I think I’m going to take a couple of days off again…

There’s an old Oasis lyric that I’ve hated for most of the past four years, mostly because of the memories it conjurs up, and now it really bugs me that it seems appropriate: “‘Cos I need more time just to make things right.”
The other fragments of the song that have survived my efforts to blot them out also seem fitting. “Don’t go away… Say that you’ll stay… Forever and a day…”

So, to ward off those perpetual rumors/fears/whatever that I’m hanging things up, I’ll just say this. I’ve “hung it up for good” before. The longest it ever lasted was 6 months, and that time was due to serious injury. Right around that time, someone insinuated that I should hang it up. We haven’t spoken since that time, and I’m better for it and I don’t give a rip about how he feels.

I fully expect this break to last through Saturday, then run out of gas sometime late Sunday afternoon.

I’ve overextended myself the past month or so. I’m tired. My Web server is running fabulously (it never hiccups, so long as Union Electric keeps the power flowing) but I haven’t come up with an effective way to upload content to it or add new features. I can live with that.

Meanwhile, my mail server’s a royal piece of… Nah. That doesn’t go far enough. My mail server is a Backstreet Boys Fan. It runs like a 16 MHz 386, and I can’t tell if it’s a configuration problem or if it’s just overwhelmed with spam. No matter. I’m overwhelmed with spam. On a good day I get 7. On a bad day I get 60+. I got 38 copies of the same spam message from some stupid online casino Tuesday. I absolutely have to get some spam filters in place, and some priority filters in place.

So the mail needs to be archived, a bare-essentials mail server built (Linux 2.4.8 kernel, sendmail, IMAP, fetchmail, procmail, and whatever else those five things force me to install so they can run, all built from the newest sources of course, using the most aggressive compiler settings known to man), then the archives restored, then spam filters put in place and run. Then I will have regained my ability to communicate and will be able to do something about my guilt over having week-old e-mail sitting around unanswered because it’s buried in worthless spam.

I need to tend to my servers. I need to rebuild a couple of workstations. I really ought to try to salvage the Baseball Mogul season that’s sitting on the corrupted hard drive in one of those workstations… (Though I hesitate to call anything that runs Microsoft Wintendo 2000 a “workstation…”)

Meanwhile, a couple of other projects need to get done, and I just realized today that I haven’t talked to Gatermann in more than a week and for all that group of friends knows, I’ve run off to the ends of the Earth only to find an Internet cafe, so I continued posting. I need to do something about that too.

I’ll be back. I have the same love/hate relationship with writing that most writers have. It’s like breathing after running a couple of miles on a brisk day in early March. I always hated breathing after that, because it hurt so badly. But no matter how much it hurt, I couldn’t stop.

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6 thoughts on “I think I’m going to take a couple of days off again…

  • August 16, 2001 at 10:03 am
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    Stay healthy, Dave. We’ll be waiting .

    At least you write. How do you deal with the insidious forces of procrastination? When you come back, if you have time I’d like some pointers.

    Godspeed.

  • August 16, 2001 at 6:56 pm
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    Be well, be happy, be refreshed, be renewed. I don’t know how any Daynoters (except perhaps full-time professional writers) can keep it up, and you’re entitled to re-creation.

  • August 16, 2001 at 7:24 pm
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    Have a good rest from posting (you sound like you will be pretty busy). I really enjoy your writing, especially about baseball. Look forward to your return.

  • August 17, 2001 at 4:54 pm
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    You’ll be back!

    Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, and maybe not next week, but soon you will be PUMPED BACK UP!

    Just remember that only a gilieman doesn’t know when to rest his body.

  • January 21, 2004 at 2:18 pm
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    sorry for pointing out the obvious, but looks like someone got around your “links not permitted” rule. or maybe this is the link that caused the rule. i haven’t been around regularly enough to know the difference.

  • January 21, 2004 at 3:58 pm
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    Yep, indeed, this was one of them that prompted it. I neglected to go back and clean up all the mess. Thanks.

    There’s a more permanent solution in the works.

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