Life sure is a funny thing.

Lately I’ve been consumed with work. Or the worry of work, rather.

You see, this work thing is still fairly new to me. I was officially unemployed for five years… and to go from that to working these screwy shifts (split days off, no days off, working in the morning and then again at night, a few hours here, a few there) and I feel out of sorts. And Miriam has different days off than I do–that really sucks.

But there’s a payoff. After only six months with this company I can move up and out. I will have job openings available to me, and other Comcast employees, that are not available to the public. I’ll be able to get out of the call center. I’ll be able to move to normal working hours (ie: mon-fri and 9-5). And since I can never take a decrease in pay when transferring or moving, I’ll make at least what I’m making now if not more.

Three and a half months down, two and a half to go. Come September 2 my six months will be up. I’ll be eligible for retirement and stock purchases as well.

Comcast isn’t the greatest place in the world to work, but it does have its perks. For example, I kept my address in Hayward so my father gets free cable and Internet. And not just basic cable either. I’m talking EVERY. SINGLE. CHANNEL. For free. This month my medical benefits kicked in–I get great peace of mind from that. And I get some nice discounts at places like Dell and Apple and Verizon Wireless.

So that’s my life right now. Work. Working. The Working Man.

Such an ugly word, ‘work’. *spits*

I finally did it. I broke down and bought an iPod. I like it.

I remember when the first mp3 players came out, way back in 1999. I paid $250 for a 256mb Diamond Rio on Ebay. When that one crapped out I bought another one, this time a 512mb. Sometimes I wish I still had those Rios, they were kinda cool.

Anyway. Then I had POS portable CD player that also played mp3s off disks. That sucked… I found that I had to swap out CDs a lot.

And then the first iPods appeared, along with the Creative Zens. After trying iTunes and reading the specs on the iPod I chose my Zen, which served me well for a good 5 years (I still use it, although not for music).

And then I bought an iRiver Clix. The Clix was, and still is, a badass PMP. The only downfall is the small sizes: 2gb and 4gb. I still use that little sucker too, when I get a wild hair and decide to try one of those music rental sites, like the new Napster or Urge.

And then I saw the 80gb iPod video. I was sold on the capacity. I had to have one. I could put my entire music collection on it and still have 20gb left over for my podcasts and Internet TV shows. So last week I bought one.

I still hate the big fat bloated pig that is iTunes. And I’m not crazy about the iPod’s clicky scroll wheel. I love the simplicity of my Clix. When I want to transfer files onto my Clix all I have to do is drag and drop in Windows Explorer. And the Clix’ interface is superior to iPod’s. I love clicking on the edges of the screen. To me, it’s much more intuitive than Apple’s device.

So what’s next? I was thinking about a Creative Zen Vision-type media player. I like the big screen and multiple video outputs.

Geek out.

So we’re doing a little web surfing over coffee the other morning, and Miriam is showing me something cool.

And then she does something that leaves me a bit flabbergasted.

“Miriam,” I ask her, “did you just press CTRL +T to open a new tab in Firefox?”

“YEP,” she answers and goes back to showing off.

She knows what she is doing. She’s toying with me. Dammit, this woman knows I love her. She doesn’t have to play these little games.

I catch her using another keyboard shortcut, but I say nothing. The geek in me is slightly aroused.

“You are so fucking cool,” I tell her.

She just smiled.