pensivewist

Waiting for DMV

2009-11-16T21:12:25Z

I remembered this weekend that I forgot to pay the renewal fee for my P.O. Box in Tiburon. To be honest, I can't remember the last time I actually went to Tiburon to pick up my mail. It was probably at least 3 months ago. I doubt I actually use that P.O. Box anymore for anything, except for the 401k notifications from my old job. Speaking of my 401k, I vaguely remember that I got a mail last year asking me to do move my 401k to an IRA. Unfortunately I'm sure I lost that mail, so I have to call the place and find out what's going on, if they even remember who I am now (it's been 3 years since I stopped working at the company where I got the IRA from).

I think I paid about 8k of my own money (pre-tax) into the 401k, and the company was contributing some money to it. I remember the 401k was up to 14k at one point, though the last time I checked the value it was down to 7k. :( But 7k in a retirement fund is better than nothing. I can't believe I haven't put any other money into retirement, but considering how much I pay for rent in Marin, it's hard to put money aside. That's why I need to find a new job that pays better than what I'm currently getting.

Speaking of work, I had to leave a raid last Wednesday because of work. My boss called me at 7:30 p.m. and said I needed to come into work early to debug this program written by another programmer at the company. I said that would be fine. During the Jaraxxus fight, my boss called me again, and said I needed to go into work IMMEDIATELY to debug the program. I asked if it was okay if I waited until 10 p.m., but apparently that was not an option. According to my boss, we needed this program running so we could send out this data file to a particularly annoying client by midnight tonight, or this client was going to send a complaint letter to the Vice President of the company. So I had to drive 20 miles to go to work then worked on this program for 3 hours, before I got the chance to go home. It was pretty sucky. They did let me go home early on Thursday but I was still peeved about having to ditch the raid I was leading.

I went to the DMV today to take care of a title transfer thing. I arrived there at 7:35 a.m. (25 minutes before the opening) and there were already fifteen there people. By the time the DMV opened, there were forty-five people waiting in line. I got the title transfer completed by 8:15 a.m. then headed off to work.

California state payroll tax increase

2009-11-13T19:16:22Z

Yup, it's a slow day at work.

http://www.pe.com/business/local/stories/PE_Biz_S_withholding.37f81d3.html

California State withholding has been increased by 10%. Good thing I don't make that much money to begin with or else I'd really be feeling the sting.

Going with your gut instincts

2009-11-11T01:20:00Z

Does going with your gut feeling work in the long run? I was reading this thread about removing guild members you don't like:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21038224562&sid=1

and it got me thinking about how I currently run the guild. Before we got into raiding, I used to be a "shoot first, ask questions later" type GM. If I didn't like a trial member I made it clear that they would be removed at the end of the trial. Unfortunately, when you need people you may not like 100%, in order to be able to raid 25 mans, kicking people just because "they don't feel right" doesn't work well. It doesn't help that we're on a podunk server where finding a person with raiding talent who wants to join your guild, is like finding a honest, sincere person on MTV's Real World.

Most frivorous impulse buy

2009-11-10T21:38:53Z

I went to work today without my laptop computer (again). So I got to drive back home to get my computer and then drive back to work. Ugh!

I'm trying to cut back on impulse buying, but it's a continual struggle. Amazon Prime makes it too easy to buy things I don't *need*.

I wasted a chunk of money on the El Pollo Grande card from Dacardworld a couple of months ago. It's 100 dollars less now from that site, and even cheaper from Ebay etc. I really shouldn't have spent money on that when I'm trying to save money for a new car.

In the past, other examples of "why did I buy that?"

