could go have some lunch or something before work, since I haven't eaten yet." Yes, that would have been absolutely lovely, I would have liked nothing more in my day than to go have lunch with my wife - and I'm being deadly serious. But she didn't tell me that this morning. There wasn't time, when I'd gotten home, to go for lunch as well as take her to work. When she said "you went into the office, didn't you" I felt kind of silly saying, yes, of course I did, that's what I do all day. And then the whole "what do you do there? All I ever see you do is play games" thing.. well, you only see me play games because you're only ever there at lunch time or when we're wrapping up for the day - both times I'm usually trying to wind down a bit by relaxing with a game, and all day I do the things that sysadmins do. For example, I've been nagged a little about fixing a certain login so that a certain user can get onto the computers; but when I spend all my time trying to fix the bloody login I get accused of spending too much time in the office, or wasting time playing games. I can't win. And I didn't even realise I was in a competition.

So now I'm back in the office, pointedly not working, because if I spent another second trying to work on the systems in my current state of mind, I would hurl them through the double-paned windows. And I do mean that quite literally. Now I think I will go spend some of the money I was going to save, to buy myself some lunch - because I don't care at the moment. And then I'll see how I feel.

Please, notice that through this whole rant I haven't accused my wife of anything evil, nasty, mean, or generally wicked. She is a good wife. I like her very much. It's just that she doesn't seem to understand what goes on in my life in those few hours when she's not around. And it frustrates me a little. That's all.

I'm not dead.

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