There's Something About Harry

OK, I need to whine, bitch, moan and complain a little bit.  Please don’t read anything more into this than my airing my complaints, because that is all it is.  Sometimes you just need to exorcise the deamons from your head a bit and that’s what I’m doing right now.

I would have done this yesterday, but I’ve been having server problems (one of the things I’m complaining about) so I couldn’t even blog about my troubles.

My week hasn’t exactly gone as planned this week.  It started on Monday.

I had outlined a number of video scripts that I needed to record this week for a new set of tutorials for designing wordpress themes that I have been working on for a while now.  I’ve been to a bunch of conferences now where I have given a bit of the intro (101 level) presentation on how to design a wordpress theme from scratch with no prior experience.

Its a great presentation, and I’ve helped a lot of people learn something useful, something they wanted to learn, and something that can make them money.

I always like teaching people how to fish. . . . well not so much fishing but teaching them how to make money so they can buy fish.

If you want me to speak at a conference, camp, or event that you are hosting, please get in touch with me through my company site at Softduit or via twitter, email, linkedin etc.  I’m not too hard to find, just google Brett Bumeter.

Complaint 1 – Noisy Neighbor

So I need to complain about my neighbor.  he’s a great guy, getting ready to take his band on tour in europe, and he’s been recovering from a house fire for the last year.  I’m not mad at him and don’t fault him for this, but it proved to be a problem for me this week.

He’s had construction workers at his house all year since his house caught fire.  Tragic story(no one injured), and I feel for him, but this last Monday as he was finally moving back in, the construction workers were making a lot of noise and I couldn’t record my video and audio work.

Tuesday, I spent scoping out a coworking space in Charlotte, which I will probably sign up for just as soon as I get the membership agreement, which is a couple days late coming to me now, but no worries.  Seems like a good deal, and I’m looking forward to it.  I think I will scope out office space in Savannah next, but that’s another story.

Tuesday night I get home after perusing the new office and then hanging around for a tweetup afterwards.  My wife is in bed chatting on the computer with her boyfriend.  She met him on our 16th anniversary at Howl at the Moon in Charlotte when we went out to celebrate.

I’m not a jealous guy by a mile and a half, and didn’t mind when he flirted with her nor even when he started groping her.  She was enjoying the attention and having a good time.  Together we had a great time that night.  It was Halloween and just a fun night all in all.

But I wasn’t exactly expecting her to hit it off with the guy on a long term basis either.

Its about 3 weeks later and she talks with him regularly via chat and stuff.  I’m not real nosy, but I think she talks with him via email, messenger and she’s friends with him on Facebook.

He’s got my business card, so who knows maybe Mike’s even reading my this article right now.

Hi Mike

Anyway, I don’t mind my wife flirting with people.  Never have.  I kind of look at it from the perspective that I’m a relatively nice guy, decent husband, decent father, I don’t smoke, do drugs, beat anyone, haven’t been to jail etc.  Sex life is good, not too kinked up not too boring.  I want Becky to be happy, so if someday she decides that I’m not the guy anymore, well I want her to be happy and find the person that is the right person.

I’m not trying to push her away, don’t want to lose her, but I’m not going to stifle her either nor entrap her in a marriage just because.  I don’t see that as a good option for anyone.

So if she wants to chat with some guy she met at a club every day, well whatever.

If she wanted to go have an affair with the guy, I probably wouldn’t stop her there either.  I’d hope that she would come back, maybe sew some oats or something (its been 16 years, if she’s bored or needs something I’m not providing well I want her to be happy).  But I’d do that HOPING she would come back.

Maybe I’m vain to think that the grass IS greener on this side of the fence, but well, I do.  Always have, and if she doesn’t think so, she needs to tell me or find better pastures. ( again not trying to send her away).

But the flirting/groping turned what she calls a new friend type of relationship grates on my nerves a bit.

Complaint 2 – My Wife’s New Long Term Boy Friend

I look at it from the perspective that he met her with sex on the brain.  Drunken, flirty, groping situation and it definitely was not absent from their thoughts.  I don’t know how seriously she entertained the idea with having sex with him.  She speculated that he might be more interested in having sex with me.

I used to get that a lot from guys, ergo they wanting to have sex with me, but I’ve never found that right guy, and odds are I’m not going to.  I’m not looking and never have been.  I’m pretty much straight as an arrow, despite my propensity for disco.

