The Obligatory Christmas Post

I wasn't going to make this post because everybody so far has probably wished you a Merry Christmas at least 30 times.  A lot of them probably came in the form of an online post of some sort and even more probably came in text messages from people you haven't spoken to in 6 months or more.  I don't know you but that doesn't make Christmas any less meaningful.  It doesn't matter what you celebrate, may it be happy.

And yes, I do feel better.  I'm not 100% yet but the past 2 days have been a bit of a rollercoaster.  Yesterday I was doing far better than today though I'd say I'm 65% there today.  Damn headache keeps coming back randomly but not enough to stop me, just enough to annoy me and make me cranky :-P

Of all the luck...

Disorientation, check

Inability to concentrate, check

Hypersensitivity, check

Body aches, check

Good God, it's a cold.  And 3 days before Christmas.

I can't believe my luck

Today started off particularly shitty.  It all stemmed from yesterday at work.  If other departments could get their shit together before they talk to a developer, that'd be great...but apparently too much to ask for.

I put up a whole bunch of shit, I check it, I have QA check it, I have the creator of the task check it, then I go home.  I receive a nasty email at 6:45 forwarded from my boss that she received from the marketing manager.  Apparently it was an absolute fucking emergency that some banners go live on the website at 6PM and not midnight like I coded them.  I told the person that put the task in that they'd go live at midnight with all the other banners they had given me.  I wasn't going to bend over backwards for them since the task was already late and being done on only hours notice.

The marketing manager raises a HUGE stink about the fact that it's not live.  Luckily we have a system that keeps track of all our tasks and all comments posted to it where it clearly says "this will go live at midnight" and the task creator says "ok".  I sent the marketing manager an email detailing all the events leading upto the task going live and pointed out that if there was a problem it was with the communication between her and her team.  She then went to my boss and my boss more than backed me up, especially considering that they fucked up yet again this morning.  She didn't have a leg to stand on.

So after all that drama and aggrivation at work, I come home in the sleet/snow and break out the snow blower and clear my driveway, clear the sidewalk and the walkway around the house.  I'm almost done and I run over an extension cord...awesome.  Now I have to untangle this shit.  I tip the snow blower over and start to untangle the fucking cord.  After getting it free of the machine I continue.  I'm outside for about an hour and in that time what I first cleared is now covered with snow again so I give it a second go for good measure before putting the snow blower away.  I go to put the snow blower away but we have 2 cars parked side by side in the driveway so I need to move one before I can get the machine back in the garage...my car key is missing.  It's not in my pocket and it's not in the ignition.  FUCK!  I remember hearing a clicking sound inside the snow blower when I went over the area I was untangling the extension cord at.  I must've dropped my key and the snow blower threw it somewhere in the front yard.

Now I'm out a $300 car key.

I Don't Get It

There's really no way to put this better than "I should be pulled over a LOT more often".

I'm cruising along at 80MPH on the parkway and it's not terribly fast.  I'm passing cars but not incredibly quickly.  At one point I pass a little old civic with a bigger tail pipe than stock.  I can tell by the look of it that it's somebody I can have fun with.  He doesn't bite and I don't do anything more than pass him like all the other cars.

A few minutes later I see these headlights coming up "fast".  I'm doing 80 still and this car is going faster than me.  Etiquette says to let him pass but he's not going fast enough to let him pass because there's a car in front of me that I want to get around.  I go around it and the civic still hasn't passed me.  Now I'm just wondering that the hell is going on but I continue on my way as I had been.  He decided to FINALLY pass me after a few minutes but I watched him do it so slowly that I was able to watch, wait, change my mind after a few seconds and go.  He didn't really stand much of a chance.  I slowed down after 30 seconds or so and declared victory with my hazards.  He was still catching up, slowed down a bit, then guns it again.  As I'm doing 80 and he's passing me I see aftermarket gauges lighting up his car.  This was just plain hilarious because my car is completely stock.

He took so long to get away from me that I, again, changed my mind.  I decided to play with him again.  He was in the left lane flooring it.  I came up behind him and the poor little car just couldn't get enough speed.  He was forced to let me pass.  I hate Hondas just for the sole fact that they've become synonymous with teenage drivers.  Every punk driving one wants to race.  I'll give him one.  My car doesn't even break 200HP or 200ft-lb at the flywheel (let alone the wheels) which just makes it all the funnier.  Hmm, maybe I should rethink the supercharger I wanted to get.  This can only lead to trouble.

