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both knowledge and rapport
Monday, September 8 2025
setting: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York
I had another unusual day at work in that I was yet again used as joint compound to fix an emerging crack. A client had removed a network switch for some reason and their network had been down for a whole day, which resulted in several database anomalies that the CEO decided I should try to fix. It involved a part of the database that I hadn't worked with before involving the timing of shifts for human employees. A huge complication in the assignment was that I hadn't been given VPN access to this particular client, and getting it would be a huge bureaucratic hassle. So instead one of the IT guys who does have access shared his screen with me and I ran various queries, following a protocol someone sent me a document. I didn't really know what I was doing, but as I worked with the data I developed a sense of how the relations fit together. In the first round of such work, we eliminated one possible source of the data glitch and the IT guy (who happens to be the youngest member of the Lunch Room Court) said he would try running one of his special tools.
At lunch, I ate about half of the leftover vindaloo from last night. It had been so spicy that it had been painful to eat last evening, but by today the spices had mellowed considerably and I had no trouble with it. There was so much leftover that it was what I ended up having for both lunch and dinner today.
This afternoon, I spent most of my time down in the first floor office of the young IT guy while he and I investigated the data to try to figure out what changes would be needed to fix it. On several occasions, the QA woman popped her head in and told us various things. It showcased how much of the business she understands, but it was also a bit of a firehose, so I had to keep having her go back and repeat things she'd already said. By the end of the day, I had a sense of what needed to be done but didn't want to actually begin running queries quite yet. The whole experience was a little uncomfortable, partly because I was being put on the spot to show off my SQL skills. But overall it was a good work experience, the kind of thing that builds both knowledge and rapport and which I could benefit from a lot more of in this particular workplace.
There would be a cook-out tomorrow to celebrate the owner's coming departure for a vacation in Croatia (seems like a weird cause for celebration, but okay), so on the drive home I stopped at MyTown Marketplace to get vegan-friendly barbecue options, particularly portobello mushrooms and some veggie burgers.
Back on Hurley Mountain, I took Charlotte for a fairly short walk down the Stick Trail and then up the escarpment and over to the Farm Road, not spending much time at all on the Chamomile Headwaters Trail. The battery in Charlotte's tracker was dead, so I didn't feel compelled to take her on the kind of walk that would leave an impressive trace on the tracker map.
Later I took a nice hot bath. The combination of autumnal chill in the house and blistering-hot solar-heated water was perfect.
Later, Gretchen came home after dining at the Woodstock Yum Yum with our friend Lisa. She and I ended up watching part of Capturing the Friedmans, a documentary about a man and his son who may or may not have been sodomizing a bunch of little boys to whom they were supposed to be teaching piano and computer classes in their basement. But this was back in the 1980s, during the height of satanic panic, so it's possible all the allegations of abuse were the product of the same forces that caused the fine folks of Salem to burn all their witches. That said, the child porn found in the house was apparently real.
When I climbed into bed this evening next to Charlotte and Neville, I discovered that someone, almost certainly Neville, had peed in the bed. The pee was cold, so might've happened this morning when he couldn't be bothered to go outside for his morning piss. It's something Neville has done on occasion for his entire life, but he hadn't done it in something like a year, so we'd taken his new, better behavior for granted. The discovery of a peed-in bed precipitated an immediately cleaning jihad. I spot-washed some blankets and Gretchen threw a bunch of sheets and such into the washing machine. I thought my spot-cleaning had been pretty good, but I could smell a little dog pee occasionally as I lay there in the dark.
Deer in the road near the south end of Hurley Mountain Road. Click to enlarge.
Charlotte along the Stick Trail today. Click to enlarge.
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