I should have realised that my morning was going to be bad when I noticed (in the car, on my way to work) that I'd forgotten my shoes. In some sense this was no big deal; I do it often enough that I always keep an emergency backup pair of shoes under my front seat. These shoes, though, aren't suitable for Chicago, and I had to pick Earl up and go to the airport directly after lunch.

Aside from that, the morning started well enough. I did a little work. Then I phoned my stepmother to make plans for having lunch with her and my father tomorrow, once we'd all arrived in Chicago. It was at this point that my morning revealed its true nature as The Morning From Hell.

My pager went off. Before I could even look at it my manager came by. I put my stepmother on hold to talk to him. My pager went off again. I hit it without looking at it, and tried to listen patiently as my manager explained that he needed me to drop everything I was doing and run very fast over to the demo room in building 3 (not my building, my cubemate's building, but my cubemate wasn't around and I was) and help these men take a machine off the network.

Frustrating, but doable. I told him I would, told my stepmother I'd phone her later, hit my pager a few more times, and headed for the B3 demo room.

They wouldn't let me in, at first. The glass door was locked, and it took several hand gestures before they were willing to let me into the room. Once there the following conversation ensued:

I settle back to wait. Twenty minutes go by. Twenty minutes of these two men yelling letters back and forth at each other, despite being less than five feet apart. Twenty minutes of them making frantic phone calls as they try to license some software, only to hang up when the person at the other end doesn't pick up on the first ring.

Finally I ran out of patience, gave them my number, and stomped off in a furious huff. I was near tears, and so tense my shoulders and neck ached.

I hate incompetence. I am able to forgive a wide range of flaws, but it is very difficult for me to deal with people being actively incompetent about something I'm good at. It makes me angry to watch people screw something up that I can do well, especially when they add in the (usually but not always) male 'I'm always right' syndrome.

Maybe my problem is that I keep expecting people to be competent and functional and rational. Maybe if I adopted a truly cynical view I'd get less angry, since my expectations wouldn't be thwarted at every turn.

Somehow I doubt it, though.

I had lunch in Mountain View and picked up my shoes, then drove to Earl's company and sat in the car reading until he showed up. From there it was a quick hop to the airport.

We got into LA around 1800, and found Earl's car with no problem. Dinner was The Authentic Cafe, which unfortunately puts cilantro in their meatloaf. Earl traded plates with me, so I ate some nice vegetables (jicama! yum!) and chicken with red sauce while he ate the tainted meatloaf. I was extensively grateful.

Then we came back to his apartment and collapsed.

I'm reading Interface Masque by Sheriann Lewitt. It's pretty hideous. It started as a nice story about a few young people coming-of-age is an interesting future society. Since then it has devolved. The author seems to feel that the way to show that her characters are intelligent is to show them drawing irrational conclusions which then turn out to be true. There's no underlying logic to a lot of it, but hey, they're right, so they must be smart.

Plus she seems to have no idea what she actually wants to write about. It's gone from coming-of-age to intrigue-and-revolution to first-contact in about three chapters. Haltingly, with lots of false starts.

I'm too stubborn not to finish it, but I'm definitely looking forward to the next thing on my pile, which is The Stars Dispose by Michaela Roessner.