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disappointed to not have been fired
Monday, July 14 2025
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York
I awoke well before my alarm this morning because I was stressed out about what precisely was going on with my position in the company I work for. Near the end of my recent vacation in Sri Lanka, remember, I was cut off from email access, as well as access to the VPN and the BitWarden password vault. That had all the hallmarks of my having been quietly fired. I'd written to the IT guy using my Gmail email address, and he'd never gotten back to me, further confirming that I likely didn't have a job any more.
But initially somehow I hadn't really allowed any of this to affect me. I'd decided that if I had been fired, suddenly I'd have lots of free time to do the things I like doing. Given all our rental income, I don't really need to work, so the only real downside would be that we'd lose our health insurance, which is really just there to keep us from being bankrupted in the unlikely event of an unanticipated medical crisis. Not wanting to bum out Gretchen (or her parents) for the rest of the trip, I hadn't told anyone about it. I'd sat with it in silence, thinking I had maybe a 30% chance of not having been fired.
By this morning, though, as the box on my Schrodinger's job was soon to be opened, the anticipation of finding out what was going on was beginning to stress me out. So that was why I got up well before the alarm. I tried to kill some time by playing Spelling Bee, but eventually I just wanted to drive. There was a light rain falling at the time, and I encountered a gorgeous rainbow as I headed south down Hurley Mountain Road past the main Farm Hub complex.
I took what I thought was the longest route possible to work, using backroads to avoid Stone Ridge. But when I got to my workplace, nobody was parked in the parking lot yet, and it was possible the key fob scanner wasn't on, so trying to get in would not have been a conclusive test of whether or not I had access to the building. So I continued beyond it to a gas station, where I wasted some time buying cajun-style cashews and a cup of coffee.
When I got back to the office, some people had shown up, and I watched as the lead developer (who recently got a Volkswagen after his Volvo caught on fire) successfully entered the building. After parking my car in my usual spot, I marched up to the door and, surprise of surprises, my key fob gave me access. But now what? My email had been cut off! As I was climbing the stairs, I heard a voice from around a corner asking if I was Gus. When I said I was, the voice said he had to talk to me first. It turned out this was the head of IT, and apparently my laptop's antimalware software had detected the installation of a Biittorrent client while I was in Sri Lanka, and once that happened, it was decided to cut off all my access, since it was feared my computer had been compromised. "You're not in trouble," the IT director insisted. "Wow, okay," I said, adding. "I thought I'd been fired!" I then said that simply cutting off access is a well-established passive-aggressive firing technique in the industry, something the IT director didn't seem aware of. I also owned up to installing a bittorrent client, saying that I intended to use it to download a Linux installation (which wasn't technically true). But I hadn't ever gotten around to using it in any case. Once I said I'd installed the bittorrent client, the IT director said he probably didn't need to wipe my laptop after all, which was what he'd initially thought he would have to do. He gave me a replacement laptop to use while he took mine to give it a forensic examination.
There wasn't much I could do with the loaner laptop except check my email. By this point I was actually feeling a little disappointment that I hadn't been fired, though there's something to be said for the stability of having a job.
Then I got called down to the CEO's office, and when I got there, the CEO didn't seem to be his usual affable self. He seemed a little angry at what the IT director had found on my laptop, which included a 22 year old copy of Adobe Photoshop, several pirated movies (including Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), and some lesser-known apps the IT director seemed suspicious of that I nevertheless depend on (such as DesktopOK, which helps manage a long-standing and still-not-corrected Windows bug). Now it seemed my laptop would have to be wiped after all, since the IT Director wasn't sure what to make of all the stuff I'd installed on it. I said the media files were from my personal collection, which seemed to cool the CEO's jets a little. But he also thought I'd have to take the day off while my laptop was wiped. That was fine with me, so I got in my car and drove home.
Gretchen was still in bed when I got home, and I could finally tell her what I'd kept bottled up for the better part of a week. In the end, I hadn't been fired, of course. But now I unexpectedly had the day off! Gretchen suggested I use the time to work on my resume to send to the Wikimedia foundation. One of the people on the Sri Lankan tour with us works there and could give me a referral. Since the experience of thinking I'd been fired from my current job had opened my eyes to the fact that I kind of hate the job, it makes sense to be applying for other jobs.
Since today was a rare day I'd be home while Gretchen would be off at work, it meant she could take Neville to the bookstore. Charlotte wasn't happy about that, of course, but eventually we went on a nice father-daughter walk down the Gullies Trail. I also took a bath at some point.
But also decided to celebrate my not losing my job by drinking booze. [REDACTED] After I'd mostly sobered up from that, I drove with Charlotte to Uptown Kingston to get some groceries and a bottle of wart-fighting compound (it turns out that several rough patches of skin on my back are comprised of warts, surprisingly enough).
Before Gretchen came home at the end of the day, I made a big pan of freshly-harvested kale as a side for a pot of spaghetti for which I also made a pan of fried tempeh and onions.
The rainbow this morning on Hurley Mountain Road. Click to enlarge.
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