Tag: work

Christopher Reeve: Sept 25, 1952 – Oct 10, 2004

Random Thoughts

I just don’t know what to say. I had planned this morning to make some tirade about birthdays, seeing that yesterday was my 30th, but then I found out about this, and… I’m not entirely sure why, but sitting in my office at work, I broke down into tears.

Yesterday, as I went about my day, I kept seeing “Happy Birthday” all over the place. Store fronts, a pile of newspapers, and loads more… maybe that phrase is just really common and I normally don’t notice, but yesterday I did, and so did Jodi. She said that it made her think that it was a sign, that my mother was saying it, that she was with me. Also going through my head were thoughts of being 30, and all the things I haven’t yet done, and the general mess my life is, and I was thinking about needing to “grow up”, stop playing games and settle in to work. To put aside childish things, to put aside my childhood, and move on.

And now I find that Christopher Reeve, Superman, a symbol of fantasy, of heroism, of childhood dreams, died on my birthday at the same time I was considering putting aside those dreams. If I were a man who believed in signs… well, maybe I am a man who believes in signs, and that’s why I’m crying.

While I go try to collect myself, I leave you with the lyrics to two songs, neither of which really evoke what I’m feeling, but they come close, and neither of which will stop playing in my head for many days to come…

Superman (It’s not easy) by Five For Fighting:
I can’t stand to fly
I’m not that naive
I’m just out to find
The better part of me

I’m more than a bird…I’m more than a plane
More than some pretty face beside a train
It’s not easy to be me

Wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie
About a home I’ll never see

It may sound absurd…but don’t be naive
Even Heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed…but won’t you concede
Even Heroes have the right to dream
It’s not easy to be me

Up, up and away…away from me
It’s all right…You can all sleep sound tonight
I’m not crazy…or anything…

I can’t stand to fly
I’m not that naive
Men weren’t meant to ride
With clouds between their knees

I’m only a man in a silly red sheet
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street
Only a man in a funny red sheet
Looking for special things inside of me

It’s not easy to be me.

Superman’s Song by Crash Test Dummies:
Tarzan wasn’t a ladies’ man
He’d just come along and scoop ’em up under his arm
Like that, quick as a cat in the jungle
But Clark Kent, now there was a real gent
He would not be caught sittin’ around in no
Junglescape, dumb as an ape doing nothing

Superman never made any money
For saving the world from Solomon Grundy
And sometimes I despair the world will never see
Another man like him

Hey Bob, Supe had a straight job
Even though he could have smashed through any bank
In the United States, he had the strength, but he would not
Folks said his family were all dead
Their planet crumbled but Superman, he forced himself
To carry on, forget Krypton, and keep going

Superman never made any money
For saving the world from Solomon Grundy
And sometimes I despair the world will never see
Another man like him

Tarzan was king of the jungle and Lord over all the apes
But he could hardly string together four words: “I Tarzan, You Jane.”

Sometimes when Supe was stopping crimes
I’ll bet that he was tempted to just quit and turn his back
On man, join Tarzan in the forest
But he stayed in the city, and kept on changing clothes
In dirty old phonebooths till his work was through
And nothing to do but go on home

Superman never made any money
For saving the world from Solomon Grundy
And sometimes I despair the world will never see
Another man like him

Where have I been?

Random Thoughts

I’m sure the three or four of you out there who occasionally hit my site might have been wondering where I’ve gone as its been almost a month since I last posted.

Well, things in the business world have been a little crazy. While I can’t speak in specifics, a client of ours (us being the company I work for, ITCS) is giving us the boot.

Normally, you give a consulting company the boot when A) you can’t afford them or they are no longer cost effective, B) they are done and you have no work for them, or C) they suck and are doing horrible work.

They have alot that needs to be done. We do excellent work. And we cost less than a third what their internal IT department does for the same projects. So why are we getting the boot?

Politics.

Its really frustrating to do a job, do it well, exceed expectations, and come in under budget, and then be forced out by people who do bad incomplete work, always fall short, and typically exceed the budget by 200%.