Drunkenly, that night I lightly toyed with the notion of the three of us having a thing.  I don’t think my wife has ever slept with two guys at the same time, maybe she’d like that.  I don’t know.  If she asked, I’d probably oblige as long as I didn’t have to touch the other dude too much, preferably not at all.

I don’t know if the other guy looks good or not, can’t judge guys looks, never really could.  I’d include his facebook picture or something, but don’t think that would be really fair.  I’m not complaining to harass him nor my wife, just need to air my thoughts and don’t really have someone that I can talk about this with on the phone or in person.

So I’m publishing it, I’m sure that’s a bad idea, but trying to salvage my sanity first.

So anyway, her talking with him via chat and email and stuff wouldn’t be probably all that annoying.  Its 2009, conversations online happen.  But this is where my complaint comes in . . .

He invited her to go back to Howl at the Moon this Friday, and bring me and some friends of hers.

So my complaint is that, I don’t really care if she talks with him, don’t care even if she sleeps with him (says she hasn’t and is not going to probably), but I don’t necessarily want to be there when he courts her, attempts to woo her away, and she asked me to go with following her invitation so that I could be the designated driver!

That last part kind of hits the nail on the head.  Not only does she want me to go out with her so she can be with her boy friend . . .

She calls him a close friend now because she has counseled him online in regards to some girl he’s been infatuated with for a long time and is finally going out with this Friday night, which to me sounds a bit like my wife in code or something.

. . . . so not only go out with her so she can be with her boyfriend and he can see my wife, but she wants me to drive so she can get drunk with him, and I can take her safely home.

I do want to see her get home safe.  For all I know this guy is a serial killer or something, and it is a long long way for a cab drive from Charlotte.

Add in to the mix she wants to take her friends from work with her, so not only will I be out with my wife and her boyfriend while they get drunk at the club they met at on our anniversary, but her friends will get to drink and wonder why I’m there letting my wife get drunk with her boyfriend at a club where they met on our anniversary.

just a touch of public humiliation thrown in on top of letting my wife go on a date basically.

Well, it was until this week that I finally found a context to that Meat Loaf song that I have always hated and still do.

“I will do anything for love, but I won’t do that.”

I guess this is my thing that I just won’t do.  She’s upset because I don’t want to go.  She had fun the last time we went (mentioned that above) and says she wants to go and have fun with me there.

In her defense, I’m not great at public displays of affection.  Never have been, just not in my wiring, which is part of the reason I didn’t mind other guys (there were a couple others that night) showering attention on her.  I think its healthy for people to be adored a bit every now and then.  Furthermore, (feels weird to write a paragraph with furthermore in it about this topic, not really trying to make a federal case out of this ) I travel quite a bit these days for work.  I have to socialize and go to a lot of those cheesy social media parties in crazy places like Vegas.

I know that is not easy for her to cope with.  I’m not much of a flirt these days.  I used to be when I was single, but I got so tired of the games of flirting and picking people up . . . .well it was one of the reasons why I got married.  And that relates to my wife, because she didn’t play those games when we met or dated.  It was refreshing then.  Maybe more importantly, I don’t grope girls at the parties I go to, ask anyone (this is the internet and I’m sure there are lots of pictures and maybe video) its just not my style.  Anyway, my point is that I’m away a lot, meeting lots of people, men and women, and she doesn’t see that which is not easy for her.

One of the differences here is that I DID see her meet this guy, flirt with him and get groped for a couple hours.  So its difficult for me to now envision the two of them ‘just as friends’.  Its been a long time since I did grope someone other than Becky, and I can only think of one girl I groped that I didn’t have sex with (I was 17).  We are still very distant friends on facebook, but I have seen her since I was 17, and the odds of her inviting me to go out and party and then asking my wife to come along as the designated driver are just not going to happen.

So Wednesday morning, I woke up after watching my wife chat with this guy the night before and her receiving the invitation and then emailing it to me.  I had this hollow feeling in my gut from the minute I woke up.

I didn’t really think I’d lose her, but weirder things do happen to people.  I sure as hell didn’t want to contribute to losing her just because I lack that healthy dose of jealousy gene that most people have.

I couldn’t work at all that morning, ended up going back to bed for a couple hours, but could barely sleep, even though I hadn’t got much sleep the night before or all week for that matter.

