Not a Lot to Say Today...

In today’s Bleat:

Made some calls back to the office to see what the mood was like. Shock and aw-sh*t, you could say. I understand; I woke last night around 3AM and started spinning the sort of scenarios that come to one at 3 AM. (One never wakes up at 3 AM and spend an hour considering an ever-escalating series of encounters with gorgeous, smart, long-legged women with a wide variety of hairstyles and foundation garments, ending in a best-case-scenario at Enzo Ferrari’s Computer & Bourbon Emporium. No, it’s always the dank sweaty dreams of mid-life failure.

James wrote this about his paper (and place of employment), the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, being sold…a for-real modern American nightmare. But the part that struck me as humorous was his best-case scenario observation that one never awakes at 0300 hrs after dreaming about good things. I’ve often had dreams such as James describes…dreams involving smart and gorgeous women, a to-die-for combination that always renders me speechless in real life. Or nearly always.

And about that modern American nightmare… “Shock and aw-sh!t” is a perfect description of the mood among the rank and file of the acquired (or sold) organization. (The senior-most level management of the acquired org almost always “does well,” so they, for the most part, aren’t a consideration.) I’ve never been on the “acquired” side of that nightmare, but I often found myself on the “acquiring” side. Such was the nature of working for one of the largest “outsourcers” in the IT industry, followed up with working for a small company that snatched up a couple of failed and/or failing web services firms immediately after the dot-com bubble burst. It’s an incredibly ugly process, deciding who among the “acquired” deserves to continue on in the new, merged organization, and who will be let go “downsized.” The fear among the acquired personnel is palpable and real, due to the fact that even though the skills and/or the experience of the acquired folks may exceed those of the acquiring team, it’s always the acquired that are downsized, never the acquiring personnel. It’s one of corporate America’s dirty little secrets.

Life ain’t fair.

Today’s Pic(s): The St. James Hotel in Cimarron, NM.

From their web site:

As a vital outpost of The Old Santa Fe Trail, Cimarron and the St. James are linked to a veritable Who's Who of the early land grant settlers, ranchers and desperados (mug shots available upon request). The cast of characters included such notables as settlers Lucien Maxwell and Carlos Beaubien, Buffalo Bill Cody and his cohort, Annie Oakley, Kit Carson, Frank and Jesse James, Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid and Blackjack Ketchum. The notorious gunman, Clay Allison, allegedly danced naked on the bar,* once part of the present dining room which still has bullet holes in its pressed tin ceiling.

I’ve seen the bullet holes. All in all, The St. James is a pretty cool place...especially considering its location and the epoch it was built in. It's pretty elegant, even in this day and age. The St. James was probably considered a Modern Marvel during its heyday.

And here I am, standing in the Bat Masterson Suite. Pretty danged small for a suite, eh?

May, 2004.