So I am quitting my job. I can’t do it. It’s not the pay, I can handle low pay - hell I worked at Spec’s as a cashier. It’s not the people, I like everyone I work with for a change. It’s not the hours, they are fine. It’s the pornography. I know some of you will be shocked to to hear me have morals. That is a shame honestly. I don’t oft speak of them and I should. I leave a lot of my beliefs in the background when I post here. But I am morally opposed to pr0n. I have had to deal with it every day for three weeks and I can’t take any more of it. I walked away today and have to rely on faith to provide for my family. I have work right now and enough to pay the bills most likely but next month is up in the air. I should be able to get enough work to get by and we will see from there how it goes.
So most of you who still read this site know what all is going on. Academy fired me for total bullshit reasons which I won’t go into. I have no hard feelings towards anyone there. I might think it was crap but being upset at someone for doing what they thought was their job would accomplish nothing. I am upset about losing the monthly poker game even though I knew it was likely. It is held at my now ex-boss’s hacienda, thrown by her husband, and I guess it would be weird for her. For me work is work and social is social is social. I really liked that game even though I didn’t always win. It’s not easy to find a good home game and that was one for me.
Anyway I am back in webhosting doing sysadmin work for a lot less money. There are some perks to the job and some drawbacks. The perks include: no dress code, free lunch (if you accomplish certain goals), some cool people with which to work, and a schedule that allows me to consult. The drawbacks are: Low pay, a schedule that doesn’t let me off until midnight, dealing with customers, some people with stereotypical sysadmin hygiene, and having to deal with porn on a daily basis. It’s a gig and it’s paying the bills. I also have two consulting clients at this point and am open for server management consulting. I have a non-compete so I can’t do hosting but I never really did anyway.
So that’s the long and short of the last three weeks.
Seamus also turned six last Wednesday and we will have a party for him and Michelle next weekend which will apparently involve painting on Saturday. I am working Sunday through Thursday so Friday is the day I relax and since I get home long after the family goes to sleep I am giving Michelle Saturdays as her day to choose what we do. Today we are going to a park that has Bluebonnets and taking pictures with the kids. It sounds alright and gets me out of the house which is good for me. Next Saturday, as I mentioned, is painting day. We have to borrow a ladder but we are beginning to fix the house up a bit since we will be here a while. On my current salary we can’t afford to buy a house.
Well I am trying not to whine and ramble on about how much things suck as I want to have a good attitude about all of this but, quite frankly, it is a struggle. I upgraded to WP 2.5 and have to get some of the plugins working again but everything is looking good so far.
So I am making it through the work day on gum. The problem is that it upsets my stomach in a massive way. This means I can barely drink by the time the day is over so I buy a pack on the way home. I am down to under half what I used to smoke but that’s not good enough. I am trying to cut back during the day so I can do the gum longer into the evening but I suspect that is not the best plan.
At work I am stuck playing with a technology I know and love. The problem is that anything gets boring after you have done it too long. I am head down in Nagios all the time. I have learned a lot and am still learning but damn it I am bored. I am about to write some check plugins so I will get to play with perl which is never a bad thing.
I am trying to get approved to go to Brainshare this year and I will likely know today whether that is happening or not. We will wait and see.
That’s all for now but more later for sure.
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Yes it is another men’s room update. Coming to you live from the artic temperature in the c?e they call a bathroom. It is honestly five to ten degrees cooler in here than at my desk; cool enough to make me wish I were wearing long johns! I have no idea why but any cooler and my breath would condense.
The whole near-freezing bathroom thing isn’t helping my level of tired either. This whole policy of being on tome after working well past midnight is really the pits. At least all of this is almost over. I left the iPod at home today so no Blood for Blood to keep me awake at my desk. Luckily I should have enough work to do that.
Well I need to go get warmed back and as much as I enjoy these quick updates it is way too cold to keep going…
Well it’s right after lunch and I am posting from the men’s room on the blackberry. The day is half over and shows no signs of ending. The new Lotus Notes client came out today with a borked installer so I haven’t got to play with it. I am overloading myself with two late night changes this week to install firewalls on a bunch of servers! It will be hell but I want to move on to the next project and soon. This has been killing me! The drudgery and boredom past the initial research is just insane.
See I can whine about work without saying one bad word about anyone! That felt good…
One more tight, but not broke, pay period and we are out of the woods. I am looking forward to that for sure.
Fry’s is going to kill me. But they did take months to fix my computer so they can wait a while for me to pick it up.