- Custom Fragbook TLX laptop from Falcon Northwest. I bought that thinking it would be great for my (then girlfriend) to play World of Warcraft side by side with me when she visited. Of course, she never ended up playing it, and we broke up shortly afterwards. The laptop performance degraded after about a year of use, so I bought a fancy Dell XPS Desktop for playing World of Warcraft.
- Exercise bike. I thought it would be a good idea to have this around in my apartment so I could exercise before/after work. Truth of the matter is, I haven't even assembled this.
- Smartdraw software. I bought it for a job, thinking I'd need it to make flow charts all the time, but I ended up never actually needing it after the first week.
- Visual Studio 2008. I thought this would be handy to have for my current job, but I haven't even installed this software yet.
- All the AJAX and Ruby books sitting on my bookshelf. Again, I thought it would be good to read these books to make job-hunting easier.
- A couple of Fendi watches. One is no longer working, and I can't seem to find the other one. So I go around with no watch.
- Norton Antivirus. I used this for a month, and then realized how much Norton Antivirus sucks, because it's so obtrusive and annoying. I think I've spent money on all of different AV softwares in my day (MacAfee, ZoneAlarm, AVG, and Kapersky), plus money on Adaware and various system optimizers.
- Leather mailman bag for holding papers when going to job interviews. Since I haven't gone on a job interview in a while, I don't use this.
- HP All-in-One Printer. I think I've used my printer about twice, not to mention the fact that I have a Canon printer in the closet.
- Guitar Hero 3 Band game. It's still in the original box.
- Fancy italian blazer, italian pants and italian shoes. I wanted to look cool at formal parties. I've never worn them due to lack of invites to formal parties.
- Steam Vacuum cleaner (to go with my normal vaccuum cleaner). Never used.
- Car Repairs. I ended up spending 2500 dollars on a car that's worth about 1500 dollars according to Kelley Blue Book. Doh.
- Keyclone. I was going to use it so I could dual box World of Warcraft. However, I never got a working key from the author of this mod so I couldn't use it, and then I forgot about wanting to dual box anyways.
- Custom resume service. I bought this thinking I needed help with my resume so that I could get a job. I paid the money for this, but I ended up getting a job before I ever finished the questionnaire for this.
- Leather bomber jacket with the puffy lining. I can't seem to find this jacket anymore.

Tastes like baby ruth

2009-11-10T01:12:02Z

I almost got into a car accident in the Safeway parking lot yesterday. I was trying to get out of the Safeway parking lot, but someone was idling in front of Safeway, which caused other cars to block the way out of the parking "lane" with their cars. So I pulled back into my parking space, and tried to do a 3 point turn the other way, so I could get out. Unfortunately, someone pulled up right behind me and started honking (though I guess the honking was fortunate). The person driving behind me, definitely did not look like someone who's car I would want to hit. Eventually the person who was blocking the way out drove off.

I've been snacking on Triple Threat Caramel Fusion Powerbars lately. Caramel nougat peanut goodness! Mmmm. Then again that probably explains why I've gained 10 pounds in the last month *argh*. I must re-commit to only eating bland foods like plain rice and chicken. :P

I haven't been getting much sleep either. I've been playing Borderlands http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderlands_(video_game) and Dragon Age http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Age:_Origins til 1 am every night. Tsk tsk. I like both games a lot but I don't really have the time or the attention span to write up a review of why. Maybe I'll have more time later.

I found out today that we don't get Veteran's Day off at work. Then again we don't seem to get that many days off here at all. Meh.

Still alive.. barely

2009-10-22T17:39:24Z

Been really busy with guild management and work lately. I haven't been sleeping much either, due to staying up late to watch episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, and Spectacular Spider Man.

Cancelled Safari Bookshelf

2009-10-01T18:25:29Z

I cancelled my Safari Bookshelf today. I couldn't justify spending 20 dollars a month on something I haven't used in 4 years.

For those of you who don't know what Safari Bookshelf is, it's an online library where you can "check out" a virtual book and then read it online. The "small" shelf lets you have 5 slots for books. Once you have checked out a book though, you cannot remove it from your shelf from a month. Most books only take up one slot, but some books take up two slots.

Also, you earn "tokens" which allow you to download chapters from books in PDF format. Also, you can get a discount when buying some books (in the material sense) through the Safari Bookshelf. But I never took advantage of the tokens/buying books from the website.

