Sunday, October 29, 2006

Chronomas

Before I go to bed tonight to wake up offensively early for my job I have to say happy holidays.

Today is Chronomas, a day where we roll back the clock one hour to celebrate humanity's triumph over Chronos, Master of all Time. We rose up as one and smote this benevolent caretaker of the universe, shaking the very essence of time out of its' foundation and starting a chain reaction that is responsible for all of the universes vast multitude of problems. For this atrocity we gained one extra hour of time, and to this day we refuse to admit that it was a mistake.

Happy Chronomas!

Saturday, October 28, 2006

A Collection of small things

I've been really busy recently, and despite that I don't have any significant story to tell. This disturbs me a little, but not enough that I'm going to deal with it now. I do have a large amount of minor interesting stories to tell.

I'm back on WoW. There was a major upheaval in my guild while I was gone, but I managed to neatly skip the entire awkward period and things are essentially right as I left them.

I'm struck amazingly hard by how sad the image of an imaginary bird that's really really cold is. The bird isn't dying, it isn't in a great deal of pain, it's just way too cold. It's really uncomfortable. And it can't get warm either, so even if it goes into a sauna or something it's still cold. I don't know why but I find that thought so sad. It's just so... Cold, and a bird, and... Damn.

I have these really creepy recordings from a video game, in the game they were a cursed sword that whispers damnation into your brain while you wield it, but I'm going to put them on loop and play them out my window all Halloween night. It's a really great series of sound effects. The first 11 are this ghostly voice that whispers a story of being a righteous warrior betrayed by his order. They gradually become incoherent, until the 12th one which is the voice brought back to focus and much heavier saying "Kill. Them. All."

Did you know you can order pizza over the internet, including paying for it with a credit card? I'm finding less and less reason to get up nowadays.

My D&D group is going to be playtesting an epic campaign for our member Chris. It shows really well how much each of us knows about D&D and how each of us feels about it. Peter and Alex who are new have these vague ideas of what they'll do, and both of them are fairly normal. Rob and I are both heavily experienced, and are on opposite sides of the spectrum as far as D&D players go. His characters are always made to have the most power, mine are always made to have the most personality. This means that he doesn't have a name or a backstory yet, and his character is entirely focused around gaining one ability, but that ability lets his character speak the words of uncreation and decimate anything he wants. Meanwhile I have two polar opposite characters. One is Saint Dagon, the Ashbringer. A legendary cleric of the silverflame, one who will always turn first to mercy but one knows when an enemy must be purified by fire. Because of this he has the names of everyone he's ever killed tattooed over his body, and every morning during his prayers he utters a prayer for each one. This adds 1 more hour to my characters spell preparation time (by the time you've reached level 25 you're killed a lot of people) but I consider it crucial. It also means that when we run into the Dread lord I'll be the only one who doesn't immediately begin winding up a doom power, I'll step in front of my combat readied friends and say "This doesn't have to come to violence!" I'll almost certainly get bashed for doing that, but benevolence is never free. The other character is "The Profane Saint Baelnazzar, The Hellspun Nightmare Blade." Fallen Paladin, Champion of the Dark God Hextor, The Tyrant, And undead monstrosity. However I've hidden all of this from my teammates. They believe that I'm a non-fallen paladin who was cursed by hextor, made to appear evil and given this deathless body so that my order would abandon me. I go on to claim that it's all a plot by Hextor to cause me to lose my faith in Heironious (The lawful good God of Paladins and interestingly enough in the Greyhawk cosmology brother of Hextor) but I claim that my faith remains strong. If the fools could only see the true power of my blackened heart and blood drenched fists . Then they would know, and they would Tremble, As the whole WORLD will tremble before my might, and the coming Glory of HEXTOR!!! BWAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA.

Then again that's just D&D. My actual life hasn't had much of note recently.

Geez. Blogger spell check dosn't know the word Undead, or the word Paladin. Or Hellspun, which might actually be two words. They really need to update this thing's spell checker for the D&D crowd.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Notes

The increased difficulty of day to day life has left me in my scheming mode much more often then normal. I think this will be the key to my survival. The following are just notes I need to take based on my recent machinations.

I should get an actual mattress, but the value of the upgrade and the cost of the mattress just don't sync up.

If Chris and catie are buying a Wii then I can afford to get a 360, but if I do buy a 360 I'll have spent my entertainment budget through January.

(Censored Nondisclosure) is going to be Awsome. Between that, Dead Rising, and Tomb Raider Legends I think I have a clear case mandating I get a 360.

I really should get back on WoW before making any signifigant entertainment purchases. We can finally put it's addictive qualities to good use by making our entire entertainment budgent $15/month.

I really need to get on the Aikido thing, but I'm loathe to spend anything until after the rent hits.

Should aikido count as part of the entertainment budget?

I can buy fifty pounds of rice for $18. Rice is essentially free. I can also buy a can of bean for 89 cents. My goal, food budget wise, is to get by on $10 worth of food a day, but if I ate rice and beans I could have three large meals a day for three dollars a day.

A diet consisting of rice, beans, and the free soda volt gives me has
got to be bad for me.

One Koku, the feudal Japaneese unit of currency said to be the amount of rice necessary to feed a man for one year is about 400 pounds of rice. So according to my local asian food store a Koku is around $136.

If I bought a koku and ate just rice I could get my food budget down to almost $10 a month.

Eating just rice and soda for a year would almost certainly kill me, no matter how much Aikido I do.

I wonder if I can get a discount at the Asian food store if I say I'm buying a koku's worth. I also wonder if they would take a single ancient Koku coin as payment for 400lbs of rice.

Friday, October 20, 2006

Survey Says

Just a quick thing to think about.

If closeted and uncloseted were counted equally which political movement do you think would have more gay activists. The Pro same sex marriage agenda. Or the generalized anti-homo-sexual agenda.

PE Discussions

I think a lot about how I would describe Project Exodus to say, someone on the bus. Someone who doesn't know my whole backstory and doesn't have time to go into the philosophical bits of it. The cliche that comes to mind and will simultaneously get the essential idea across while ending the subject is that I'm trying "To find myself."

Now if I were the standard person in my position finding myself would mean backpacking around Europe for a few months drinking, enjoying Amsterdam loose drug rules, and trying to nail one chick of each nationality.

I'd like to pause for a moment and thank the powers that be that I'm not the standard 18-35 year old male.

Stephen Colbert did a "Stephen's Sound advice" sketch on graduates once. One of the things was "Don't go to Europe to find yourself." and one of the key jokes was "Who told you that you were in Europe anyway?" It's funny but it's also relevant to my my experience. I don't think I'd gain much from going to Europe on my parent's bill because I've already had the essential Exposure to European Culture lesson. It's a good lesson, no doubt, but I've already had it.

So then where am I? I thought about it and the answer I've got is that I'm in the dark. Both in that I'm confused and lack clear vision, and that the time when I'm most myself, the place where I can truly connect to the core of what I am is in my "Darkened lair" mindset. I need to spend more time in that state if I'm going to move forward.

PE Discussions

I think a lot about how I would describe Project Exodus to say, someone on the bus. Someone who doesn't know my whole backstory and doesn't have time to go into the philosophical bits of it. The cliche that comes to mind and will simultaneously get the essential idea across while ending the subject is that I'm trying "To find myself."

Now if I were the standard person in my position finding myself would mean backpacking around Europe for a few months drinking, enjoying Amsterdam loose drug rules, and trying to nail one chick of each nationality.

I'd like to pause for a moment and thank the powers that be that I'm not the standard 18-35 year old male.

Stephen Colbert did a "Stephen's Sound advice" sketch on graduates once. One of the things was "Don't go to Europe to find yourself." and one of the key jokes was "Who told you that you were in Europe anyway?" It's funny but it's also relevant to my my experience. I don't think I'd gain much from going to Europe on my parent's bill because I've already had the essential Exposure to European Culture lesson. It's a good lesson, no doubt, but I've already had it.

