ah, the sweet, sweet sound of quiet. i'd say silence, but that would be a slight exaggeration. the flourescent lights are making their barely audible hum and the keys on my computer are making some noise. some of the other computers are making sleep noises and the central air is an almist imperceptible thrum. this is definitely without a doubt the best part of the day. i'm working late and everyone else has gone home, leaving me nothing but peace and quiet: no annoying radio DJs yammering, no repetitive playlists, no inane chatter, no hovering behind me to see what i'm working on. i'll be here a while longer, until i get hungry enough to wander home in search of dinner. which, given how much more pleasant it is to work in peace may not be as soon as i had originally thought. not to say that i dislike company in the office exactly, it's nice to have a little time to one's self

after all, i can sit in the quiet and make my printouts while i contemplate the $0.4628 per hour bonus that has mysteriously found its way onto my paycheck. because i am employing direct deposit, i would not even have noticed the increase if i hadn't been carefully examining my pay stub. for where i expected to see one number (it is always the same number), in place of the familiar digits i found some slightly larger ones. since i would imagine that this bonus will not be disappearing, i imagine that this would traditionally be called a raise. but you must understand: the Jeff Miner weltanschauung understands pay raises to involve performace reviews and notifications and charts and graphs and things like that. raises are things that happen for rational and explained reasons, and always to other people. essentially, if i were getting a raise, wouldn't you think that someone would have told me? maybe? i don't know.

what i do know is this: i am already scheming on ways to make this money disappear just as fast as the old money. to wit, i am planning on making a return to the poker table. i am almost certainly the worst poker player in the world. during my 2-3 year history of occasional $5 buy-in poker games i have won $2.45 and lost an amount of money that lies somewhere between the GDPs of Tajikistan and Albania (1995 dollars). you'd think that after a while i'd learn. oh, no. not this guy. i have claimed that i would never play poker again as many times as i've sat down to play and stuck to it just as long as a game isn't being played. maybe tonight my time will come, maybe tomorrow. but rest assured that i'll be $5+ poorer some time in the next couple days. you can bet on it.