A Few Days Off

I've been working from home for the past few days. I was getting new tires put on and they were delivered late in the day yesterday so my mechanic said he'd do it today instead. I say I worked from home but that's a huge lie. I logged on to the work VPN and then did a whole lot of nothing. It was well deserved though. The company is completely screwed now though because one of the marketing guys that handles all of our advertising through affiliates and cost-per-click stuff quit today. I somehow doubt they'll get anyone up to speed on everything he used to do soon enough. Oh well, shit happens. Like I said, nobody wants to be there.

Luckily I've been getting a few calls, nothing terribly promising though. We'll see what happens.

Just an Update

Hey guys. I just figured I'd update and tell you what's been going on. I stayed at my uncle's until Monday morning and I drove about an hour and a half to work. I'm working from home tomorrow because my car will be getting new tires. It's actually been scaring me recently because it's started vibrating at highway speeds. I think it's mainly to do with the tires but I can't explain how or why, it just feels as if I'm driving around with snow in my rims causing the wheels to be unbalanced (no, it hasn't snowed here in weeks) but sometimes it just stops.

I'm working on a site redesign at work. They want a "simple color swap" but it's never that simple. Measurements change for different elements causing me to redo portions of the site. That and the site is horribly coded anyway. I keep fixing the bad code and it's slowing me down. At this point I think I have 3 weeks left. Not a lot of time, though luckily the largest portion is done, it's just the minutia that kill me. All the little things you miss here and there get incredibly annoying. All-in-all it looks good though and it's coded far better than it was before.

Everybody makes jokes about the company going under, firing more people, looking forward to getting fired themselves. I'm one of those people. I've been coming home and finding it ridiculously hard to even get on my computer anymore. I don't want to code at home because I'm just so mentally drained. I don't want to be there -- nobody does, not even my boss. At least if I got fired I could collect unemployment and drive up and down the tri-state area applying for jobs and going to interviews, all the while getting paid. Having a job makes it hard to get a job.

As for me, my depression seems to be coming back. I mean, it never really went away per se, but the job situation doesn't help any. I feel unmotivated. I feel trapped. I remember days when I couldn't wait to get to work and didn't want to go home at the end of the day. I was innovating, making cool stuff from scratch. Now I'm hard-pressed to do anything but straight HTML/CSS. I guess that's life though, eh?

I do want to tell you guys that your comments make it all worthwhile. I love that people care enough to read what I write, no matter how bitchy and annoying I may sound. Thanks for the comments, they mean a lot.

A Wonderful Surprise

I was at home on Tuesday when I got a text from my uncle saying his son would be flying in today. I was ecstatic. I took the day off and went to the airport with him this morning to pick him up. His flight arrived at 4:32AM so it was a long day.

He passed out around 9-9:30 while we were playing PS3. Poor little guy hadn't slept in probably over 20 hours. He complained that trying to sleep on the airplane was an impossible task.

He's 12 and I've babysat him since he was about 8 or 9. I would drive to my uncle's after or before work when I was working retail to make sure his homework was done and spend time with him. My uncle's a lawyer so his schedule can be quite random and sometimes incredibly long. Also the flying back and forth between his mother an father made it hard for him to make many friends here.

I'm a mere 10 years older than him but I almost feel like he's my son -- or at least I defend him like he is. I'm not sure what it is but I've always felt the need to protect him and watch out for him.

I'm not sure how long he'll be staying but I'll make sure to try to drive down to see him every once in a while. Itt's too bad my uncle moved more than an hour and a half away from me over the summer or I'd be able to make the trip more often.

The biggest surprise of all

About 3 minutes ago the front end was called to the project manager's office for a mini-meeting with the CTO. He told us Friday would be his last day due to being laid off. Apparently they laid off the CTO in order to keep the developers. I can see this going terribly and
especially since now apparently Technology will report to the COO/CFO. I'm positive he'll care more about the money than the procedures.

I didn't even know you could lay off a Chief Officer. I forsee hard
times ahead.

Email is back

Thanks to google's gmail and support of other domains besides gmail.com I have mail again and it's IMAP just like I had it set up before.  I'm cancelling the dead server (it's officially FUBAR.  It never booted back up after I rebooted it.) tomorrow and that'll be one less expense per month.  I just need to make sure I'm not missing anything.  DNS was transfered over to one of my other servers so that's taken care of.  Luckily I have backups of all the websites I had on pulsar (the dead server) because I had to transfer them when epicenter got hacked.  Time to set them up again.  I may do that tomorrow.

