A Comedy of Errors

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"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." -Morrow
"Take care of the minutes, and the hours and years will take care of themselves." -Anonymous
"Love doesn't make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile." -F.P. Jones

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2006-08-04
what, me, overanalyze? never!

17:20

I have been, ahem, accused of over thinking things. I'll save us all time and not delve into that cesspool of my personality, as here, I'm only talking about the written word.

When I was at UCSD, during the eleven harrowing days forever known as that mission (STS-97), where we thought it would be a great idea to work twelve-hour days (in rolling shifts of six hours, meaning six on, twelve off, six on) in the midst of midterms, I was responsible for writing a short summary of EarthKAM's activities for each day and sending it off to JSC. For most of the time, I carefully thought out each word, each phrase; I mean, real live Flight Controllers (hallowed persons in my opinion, then) would be reading my words! Well, not so much. By the time it got through our contact at JSC, it was my summary only by the thinnest definition. Finally, with my last synopsis, I carelessly jotted something down and then sent it off without another thought; it was going to be re-done, anyway, so what did it matter what I wrote? Then I saw a copy of the file sent to the crew - and there was my summary, word for word. Go figure; the one time I quickly dash something off, not only is it seen, verbatim, by the Flight Controllers, but by the astronauts.

It happened again today. I had to write a message that is going to be seen by some Very Important People. Actually, this is the second message that will be seen by them. True to form, I spent several hours on the first one, and upon submission for review, generated not a few comments/suggestions on changes. Last night, I spent fifteen minutes on message #2 and have recieved nothing but praise for my attempt.

This just proves that I spent WAY too much time over my English papers at high school and university, trying to get them pefect. I'm sure that this is also a metaphor for the rest of my life, but I need to save the therapy dollars for any children that I might have. They'll need it! ;)

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