Insert coin

Ah, the promised land is upon us again: the three-day weekend.  The land of milk and honey, the land of getting an extra day free from the slavery we suffer through in order to pay bills for stuff we no longer have, the land where you can almost feel like you're more than a corporate drone in the great machine that makes the rich richer and delivers the rest of us products and services that we never thought we needed.

 

God, do I hate my job.

 

Actually I think I just hate working, period.  No, that's not so true either - I'd love to work if I were doing something I really enjoyed, I just haven't found that job yet.  My very first real paying job was the closest I've ever come to true happiness in the workplace: I worked as an attendant in a video arcade.  Now keep in mind that I was all of fifteen years old, I think, and this was during the arcade boom of the early eighties.  We had state-of-the-art entertainment like Ms. Pac Man, Phoenix, Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong 3...it was a high-tech paradise in the middle of backwards DeLand, Florida.  And I got to come in one day every weekend and open up the place, making change and handing out tokens.  I would even come in early, something I haven't done with a job since...but then again, coming in early here meant that I'd be able to use the little stash of free tokens the owner would leave me and play games before opening up the place.  The job didn't pay very well but to a nerdling such as myself it was a slice of heaven.

 

Of course, these days you'd be lucky to find an arcade worth stepping into, much less working at.  To Central Florida's credit we actually have a few good ones around here but really, it's just not the same anymore, what with gaming consoles pushing out gaming experiences which rival or even beat those you can find in arcades, although there are still great gaming experiences out there to be had.  Personally I've always been in love with the more immersive games, i.e. racing and other simulation-type games, as without spending a couple hundred dollars you're not going to be able to duplicate that experience at home.  Truth be told, however, I really don't go into arcades as much anymore.  I guess it's that self-consciousness you get when you're in your mid-thirties playing games in an arcade surrounded by kids less than half your age with more than twice your skill.  Despite the cries of "The Death of the Arcade" spouted for the last ten years I don't see them going away anytime soon.  Which, to me, is a good thing.

 

Now I want to go home and play some videogames.  What a life.

Catching up yet again

Once again, another valiant effort shot to hell by my laziness.  I am, of course, writing of my resolution to write for fifteen minutes a day - something I obviously haven't been able to keep up with.  I don't really have an excuse other than being distracted by other stuff: I've been playing a free trial of City of Heroes (and enjoying it immensely) as well as dabbling in a couple of classic RPGs on my GBA (Final Fantasy I & Zelda 3) and spending the usual amount of time bullshitting with Michelle or doing half-a-hundred other things.  I could have all the excuses in the world but the simple fact is that if I don't continue writing I'll never get myself to the point to where I try doing this shit professionally.  So I guess the easy conclusion is that I need to write more often.  FUCKING GENIUS!

 

City of Heroes is a blast, even if it is a little one-dimensional.  For those readers who haven't heard of it (no-one since I have no readers) CoH is an MMORPG based around...well, being a hero.  A superhero to be more exact, with a large variety of power types and customizations to make your character as unique as possible.  Depending on your point of view, the best or worst part about the game is that there's really nothing to do but fight - there's no crafting system, there's no loot or items at all, there's not even any money (although "influence" is a pretty close substitute).  You just beat stuff up, usually to great satisfaction whether you're running around defending helpless pedestrians from purse-snatching muggers or teaming up with other superheroes to take down an evil villian and his henchmen.  Beyond the gameplay, the part that I have tons of fun with is the character creator - I've already created several heroes with widely varied looks and powersets.  In fact, I've been planning on writing a detailed origin from the point of view of my main character "StinkPalm" here for a while - I'll have to get around to that sooner or later for no other reason that it'll be fun.  My only problem is that my three week trial is almost up and I'm really debating on buying/subscribing to it despite my money situation.  I'll have to get back to that one.

 

By the way, Blogger finally answered my tech support request about my entry regarding my trip to New York:  basically, I'm boned.  I'll have to delete it when I get to a computer with real actual Internet access (I'm writing this entry from work).  I'm not too upset about it as I wasn't necessarily all that happy with it to begin with; I just hated losing all the work that I put into it.  At least this will give me even more of an impetus to actually sit down and write more.