Don't get me wrong; the Safari bookshelf is great in theory. I simply don't have time to read books online anymore, in between having to work long hours at work, then logging into WoW everyday to take care of the guild stuff.

The end of it all?

2009-09-23T05:10:05Z

*queues "In the End" by Linkin Park*

So, I was talking with my manager (the VP of development) about some test files I was creating for our current client. The Vice President of the project managers bursts in, saying there's an production emergency and that she needs to talk to my manager. The VPPM gives me a glare that instantly tells me that the production emergency is my fault. They go into her office but I don't hear anything from there.

Then the two lead developers (Slick Hair, and Glasses) tells my manager that he needs to talk with her about an emergency. I sense from what he's saying, that the emergency is the same as the emergency that the VPPM was talking about. I hear shouting in the hallway about "an exit strategy to deal with this" and how they need to transition my current projects over to the new guy they just hired ASAP.

Then my manager comes in, and sheepishly tries to convince me that everything is alright, and that "she's on my side". Why do I have a hard time believing that?

Honestly I'm getting tired of all the drama at my workplace. If they told me tomorrow that that my stuff was in a box, and wanted to escort me out of the building, I would be absolutely relieved. Yes, it would suck not having a job right now, but I don't think I can take working here any longer. :(

Getting older now

2009-09-09T18:58:07Z

Meh!

I'm having one of those years

2009-09-01T19:46:59Z

It seems like things have been spiraling out of control since last December.

Losing interest in playing my rogue

2009-08-13T00:46:55Z

I've had a nasty cramp in the arch of my left foot since 7 p.m. last night. I wonder if it's because I skipped lunch yesterday. I was sooo busy with work I forgot to eat my lunch, and strangely, when I got home, I wasn't all that hungry.

I'm losing interest in playing my rogue right now. We had three rogues in the guild, but I was the only rogue available to raid. I recruited a rogue because I thought we needed a second rogue for interrupts, but once I recruited a rogue, suddenly the two other rogues who weren't raiding, suddenly became available to raid. So now we're up to four rogues signing up for 25 man raids, in the last month. While it's nice to have extra people signing up for raids since we're still short on DPS due to the summer doldrums, it bothers me bring four rogues since they don't bring any synergistically to our raid. We already have the 4% physical damage debuff from an arms warrior, and the 3% crit chance debuff from a ret pally. So basically, they bring tricks of trade and fan of knives spam for trash. :P

We're also still crazy short on healers (as I mentioned in my last post). Hopefully I can fix this problem with recruitment soon..

RTS overload

2009-08-11T01:09:27Z

Uggg.. I had a hard time waking up this morning. Then again, I never get a good night's sleep on Monday mornings, because the garbage trucks always wake up me at 4 a.m. It also didn't help that I spent twelve hours this weekend playing Supreme Commander instead of getting exercise, or sleeping. Then again considering how I've been feeling lately it felt good to blow stuff up. :P

I was pretty exhausted last week. I got about 4-5 hours of sleep each night, mostly because people were all gung-ho about doing heroics until midnight, to complete the daily heroic quest and farm Emblems of Conquest (I will admit it feels a bit dirty to farm item level 200/item level 219 epics from a 5 man). Then after I logged off, I had to spend an hour/hour and a half working on the guild forums and recruitment. I'm scrambling to get replacements because I was just informed last week that two of our druid healers are not going to be playing WoW anymore due to work, and a third druid healer is going on vacation for the month. I can't see the forest for lack of trees..

There's this list of things I always mean to get done (like work on my resume, or put together my exercise bike) but I never get it done, between work, and running the guild. I should take some time off from WoW but it's pretty hard since we're down to basically one active officer right now, and nobody else in the guild has the desire AND the ability to be a guild officer. I've learned the hard way, several times now, what happens when you make the wrong people an officer in a guild, and I've got the wrinkles and grey hairs to prove it (lol).

