Party on, dude

I had my first party in a long time today and it turned out to be a very different experience than the one I was expecting. See, I have this thing that I call "party anxiety" which I suppose is a remnant of the parties I used to go to when I was younger; as the party approaches I start getting afraid that I'm going to go and not have anyone to talk to and end up bored and miserable in a corner somewhere. Why I'm like this, I'm not sure - I can be really outgoing when I'm in the right situation, even with new people. I think it just becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy: I get nervous about being bored at a party, so when I go I'm nervous so I don't socialize and end up being bored at the party. I probably need to just loosen up, maybe take advantage of alcohol's value as a social lubricant, I don't know. Regardless, that's not the real point of this post.

When I started getting that feeling of dread once again I decided to look at this party a little differently; I made up my mind that I was going more as a writer than a guest. In most parties, there's little stories going on all around. This person talks to this person, this girl flirts with this guy who is oblivious to her advances, this woman gets a little too drunk and starts spewing forth with personal details no-one ever knew about her. All around there are little dramas going on which could be used as parts of a bigger story or even become stories in themselves. This is really the first time I decided to do something I don't normally so I could get more experiences to add to my writing and, to my surprise, I started really looking forward to the party and the rich material that awaited me there.

Naturally, it turned out to be a complete bust...at least for the writer side of me. The party itself was actually pretty nice. Our friend had a great time doing the "Halloween Thing", hiding himself as a prop to scare people coming in and even converting his small garage into this remarkably elaborate haunted house. There weren't too many people and the ones that I actually talked to turned out to be pretty cool. The food was great and plentiful, nobody got really drunk and there weren't any real awkward moments. Maybe this is the type of party that goes on once you get a little older. Or maybe we're just boring - something I don't mind all that much, as there are times that "boring" is not such a negative thing as it once was. The only unfortunate part to the whole affair is that my inner author left relatively unfulfilled.

Edit: Ouch, I just realized how dry and boring this whole entry was, which I think was the point. I'm discovering more and more how much I need to start experiencing new things...or if I can't do that, at least use some imagination to make things more interesting. But even with the time change it's too late tonight, so I'll have to think about this and write more bullshit later.

Great, more bitching

I know I bitch about my job quite often; sometimes I wonder if it's due to having a really horrible job or if I just hate working for someone else. Then I look around my job, look around at the people and realize that no, it's definitely the job.

Yesterday was a bit of a breaking point for me and it started before I even went into the building. When the owner of my company moved into this place, he apparently didn't have the ability to figure out the ratio of potential employees to parking spaces; in other words, there was nowhere to park. This is a fairly common occurance here, especially since I come in later than most - but yesterday was a little different. I could have parked in the lot just fine, but the owner's "assistant/girlfriend that he left his wife and kids for" parked her gigantic SUV in just the right way to force the person next to her to park in a way that, betweenI know I bitch about my job quite often; sometimes I wonder if it's due to having a really horrible job or if I just hate working for someone else. Then I look around my job, look around at the people and realize that no, it's definitely the job.

Yesterday was a bit of a breaking point for me and it started before I even went into the building. When the owner of my company moved into this place, he apparently didn't have the ability to figure out the ratio of potential employees to parking spaces; in other words, there was nowhere to park. This is a fairly common occurance here, especially since I come in later than most - but yesterday was a little different. I could have parked in the lot just fine, but the owner's assistant/girlfriend-that-he-left-his-wife-and-kids-for parked her gigantic SUV in just the right way to force the person next to her to park in a way that, between the two of them, would take up three spaces. Then the owner decided to just say "fuck it" and take up two spaces himself with his huge, ugly as hell Mercedes SUV (as an aside, don't those and the H2/H3/H-whatever seem as though the driver is saying "hey, fuck you and fuck wind resistance, I can afford getting 3 miles-per-gallon, I'm RICH!). Never mind the fact that about four spaces are taken up with broken down work vehicles that the owner is too cheap to either repair or tow away. While waiting for a workvan to get through the driveway so I could back out and try and find a spot somewhere else, I came close enough to just driving home out of disgust that I had my phone out calling my coworker to let him know I was taking a sick day. Luckily (for him or me?) he didn't pick up which made me feel guilty about the idea because I figured he was busy and I didn't want to screw him over. So I parked across the street in the driveway of another business or something.

I get into work - late, of course - and start getting my computer up and running. Normally it just takes a reboot and everything is working, but not this week. This week my computer doesn't want to see the network...and since I keep forgetting this, after I wait for the longer-than-usual reboot cycle I have to then shutdown the system, wait a few seconds, then power it up and pray. Yeah I know, big deal, it's just another inconvenience...but here, it's almost expected. But this is what you get when all your network infrastructure was bought used on eBay. Of course, this wouldn't matter if we had a competant I.T. guy in the office; even a part-timer would be helpful. But no, we have this guy who shows up maybe once every couple of months to patch up everything that went tits-up in the meantime. Hey, at least our firewall is working great so we can't waste time surfing the web...oh wait, by now everybody has found a login to bypass it.