But sometimes, a curse is a blessing in disguise.

Seeing our majority source of income prepare to kick us to the curb, my boss decided that it was time to focus on bringing one of our products to market. Oh, we’ve been selling it up till now, but its lacked a polish that only happens when you decide to show the world and not just your captive clients.

With that, I bring you the ITCS WebClock.

While this product has been in development for over 5 years (it began as a Microsoft Access application), for the past year and a half, I’ve been working on additions and changes. And in the last month, I completely overhauled the entire look and feel of it, and have started production on a dozen new functions and features.

Its sweet. And it feels good.

A Work In Progress…

Random Thoughts

I’m not really looking for work. The company I work for is doing okay… and by okay I mean that on any given day we could either go bankrupt or close the deal on a project that would leave us all set for life. But that doesn’t mean I’m not looking. I’m always looking, its the nature of the IT beast.

So here is my resume. I recently reworked it because I needed to send a copy off to a posted position, so I figured I’d slap it in a news bit as well.

The more things change…

Random Thoughts

… the more they stay the same.

I say I’m going to update more, and I don’t. Its the cycle I’ve been in for 5 years with this web junk, and I don’t foresee myself changing anytime soon.

In the end, its the usual excuses. Too much work. Other stuff going on. I’m moving. Nothing to report. Creative juices not flowing. Etc, etc.

Well, back to our regularly scheduled…

From Idea to Execution…

Random Thoughts

A couple of patches ago, Verant introduced for EverQuest a customizable User Interface. This new UI uses XML and a SIDL engine to basically allow someone to do anything they want with it.

Of course, the first people to slam out new designs were those people who play the game way too much. Every mod was aimed at less lag, more visible space. Slim, compact, no frills interfaces.

Jodi says to me, “I want to have a body to put my stuff on.” Or something close to that. My first reaction was to think it would be too big, bulky and cumbersome. It would take way too much space to put in a drawing of a person and to put all the items for the inventory on it.

After letting it sit in my head for a day, I started to try to come up with a layout for inventory boxes in the shape of a person, but without the actual person. The problem of course is that in the game you have boots, leggings, and a belt, then about 15 items from the waist up. Too much to get it to lay out well while keeping it compact.

Then, while sitting at work fighting sleep between calls on a sunday afternoon, my brain was electrified with inspiration.

The Vitruvian Man.

From there, my mind raced, placing parts from the Inventory all over and around the image. I made three or four mock-ups, then I headed home for the day.

Once home, I started fiddling with numbers. I sized the image that I wanted for the background, then began pixel placing the inventory.

A few hours of work placing pieces and fiddling with the contrast and gamma correction on the image, and I was finished.

So here are some screen shots of the final product in 2 resolutions: 1024×768 and 1280×1024. And if you read this page and want to download the mod itself, its here.

Enjoy.

Does Anyone Else Have a Work Ethic Besides Me?

Random Thoughts

You’ll forgive me if I am repeating myself. I’m too lazy to go back and check my own archives to see if I have ranted about this before, but then, I feel its worth repeating anyway. All this is a bit ironic considering the title and subject. heh heh.

When I was young, or younger depending on how you want to look at it, I was a complete slacker. Even at the tender age of 8 I was standing around while the rest of the family did yard work proudly declairing that I was “supervising” the rest of them. If I could avoid work, I did so.

My grandfather, my father’s father, gave me a tired old piece of advice that I didn’t understand at the time. “Any job worth doing is worth doing well.” Frankly, I didn’t consider yard work worth doing, which is hilarious considering the plans that I have for the yard I will have at the house I will one day own.

Later on, when I took a “real” job after high school, I came to believe and follow this tired piece of advice. I even went so far as to come up with a couple of pieces of “tired” advice myself.

The first: “Any job that pays a decent wage is worth doing.” Its just a logical, for me anyway, extention of the old standard. Basically means what it means that if the job pays okay then its worth doing, and furthermore, worth doing well. Simple.