I boggle when I see how active people on my Facebook friends list, are on Facebook/Twitter. Then again, I don't consider myself to be all that interesting. I don't find myself coming up with philosphical or witty comments all that often, and I don't think anyone would be interested in hearing about what I had for lunch. :P If I was a technology evangelist or a product promoter I would be more interested in both of those sites, though.

I just don't post enough

2009-07-31T17:28:41Z

I haven't posted much on this Livejournal lately. I've been swamped between work and running the guild. Summertime may mean relaxing beach vacations for some people, but for me it means going into overdrive with recruitment to replace people who quit the game because of boredom with WoW. Summers have always been a "down" period for the guild, because of people quitting WoW or using the summer as an opportunity to trade up to another guild (since other guilds are having attendance issues as well). Anyways, with four of my guild officers having left the guild/quit WoW in the last four months, and having to rebuild a 25 man raid roster pretty much from scratch, it's meant a lot more work for me. Oh well, I didn't really need/want a tan anyways. :P

Despite the setback of losing 20 Naxx 25 geared raiders to RL/other servers back in May, we did finally manage to get back into 25 man raiding a couple of weeks ago. We worked on Ulduar 10 right after the split, and with persistent recruiting efforts over the past couple of months we've gotten ourselves back into Ulduar 25, and downed 4 of 14 bosses in one week. It's not great, but considering our low server population and progression, I think we are doing fine. We still have a couple people who do low DPS for their gear level, but both of those people acknowledge their DPS issues and seem committed to improvement. We decided to do Naxx 25 this week to replace blues on a few of our members (it's hard to recruit Ulduar 25 ready people on our server). We did 3 wings in 3 hours, which is alright, though I know we could do better. We wanted to finish up Naxx 25 last night but the instance server gods deemed that impossible. However, people seem psyched to finish it up tonight.

As for me, I've had to go to the dentist four times in four weeks. I hadn't gone to the dentist in about a year, so when I visited the dentist for a cleaning, he told me I had a major cavity in one of my molars. So I've had to go the dentist twice for root canals, and once to get a crown fitted. I'm supposed to back into the dentist's office again next week. I have dental insurance through work, but I've hit my benefits cap for the year, so this is gonna be painfully expensive (like over two thousand dollars total for everything). Ugh. It seems like once I have some money set aside I end up spending it on something. I think I spent about three thousand dollars on my car this year, and three thousand five hundred dollars on my computer. Combine that with rent, gas, food, electricity, internet, and the random things I buy from Amazon each week, and my paycheck goes by pretty fast.

Work is pretty much the same. I had an annoying SSIS project to work on the last four weeks. This project is gonna take up my time until September, but I'm slightly ahead of schedule so I have some breathing room (for now). There's a ping pong tournament later today but I don't want to go. I'm tired and have been feeling sick for the past couple of days. I've been working at this company for over a year now, and yet I don't have any friends that I would hang out with outside of work. Is that sad?

I was exercising everyday at one point, but I've slipped on my exercise regimen lately. I *should* exercise more often but I find it difficult to get up early enough to get in exercise, before I have to go to work. I would exercise after work, but when I do get home, I usually have to log into WoW. I'm hoping things settle down a bit, but it seems like once things get to a "smooth point" where the guild is running itself, something happens like people start quitting WoW/quitting the guild. Is running a guild always going to be a vicious cycle for me?

Toasty

2009-06-29T19:42:29Z

Man this weekend was broiling. And of course, I don't have air conditioning at my apartment, so it made for a muggy, sticky experience (and not in a good way). I got new tires for my car - it set me back 700 dollars for 4 tires (eek). In total, I've spent 3k on the "beatermobile" this year.

California living is expensive. From what I've read on city-data.com, apparently a 90k per year salary is the minimum needed to live in Sunnyvale or Irvine. o.o I know my budget feels tight living in Marin (which is about as expensive as living in San Francisco) on my salary (which is far less than 90k per year). I've been working at this company for a year, but I doubt I could get a raise that would take my salary up to 90k, let alone get a raise in general with the current economy and my boss's (low) view of my work performance. But with my relative lack of work experience (a little over 4 years now) and the sluggish job market, it would be hard to find a new job that pays more than what I currently make, and is a decent place to work for. Oyyy..