So then where am I? I thought about it and the answer I've got is that I'm in the dark. Both in that I'm confused and lack clear vision, and that the time when I'm most myself, the place where I can truly connect to the core of what I am is in my "Darkened lair" mindset. I need to spend more time in that state if I'm going to move forward.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Food

Me and my microwaved can of corn beef hash have a story to tell.

First let me tell you about the meal block. It’s a great way of keeping my gastrointestinal affairs in order. I normally make dinner after coming home from QFC which is on my way back from work. I also usually make much more then would be necessary for a simple dinner, then I fill a Tupperware with whatever’s left. These aren’t your small “normal person” sized tubs either, so this gives me enough for a large lunch to compensate for the fact that I never eat breakfast, and an after work snack. So far this is working out great.

So today I went to QFC and the grand wheel of impulse said “Hamburger helper.” I bought the extra noodles, the boxes, and the beef. This model, by the way, is how I make almost everything. It’s some meat, some filler starch, and some additive. Anyway, I started making my grand mixture. I had decided to get the rest of the week done, so I bought two of everything. It’s about $20 altogether and would’ve fed me tonight, and through Friday. I spent about an hour altogether making it, and messed up the stove because I forgot that the pan couldn’t hold that much. I simmered it down ultra fast because it was simmering down from the lip of the pan. Anyway I finish, I mix, and I fill two tupperwares, then I fill a bowl for myself.

Something’s wrong.

It’s a weird taste that I can’t quite place. It’s almost metallic. When I first tasted it I thought my spoon was malfunctioning. It’s an unplaceable taste; it’s what a toothache would taste like. Almost bloody…

Damnit. I didn’t fully cook the meat. This is what I get for trying to brown 2 lbs of beef in a 1 lb pan, If I’d just stuck to reasonable portions this wouldn’t happen.

So what now? First of all it taste’s horrible. Also it might make me sick, and by association kill me. Twenty bucks down the drain. Damn.

I did then what I do with all of my food waste. I opened the back door to our porch and hurled it into the woods. That may sound horrible to you, but it’s always completely gone the next morning so something appreciates it. There’s a green belt behind our apartment so I imagine all sorts of woodland creatures may be eating my three day old rice and overcooked pasta. This opens the issue that I’m feeding friendly woodland creatures potentially poisonous pasta. I don’t think it will matter though because the herbivores won’t eat the meat, and the things that eat the meat are animals and hence already eat raw meat. Hell, my semi-cooked meat is a delicacy by comparison. Actual delicacy too, I’m not just drenching it in over potent sauce, adding the phrase “tar tar” and declaring my lethargy cuisine.

So here I am, $20 bucks down and I don’t have food for tomorrow. Well not yet anyway, I can go to QFC on my way too work and pick something up.

And while I’m on the subject of QFC, and because I don’t feel like making two posts, did you know you can buy an entire roast chicken for $7? Seven Dollars! I make more then that for an hour of playing video games. It’s great for me, but if you told that to chickens they would probably turn suicidal, which would make them even cheaper due to the abundance of dead chickens.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Aikido

You may recall that part of the grand and unrealistic list of planned activities I had for project Exodus was learning Aikido. I was fairly certain that this would entail me going to work, bussing across town, and going to class, then bussing back home in a manner which would give me just enough free time left for sleep. What I didn’t expect was that there would be a dojo eleven blocks south of the place I work.

I’m not officially signed up yet, but that’s mostly because the big and tall shop doesn’t sell Aikido uniforms. Then again I can’t imagine the Asian big and tall market being a very big industry. If all goes according to plan I’ll start Tuesday of next week. I’ll let you know how things go.

Breaking Point

I need new shoes, and if I’m saying that you know it’s something serious.

Some people will decide they need new shoes when their old ones begin to look ratty, or go out of fashion. I kept my shoes long past that. Most people would say they need new shoes after their old shoes begin to break. My shoes began to break five months ago. It’s not like they were big holes in the leather after all. Nearly everyone will agree that you should get rid of your shoes once the insole falls out. That happened three months ago. Knowing all that what could possibly push me to buying new shoes? Well after three months of walking around on the semi-padding that goes between the insole and the actual sole that padding has worn down to nothing. Including the lost height from the loss of the insole this makes my shoes about half of an inch deeper then normal. This means that the top of the heel of my shoe is now perfectly positioned to grind into my Achilles tendon. That started happening two weeks ago. When I began to find blood on my socks, that’s when I decided I needed new shoes. That was one week ago. Today I finally went and bought new ones. I would've done it earlier but walking with these busted shoes is just so painful.