Friends and Acquaintances

I've said it before and it bears repeating because I feel so naive.  I always considered myself a good judge of character and I consciously repress those feelings because I don't want to be prejudiced.  I want to be fair to everyone so I give people a chance.  Stupid me.

I went to a co-worker's house, he made this cranberry-grape and Skyy drink.  You couldn't taste the alcohol at all...wow was that a bad idea (because it was DELICIOUS!).  So here we are playing poker, there are about 6 of us.  We all go out for a cigarette (I don't smoke but I wanted to be social so I went out there to accompany them) and at some point the host's brother whips out two half-smoked joints.  I haven't smoked in about 3 years so I figured there was no harm in it.  My boss did as well and a friend of ours just stared at us and told us how disappointed he was.  He proceeded to really lay into my boss for it because she has kids and what not.

Before I continue this story, let me say that I don't condone drug abuse.  I normally don't smoke but I have no problem with recreational use every once in a while.  It'll probably be another 3 years if I ever smoke again and it's not for lack of availability, I've turned it down plenty of times in the past 3 years.  That being said, I'm not going to give anybody shit for doing the same.  If you smoke every week though, then there's a bit of a problem and I'll try to convince you to stop, but I most certainly won't go on and insult you and so forth.  Let's continue where we left off...

I went inside, it was cold out.  We basically took 2 puffs each and it was gone.  Apparently they stayed outside smoking their cigarettes and he really let her have it.  He then goes on to say some really fucked up stuff about her marriage and how her husband thinks she's having an affair with him but he should really be worrying about me...all within earshot of our host, which I said earlier, we work with.  Wonderful.  Apparently he also continued to say shit at the table while we were playing poker.  I honestly don't remember half of this because I was just beginning to sober up from the vodka but I'm told things were said and friendships are on the rocks now.  He said something to the effect of "You need to slap your wife around" and my boss' husband responded with a firm "keep your mouth shut".  Needless to say, he won't be invited to further get-togethers.

This is some good shit.  When I met him he looked like a complete asshole.  I didn't talk to him at work for months before I had to work with him on the same team.  At that point, we became friends and he was recently laid off.  He was always a bit of a dick to people but it was mostly funny and somewhat harmless.  Now I'm realizing my initial observation was correct and I completely ignored it.

I'm not the kind of person that's emotionally open.  For me to open up to somebody takes time, lots of it.  Even then, even though I may have opened up to them I'm still very guarded and nobody really knows anything about my life and the goings-on in my head/heart.  I keep few friends for this reason and to lose one this way means I have even fewer now.  Amazing.  I used to consider my lack of friends a virtue because I go for quality, not quantity but now I'm starting to feel alone but still unwilling to waiver in the quality of friends I look for.  Do I consider more people friends and simply take what they say and do with a grain of salt and chalk it up to their personality or do I have fewer friends?  I guess this is where somebody says "Welcome to the real world".  I'm not ready.

The Job Search Continues

I posted my resumé online last night.  I got 4-5 phonecalls today.  It was amusing.  I'm entertaining some of the offers, I need to find a new job because I don't know how long the company is going to last.  It's scary when you don't know if you'll have a job and not because you suck at your job, because I'm sure you can feel that one coming, but simply due to lack of funds.  I doubt that at this point they'll single anybody out because there's hardly anybody left so the only logical step from here is to close the company (unless they can get back on their feet and I don't know anything about how long that would take or how close we are).

I think it's time for a new job anyway.  I don't know if any of you have felt this but I've had it happen at my retail jobs; I felt complacent and I knew I could get away with more than I should.  When you know the system, you know the people, you can use situations to your advantage.  I'm not saying use people, but things may no longer be a challenge or you can find a way to shirk something onto somebody else.  I don't like doing that and so to keep myself honest I think it's time to move on.  Don't get me wrong, I pull my own weight and then some, I just think in order for me to grow in experience I need to go someplace that can challenge me with something more than "how fast can you put up 70 promos?"

And so the job search continues...