Facebook friending

2009-06-22T20:07:35Z

I've had a Facebook account for a while now. I think I spend about 15 minutes per year on Facebook. I definitely don't look around on Facebook for people I knew in high school or college; I feel like I was a completely different person back then and I'm not interested in dredging up the past. So I don't get excited when I see people send me Facebook friend requests.

Like right now for instance, I logged in and noticed I had 10 Facebook friend requests from people from my high school. I went through and friended them all, because at least they're not the usual Myspace porn site ads disguised as a real user. But I won't start posting Twitter updates to inform them of every minute detail of my day-to-day life; like if I posted:

"Hey, I'm gonna have Subway for dinner!"

or

"American Idol is the coolest!"

Eh.. maybe I'm just too cynical/world-weary from all the time I spend running the guild. *shrug*

Dailydoppel

2009-06-04T23:56:41Z

http://dailydoppel.blogspot.com

Site that compares actors who look similar to each other.

It's kinda cool.. it suggested that Yvonne Strahovski (from NBC's Chuck) looks similar to Portia de Rossi or Julia Stiles. o.o

Online spending addiction

2009-06-03T19:54:23Z

I looked at my list of orders through Amazon over the last year, and I was shocked. I think I've spent 10,000 dollars buying things online since I moved into my apartment back in April 2008.

32 inch flat screen TV
Wii + games
XBox + games
PSP + games
Nintendo DS + games
PC games
Exercise bike
Water Distiller
Fan
Space Heater
Probably about 20 different programming books (AJAX,SQL,Ruby etc).

Add to that all the clothes/shoes I've bought online, and the Dell XPS computer (cost me about 3,500 dollars) and it adds up fast. And I wonder why I can't afford to move out of here..

Slow work week

2009-05-17T22:17:37Z

I thought last week at work was going to be hectic, but it turned out it was really slow instead. I think I did actual work for 2 hours on Wednesday, 2 hours on Thursday, and 2 hours on Friday. I can't do any more because my ability to work is dependent on other people in the company doing their work so I can continue with my work.

On Friday afternoon, right before the lead developers were about to leave for the day, they went over to another person's office to talk to them. Then when the developers came back, they said "I saw him doing something on the internet right before he closed Internet Explorer. That's grounds for dismissal". Then the developer was like "We should talk to Jim (the IT guy) about setting up a filter for that kind of stuff. I freaked out because I was looking at the WoW forums when the developers were talking about getting someone fired for misuse of internet. Then they both packed up their belongings, and went home. It was very odd.

Needless to say, I have not been getting much sleep this weekend. I woke up at least three times last night. Strangely, I cut back on caffeine (I don't drink Rockstar energy drink or espresso anymore) and NOW I'm having problems sleeping.

Lack of morale

2009-05-13T02:45:40Z

Today, during our weekly meeting (which my manager has cancelled out on for the last two weeks) my manager told me that she needed to get something off her chest. Apparently, she's bothered by the fact that I won't do my job unless I get compliments. o.O She said that when she gave me criticism (like last week when she told me I was ruining the company) I sulk for the rest of the day and stop moving. Hellooo if I'm ruining the company why would I want to do things that will make the situation worse? However, I didn't want to get into a flame-wars with her, so I explained my lack of energy as saying I was stressed out. Then she replied "are you saying I don't get stressed out?" which then I responded "no, I know you get stressed out too" then we just dropped the conversation there.

I dunno if it's even a big deal. I'm sure there are jobs where I would get treated much worse. But still, every day I go into work I wonder why I'm still working there. I mean, I don't get asked for input on new hires for the department, even though everyone in my department is on the new hires panel. And a month ago, when the manager sent out invitations in outlook, to add people's birthday's to the calendar, my birthday was the only one not included. o.o Meh. I guess I should just suck it up since I need this job for the health insurance.

