Something is better than nothing

I think I’ve mentioned once or twice here that my job sometimes includes long, idle stretches for me, like I’m a personal auto mechanic kept around for any occasion on which the car needs repairs, but the car itself is pretty reliable and certainly doesn’t break down every day. Sometimes when those idle stretches draw out to absurd lengths, it actually makes me feel anxious. I was in one of those stretches this week, but then this morning I was asked to do a couple of job-related things. One was a bit of data entry which a monkey could do, but all the other monkeys were busy. That took five minutes. The other was a request to look into a system-wide website function that wasn’t working at all. This could have potentially been an open-ended trainwreck that would keep me busy for days on end. But I started with the first step of troubleshooting, which is trying to replicate the problem. I couldn’t – the website seemed to be working fine. I e-mailed the requester back and asked them specifically what sequence of events they had been going through when they hit the not-working point. A couple minutes later the requester e-mailed back and said they had tried it again and now it was working fine. So I was off the hook.

Still, even just taking a couple minutes to look at it myself and then convince the requester to try it again was enough to make me feel like I had been productive. Add on the data entry and I no longer cared if any more work came my way for the rest of the week. So this is the essence of my sanguinity about the job: nothing to do is bad, but something to do, ANYthing, no matter how trivial, is unreservedly good.

I hope that applies to blogging, as well, because honestly, I haven’t got much material or motivation today, but in order to keep up my every-weekday commitment, I’d rather post something than nothing. Thus, BEHOLD:


(Click to embiggen ... if you DARE!!!)

I love this trippy image, which is of course a graphic scan of a blacklight poster that Marvel Comics sold back in the 60’s/70’s. The image actually has some sentimental significance too, because it was plastered to the front window of a used book store in the town where my grandparents had a beach house when I was growing up. Said used book store also sold back issues of comics, which was kind of a big deal back when I was little, before the boom in comics specialty shops of the 90’s. My aunt took me to the store the very first time I went, because (if memory serves) she wanted to buy me whatever I wanted (up to 10 or 20 bucks or something) as a belated birthday present. In hindsight I think she expected me to pick out a bag full of 25 cent paperbacks or something, given what an obsessive reader I was, but when I saw the Dr. Strange poster in the window and realized they sold old comics, that was all I could think about. The comics were up at the front of the store; I don’t think I ever made it to the back half of the place beyond the cash register.

As the years went by I would always look forward to beach vacations with my family for innumerable reasons, one of which was visiting that used book store, and it always gave me a thrill to see that psychedelic poster in the front window. Of course it’s funny to see a scan of the original art because in my memory the colors are all different, much softer, really blended almost to a dull monochrome. (Yes, the owners of the store put a blacklight poster in a window that got full-on exposure to the sun pretty much year round, thus completely missing the point, but I can’t fault them for that, it struck them as the best use of a promotional piece and more power to them.)

The thought has of course occurred to me to buy one of these posters, now that we live in the future and everything ever created or conceived by man is a click away. And I tracked the poster down (as the image attests) but apparently it is so vintage that most people are only willing to part with it for $150 or so, and that’s a bit much for a poster, according to the rules of frivolous spending I (strive to) abide by.

Still, pretty sweet image, isn’t it?