You have new Picture Mail!

You have new Picture Mail!

Ahoyhoy?

Put in two 8hr shifts this weekend at the "gaming arena". Lots of meticulous wiring, cleaning, and organizing. Stuff that had to be done, but was just a drag to do. The part that worries me most is that we're supposed to have our "soft opening" this coming weekend. We've only got a couple games as of Sunday. I personally don't see what the damned hold up is. I wager it's a bunch of crap that you get when big corps try to get something accomplished.

Still training for that Arazu in Eve Online. The big pain will be Gallente Cruiser V. Damned skill's gunna take over 20 days to train, even with a full set of +3 implants.

I'm in the process of finding out information on how to get licensing to run Eve at the "gaming arena." I think it could be fun, and the posters and whatnot we could put up would look sweet, I love all the art the Eve online folks have been using.

Played a few hours of Neverwinter Nights 2's single player game now. I've had to get used to pausing the game every once and awhile to issue specific orders to my party members, but doing so has made combat a lot smoother. Looking forward to seeing what folks will make with the toolset.

Oi, where ya been?

Just realized I've been doing this for over a year now.

Anywho...

I've been fairly busy as of late. The Colonoscopy went well, no problems. The Doc tells me my low red cell count is from donating blood too often. That 6 weeks they tell you to wait? Not enough if you're going to donate on a regular basis. He said something about you loosing 500 (something) of iron each time you donate blood, but your body can only absorb 2 (something) per day. So after awhile, you just deplete yer iron reserves. Joy!

Ah well, my ass should stay unmolested until I'm 50 at this point.

Eve Online I've been kinda apathetic about as of late. I've got a lot going on at home, and running missions in a laggy arse system isn't fun. The new hardware upgrade on the servers seems to have helped some, I managed to run a few missions now without getting terribly pissed off. I've set a goal to be able to fly an Arazu Recon Ship effectively. It's going to take until after Christmas at this point... but I'll increase a lot of valuable skills along the way.

The job at the Theatre is going well. I've got some minor complaints, but no job is perfect. The manual labor aspect of the job seems to be done for the most part. Now I'm just waiting on the network and software side to be completely set. Then I can get to work on doing the job I was hired for. I worked on Friday, and I don't have another shift until Thursday for 4 hours, then 2 8 hour shifts this weekend. Hopefully those will be wrapping up the computer setup and learning how this time management software (for the customers) works.

The Wife picked up Neverwinter Nights 2 for me this weekend. Had to do a fair amount of fiddling to find my happy medium for performance/visual quality but I think I've got it now. I'm really enjoying the single player so far. I like how the "background trait" you can pick at character creation affects some of the dialog throughout the game. Also, choices you make as to how you treat the NPCs will affect how they treat you, as well as yer alignment.

It has begun!

Got home from the theatre last night just before midnight. The prep for the colonoscopy said to take 4 of the laxative pills that night before bed. Down the hatch! The only solids I'd had since lunch.

About 4am I woke up with terrible stomach cramps. Got to spend 30min on the throne at 4 am, with the heat set for only 62°F and me clad only in my boxers... which managed to keep my ankles warm. Good times.

I'm now doing my damnedest to drink 64 oz of "Glacier Freeze" Gatorade with a whole bottle of prescription laxative dissolved in it.

I just had "trip #1" while typing out that last line... Worst. Smell. Ever.

Seriously, I had to flush while still on the pot just to clear the air.

Yer gunna put that where?

Halloween went well. Got lots of complements on my costume. I'll see if I can get around to getting a picture of it up.

Theatre work has been busy. Getting close to the "soft" opening. The "Grand Opening" will be the beginning of December. We've got all the PCs that are working setup, just need to plug in the last 10 or so. Then we've gotta ship out a few more for RMAs.

Hopefully we'll have some sort of image to ghost over to all of them soon. Then we can run some performance testing and such to make sure that they really work. I burned a couple of DVDs of demos, some single player, a couple multi player to see what the machines can do.

Remember how I mentioned having to get a gastroscopy? Turns out I also have the outright privilege of having a colonoscopy as well! Wooooohoooo! So tonight I can only drink clear liquids, then tomorrow morning I have to start my day by drinking prescription strength laxative mixed w/ Gatorade. I'll spend a good chunk (pun intended) of my day in the bathroom at work. Joy!

Ah well. Here's hoping I don't have cancer or something... or if I do, it's caught early because there's a camera up my ass.

Still Plenty To Go...

70 freeking pounds!

There's a shot of a few of the new Alienware PCs we've got setup at the new job. They bought 60 of these bad boys! Along with twelve 60" plasma TVs for the Xbox360s, Playstation 2s, and likely original Xboxes. each one of those PC's weigh roughly 70lbs. Damned things are really heavy by the end of the night.

I worked over there from 2:30 to 10:30 last night, and I looks like I'll be doing the same again tonight. They want to have the place open by the 10th of November. There's quite a bit of work to be done yet, but I think we should make it.

9 years

Also of note, today marks 9 years of being married to "The Wife".

We've arranged to have the kids outta the house for the whole night and into tomorrow. So we're going out for dinner and possibly a movie. Then tomorrow we get to sleep in.