The second: “Any wage you agree to work for is a decent wage.” Another logical extention. Personally, I won’t work for peanuts. If its not enough to cover my bills I will find something else. So, if I take a job, then I am agreeing to the wage, therefore the wage must be decent, and the job worth doing, and worth doing well.

So why am I writing about all this you may be asking yourself? (and if you aren’t, please pause and ask yourself this now) Sometimes its hard to not hold people to the standards that you hold for yourself. To expect others to live up to your ideals. I have come to the point that I cannot work in a good 95% of the world’s help desks or customer service areas. Other people, and companies in general, just seem to not give a shit. My coworkers tell me to just “let it go” and that its “not your problem”. But… it IS my problem, and its my job to NOT let it go. Its their job too, but they give in to the adversity of the workplace. Every day I seem to pull my hair out
(what little is left) at the bizarre hoops that I must jump through. Things that should take a day, two at most, to resolve take a week. And if someone here says it should be a week, the customer should just cancel service with us because its never going to get done.

There are far too many transfers, changing of hands, and with it all done through an electronic call tracking system problems can sit open for days with no one looking at them, adandonned in the queues. There are too many gaps and holes in the system for it to function with any degree of certainty. Calling this helpdesk is like playing Russian Roulette. It shouldn’t be that way, and with the smallest of effort it wouldn’t be.

Someone, anyone, please. If you know a company that actually cares, that actually provides good complete service to its customers, one that is hiring, send them my way.

`Tis the Season.

Random Thoughts

It occurred to me that there is something very wrong about the retail business at the Christmas season.

While working at Toys “R” Us, admittedly only for 3 actual days of work, I heard alot from the other employees, you know, the ones who work there are year long. Seems that this place, much like alot of retail places, only allows each store to have so many “full time” employees. The kinds of people who have to provide benefits for. During the Christmas season, they hire seasonal help to handle to extra load. These seasonal people are required to sign forms saying that regardless of the number of hours they work, they will not under any circumstances be considered full time employees. So I, and the 10 or so others hired for the holidays get scheduled for back breaking 40 hour weeks, while the people who actually care enough to work for the store all year round are left wondering why they can’t get more than 22 hours on the schedule. I mean, I bet they’d like some extra spending money too (safe bet, they actually told me they wanted more hours but were refused).

These stores don’t offer their normal part time workers more hours because by law if they give them 30 or more they have to give them benefits too, and yet they can work a “seasonal employee” into the ground and until what used to be his feet are just bloody stumps thumping away at the tile as they drag yet another overpriced Power Wheels toy to the front. Why is it they can’t just use the same magical piece of paper that allows them to side step the law for seasonal help for also allowing their dedicated employees a few extra hours a week?

I quit because my feet hurt. I was unprepared to do the job physically. Only minutes before I handed in my badge, another employee did the same, but because she was going to go do “seasonal work” for another store to get more hours.

Sometimes I just don’t understand.

All Hallows Eve.

Random Thoughts

Last night was Halloween. One of my favorite nights of the year, even though I partake of it too little.

I’m happy to say that Cobb County didn’t try this year to celebrate Halloween on the 26th or some nonsense to avoid work and school conflicts. I’m also happy I wasn’t innundated with warnings about rapists and murderers about. I wasn’t told to make sure the kids start trick or treating at noon and are done before sundown.

People seemed a bit more relaxed this year. Well, except that perhaps they were looking at Halloween as an escape from terrorist threats, anthrax scares, and all the real world bring-me-downs that we have seen since September 11th.

I headed out this year to a local Taco Mac. The best Taco Mac around in my opinion. Built in an old Steak & Ale building it looks totally different from all the strip mall steel and glass crap many of the others are made of. It’s homey. Smokey. More a bar than a restaurant. And I went with my fiancee and a few friends. We talked and drank. I think my friends were bored, or just had too much else going on to relax.

