12.31.2008

What is it??

I don't know what it is that has made me more and more uninterested in people in general, but it's not nice, and doesn't make me happy, and hurts the PR I have with nearly everyone except those who know me the most.

Isolationism? Anti-Socialism? Those sound like political foreign policy stances, but I'm talking about the personality concepts.

When I go home, there are nights where I don't want to talk to anyone at all - anyone....at all. There are days when I come to work, and don't want to talk to anyone at all...or spend time fixing computers, or going to someone's desk to click OK for them on an error box that they're capable of clicking themselves. There are days when I just want to sit alone, in silence, for an extended period of time, until I have had enough time to recuperate the energy required to be social.

I'm willing to guess this has a good deal to do with finances. Moving to Plano zero-byted my checking and savings accounts. For the first time I literally had $0 in the bank or in paypal. All I had available to live on was the available balances I paid down on my credit cards since taking this new job. Now, that is no longer an option.

I'm just now getting past the 1st-month's fees that the bastard companies tack on to their services when you move, and catching up on some late bills.

What I really need to do is get the credit card bills off the expense report. That would save me an extra $800 a month...srsly. But those won't get paid off until 2011, at the earliest. (At this point, I don't mind if Nostradamus is right about the 2012 asteroid impact, I won't have to pay my credit cards back).

I got one paid off last summer, and was just about to pay off the second one before I moved, and in the matter of a month, I ran it back up to the limit. Why? Visiting my friends and family in Arlington/Hurst and making unnecessary trips (one of which was for a metal rod not even worth the gas it cost to go get it). And so, when I told my stepmom that I could literally not afford to make it to my brother's birthday party this coming weekend, she sounded shocked. Well, it's a 100 mile round-trip...it's the same thing as going to our grandparents house for something as trivial as a few hours.

For some reason, I am happier when I have the means to afford spending time with people. Just being able to go over and spend time is not enough for me (apparently), I have to be able to afford to do it.

I don't feel isolationist all the time, nor do I mind being around a certain handful of people when I feel that way. But lately it's been more often than not that it has been the case.

12.27.2008

Porch Monkey

I decided this morning, after having the windows open continually for the past two days, that I'd spend the morning on the porch, with my laptop, and some coffee. I'm enjoying the 73 degree weather, with the morning freshness.

But I'm also waiting on the rain.

I've got some mint chocolate candies in my coffee, and a pile of pine wood next to me for the new Chiminea my parents bought me (after asking for two years), and some rocking chairs I got from my brother.

It's interesting how much more willing I am to sit on the patio now that I don't live in the ghetto - I don't have to stare at wannabe gang posses wandering the streets and breaking out the windows in the laundry room...or listen to the loud thump of car bass systems as they slow down for the speed bump in front of my apartment...or feel cutoff from what's going on inside since I didn't have a screen door for the patio.

But all that has changed - I have a view of a side walk, where one of my neighbors brings her dogs out, and random people walk by - unaffiliated with a gang...I only hear the sound of the wind, or my tv inside...and I have a screen door so Winston can enjoy the breeze too.

It's supposed to get down to 35 degrees tonight, and I'll probably spend some time out here with the Chiminea...unless it's too cold, and then I'll probably just work on some other things I need to finish, like shampooing the bedroom carpet, or setting up a server.

We'll see...right now, I'm watching the cold front move over the Airport. Should be here within the next hour or two.

12.08.2008

A little update

I decided I'd finally get around to changing the layout of the blog to look a little more like my twitter design, and I think it looks pretty epic to me.

I also want to give a shoutout to my Mom, who decided to read up on all my blog entries, except for the ones written in 1s and 0s. "Hi Mom...you can stop stalking me now, or I'll be compelled to write more about you."



It's not that I care that my information is on the internet - I'm the one that put it there. It's not even that I care that people read it - that's why I put it there. The only thing that bothers me about it, is when someone decides to go read it, and then comes back to me and tries to get on my case about the fact that I put it there - like it was some unintentional slip-up, and my life ended up in a blog on the internet.