So randmon and so cheap. What did you expect from the men’s room?
I don’t mean like I have been working in the Texas sun. I mean like morally dirty. Like the kind of dirty a shower won’t clean off. The kind of dity a youth minister would feel entering his first shake joint.
I like Windows Vista.
I cannot believe I admitted that in a public entry.
It’s all the eye candy. I like it because it is pretty.
I am part of a test run at work and so I have it on my laptop. I have SLES10 on my desktop and no plans to change that at all. I also like Mandriva’s 2007 LiveCD with the Metisse 3d Desktop. I guess I am getting soft. I like things because they are pretty. I am so going to have my geek card taken away over this. They’ll have to outdrink me and then fight me first. I won’t give up without a fight!
Well it is that time of year and for the first time in half a decade I am unemployed. Technically I have a job but it doesn’t start until Jan 8 which will be too late to pay rent. Yeah I was overestimating our finances for rent time. We didn’t spend a dime of our own on Christmas for the kids even. Just bills, food, and such. It sucks. To be honest I fight depression every year around this time and it’s really hard to keep my head up right now. Last time I was unemployed an angel sent me money and it helped. I have to go to various organizations and ask for help and while I shouldn’t feel this way I so don’t want to. It’s a blow to my pride. The last job loss wasn’t anything I did and as such I feel I should still be employed. The bastards as Veritas DGC fired me while my wife was in labor for God’s sake! I can only think it was the three days I asked to have off for the new baby. Yeah that’s right I asked for three days. Of course they get around all the federal labor laws since I am a contractor.
I am not having a good time of it right now. I cannot stomach this for much longer. I am headed back into webhosting because I know that industry. It’s not near as much money and we will have to change a few things but I have to get my confidence back. I am done in. I wish I could just give up to be completely honest. No music this time folks…
Yeah I know it’s a goofy title. But one for the reasons my ‘doze partition has continued to exist is PCDJ FX. Well since I have Ultramix, which is cross platform, I have no need for the MS hell. All the games I play run perfectly under Cedega so that isn’t an issue. Yes even warcraft is perfectly capable of running under it and getting great framerates. So I will be moving files around to create larger partitions and get all of the important files over to EXT3 partitions. Ok I am a huge geek but everything I do I can do in Linux and some it I can do better in Linux. Given equal ground I see no reason to keep around the ‘doze partition and everything is equal in my environment at this time. I do love my tweaking….
I am torn about something. But first I must explain my stance on an issue that most people never give a first, much less a second, thought. The issue is Christian branding. For instance I heard a commercial the other day for a law firm who “uses Christian values in all lawsuits”. So today, in preperation for writing this piece, I called them up and asked them a few questions. As I was doing research I do not consider this to have been dishonest. The nice lady who answered the phone did indeed confirm that they proudly support Christian values and worked accordingly. So I described a situation wherein I was sideswiped by a fellow church member who happened to not have insurance and asked if they would be willing to help me sue this fellow. With no further clarification she began to ask if I had any pain and told me that any pain related to the accident would result in a larger settlement. I explained this person was an older fellow who had absentmindedly let his insurance lapse and was on the board of elders and wondered if it would be proper to sue him for damages since he had not paid as he said he would. She explained to me that it would be perfectly alright since we would only sue for what actually happened and not try to make it into a huge payday. I politely ended the call.
For those who do not know a lot of scripture I will post the relevant verses before I go any further:
1 Corinthians 6 (NASB)
1 Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints?
2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts?
3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life?
4 So if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life, do you appoint them as judges who are of no account in the church?
5 I say this to your shame Is it so, that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren,
6 but brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers?
7 Actually, then, it is already a defeat for you, that you have lawsuits with one another. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded?
8 On the contrary, you yourselves wrong and defraud. You do this even to your brethren.
Since I don’t keep up with the moblog and stuff I am simply adding a re-direct. So going to myevilminion.org will get you to here as well. I am also working on the Day by Day code a little bit to try and get it running. The migration to the new server went really well and we are on a more up to date platform. In fact it went so well there was no downtime at all! I have to get a license upgrade to enable the spam filtering but other than that we are golden.
I will be playing with modules very soon and might even slap up a message board. I will be doing some blog ad exchange stuff and hopefully getting some more traffic and also emailing all the old minions and letting them know we are back and running strong. There are some cool modules and a few tweaks I want to get in place so expect a little weirdness while I do all of that!
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