Catching Up

Friday afternoon, I was crossing the street to the Woodley Park metro station, when a man waiting for the red light caught my eye. I considered for a moment and hopped into the passenger side.

His name is Brian and he's had HIV for nearly twenty years. He and I went to Kramer's in Dupont Circle for a light supper, then he drove me on my errand to pick up the gift I had ordered for legalmoose's birthday. Afterwards, he drove me home to Baltimore.

He's a very take-charge guy, and I'm going to have to explicitly set my boundaries with him if we're going to become friends. He's ready to jump in the sack with me on a moment's notice, but my body isn't reacting to him that way. He also seems to be very generous -- he picked up the check for dinner and did drive me all the way home. I'm not buying into the mindset that this implies some sort of contract between us.

It was good to meet him and talk about HIV with someone who's seen a lot over the years. I'm always grateful for these opportunities.

I spent Saturday morning trying to get my current project to work. The client was planning a big PR event that evening at the 2004 Mautner Project Gala and we needed the site to be working. Unfortunately, due to delays with getting the SSL certificate authorized and installed, the site wasn't actually live until this morning.

I worked on that as long as I could, but it was pretty much a waiting game, dealing with tech support with the hosting company. I caught a train for DC just before 3 pm to attend legalmoose's birthday party, which was great fun. I stayed for the end of the party and was intending to take the early train home, but Moose offered to let me crash there.

I headed out on Sunday to catch a train back to Baltimore. When I arrived, I did some laundry, ate some lunch and met my friend Lee, who agreed to drive me to bowling in Perry Hall. My primary and backup rides were both unavailable, so Lee and I planned a day where he drove me to bowling and hung out with me there, then we returned to Baltimore to meet Russell, have dinner and watch Mona Lisa Smile at my apartment. It was a nice evening.

Outsourcing

I have some thoughts about outsourcing, a subject popular everywhere you turn.

I'm convinced that this is just the next step in the globalization of our economies. It started decades ago and won't be complete for decades more. If we're truly heading for a global labor market, then I expect further downward pressure on wages here in the United States as we figure out more ways to dissociate work from location.

At the moment, outsourcing is being pioneered by corporations able to set up the infrastructure to support the enterprise. I have no idea if it will become easier for smaller companies to follow suit, or if there will be companies who will specialize in facilitating outsourcing for smaller businesses, but it seems to me that you'd get less risk of being outsourced by working for a smaller business.

That's one of the reasons that I'm happy with my current job. I'm not making $60K per year, but I'm also not at risk of losing my job overseas either. Even when I begin making more money, I'm hoping to keep my spending under tight control. I need to make sure I can weather unexpected dips in my income. I had a large cushion when I left my job in Baltimore, but I burnt through that just figuring things like this out. Next time, I'll manage things even better.

Looking to the future, I agree with some writers that we're going to also see continued reliance on automation. When every McDonald's franchise is using touch-screen ordering, what happens to those employees? What about those self-serve checkout scanners at Home Depot and Wal-Mart?

We've got some large adjustments ahead of us.

Nifty!

I continue to be pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of free audiobooks in the iTunes Music Store that provide more primary source material for political thought, like the hearings of the 9-11 Commission. I just downloaded the first presidential debate and I see that there are thirty speeches available from the Democratic National Convention and twenty-one from the Republican National Convention.

I'll have Bush and Kerry on my iPod this evening!