 

Okay, back to pretending to work.

Meanderings of an old mind

This'll be a short one, I think. I just wanted to write something to assuage my guilt over not writing anything for the last couple of days. Mainly I've been staying up later than usual bullshitting with the roommate but I'm also somewhat bummed about losing a good part of my New York story but when I look over it I almost don't mind rewriting it, as I'm pretty certain that I could do a much better job if I just put some time into it. I'll give Blogger a couple more days to see if they respond to my service request and if I don't get anything, I'll just delete the damned thing and start over.

I've had a rough week at work and am very glad it's just about over, if you couldn't tell from my previous post. Things have been busy as hell the entire week and I'd have to say that I'm no longer pissed at RJ - my ire is now directed at my supervisor Betty for assigning him to go work on a stupid camera demonstration system in the conference room for the past couple of days, leaving us shorthanded while she gallivants around the office chastising people for even the slightest bit of slack. Between her, the horribly shitty phone system and every other ridiculous thing that happens in the office (and would take several days to write about), I'm starting to think I'm just about done there. My roommate Michelle seems to feel the same way - she suggested I look into applying as a dispatcher for the local police department. It's an idea I've thought about several times but now that I'm in a shitty job the idea attracts me. Not only would I get better pay, better benefits and an actual retirement package but something tells me I'd get plenty of material to write about without ever getting off my fat ass. How can you beat that? I think I'll have to pick up an application and see what happens. If I leave this job, I'd love to get contact information from a couple of people there; without overinflating my self-importance, I'd be interested as hell to see how things go without me to take so many damned calls.

One last thing: I just saw that we have our first tropical storm of the season - "Arlene". Looks like it's heading directly north from the Cuba region, probably heading for the Alabama/Mississippi region if it makes it up this far. And shit, I just realized that Michelle will be heading for Biloxi on another of her gambling junkets this coming week. Hope everything either clears out or goes away by then...unless it brings her luck. Then again, everything seems to bring her luck when it comes to gambling. My roommate, the luckiest person I've ever met and yet I can't seem to get her to win me the lottery. Dammit.

An interlude of release

I don't feel like going into the whole New York thing again tonight; I'm a bit tired and I know that it'd take much longer than I feel like writing. So...a brief random interlude between parts!

I have an admission to make: I'm extremely lazy. My perfect life would involve me being independently wealthy and never having to work again. When I was out of work (and supposed to be working on my tech support business) the majority of my time was spent playing around with the computer all day and absolutely enjoying being able to sit around and do nothing if I so desired - really, the first time I had been able to do this in years. I imagine that if I ever won the lottery, my first year would probably be spent playing games, watching TV and generally being a fat lazy fucking slob.

Now that I've made this admission, I have to complain about a coworker of mine. He goes by the initials "R.J." - I despise people who use initials instead of their name, once you're an adult if your real name bothers you so much go and have it legally changed. Today was a typical Monday; we received a ton of calls for stuff that happened over the weekend while the office was closed. We were also down one person as he had requested to take the day off, which was fine. RJ, however, decided he didn't feel like taking many calls today and instead did what he does best, which is socialize with anyone and anything he can. Normally, I wouldn't mind something like this too much - I might bitch a bit here and there but hey, I'm a slacker too. However, being as busy as it was today I took a ton of phone calls while he sat, chatting and every so often emitting his trademark idiot laugh as others might use punctuation. Even though I'm lazy I do know when work needs to be done and when I'm forced to do all of it while some prick kid is busy trying to get his dick wet my blood pressure skyrockets to astronomical levels (or so it feels - I don't actually sit with a measuring instrument or anything).

I think one of the most frustrating things about this whole problem is the guy apparently doesn't even need this job. Judging by the comments he's made and the various trips he's been taking, his family seems to have a good amount of money. I'm not one to begrudge anyone from having a more extravagant lifestyle than I have - I'm pretty happy with the way I live and even with a ton of money, I'm not necessarily sure that I'd want this to change. The frustration level does rise, however, when you're trying to do a decent job because you really do need the job and it's made harder because you have to depend on some yutz who could just leave and not be bothered if people come down on him too hard. Not that that would happen; my boss is extremely happy with his work because he's very willing to be her "do-boy" and carry out all the physical tasks around the office.

