And Then There Was Light...

I've ventured into the blogsphere, not so much to contribute to the endless Babel of voices out there, but to read other people's work. The concept really appeals to me; find a few interesting individuals out there and follow their daily posts, learn about them, see a different viewpoint of life. We're not limited by country or race or social status; I can read about Rance, the anonymous famous actor, or about a refugee, or a writer, or a janitor. So what value is there in my contributing to this forum? What's my label?

I'm quite boring, I'm afraid. I go by the nickname Brettanicus, because my real name is Brett but my college friends thought it much too short to convey the literary bookfreak that I meant to become. I think my roommate intended the name "Brettanica", like the set of encyclopedias, but he was decidedly NOT a bookfreak, spelling "oven" as "ofen" because he took the general rule of spell-it-like-it-sounds a little too far, so I ended up with Brettanicus. Sort of Greek or Roman sounding, yet also a true word of "man from Britain". Now, I am not from Britain, but coincidentally my dad and all of my paternal lineage comes from England, so it fit. And the real reason; it's always an available username.

So enough background, this is day in the life, right? I'm waiting to get a call on a Sunday morning to go into work and perform post-implementation testing of a software upgrade. Yes, bookfreak turned computer geek to make a living, a cliched story. But the world of corporate computing, and more specifically data warehousing and business intelligence, is not without it's own appeal; I live a Kafkaesque life, packed away in my little cubicle, wandering the complex labyrinth of corporate data, traversing joins to different tables of information, trying to make sense out of meaninglessness, aiming for that glowing holy grail of a "single version of the truth", or what has now been termed "single version of information". But this sidetrack into computers has really led me astray; writing is where life takes on meaning. I love books. I love movies. I've divorced recently and in these solitary hours I will try to examine life again and try to make some sense out of it. But I need a take on life for a blog, don't I? I need a gimmick--which of my many obsessions will become my area of expertise? Eavesdropper of cell phone conversations? Corporate bungler, a new kind of Dilbert? Or how about a single guy learning to date? I'll think about it. Tune in again.