What a waste

2009-04-23T03:02:38Z

I had an annoying day at work. The Skeletor project manager was freaking out about how her client didn't recieve any export files. She asked me to re-send the files, which I did, but then she also called in the lead developer to give me a chewing out. And then the Cryptkeeper project manager was freaking out about her client's document imaging problems for this Excel sheet. So then the same lead developer gave me a second chewing out. I don't know why I still work at the company.

I came home from work, and smelled wet pizza and broccoli. I noticed that the freezer door was open. I checked the food in there, and it turned out it was soggy and unfrozen. The ice cream was completely melted. So I tossed out 70 dollars worth of ice cream, vegetables, and frozen food. I went over to the grocery store to buy more food, but I only filled up the freezer halfway. I'll have to go to the grocery store again to fill it up completely.

Last song

2009-04-02T17:02:44Z

Today's turbulent economy has claimed another victim. Muzak declared for bankruptcy:
http://consumerist.com/5151792/muzak-bankrupt

Fortunately, at my current workplace, they don't play background music. But I used to work at a grocery store, they used to play Billboard Top Hits of the 90's on a continuous loop. I felt like I was trapped in a Kevin Williamson drama. :P

Boredom hunger

2009-04-01T00:20:45Z

Work has been kind of slow the past week. I'm juggling the same three data import/export projects, but since I'm still waiting for client feedback I can't do much with the projects. To be honest, the actual implementation of things doesn't take me long anymore; it's all the paranoid testing and re-testing that hogs all my time. I hate putting a code change into production and then having a dreadful realization that I forgot a small thing (like for example, a semicolon in a definitions file) and now the process isn't going to work in production and the client is going to be pissy, which in turn will make the product manager pissy, which in turn will make the VP of development pissy, well you get the point. It's like a domino chain of DOOM.

I also came to a realization about how much food I eat because I'm bored. I wouldn't say that I'm as bored at this job as I was when I was working at Edusoft, but I think the amount of anxiety I feel just being here right now at my workplace, also contributes to my need for "comfort food". Drinking more water should help, in theory. I used to chew two 15-piece packs of gum per day, but I don't think I can do that anymore. I think the Nutrasweet/Splenda whatever was making me nauseous.

I've been having a really hard time waking up in the mornings lately. Today, I had my alarm set for 7 a.m., but I didn't actually get out of bed until 8 a.m. Which meant I didn't get to work til 9:25 a.m., so I have to stay pretty late tonight. Sleeping in on weekends doesn't help because then I end up undersleeping on Sunday night which means I go to work on Monday totally groggy and drowsy.

I spent a lot of money in the last year just on various things, like an exercise bike, a TV, the new computer, car repairs, a dry vacuum cleaner and a wet vacuum cleaner, a water distiller, Wii + a dozen games, clothes, and shoes. I probably spent about a thousand dollars on programming books alone, which I haven't read. And I still haven't finished my resume to submit to the professional resume service. Oyyy. I should start thinking about my retirement and applying to the 401k here at work, or at the very least getting an IRA account. I wonder whatever happened to the old 401k I had from my first job. I remember I got a mail from the 401k firm telling me I needed to take action, but I don't remember what I had to do. *shrug*

The end?

2009-03-20T20:21:50Z

Well, the manager called me into her office today. I had been testing a custom onboarding email on my workstation (like she asked me to) and it was working fine on my workstation, but apparently when I moved the sql view to production I mispelled the profile name, which caused the email to fail, then the census upload failed too. Apparently the client called to complain. So this is like the sixth mistake I've made in the past three weeks, because something I've tested in development, didn't work correctly in production. I really don't know what to do anymore. It seems like the more i stress about doing things the right way, I miss something and then I get slammed down for it. And I can't get any help because the lead developers are always so busy with their twelve gajillion projects. Nevermind the fact that I've been here nine months and perhaps gotten four hours of training. At the initial interview I even said I don't know this stuff, which is why I accepted a junior position and junior salary. I'm freaking 30 years old and still working junior programming positions. Bleh.