So I continue to get frustrated, aggravated, annoyed - there's a shit-ton of synonyms I could use here. And the worst part of the whole ordeal is that if I don't get something else going, i.e. a solid writing career, I'll be dealing with this sort of shit for the rest of my life because, with varying details, this happens in almost every office one will work in. Ahh...my ulterior motives come out at last!

Not that I needed to vent or anything like that.

Requisite pet picture, part 2

Okay, now I'm really getting lame. Here's a picture of Bobby, my Mom's bird. He enjoys singing and screaming at the top of his little birdy lungs.

Waiting

Yup, at the repair place again. Thursday morning when I came out of my house to go to work I found a nice flat tire on my car and unfortunately, despite how I've been trying to learn more about car repair, this is just one of those things that you may as well get fixed for you. Now I'm late for Matthew's birthday party. I knew I should have went to bed earlier.

Random late night blatherings

Ah hell, looks like I did it again - stayed up much later than I wanted to. I've got a lot to do tomorrow too; I have to get a new tire for my car, check my transmission fluid, pick up a present for my nephew and attend his first birthday party over at my Mom's house. So instead of going to bed an hour ago as I had planned I instead took care of my weekly bills (putting them off until much too late at night) and spent a half-hour browsing LCD monitors that I'll never actually buy. I didn't even have time to play any games, something I'd been looking forward to doing all night.

And you think YOU have it rough?

Actually, I'm very cognizant of how well things are going despite the self-deprecation I occasionally find myself falling back on. I may not be making the kind of money I'd like to be, I may feel a certain degree of loneliness at times, I may even just get frustrated by the times I'm living in. However, when I start examining my current place in life I really can't complain much. I'm living in a great house with a friend so close she's all but family, I have tons of toys to distract myself with, I have a great family that loves me. I've been in much worse situations in my life - and there are plenty of people out there that are currently in much more horrible places than I could ever imagine. When it really comes down to it, somehow I've been pretty damned lucky.

So I've got that going for me.

I know I was going to write about my New York vacation but I haven't felt like going into anything deep for the past couple of days, probably because by the time I'm logging into this site I'm already pretty tired. I've also seen a couple of news stories I wouldn't mind kvetching over but I think they'll have to wait a bit also. That's the beautiful thing about this site: no-one reads it so I have no-one to disappoint!

Wait, no. That's actually really sad.

Ah well, I can live with it. I do have tons of material to draw on and write about, though, which is the true beautiful thing about writing here. Even on a night like tonight where I just want to go through my fifteen minutes and get to bed without really writing anything of substance, I can still squeeze out several paragraphs of bullshit.

Speaking of which, there's no way I'll be able to concentrate on writing now; Buck Rogers is on and is delightfully cheesy, as usual. BRIGHT SHINY OBJECT! MUST GO LOOK AT IT!

Too damned late

Argh. I knew that when I promised myself that I'd write for fifteen minutes each day that I'd end up staying up later than I should to do it. Admittedly, I've been staying up far too late all this week anyway so one more day shouldn't kill me, despite how much I feel like shit.

I've always been enamored with the idea of staying up late, ever since I was a child hoping to get to stay up past midnight. There was always something magical about midnight; the thought that I'd get to experience a new day right when it happened was somehow intoxicating. Of course when I finally got the chance 12:01 really didn't feel a lot different from 11:59 but I knew that I was a little more of a grownup that night.

Since then I've always seemed to end up staying up long into the wee hours of the night, usually doing such constructive things as playing games or just watching the idiot box. These days I'm usually just browsing the web, either finding something of interest that I can't get away from or getting hooked on a message thread or two over at the Something Awful Forums. Of course, there's always regret the next day when I have to wake up for work but during the night, I could literally stay up for hours doing the silliest shit.

