No, this isn't about World of Warcraft romance:

http://www.switched.com/2009/12/01/japanese-man-marries-virtual-girlfriend/

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.

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.

*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. :(

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 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?

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

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..

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.

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.

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.

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

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*

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..

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.

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.

So I got the car back today. The total damage was 2300 something dollars. Eep. So I just spent 50% more on repairs, than my car is actually worth. Labor came out to 1500 dollars worth of that total.

I don't think I get paid enough considering how stressful my current job is. However, I don't think I can find a new job this year, considering how awful the economy is right now. Plus I don't have much actual IT-related work experience (only about 4 years now). I wish I hadn't wasted so much time figuring out what I wanted to do for a living. Bleargh.

Here's a list of computer IT wage listings from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics:
http://www.bls.gov/oes/2007/may/oes151021.htm

My landlord STILL hasn't gotten back to me about renewing the lease. I'm really worrying now.

I couldn't sleep last night. I kept waking up at 4 a.m., 4:30 a.m., 5:00 a.m. I eventually got out of bed at 6:30 a.m., then drove over to the Toyota dealership.

I go into the dealership, and chat with the service advisor. I tell him I called yesterday about an appointment, and that I wanted to get the car's brakes checked out. He seems awfully friendly (far friendlier than any other car repair-related person I've ever spoken with). He asks for the key to the car, then runs outside to look at the car, and writes down some stuff on a sheet. Then he goes back inside, and tells me that I can borrow a car while they work on mine, as long as I refill the tank to make up for any gas I use. I'm like golly gee whiz this is convenient. He asks me if I've ever had any service work done on the car. I draw a blank; I don't even remember the last time I got an OIL change for the car (I think it was back in December). He then tells me I ought to get a timing belt change; it's apparently past due to the 2nd timing belt at 160,000 miles. Not really thinking any better of it, I go "sure why not". Then he asks if there's anything else wrong with the car. I casually mention the fact that the dash lights/radio/cigarette lighter aren't working. He then goes "anything else?" and I say no. Then he gives me a estimate for 1000 dollars. 500 something for the timing belt and "other critical service upgrades", 300 dollars for the brakes, and 120 to fix the electrical system. I'm like sheesh that's a lot of money, but seeing as I haven't done ANY service work on the car for the last four years, I figure that's fine. I then take the loaner car and drive to work.

I get a call around 11 a.m. from the service advisor. The service advisor said they did a check of the car, and he had some bad news. As the service advisor put, the brakes were "metal on metal". He quoted 270 dollars EACH to replace the front and back brakes. Then he says the radiator has a leak, and that's gonna be costly as well. He also states that "an air intake valve" was faulty and that it was costing me performance. With the timing belt replacement, he put the total cost of parts + labor to 2200 dollars. My jaw drops to the ground and I'm like uggggh. I mean I can pay for these repairs, but I just dropped a major chunk of change on a new computer a month ago. Plus the repairs cost 50% more than the blue book value of my car! Here's the kicker: he tells me there's an oil leak and that the tires need to be replaced as well, because they're down to 2 minutes 30 seconds. I'm floored at this point by how much this crappy car is gonna cost me. He sympathizes with the massive expense of all this, and tells me he'll just work on the "driving critical" stuff for now, and we can deal with the oil leak/new tires at another time. I'm like gee thanks. I tell him to go ahead with making the "driving critical" repairs and he says the car will be done tomorrow, but I can keep the loaner car for now.

I forgot to bring lunch, so I had to skip lunch again, but it didn't really matter since I lost my appetite after hearing about the ginormous automotive repair bill, plus I had to work on a shitload of client-related software problems. Both my manager and the engineering manager were having fits over how these software problems were gonna potentially delay the client go-live (and thus delay the company getting $$$), so they were breathing down my neck to get these problems solved YESTERDAY. