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Journal perfessor multigeek's Journal: Rest is GOOD

Nope, Cynicism still on break.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm on vacation. My deeply intrusive apartmentmate of eight months just moved out Sunday night and, having known the likely scheduling of this, I had already told folks that I would not be available this week. One trip scheduled for tomorrow to deal with some deliveries, check a cleared out space and a few hours of other low-stress billable work. Other than that, nothing.
So I'm hanging out, getting used to having my place back. Doing tons of laundry, starting to move things around, sweeping, mopping, all those quite domestic things that I have allowed to fall behind. Marvelous. Not to mention spending silly time on /. instead of my usual driven "what will we help fix today?" mode. It feels great to be one of the people posting Star Trek jokes instead of technical overviews.
Actually much of New York is feeling more relaxed these days. As if we have all been holding our breath waiting for the next disaster to happen. I think that the main reaction that most people had to the anniversary of 9/11 is that we're now in another *year*, which in New York is a geologic age. So everybody feels better about thinking of that stressful time as long-past. Purely subjective, like taking seriously things like "a new millenium", but helpful nonetheless.
Also the whole tone of the city has felt off for a bunch of other reasons. An intrusively hot summer that screwed up a lot of habits; the first post-term limits elections with a bunch of unknowns tripping all over each other in races usually smoothly passed along within the party machines; subways and busses still rerouted; security checks at many buildings; the economy, of course.
So, I think that all in all folks are entirely willing to let this summer go and hopefully, for a while at least, our environment will better match our expectations.
I've been struck this past year by how much easier coping with all these changes has been for people who were new to New York when the planes hit. Because for them, living here is just *differently* arbitrary and weird then it was when they arrived. There's no deep sense of wrongness when the automatic reaction of twenty years is suddenly inappropriate because that street is gone now, or the subway doesn't go there anymore, or it's always taken ten minutes to get upstairs from X Corp's lobby. Kind of a variation of younger people being more adaptable.
It gets me thinking about what constitutes ideal staffing mixes for crisis management.
Anyway, I'm going to stick to my resolve and not try to do a detailed analysis and overview of this today.
Take care all of you out in slashdot land.
Rustin
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Rest is GOOD

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