Irony is a harsh mistress.

I’m not sure if this is determination or bravado that makes me do this, but either way it’s almost certainly unhealthy.

It’s also a bitch finding someone that will sell you size 15 extra wide shoes. I found one place, which is the same place that sells me all of the rest of my clothing. That damn big & tall shop is going to bleed me dry. Well they would if I didn’t have a rewards card which sends the bill to my Mom; making this the first time during Project Exodus that I’ve shunted some of my cost of living onto my parents.

Thanks for the new shoes Mom.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Stories from Volt

I've gotten a lot of good stories while working at Volt. A lot of these involved material I can't talk about; things like "This game that's coming out late November is going to rock!" or, "This game which is still going to do well because it's from a big name series sucks and is buggy and will clearly mark the fall of that series."

There are some though that are really amusing that I can still tell you.

During a network test we're all using the handles that are assigned to the machines that we're on. The names are incredibly technical so they're not that amusing, but when you're playing against other people in the same room all day it's really easy to get over enthusiastic. The one I was playing as was something like USDescCertFRG20. Everyone was USDescCert something so we would identify each other by the suffixes, and I came to think of myself as "Frog 20." Now it turns out I'm really good at this genre of games, which is surprising because I almost never play them, so there would be moments of dramatic unexpected success for me in which I would yell out something along the lines of "FROG 20 SMOKED YOUR ASS!" This worked well for me, but one of the other boxes was something like X31F5dkhg64dl12, so he won the next thing and turned to me to shout "Dukhig-64-dul-12 smoked... never mind."

It's really hard to stay enthusiastic when you don't have something good to shout and the other guy does.

This next story involved a WWII game, which I'm fairly certain won't be breaking my nondisclosure agreement because there are too damn many WWII games out today. Anyway the game starts off on the European front, and one of the taunts the NPCs would use is "You shoot worse then you fly!" The voice was an overdone German accent, but it wasn't that bad. What was bad was when I got to the Pearl Harbor level. The Japanese pilots use the same phrase, but their voice is like a crude racial caricature off and even less funny Mind of Mencia. It's hard to focus on shooting things when you keep hearing "Yoo shoot wurse then you fry!" over your headset.

The best one though was when I was bug hunting. The team across from us was testing the game without using Debug mode, they were assigned to go through and do everything legitimately to make sure it all worked. The problem was that towards the end of the game it got so difficult that nobody could actually do it. Then, and this is Awesome, then Volt called in an expert. When they told the guys testing about that they began discussing what he would be like. They imagined some kind of badass loner who just calls himself "The Wolf." They joked about that the whole rest of the day, imagining a scenario where he gets stuck at airport security and just waves them down because he's "The Wolf." He would walk by an arcade and people would form a mob following him. He'd walk into a game stop and some ancient game stop regional manager would step forward from the shadows and say "You! The one the prophecy told of!" They imagined the game spontaneously fixing itself in his presence, etc. etc. Well he arrived the next day and he's a fairly short clean cut early twenties kid. He's really nice, not mean about anything, and amazingly good. The thing is that they told him about the Wolf thing when he came in, and they just keep calling him that throughout the day. Even the team leads used it when resolving a hard lock bug and deciding if it was a hardware thing or a software thing. "That was the Wolf's Box."

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Volt, Exodus, Nocturnal Ramblings.

I have much on my mind and I’m not in the mindset to do a lot of editing right now, so I won’t be doing anything more then spell-check corrections wise. Consequentially you’ll have to pardon me if I wander with my focus.

It all starts with the job. I took this job knowing, but not fully realizing the consequences. I’ve worked only one day this week, which is better then I thought it would be on Tuesday, but worse then last week where I managed to get in three. I still haven’t made my way on to a long term project. The group is about as organized as you would expect a bunch of people who play video games for a living to be, and I’m getting shafted by their nonchalance.