I'm sorry if I bitch and moan on my blog a lot.  I'm quite a reserved person and, honestly, this is my only outlet.  I don't like opening up to people.  It's only been trouble in the past.  I'll try to post some more mundane stuff to water down the bitching.

And I thought it was over...

Let me start off by saying I haven't forgotten about my blog, I simply haven't had much to put in here recently.  Now on to today's news.

I lied, I'm rewinding an extra day to yesterday.  They let some more people go but luckily they weren't from my department.  Apparently the financial troubles continue.  This leads me into today's goings-on.  The CTO called a meeting for the whole department this afternoon.  We got a few extra guests than what we expected.  The CEO and CFO/COO joined the fun.  The theme of the party was pay cuts for all!  I'm glad they decided to share the poverty but I'd rather the wealth.

I'm in disbelief as to what happened today.  I can't say that I won't be able to survive on what I get paid, far from it.  It does, however, mean a change in my daily spendatures.  I have to not only think more about what I'm  spending on a daily basis but also the overall picture.  What monthly expenses can I do without.  The first thing that comes to mind is my servers.  That just makes me wonder about those with families to support.  

I'm being positive though, it's not a ridiculous amount and I'll make it through this.  The only question is will the company make it through or will I even be there to find out.

EDIT: Oh, and one of my servers may have a corrupt HDD and now I can't get my email.

What We Take for Granted (Continued)

Alright, so I know I JUST posted a blog but the story gets better.  I need to start taking advantage of these situations NOW btw.

My brother came up from Florida with his family (he's about 20 years older than I am).  He asked me to sell him my car if I ever felt the need since his son would be needing his first car soon and my brother has a a BMW 528i and loves it so he figured why not give his son my car.  It's a 2002 325Ci and it's in good condition and under 100K miles.  I still owe half the car which is actually more than it's worth right now.  I figure I'll just give it to him and let him take over the payments.

I mentioned this to my mom and she was all for it.  She said she'd cosign for me to get the M3 I've been wanting.

What We Take for Granted

The wisdom and insight of those around us is probably foremost on that list.  This morning I got on my computer as I always do and read that John Travolta's son died.  Quite honestly, this means very little to me, I'm not one to follow the stars but it is a sad occurrence regardless.  I read this article and put it in the back of my mind as I tend to do.  A few hours later my mom and I talked for a few minutes and we went back to doing what we were doing.

For some reason I felt like bringing up the John Travolta story.  She's usually up on the happenings in Hollywood for some reason.  I mentioned it and we got to talking.  We talked at length about life and eventually got to the topic of what we do with our lives.  She's said before that I should enjoy my life while I'm young (don't get tied down, don't feel you have obligations anywhere or to anyone but yourself).  This particular conversation went the route of the job offer in Canada I told you guys about.  She said that she was excited when I told her about it because she had always wanted to travel the world and that it doesn't matter where a job takes me (career-wise and life-wise) I should experience as much as I can of the world, of life. (sidenote: the job turned out to be for a company that made their website in what appears to be Microsoft Frontpage...I don't think I want to work with them.  That and they have no portfolio.)

We had worked out a payment schedule a few months ago so that I could chip in and pay rent (not my idea) since times are tough and the mortgage is expensive.  She told me just now that regardless of what we worked out, I have no obligations here and if I want to go I should and should I ever find it didn't work out I always have a home to come back to...regardless of whether my stuff has been thrown out or not (and she said she probably would throw it out).

I never thought I'd feel this way but I think I want to go.  I want to apply to jobs EVERYWHERE and see what comes up.  I had originally confined my job search to Northern NJ, then extended it into NY.  After the Canadian job I aded Canada and I think I'm done being passive about this job search thing.  I'll list myself as open to work just about anywhere and I'm going to start actively looking.  Forget depending on recruiters.  It's January, companies will hopefully have a new round of funding for the new year either now or soon and that means looking for talent.  I'm currently working on version 3 of my Woot!-off checker and it will be my crowning achievement.  I hope to have a job before I finish it but if I don't, I'm sure it will help me get my foot in the door.