She told me none of the product managers want to work with me anymore. She didn't tell me I was on notice, she just said my performance was "unacceptable". Maybe that's her way of telling me to gtfo. Then I overheard the lead developers talking shit about as well. So much for them being happy that I was working there..

Job quitting quiz

2009-03-19T18:08:11Z

I think my job is giving me an ulcer. It feels like things are spiraling downwards out of control. No matter how many times I double and triple check my work, I end up missing something, and then someone at the company jumps down my throat over it. I'm tired of hearing things like "you're damaging the company's reputation". Am I really that bad at my job?

http://careerplanning.about.com/library/blquittingquizresults.htm?cor=37

You have some problems with your job and quitting may be a good choice for you.

Unless your current job is making you physically ill or your employer is asking you to do something illegal or unethical, you don't have to quit immediately, but you can start looking for a new job if you want to.

Calgon, take me away!

2009-03-18T20:25:13Z

So I've had some close calls at work lately. I've been in my manager's office so many times I have my own high chair and dunce cap with my name on it. The angry villagers (the product managers) are calling for my head on a silver platter. The Obviously Enraged Duo (the lead developers) are obviously enraged. But my manager has tried to smooth things out, and insists she's happy that I'm here, despite all my screwups. I can tell that she's straining more and more as she puts on her happy face. She deserves an Oscar award for her performance but I can tell deep down she's doing everything in her power to avoid shooting eyelasers of death at me.

I can see my remaining days are probably limited here. I really need to update my resume, but I always forget about doing that. I mean, I paid 280 bucks for a resume review, but I never submitted my resume for review in the first place. I got stuck on the questionnaire that asked "what do you want to do for your career long-term?" I've never seriously thought about that. I mean, when I was younger I had these ambitions of being a musician, but I never went anywhere with it. I played piano for 4 years, then stopped playing because I got bored. I played violin for 2 years, and then gave it up because I couldn't stand the conductor. I rapped for 3 years (even produced a few poorly mixed tapes with a keyboard) and then gave it up because I grew out of liking rap music anymore.

I went to college as an English major, because I thought I wanted to be a novelist. After two years of taking English classes as UC Davis I realized I wasn't cut out for that. So I went to community college for a few years to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I did improv acting for a year during that period, and enjoyed it, but got tired of improv group drama, so I stopped doing that as well.

I then resigned myself to finding a "real job" so I went to Sacramento State (ugh) for three years to get a Computer Engineering degree. I finished that up and then spent six months struggling to land a job. Most companies rejected my resume outright because I didn't have any IT work experience yet. I lucked out and got a job working as a systems analyst for a "capacity management" firm. It was not the best working environment ; the owner of the company was a micromanager, and so was my supervisor. Not to mention the owner also had a 1950's mentality towards people (I'll leave it as that so as to avoid a lawsuit). I didn't get any career direction or useful job experience from the job though, but having the name of the company on my resume, and a reference to call, was enough to get a job interview with a digital rights management firm. My time at the digital rights management firm was pretty helpful since I learned quite a bit about Linux and Perl, but eventually that company folded and I was out on the street again. I then got a job at an educational software publishing firm which was cool. It was like my dream job since I could actually identify with people at the company, since they were in my age group/socioeconomic background. But then that company too folded, and now I'm here at the human resources management firm. It's funny how the days turn into weeks, the weeks turn into months, and the months turn into years like that.

I did call my landlord about renewing the lease. He thought his wife took care of it, and his wife thought her husband the landlord took care of it. o.O He said he would be happy to sign another year long lease. He claimed he was going to drop off a new lease by the apartment. I asked him if he could mail it to me but he said he would drop by the apartment on his way to work, and then I could make a copy of it and mail it back. Anyways, it's two weeks later and I still haven't recieved a new lease. I'm just gonna send him the same monthly rent, and hope he doesn't decide to up the rent.