I've been writing a journal since the days of etbustudents.cc, when we did it by hand, and re-uploaded an html page...until we got a forum for them at the-spot.net...and now people have various web services dedicated to doing journals. This is not something new to me, I've been doing it since before it was something to be doing on the internet, and it has always contained my thoughts.

I don't have any problem telling people to their face what my thoughts are - my problem is whether or not they're going to be able to handle it when I do tell them my thoughts. I used to be a little sissy-bitch and always tried to keep the boat from rocking - and to a certain degree I still like to maintain peace and order. However, these days (as of the last year or so) I am no longer afraid to be myself - I can thank Sunny for that. She's the one that couldn't handle me as I was...and when I changed, noticed that I wasn't being me. So I resolved to always be me, regardless of whether or not people could handle it - and if they couldn't...too bad.

So here's to my journal - me being me. If you don't like it, can't handle it, or want to change it - don't read it.

12.03.2008

Week 1 - 10 days in...

It's been around 10 days now since I moved to Plano...and I still have boxes to unpack. I'm not worried about them though - they're either decorations for the various rooms, or stuff that I don't need to hook-up/use.

But I don't really want to talk about moving. I like my apartment, and definitely like that my "work day" has been reduced by 1/3, or 4 hours, since I don't have to ride the train anymore.

Lately work is starting to stress me out. I don't get stressed easily, and generally can handle everything that's given to me in a timely manner. But lately, we've decided that we are going to recode/rewrite the entire Yahoo Store that we're using. That's great! We can finally clean up some things that needed to be cleaned up since it was first sloppily put together by the person that they paid to write the code.

The problem with that - is that I'm still expected to continue being the System Admin, and Help Desk, and Network Admin...as well as the Project Manager for this project, and two parallel ones - generating a Non-Yahoo Store, and doing research on getting a better internet connection to the building.

Normally, I wouldn't have a problem doing all these things - however, I'm dealing with a generational gap that is causing some communication issues and a lot of frustration on my end. I'm dealing with a boss who is used to doing things one way - the same way he's done them for the past 8 years, who has been involved on the day-to-day operation of the site/store, and only within the last 2 years has moved further from the day-to-day, and is more week-to-week.

That's fine. The problem I have with that, is that things aren't the same way they were in 2000. The internet changes every 6 months or less. I kinda thought that by hiring a bunch of 20-somethings, that we were going to be tapped for our expertise on the internet, how it works, what it can do, and how people use it. Apparently that was not the case. We are being tapped for all that information, but not to use it with how the internet is currently being used - no...to use it for how we've always done business.

I understand it's a tough thing to let someone else take over the production, design, and marketing of one's livelihood - one's baby that they've built from the ground up...the one thing they know inside and out. But just like Microsoft had to give up Bill Gates in order to move forward with the new way people are using computers, so should other sites that have been around as long. I guarantee that if I still had the-spot.net looking like it did during tsn I, II, or III - it'd still be dead like it was after tsnI and II. But I'm not here to talk about the health of tsn - that's a factor of the free-time I have to work on it vs responsibilities.

Basically what frustrates me, is that I would like a hands-off kind of management. I get a lot more done when I don't have a boss around that is interested in having a meeting about something, and then giving out directives to go and do something that we've already decided amongst ourselves is a bad idea. I make a list, work the list, and when I'm done, that is when there should be a meeting...not strategically positioned to interrupt a good workflow.

Trust appears to be my concern. We're not trusted to do the job we were hired to do - some of us after 1.5 years, some of us after .5 years, and some of us after 1 month. Us 20-somethings are the internet generation. We're more plugged in than the characters on The Matrix. We know what we expect the internet to do, and when it doesn't meet expectations, it gives us the impression that this site hasn't been updated in years, so we better not shop there - we might not get anything for our money.


Trust us to do what we need to do to get our job done, without defaming the company's name and reputation on the internet...then we'll have enough time to do all the other things that we've talked about doing for the company, as well as the jobs we were hired for in the first place.



This is my work rant. Too many "go ahead and add this to your list" requests, combined with too many "no, I don't like it, let's do it this way...no, I don't like that either". F@#$ dude! Figure out what you like - I'll be at my desk working on everything else that's wrong with everything else.