jr conlin's ink stained banana

Growing up, i was not what you would call a "neat freak".

Well, unless you meant the dead opposite of "neat freak", in which case, i'd pretty much fit the bill. Being the youngest in a pretty military family, however, this didn't exactly endear me with my parents who continually sought to remind me that i was a slob and needed to pick up that stray blade of grass that wound up on the sidewalk.

To this day, Anne Marie will note that i am not a "neat freak" and even looking around my desk in the dim light of the monitor shows a pretty chaotic mess of used batteries altoid tins, wires and other bit of life that i seem to have acquired.

So i'm not exactly sure why i'm so bothered by disorderly wiring.

i was again made aware of this after the most recent office move. (Note: My disdain for shuffling folks around is only slightly outweighed by bad wiring, so this may be a combination effect.) While trying to figure out why my moved computers failed to work, i went under my desk and beheld a tangled rats nest of cabling, wires, and assorted dangly bits that screamed out for a bag of nylon zip-ties. Heck, i already know how i'm going to be untangling and tying off cables in order to make things clearer and more organized with the minimal number of ties.

And needless to say, that scares me.

Mostly because i can hear my Dad's voice yelling about "cleaning up that damn rat's nest", and i know he was right.