The great/horrible thing is that there are lots of great examples of what a shitty place this is. There's the sink downstairs in the warehouse/breakroom that has big signs all over it stating "OUT OF ORDER - DO NOT USE"...for the past month. There's the other sink in the men's room that has had the hot water shut off for the past two years because it causes the faucet to drip - and don't you dare turn it back on. There's the addition that was built to the upstairs floor that hangs over the warehouse that has had dripping air conditioning ductwork since it was built several months ago.

Employee relations are just peachy as well. When you start here, you'll generally make insultingly low wages. When it comes time for your evaluation (and a raise), they'll delay it as long as humanly possible and then give you the bare minimum possible. In fact, the best way to get promoted and/or decent money is by doing a reasonably competant job and then turning in your two-weeks notice (it worked for me!). But why would you want to leave when you could stay and have the owner watching your every move with his network of video surveillance making sure you don't even THINK about slacking off. And if you're a young attractive female hired as the owner's assistant, you can either fuck him or get constantly barraged with off-color comments until the CURRENT assistant gets jealous and convinces the owner to fire you!

Argh...I'm doing nothing but venting now and really, this is just a waste of space. My big breakthrough is to realize that I just simply don't care anymore. I did when I started, then I lost it after almost a year and a half. Then I got it back when they made me manager and gave me that fat raise...and now it's gone again. I guess it shows that money can only blind someone from an incredibly shitty job for only so long.

Anybody want to hire a wannabe writer with gobs of tech support & customer service experience?

About damned time

Finally, finally, FINALLY I'm able to get this thing looking halfway decent again. Even after my last "fuck the sidebar" post it was still very disheartening to pop onto this site and see what shit it looked like and VERY frustrating to not be able to do anything about it. And hell, that's as good of an excuse as any as to why I haven't written anything substantial here in so long.

Damn, now I really want to write a bunch more stuff here but it's already almost 2am and I have to get to bed. I will drop in this comment that comes from being too tired and having the television on in the background for far too long: Prime Rib, while being incredible, is not "the king of all the meats" you mouthbreathing moron. I've never had a Quizno's sandwich I liked and I hate them even more for that commercial. But I did like that odd little squirrel thing that used to whore for them so they live...for now.

Stupid sidebar

By the way, fuck the sidebar in it's stupid bottom-hugging ass. I've just wasted the last hour and a half trying to figure out how to fix the motherfucker and can't figure it out for the life of me. I have small images, I don't have long URLs...just fuck it, I don't give a shit at this point, I'm just too fucking aggravated.

Oh look, a blog!

Okay, so I haven't written in this thing for a very long time. The lack of an outraged deluge of emails protesting my inattention to this site had nothing to do with it, believe it or not. Upon further reflection, I think my main reason for not writing can be traced to my current job: it sucks your soul and gnaws away at your sanity until you are nothing but a brainless mass, going through the motions of actual thought and returning home to stare at mindless sitcoms and the next big crime drama show.

The funny thing? I had an opportunity to leave and, despite any principles I may have, I passed on it after being offered more money here. In short, I find an awesome job through a friend, I apply and interview for same job and they love me, I turn in my resignation at my current job who then comes out of nowhere with an offer that is frankly more money than I've ever earned in my life, I realize how many bills I'm behind on and how shitty my car is and rescind my resignation. So yes, although I've been crying for years about how our dependence on money is just sad and pathetic, I turn out to be just another whore for the right amount of said cash and a rather meaningless middle-management title.

It really is a lot more money, though.

Despite my bitching, the job really isn't as bad as I make it out to be. Wait, that's not true...it's worse. I've just become more adept at dealing with it. With the worry of stretching the pathetic amount I was getting paid now gone, I've found that my tolerance for the amount of bullshit that goes on in this place has definitely gone up; for the most part when things start aggravating me all I have to do is think of my paycheck and suddenly, magically, the aggravation evaporates away! Really though, I figure that if I can stick it out here for at least a year, that will be one year of management experience on my resume that I can then take and parlay it into a decent job with a real company if I so desire.

In the meantime, I'll continue working on the things that I truly enjoy doing...like this writing thing. Eventually I'd like to start putting things on this site that aren't internal monologues, i.e. game reviews and discussion, Linux stuff or whatever geeky stuff I'm into at the time. Maybe I'll use a different site for that, now that I think about it. I'd hate to write something that a lot of people really like and have everybody and their grandmother critique my self-centered ramblings. I think I will keep this site as my "pressure valve" and a way to just throw ideas out there. Better yet, a place where I can just sit down and type whatever comes to my mind and vomit it out onto a site with a potential to reach millions of readers.

Yeah, great idea.