Richard Cho, who I’m going to call my contact even though I don’t have a consistent contact because I don’t have consistency, said last week that he could get me back on the originally planned long term project. I’m not sure if he’s swamped with work of if he’s just playing WoW at work, but that didn’t happen. I got put on for the last two days of another project, and was told that I would be getting back onto whatever was in store for me starting this week. I was told that, and that he would get back to me, but Monday came and no word. I began sending e-mails because there’s no way for me to call him directly. The e-mails became more and more embittered until Wednesday’s which ended with whatever my business etiquette word filter made out of the thought “If you fuckers keep stringing me along I’m going to drop you and get another job.”

It’s probably a good thing I have that filter.

Whether it was the much more terminal message of Wednesday’s e-mail or just him finally getting around to my e-mails I don’t know, but he called and set up a one day stunt for me today, and promised another long term project starting Monday. He also said he’d get back to me tomorrow with details on that project. If I don’t have directions, time, etc. by Monday I’m finding a new job.

That’s the more immediate material news of it, but this is really just a stepping stone into a greater philosophical discussion, because hindsight won’t shut the hell up. It reminds me of the Quiznos job which would have paid more for better hours and consistent employment. It reminds me that I had a safe secure option that would’ve made Project Exodus much easier, but ease isn’t what this is about. Ease is the opposite of what I’m seeking; I’m seeking the pain and the strife that fan the fires of my soul, the turmoil that is my greatest muse. I seek to live once more at the height of my being, where my forebrain is linking together complex schemes and machinations, diverse webs of options and alternatives all leading to a single goal, and my midbrain is tossing about the philosophical implications and questions raised by the state I’ve found myself in, and the deep recesses of my mind are ablaze in a rainbow of esoteric emotion. Not the simple happy and worried and afraid that fill the mundane world, but the more exotic flavors of Miasmic Depression, of Peril, of Strife, and of Triumph.

Some may question my bizarre form of emotional masochism but they’re too busy drowning in their emotions to step back and see the beauty of the nuance of feeling that is afforded to them. A nuance that is almost never truly appreciated.

Act 2.

I’m beginning to learn how to play the game that is the playing games business. It is much the same as life was before. The change is that the fight is no longer one that you can fight with only half of your mind. This new challenge requires the whole of my focus because I was, until recently, up against an entire horde of enemies. My list of concerns back at Lander was essentially “When is class, what is my homework, what do I have to do for the Bistro.” It is a short one but one much more troublesome then it sounds. It was also one that left room for a much larger number of entertainment based concerns. Project Exodus has given me a much larger list of much more significant concerns. “Will I have a job tomorrow, is there any food left, If I do this will I have enough money left for rent, can I schedule Comcast to perform the installation at a time that one of us will be available, if this job fails where will I go as backup, if Chris is schedules next weekend how will I get food for next week.”

A dark inner part of me laughs thinking of this. You see when people have proposed to me their plans of going out on their own and doing whatever it is they sought to do I would fall into my role as Devil’s Advocate. It’s a good thing I did because they never almost never had a good plan, but one of the key was I pointed that out was asking them “How do you plan to get food.” It’s a question so essential to existence that is would shake people from their high flying dreams and bring them back, sometimes painfully, to earth. And this may be part of my next point.

