m.i.a.

I've been in training all week, which is always a nice departure from work. It is sort of a like an all-expenses paid (except gas) work-hours vacation. So, yeah, you have ot get up early and get somewhere by a specific time, but they have bagels and doughnuts and coffee and soda, all you can eat and drink, for free (well, I'm sure they barely notice the cost of food when the class costs thousands of dollars to my employer). So, you sort of get a vacation from work AND from home, which doesn't happen all to often. Not that I need a vacation from home or work right now, just that it was nice to be able to go and get some technical learnin' that's not completely self directed. So here's the kicker...The class was taugh AT Microsoft. Yeah, I got to go to the local branch office of microsoft to learn some of their stuff. All my feelings about Micro$oft aside, it was a pretty good class that will be very useful for me in my current position, so I think my employer is going to get their money's worth out of me.

The weird (or maybe not so weird in the big picture, but weird for me) thing about this class was that Microsoft training is like being sent off ot qa deserted island. We spent all day working on computers that were completely disconnected from the grid. The only network involved was the virtual one existing on the virtual PC software we were operating inside of. Microsoft of course has their own internal network, but theres no way they let anyone from the outside on to that. My experience has always been that training places usually have their classrooms networked, but on a seperate segment that is in the DMZ. At Microsoft we got zip. Not even a guest network for me to log into with my own laptop in case I wanted to check my email. I had to go down to the Caribou Coffee in the other office tower and even there I waso nly able to get online because there was apparently a wide-open wifi networked conference room (Caribou had ATT, which requires subscription to do anything other than look at the caribou homepage).

So while I've been on vacation from work and home during the day, I've also been on vacation from the "outside world" for the most part. No email, not blogging, no browsing. I guess it helpes with attention span in the classroom if you know that your geek students are not going to be surfing ebay for action figures or Googling obscure coding examples in an attempt to trip up the instructor. But it is sort of disorienting to have whatever is on the car radio be my last free-world information stream before entering the Microsoft bubble. I may be more dependent than some folks, but seriously, if you regularly check your email (not even your work email, but your home email) at least twice a day, then you go on a net-free vacation to say, I don't know, a cabin in the woods or an igloo on a glacier or something (can they get internet in igloos yet? probably) you'll know what I'm talking about. Or, if you can't really give it up completely try this little experiment: Stop watching TV, ALL TV, for about a month. TV is such a steady stream of info that is so ingrained into our society that a lot of the time you probably don't even notice how many TVs there are around you all the time, every day. It is almost a part of the backdrop in a lot of places. Anway, if you suddenly cut out that subtle background stream, you find you start to notice it not being there but only in the back of your brain. You'll feel like you are missing something, like you are little disjointed when you try to talk to people who still are connected into the stream and are still receiving all those soundbites and opinion cues.

Ok, I'm rambling a bit. Of course, I've been in class, cut off all week, and at night I don't really have much time to dedicate to my blogging habit, or anything hobby related really. When I come home, i do my best, in whatever way I can, to relieve Andrea from Felix duty. Unfortunately, I cannot replace her, I can only try to take a little bit of the weight off of her shoulders. Well, luckily right now Felix is snoozing and Andrea is off with her brother, so i can try to catch up here. As soon as she gets home I'm going to have to tackle the house chores that have gone undone for the past few days vacuuming mostly...dog hair piles up faster than you can sweep it!). So I'm going to try to squeeze as much into this opportunity ads I can.