Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Yes, I procrasitnate...
Well, a lot has happened in the HALF A YEAR since my last post. I apologize, really. And just for that, this is not going to be a negative rant about GG's today. First I want to talk about life. I posted my To Do list and I thought an update would be in order so here goes:
1. As it has only been 6 MONTHS since I wrote this, I did get into Beta and am now happily playing the release of City of Heroes. It's a big reason I haven't been posting.
2. I've now trained another three Team Leads or so and they are now productively beating reps with clipboards! I will expound on the job thing when I get to my life update.
3. I have my car, now I just need to put speakers in and fix the leak.
4. Due to lack of time I have not been able to do any frivolous cooking, the supervisors will have to wait a little longer.
5. Not only have I not finished any of these games, but I have added UFO Aftermath to the list of must-finishes
6. OH MY GOD WOW!
7. Sewing also has had to wait, the machine gathers dust.
8. Did it. More details to follow in the life update.
9. Still working on it, I'm kicking some ideas around I want to play with tonight before bed, I predict it will be ready in about three Christmases.
10. Writing is also waiting patiently for time so the blog will have to do.
11. School....maybe later but I think I've settled on learning programming so I can make video games with my partners in crime Phred and Josh.
Now for the life update:
A lot has happened, well duh it's been 2 QUARTERS OF A YEAR since my last post. Gaming is all CoH now. I dropped Star Wars Galaxies due to lack of interest and I dropped Everquest because of guild crap. I was reluctant to get involved in guilds in the first place after several bad experiences on AOL. ( yes I know, it was AOL for god's sake what should I have expected) But of course all my friends were joining it (peer pressure peer pressure) so I figured I may as well. I don't regret it, I met some really nice people along the way and had some good times, but for the most part I'm glad to be done with it. Organized gaming is almost as bad as organized religion. I hate feeling pressured to do something I enjoy, it's one thing when my friends and I plan something special and I'll set aside the time for it to the exclusion of things like sleep and laundry, but I can't do it on a nightly basis. Sometimes when I feel too much pressure I take a whole night off so I don't have to deal with the..leaving so early?'s
Work is good. Work is very good actually. I still find it odd that I work in a call center when I hate telephones so much. I was starting to get a major case of burnout doing what I was. Being that first point of contact for the floor reps can be trying. Especially when they are spoiled like our agents are. We work for a line group that's touted as being the most "prestigous" line groups in the building because we have slightly higher hiring standards. Sometimes I think it goes to these people's heads. They'd get pissy if they didn't earn an incentive for some thing or other because they missed a few days of work. Why would we give you an incentive for attendance when you don't attend??? Well, needless to say, I was getting easily irritated with people at work and finding more and more excuses to take on special projects that involved me and a computer and no people. I was getting stressed and frustrated to the point where I was tempted to ask if I could go back to the cable customer service line group. That's when I knew I was going over the deep end. Luckily, I didn't go over. We had an opening for a Reports Specialist in my line group. Someone to sit and put together spreadsheets and reports for the manager and the client. It sounded like heaven. My manager strongly encouraged me to apply and after a little confusion about pay, I got it. I was ecstatic. I've been at the new position for a week now and I absolutely love it!
Work leads to the date thing. It's a bit of a sour subject for me but not like I'm heartbroken, just a little peeved. There's a guy in the cable line group that I have known and had friendly conversation with for some time. I always thought there was some interest there, but I wasn't sure. I decided to find out by being all girly and making myself available. I'd find excuses to go over to his area and say hi and strike up conversations and the like. It worked like a charm (well, in a monkey's paw kinda way) and he asked me out. We had a couple of nice dates, and I thought things were going nicely. Casual, no clingy commitments just me and him having a good time. Well after the third date he suddenly had excuses for not being able to go out. My friends were getting curious about the guy by now and wanted to meet him but I was thwarted. After a couple weeks of excuses, the phone stopped ringing completely (HELLO we work with phones, you'd think we knew how to use them!) I hadn't been given his number and I thought it unethical to use the one I got off the caller ID to find out why he wasn't calling. I found more excuses to be over on the cable side of the building, going to the far copier, asking other Team Leads questions, borrowing paper, but the most I got was a quick wave or a hi. So, needless to say I'm fed up with the dating thing. Maybe I'll try again in another few years or so. I get pissed off at myself sometimes because I know there have been times when I've had a good thing and I just blew it off and relegated it to "just friends" land when it could have been something really special. Well, it's my own damn fault.