Woke up that afternoon and tried to get it together for a customer meeting online, and just couldn’t do it.  Backed out of that meeting with a poor ‘DSL down excuse’ but how do you tell a customer you can meet with them because you are torn up over your wife’s boyfriend?

By the way, if you don’t know this about me by now, I should lay it out for you as I AM aware of it.  I have a tendency to be a little overly dramatic.  While I’m not exaggerating the events, I HOPE I am seeing something possible where HOPEFULLY nothing is possible.

My wife got home from work and I told her I didn’t want to go and wouldn’t likely go.  I told her if she wanted I would drive her, drop her off and pick her up.

I do want her to be safe, and seriously, it wouldn’t surprise me if this guy was a serial killer (we do seem to have one in Gastonia these days, again, 2nd girl’s body was just found, although I suspect it was drug related).

So I’d go so far as to take her and bring her home to make sure she is safe, but I don’t want to be there and watch, nor be in the situation, nor walk away with a re-enforced memory, good bad or otherwise.  I just want to do a memory dump on this situation basically.

I’m not demanding she stop emailing/chatting/facebook friend him or anything either.  If they are friends, great.  Whatever.  But I don’t want to be a part of possibly creating a situation where they have a greater chance to connect or something.

IF there is a spark there, I’m not going to blow on it.

Hell, I’ve already agreed to go see New Moon with her tonight after midnight.  She’s a big fan of that book series and movies, over the top type of fan.  I think the books are decent enough, but the movies seem a little too teenage for my tastes.

So going to New Moon tonight and then out with her boyfriend tomorrow night is just too much.  I keep thinking maybe I could just let it go and go and have fun, but that’s the thing.  Given the situation, I don’t think I can have fun, even if I go and drink myself silly.  I don’t want to go somewhere, knowing the odds are good that I’ll sit there and sulk and be a brooding asshole, nice contrast to her new boyfriend who will likely be in a better mood.

Seems likes like a recipe for disaster if not Jerry Springer.

Then on top of all of that, last night as I’m finally trying to get back on track and get caught up with the work that I was too depressed to deal with yesterday, my server crashes last night around 1 am.

Complaint 3 – My Server went down again

My server with inmotion hosting has been driving me nuts since July.  I’ve been with them for almost 4 years and have historically loved their service and support.

In July, they convinced me to upgrade from one server to a newer ‘faster’ server.  I’ve had nothing but problems ever since.  Almost everyother week, my server goes down and they threaten to cancel my prepaid account ($500 per year) because I’m using up to much CPU time.

I have a handful of sites that get very little traffic.  I have actually closed or moved half the accounts I had on my server before July because of this.

The server crash, completely torpedoed the last of my energy last night, so I went to bed hoping that it would be better enough in the morning.  Scrunched up in bed and tried to sleep, barely pulled that off.

Got up around 6:50 and the server is still down.  Got my daughter on her bus and then called tech support.  I got the impression they were just starting to look into it 6 hours later (I could be mistaken, but that was the impression the phone rep gave me who was interfacing with the higher level support reps, who used to field phone calls and now do not).

I’ve been through this with them before.  I figured, I can’t fix things with my wife right away, but maybe I can fix my fucking server at least.  So I started seriously looking into switching to Host Gator, which I’ve been scoping since this problem came up.

I’ve done a massive amount of optimization for performance on my sites over the last 5 months, and I had no issue  before the server upgrade.  I’m pretty sure its not me, its them, but their system provides almost no information about what is going on with my accounts on their server.

I’m completely in the dark with them. 

I had one last talk with them, indicated that I was going to move elsewhere and started to work on that.

Then I get a call from Marco at Inmotion.  He was doing some super heavy lifting on my server trying to reconfigure it and move my sites to a different machine where we could figure out what was going on.  His super hero efforts stopped me from switching, but I’m not sure if that’s good for either one of us just yet.

Many hours later, I think my sites are actually back up and working without the errors and things.  They’ve been up and down all after noon as he works his magic.

When I started writing this blog post 90 minutes ago, Something About Harry was still up.  Hopefully it still is because I’m getting ready to hit the publish button.  I feel better and I’m tired of bitching.

If you read this far, thanks for listening.  I have a lot of good luck and a tendency for surviving very odd situations, usually to my benefit.  I hope these complaints and the situations that caused them have a positive outcome.