You know you've been married w/ kids for awhile when a simple night alone and being able to sleep in is the best gift in the world.

Start Next Week.

It's official, I now work 2 jobs. Got a call from them this morning and theyre hiring me on fr the Part Time.

I'll get another call later w/ my hours and such. As far as I could tell, it sounds like the starting work will be setting the whole place up. Good times.

Also chatted briefly with Nick "Propwash" Smith that now owns Virtual World LLC. He's outta Kalamazoo and would be interested in getting the Mechwarrior Firestorm pods setup over there if the theatre is interested. I'll bring it up w/ them once I start working with them. Would be sweet if I could arrange that.

Not dead!

Cripes, almost a week with no post. I didn't even notice! Not because anything exciting was going on mind you. Nope has been boring as hell until today. Probably why I didn't post, nothing to say.

This weekend I'd basically given up on the whole new job thing. I'd called again midday on Friday, no return call.

Then today, 2 weeks to the day from the interview, they called! Now, they're not offering a full time job because I wouldn't be able to take the pay. So they offered me part time, 20hrs a week.

The Wife and I had talked this over before, if I went to 30 hrs a week at my current job, and then 15-20 at the other place, I'd actually make more money per year, even though it was a lesser pay at the new place. And if the job doesn't work out, I talked w/ the bosses here and I'm welcome to come back to full time. If that place takes off, I should be able to prove myself and work into a full time, good pay job there. (tack on that this office doesn't loose me with little to no notice, and it seems to be a win/win/win situation.)

W00t!

And the band played on...

So, it's over a week after the interview at this point. During the interview they were all wound up about how they wanted to hire someone right away. But still... no word either way. I woulda figured at least on a rejection letter/email if I didn't get the job. (Since I'd had an interview and all.)

My only hope is that they've had to go back and refigure the payroll budget because people with the qualifications they want make more than they wanted to pay in this area.

Eve Online has stirred up a bunch o drama. Long story short, we're bailing on our current alliance and looking for another one. The folks runnin this one seem to be running it into the ground.

Still no word...

4:30pm and another day goes by without word regarding the job. I refuse to contact them about it again though, as doing so would either make me seem like I'm too needy of the job, or that I'm, just being a pest.

But for the love of Jebus this is killing me!

Foxy

I've managed to get angry at IE 2 or 3 times already today so I'm officially going to attempt to convert to Firefox.

I've only made halfarsed attempts in the past, basically just checking it out. This time I'm going to make it a point to use it as often as I can. I'll even load it up at home I figure. That way I get double the usage outta it.

Still no word on the job.

On the medical front...I get to go in for a gastroscopy now. Joy! They found blood in one of my 3 poo smears, so they want to run a camera down my throat to see if it's coming from my upper GI. Ah well, it's a day off of work I figure.

In Eve online news, we're moving again. Better NPC's to fight, better ore to mine, and a better complex to farm. Plus there's likely to be more PvP as well. W00t! (as they say)

No news...

Yeah, I've not posted anything since the interview.

Why? Well, I had hoped to make the next post the results post... like a reality TV show or something.

The interview itself went great. They loved my resume and my skillset. Problem was the pay. They were only looking to offer $10k less than what I make now. That's just not going to work.

I did a followup call here at 4pm, the fella wasn't at the office it seems. Oh well. Mayhap I'll hear something next week.

Poo.

Apparently the low red blood cell count is due to low iron. They say at my age I should be as low on iron as I am unless there's something wrong. Yay! So to see if I'm bleeding in my bowels or something, they need to check my poo. "No biggie, just poo in some tupperware, right?" Wrong.

They want samples from 3 different days' poo. With 2 samples from each poo. So I have to put newspaper down in the crapper and write an editorial there. Then take a wooden stick, scrape some poo from one section, smear it on this card, then get a little more from another part of the poo and put that on the card as well. Fantastic!

And man, I thought my poo smelled bad normally... it's 10x worse when the water's not there to contain the poo.

1 more day of that thank jebus.

Job Monkey...

So the Wife came accross a job listing while looking for something for her schoolwork. It's for a Tech Manager at the local 20screen theatre. Seems that they're adding on a gaming area w/ PCs, X-boxes, and Playstations (all networked). Well, my job history seems to fit this to a T. Not to mention all the gaming I do. So I threw an application at them on Saturday. Sent a followup letter on Wednesday and got a call a couple hours later.

They're going to call me today to setup an interview for Tuesday. I just missed that call because my current boss was at my desk. Damnit. Of course the guy didn't leave a voicemail, and I can't remember his name. So when I tried to call back the number he called from, it got me to the main switchboard. Crap. Hopefully he'll call me back again.

The only real questions about this job are, what's the pay, and how committed is the company to the project. It's a new thing for them, so I worry about them pulling the rug out in a year or two.
As for pay, I make a pretty fair amount now... and I need to get more to make it worth it. And theatres aren't exactly the best paying jobs out there.

Woohoo, just got the call as I was typing this. Got an interview at 1pm on Tuesday over at the Theatre. Joy!

Still the issues to deal with, but at least I'm to interview stage.