For a while I thought my attraction to staying up late was because I hated ending whatever I was doing so I could sleep but I've realized that when I'm tired, I like to sleep (imagine, what a novel concept!). I think if I had to put it into words it's the feeling that at 2AM in a small town like Oviedo, you are the sole owner of the world around you. There's few cars driving by, the house is empty save you and the cat - you can do what you want when you want. Although I love my roommates, I value my alone time - staying up until the wee hours of the night is the best place to find it.

Argh again, somehow I've messed up the text entry in this damned Blogger text editing box and I'm too tired to get it working right. Now it's truly time for bed.

Requisite pet picture

And of course, what would a blog be without a picture of my cat?

A return to writing...and HUGE BLOWJOBS

I'm really rather surprised (and a bit disturbed) that it's been over a year since I've posted anything on this site. Well, not really - I've never been all that good at the whole follow-through thing - hell, I even predicted this happening in my second entry on this thing. My closet (and a good part of my room, for that matter) is a testament to unfinished projects. However, I don't mind that much; I signed up for Blogger so I'd have somewhere to put my writings when I felt like writing and I guess I haven't really felt like writing much in the past year. No particular reason other than a general moribund feel to life. But I want to write now, so here I am. In fact, I'm going to try a new goal: at least fifteen minutes of writing a day. Not that anyone will necessarily read this but it's something I feel like doing.

So a little catching up is in order, I suppose, just in case anyone ever read any of the stuff I wrote last year. My new business never really got off the ground and I cannot blame anyone but myself for that; I'm just really not the self-promoting type. So between hurricanes I took a job with a local alarm company and have been there since. It's a miserable place that seems to find new ways to suck the life and joy out of me every few days but it does help paying the bills. If I had to say something nice about the job, I'd have to mention that the incredible mundanity of the place has encouraged me to start writing again. And that's always something.

As I mentioned before, there were hurricanes last year. When all are counted I believe five actually hit the state of Florida before the season ended, although only three of those really had any affect on my life. The first and most momentous one for me was Charley; the eye passed right over us, tearing off a good portion of our roof (some part were down to the actual wood underneath the shingles and tar-paper stuff), knocking down half the backyard fence and smacking it into our screened-in porch along with a couple of trees. When it rained the next day the ceiling was also damaged by water leaking in through our now faulty roof. Of course, I was stupid enough to stay home the entire time by myself, thinking it'd be a better idea if I were here in case something happened (my roommate works with a local Police Department so she was out doing emergency-type stuff, her daughter was over her grandparents house). Great idea, that; there's nothing quite like sitting in a completely darkened house (the power naturally went out), listening to the wind howl, the roof disintegrate and the porch take a pummelling from the fence, not to mention feeling the pressure within the house rise and fall, expecting the roof to fly off or the windows to shatter inward in a hail of glass. Obviously I made it through alive although I'm fairly certain I took a couple of years off my life. Although we did have to suffer through a few days afterwards without power, it was tempered by knowing that there were many others out there that had a much rougher time than us.

The other two hurricanes that hit my area were completely different experiences, both for different reasons. When Frances came, my family and I decided enough was enough and took off for Mobile, Alabama along with many, many others. It turned out that my panic was premature - the hurricane did no extra damage and, as a matter of fact, my house never even lost power. Of course the costs of travel and lodging on a then unemployed me had their own special kind of damage. Finally when Jeanne came, I compromised and stayed at my mother's house as they weren't going anywhere either. If I remember correctly we definitely didn't get the brunt of this storm either, although the power did finally go out shortly before everything cleared up. Once again, my own house never lost power, although I've found that dealing with these huge "fuck you's" of nature is several degrees of magnitude easier when you're with family and/or friends. And I've come to the conclusion that hurricanes are a lot like swarms of bees: they're really interesting to watch from a distance but really suck when they come too close. By the way, check out the Central Florida Hurricane Center if you want to watch a bunch of really smart people figure out what goes on THIS hurricane season (which officially began today...well, yesterday now). Oy.

Okay, it's late now. Maybe tomorrow I'll write about my trip to New York after Hurricane Charley and the epiphany that resulted.