I didn't have time to stew over the date thing for long because while I was lingering in the "why hasn't he called?" nature was brewing up something of a distratcion, a distraction named Ivan. In case I hadn't mentioned before where I am, I live in Pensacola FL aka Ivan's strike zone. Phred details some of our travails in his Blog which I shall link once I remember how. We decided to evacuate Tuesday night. My office closed that afternoon so I didn't have to worry about lost work. In fact, we were planning a trip to Seattle to visit our friend Rita and I got to evacuate on my vacation time. We fled to Tennessee to stay with Heather and her family. It was a long tiring trip and between the road and the worry over our house, we were very cranky and tired. We did get to spend some quality time with Heather as we anxiously watched the weather channel show the same street getting pummeled over and over again. Once the storm had passed we stocked up on extra canned goods and made the trek home.
Our house was still standing, and for that I will be forever grateful. I know so many people that just lost everything that it breaks my heart. The days we spend without power didn't seem as bad as they did when we had Opal come through, it was kind of like forced camping. The MREs were surprisingly tasty. We had some damage to the house and we're still waiting on an adjuster to find out how much everything is going to cost to get fixed. It's depressing driving around town and seeing streets that used to be familiar to me. Some of them look totally different with whole buildings demolished, landmark signs gone and downed trees everywhere. The power crews and the television crews were all diligent and we didn't have long to wait before electricity and the ever important internet were restored. I'm sure the phone folks were hard at work, but we don't have a phone so I really can't accurately comment. Phred mentions his tree in his blog and it being gone. I had a similar experience myself. The road leading up to my job has a median with a row of trees. The trees are absolutely beautiful and they show real seasons, unlike most trees in Florida. Green leaves in spring, white flowers in summer, red leaves in fall, bare in the winter. The storm tore out at least half of the trees on the row and the surviving ones have large branches torn off. They've also been knocked off kilter by the deluge and are now in spring mode. I really hope the caretakers replant the same type of tree.
This is a long post, but I guess after THREE AND A HALF DOG YEAR'S worth of life it needed to be. I'm sure I left out a lot, but hopefully you friends of mine that read the blog that were waiting for a call from me or an email from me after the hurricane will see this and know I'm ok since I'm too lazy to call or email.
1. As it has only been 6 MONTHS since I wrote this, I did get into Beta and am now happily playing the release of City of Heroes. It's a big reason I haven't been posting.
2. I've now trained another three Team Leads or so and they are now productively beating reps with clipboards! I will expound on the job thing when I get to my life update.
3. I have my car, now I just need to put speakers in and fix the leak.
4. Due to lack of time I have not been able to do any frivolous cooking, the supervisors will have to wait a little longer.
5. Not only have I not finished any of these games, but I have added UFO Aftermath to the list of must-finishes
6. OH MY GOD WOW!
7. Sewing also has had to wait, the machine gathers dust.
8. Did it. More details to follow in the life update.
9. Still working on it, I'm kicking some ideas around I want to play with tonight before bed, I predict it will be ready in about three Christmases.
10. Writing is also waiting patiently for time so the blog will have to do.
11. School....maybe later but I think I've settled on learning programming so I can make video games with my partners in crime Phred and Josh.
Now for the life update:
A lot has happened, well duh it's been 2 QUARTERS OF A YEAR since my last post. Gaming is all CoH now. I dropped Star Wars Galaxies due to lack of interest and I dropped Everquest because of guild crap. I was reluctant to get involved in guilds in the first place after several bad experiences on AOL. ( yes I know, it was AOL for god's sake what should I have expected) But of course all my friends were joining it (peer pressure peer pressure) so I figured I may as well. I don't regret it, I met some really nice people along the way and had some good times, but for the most part I'm glad to be done with it. Organized gaming is almost as bad as organized religion. I hate feeling pressured to do something I enjoy, it's one thing when my friends and I plan something special and I'll set aside the time for it to the exclusion of things like sleep and laundry, but I can't do it on a nightly basis. Sometimes when I feel too much pressure I take a whole night off so I don't have to deal with the..leaving so early?'s
Work is good. Work is very good actually. I still find it odd that I work in a call center when I hate telephones so much. I was starting to get a major case of burnout doing what I was. Being that first point of contact for the floor reps can be trying. Especially when they are spoiled like our agents are. We work for a line group that's touted as being the most "prestigous" line groups in the building because we have slightly higher hiring standards. Sometimes I think it goes to these people's heads. They'd get pissy if they didn't earn an incentive for some thing or other because they missed a few days of work. Why would we give you an incentive for attendance when you don't attend??? Well, needless to say, I was getting easily irritated with people at work and finding more and more excuses to take on special projects that involved me and a computer and no people. I was getting stressed and frustrated to the point where I was tempted to ask if I could go back to the cable customer service line group. That's when I knew I was going over the deep end. Luckily, I didn't go over. We had an opening for a Reports Specialist in my line group. Someone to sit and put together spreadsheets and reports for the manager and the client. It sounded like heaven. My manager strongly encouraged me to apply and after a little confusion about pay, I got it. I was ecstatic. I've been at the new position for a week now and I absolutely love it!
