Daynotes On A Budget, V6.0

I'm starting a new job.  It's not one that's going to require what my previous job did, but that's OK.  Sometimes it's not about the work you do, but the income you have that will allow you to continue to maintain a few luxuries, like eating, living indoors, and staying sane.   My previous position was seated, which is yes, a joke.  I've had some jobs that involved sitting some of the time.  When in IT, I learned very early on that when I was supporting other people, it was my job to be visible.  Not just walking past someone's cube, but doing it slowly, stopping by, and, if their work permits, say Hi.  Not just because I'm that outgoing, which I'm not, but because I learned that there are quite a few people like me who might deal with a small annoying problem with a work-around they've figured out, but there may be an easier solution. One person whom I would regularly pass by and pass the time of day eventually mentioned an annoyance.  When ...

Thirty years ago I was a young father.  I had a one-and-a-half year old daughter, I'd been married for four and a half years, and the day was pretty bright, with clear skies.  I'd gotten up at 4 am and gotten into my car, drove three hours south to LaCrosse, Wisconsin.  I was installing a time & attendance system for a client who had a large number of locations - I was doing the corporate office first.  Because I was the only person in my office who had been trained on the particular version of the software, I was kind of The Guy.  Any support questions, any problems, any issues - it was me.  My employer was still coming to terms with technology, which was both a blessing and a curse. In the previous year, I'd been sent to Dallas to train on this new software.  The company we distributed for had purchased another company that wrote a time and attendance system which ran on the IBM AS/400 Minicomputer.  Now, before you start yelling at me, it's...