Before I can fully explain this I have to outline my situation so I can show that I’m now speaking from a valid position instead of just idly thinking. I’ve held this theory for a while, but only now do I have any real proof of it. One of the key things that I’ve done by striking out in a city I don’t really know and attempting self sufficiency is lower my own class ranking. Given my current income I’m well below the poverty level, and even if I was working forty hours a week at volt I’d still be making less then 20k per year. In many ways I’m living a lower class life. This is only the beginnings of being true because I was born into lower middle class, grew up regular middle class, and watched the corrupting power of success as I became someone who has one foot (parent) in the upper middle class and the other foot (parent) in the lower middle class. In either case life was never economically harsh for me. It is now though, and it gives me a rare delicious insight into the problems involved in lower class existence. The lack of money means a lack of power, and if you don’t have money you’re going to have to spend more of the other three incantations of power: Freedom, time, and knowledge. Those of you who didn’t follow that sentence see my previous work on “The New Pentacle.” If you grew up middle class you probably don’t have much knowledge to spend. I’m lucky to be a child of privilege who grew up in an intellectual household at the dawn of the information age so knowledge flowed freely into me. Anyway the average lower class person is going to be forced (freedom) to give up time. It’s really all they’ve got to spend. The best example of this is the bus. If I had a car (money) I could drive to volt in half an hour. My total commute time a day would be an hour, tops. Actually, I would drive to work in twenty minutes, but the average safe driver would probably take thirty. I don’t so I have to take the bus. The bus costs a lot less, but now it’s about an hour each way to and from work. Off the bat I have an hour less each day then someone with money would. The problem doesn’t go away though. When I have errands or chores to run I don’t spontaneously get a car. As a general rule of thumb it will take you three times as long to get somewhere by bus as it would to get there by car. The 291 Dart runs up and down Willows hitting all the corporate complexes there, so it’s only a factor of two for my commute to volt, but for everything else it’s three.

Our subject now has much less free time then the average middle classer, and despite this sacrifice they still have less money. This means they almost certainly don’t have enough money to go to college or some other form of higher learning center and gain Knowledge. The lack of initial power combined with the constant demands of life will prevent them from ever gaining enough power to trade some for freedom. This brings me to my first point, which is really a sub point.

The current capitalist structure prevents the lower class from rising and prevents the upper class from falling. It reinforces the present class lines, making success not a matter of personal achievement but an inherited gift. Only cataclysmic failure or epic success on the part of an individual can cause them to overcome, or fall from, their class placement.

That probably sounds like something a communist would say. I don’t reject capitalism; it seems to be the best thing we have thus far. I certainly think it could be done better, but as long as you wish to maintain a government that isn’t tyrannical I certainly can’t think of a better system of governance.

Some day I need to post the full description of Maxonian semi-enlightened communist dictatorship. That day will be the day after I finally get around to writing it out.

And wasn’t Project Exodus supposed to be a time for me to write all these things out? I really need to get done with all of these important immediate concerns so I can get around to addressing all of the pointless ethereal concerns this project was meant to address.

I’m getting off topic.

Starting back from my rant on class oppression I have another theory, this one not so well tested and certainly not as easily proven, but I think I’m right (which is about as far as I usually get) and if I am then one of the greatest quandaries I have will finally be answered.

I’ve talked about the divide between what I call normals and deviants before. The general rule is that normals have given up on the bizarre extreme goals and have instead sunk into mundane life. They tend to be much more economically successful, and the mass media and pop culture are built around satisfying them and essentially farming them for money. It’s hard for things that appeal to deviants to stay in business because we tend to have very little money, either because we’ve spent it on our goal/dream/obsession or because we’re too fixated on our goal/dream/obsession to get a good paying job. As someone who will almost certainly be consumed by his obsessions one day I’ve always wondered why people become normals. I’ve made little secret of my disdain for normals, and I’ve done absolutely nothing to hide my disdain for their culture. In fact I’ve probably gone out of my way to bash normal culture. The phrase “Drow in sunlight” best conveys how I feel when immersed in it. For those of you who don’t know what a drow is the feeling is being vaguely offended, equally disgusted, and very out of place. I tend to actively recoil when walking through downtown’s “Westlake Center” but if you know where another movie theatre is downtown you tell me.

Despite all this I’m still fascinated by the study of normals. It’s what a regular person would call “people watching” but a regular person probably wouldn’t have the same “Here I am exploring the thick of their jungle habitat” mindset that I do. The one thing that has always puzzled me is how, when, and why people become normals. I could see that most people were destined to subside to it in college. A lot were already there, and, but by and large people were on the precipice. They could go either way and I knew that nine out of ten of them would go normal. It’s clear to me that it’s not a conscious choice. People rarely take time to reflect on their lives in a meaningful meditative way, so I doubt any of them were conscious enough of the shift to have a moment where they decided to give up whatever their idyllic dream was. It just gets pushed to the side temporarily, but that act of putting it off becomes habit, and eventually you don’t even remember that it was there. So Why? I know now, and it’s connected to my earlier theory about class rigidity.