Work leads to the date thing. It's a bit of a sour subject for me but not like I'm heartbroken, just a little peeved. There's a guy in the cable line group that I have known and had friendly conversation with for some time. I always thought there was some interest there, but I wasn't sure. I decided to find out by being all girly and making myself available. I'd find excuses to go over to his area and say hi and strike up conversations and the like. It worked like a charm (well, in a monkey's paw kinda way) and he asked me out. We had a couple of nice dates, and I thought things were going nicely. Casual, no clingy commitments just me and him having a good time. Well after the third date he suddenly had excuses for not being able to go out. My friends were getting curious about the guy by now and wanted to meet him but I was thwarted. After a couple weeks of excuses, the phone stopped ringing completely (HELLO we work with phones, you'd think we knew how to use them!) I hadn't been given his number and I thought it unethical to use the one I got off the caller ID to find out why he wasn't calling. I found more excuses to be over on the cable side of the building, going to the far copier, asking other Team Leads questions, borrowing paper, but the most I got was a quick wave or a hi. So, needless to say I'm fed up with the dating thing. Maybe I'll try again in another few years or so. I get pissed off at myself sometimes because I know there have been times when I've had a good thing and I just blew it off and relegated it to "just friends" land when it could have been something really special. Well, it's my own damn fault.
I didn't have time to stew over the date thing for long because while I was lingering in the "why hasn't he called?" nature was brewing up something of a distratcion, a distraction named Ivan. In case I hadn't mentioned before where I am, I live in Pensacola FL aka Ivan's strike zone. Phred details some of our travails in his Blog which I shall link once I remember how. We decided to evacuate Tuesday night. My office closed that afternoon so I didn't have to worry about lost work. In fact, we were planning a trip to Seattle to visit our friend Rita and I got to evacuate on my vacation time. We fled to Tennessee to stay with Heather and her family. It was a long tiring trip and between the road and the worry over our house, we were very cranky and tired. We did get to spend some quality time with Heather as we anxiously watched the weather channel show the same street getting pummeled over and over again. Once the storm had passed we stocked up on extra canned goods and made the trek home.
Our house was still standing, and for that I will be forever grateful. I know so many people that just lost everything that it breaks my heart. The days we spend without power didn't seem as bad as they did when we had Opal come through, it was kind of like forced camping. The MREs were surprisingly tasty. We had some damage to the house and we're still waiting on an adjuster to find out how much everything is going to cost to get fixed. It's depressing driving around town and seeing streets that used to be familiar to me. Some of them look totally different with whole buildings demolished, landmark signs gone and downed trees everywhere. The power crews and the television crews were all diligent and we didn't have long to wait before electricity and the ever important internet were restored. I'm sure the phone folks were hard at work, but we don't have a phone so I really can't accurately comment. Phred mentions his tree in his blog and it being gone. I had a similar experience myself. The road leading up to my job has a median with a row of trees. The trees are absolutely beautiful and they show real seasons, unlike most trees in Florida. Green leaves in spring, white flowers in summer, red leaves in fall, bare in the winter. The storm tore out at least half of the trees on the row and the surviving ones have large branches torn off. They've also been knocked off kilter by the deluge and are now in spring mode. I really hope the caretakers replant the same type of tree.
This is a long post, but I guess after THREE AND A HALF DOG YEAR'S worth of life it needed to be. I'm sure I left out a lot, but hopefully you friends of mine that read the blog that were waiting for a call from me or an email from me after the hurricane will see this and know I'm ok since I'm too lazy to call or email.
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