One by one they left. The band came on the stage, Tommy Gun, and with the end of their first song, the last friend left. My fiancee and I stayed. The band was good. Bordering on great. We drank. We sang. We danced. Ahhh… relaxation.

After the first set was done, we too headed out. We got home and decided to take a stroll out in the full moon light. The night air was brisk, and we wandered the streets, empty of trick-or-treaters in our apartment complex, and talked. We laughed. We smiled. Ahhh… relaxation.

The worries melted away last night, and once my friends were gone and the music began to play, up until I drifted off to sleep during the final credits of The Amityville Horror with thoughts of bleeding walls and demons in the basement drifting through my head, it was a great night.

I love Halloween.

Job Hunting.

Random Thoughts

Since early this year, the Information Technology market has been less than good. At the end of last year I quit a job and within a month picked up an open ended contract, basically stay hired as long as I wanted. After they moved me to third shift, 11pm to 7am, I decided I didn’t want to any more. So on April 30th I turned in my work I.D. and security swipe card, and set off looking for a “better” job.

I had 4 months of bill money saved up in the bank, 5 if I stretched it. I called some headhunters, recruiters and the like, and started sending out resumes.

Its now almost 6 months later, and I’m still unemployed.

I managed to keep my head above water because my fiancee has a job, and she makes just enough to not quite cover the bills. So we are still slowly sinking, but not having to bail water as often.

I’ll be the first to admit, when I started looking, I had a fixed set of rules for where I wanted to work. But that began to fade after the first month. Slowly, week by week, my standards for employment have crumbled to the point where I think the only thing on my “I’m not comfortable doing that job” list is fast food. And its not just personal choice that has whittled away at my resolve. In nearly 6 months, I have had 2 real interviews.

Two.

Anyone else who bothered to contact me in response to my resume (and that number is small when compared to how many I have sent out) said the same thing: You’re overqualified, you wouldn’t be happy here, we can’t hire you. Even one grocery store which will remain nameless told me that I was overqualified to work stock, and that they would rather hire some high school kid who’s going to quit the first time his job conflicts with his social life over me, someone who just wants to keep food on his table and a roof over his head.

The job market was getting better. Then some maniacal moron had the idea to slam a couple of planes into the World Trade Center. I had 3 interviews lined up that week. All gone now as each company “rethinks its position in this time of crisis.” I don’t mean to lessen the pain of the terrorist attack. I sat at home, being unemployed, and watched CNN all day from the first crash to the very end. And I cried, all day. But as the President said, we must carry on. Those of us not victims of the attacks, our lives did not end on September 11th. We must continue living, we must show that an attack on our buildings cannot destroy our lives and freedom.

And yet lots of companies stopped interviewing. They still post jobs and collect resumes, but if you call them, they aren’t following through. No interviews are being set up, no hiring being done. The process only pretends to continue, it doesn’t actually carry on.

So what am I to do? I need a job. Lots of people need jobs. I’m no fool. I realize that I’m in a pool of thousands looking for work. But I can’t worry about them, because if I do I’ll care, and I’ll starve. Well, not likely starve, but move back home with my parents for sure, and that’s almost worse.

Luckily for me, the Christmas season is upon us. Its a time of generosity, good cheer, and seasonal help in stores all over this great nation. I’ve got an interview today in fact. And if I’m chosen, I’ll get to survive until next year. And if I’m not… I hear you can make up to $12 an hour begging on the street if you do it right.

25 January 2001

Random Thoughts

Not The End
Where do I begin?
I no longer work at Norfolk Southern. I got while the gettin’ was good. And good riddance. I will certainly miss the people that I worked with, but I will not miss the work that we were doing. You can only slam your head into a brick wall so many times before people can no longer convince you that its a GOOD idea.
I don’t know what I am doing with my life, but I’m not worried.
Love doesn’t suck. Complete reversal from my last plan update, although I still want out of this city.
And I am still addicted to EverQuest.
I was asked to write again. To write anything. So this is something.
I’ll do more later. I promise.