People succumb to mundanity because the difficulty involved in existence is so great that no other pursuit can be afforded.

That’s all well and good, but the key flaw in that one, especially when you link it to my earlier theory, is that everyone succumbs to mundanity. Not just people who have to invest all their time and freedom into subsistence. What I’m about to say may be the darkest, harshest, single most bitter theory I’ve ever put forward.

People succumb to mundanity because the difficulty involved in existence is so great that no other pursuit can be afforded. This is true irrelevant of the difficulty of an individual’s existence, and made true by humanities tendency to adapt to their present situation.

Why do people become normals? Because it’s easier. God knows it’s tempted me more then once. Good at math, good at science, BAM I’m an engineer and the whole “Faith” thing I was doing becomes something I’ll later talk about as having been a phase. I could write it off as a childish pursuit and make bank wiring up the next ipod knock off or doing whatever is Halliburton keeps recruiting chemical engineers to do. Hell, I could go all the way get my CS BS and sell out to M$. The sky’s the limit.

But speaking as someone who will never let go of his inner fire, Fuck the Sky. I don’t intend to have any limits.

Act 3

Which is really a shame because I love that last line. I kind of which that I could get my point across without resorting to profanity, but the severity, and harshness of the word is really what I’m going for. If I do slip into mundanity I’m going to fight every step of the way.

By now of course you know that all of the outlines of my “current situation” are irrelevant. My actually current situation is summed up in the “Job Stuff” entry below. Now that I have some measure of stability, and some form of a system in place I can finally step back and reflect.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

A Series of Tubes

I've got the net back, and it has not languished in my absence. YTMND in particular has produced a few works of genius.

What is the Matrix?

Who'se the new talent on 60 minutes?

Genius.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Job stuff

Okay so I think I've got this Volt thing down. The key thing to know is this.

At any time I can say "I don't feel like working that day" and not sign up for the next day. And at any time they can say "We don't really need you today" and not offer me a job that day.

Now the majority of the time they'll offer me a job and I'll take it. I plan to take every weekday job I can starting Wednesday. Those of you who've just noticed that tomorrow is Tuesday are probably wondering why I'm not working tomorrow when I easily could be. The simple version of the story is that Comcast gave me the option of doing the installation Tuesday at 8, or Three weeks from now at noon. Either way I'm going to have to get off of work. If I was at a regular job, or what I've begun to think of as a "Real" job this would mean going through the whole rigmarole of making a subtle show of lagging during work the day before, then calling in sick Tuesday. Because it's Volt the entire process comes down to one quick exchange at the end of today's job.

"Hey Max, want to work tomorrow?"
"Nope."

Now all that being said I'd like to point out to the various people I've discussed it with over the phone that is not my writing out of the job situation from last week. That's a multi-page word document on my laptop. Right now I'm on the business center desktop. Tomorrow, when the internet finally comes to my lair, I'll post that. It's good, a bit profane, but I stand by my word choice, particularly in a case like this where the mood that needs to be conveyed is a mixture of sulry and passionate.

So for now the job situation is effectively settled, in that I've resigned myself to a permanent state of instability, but the way that instability is rolling at the moment seems good.

Friday, October 06, 2006

Epic Walmart Maneuver

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Complexity

I essentially still have a job. It's... ugh, I get tired just thinking about that. I'll let you know Monday if anything catastrophic has happened. A lot has happened this last week. A lot. I find it all extremely tiring.

I'm tired of the bullshit,
I'm tired of the instability,
And I'm tired of these motherfuckin snakes.

I'll give the full story later...

Monday, October 02, 2006

New Address

I have a new address, e-mail if you would like to know it.

I'm also now officially through step 1 of Project Exodus. While I wish I had a less shakey job, one that wasn't project by project, I think this will all work out well in the end.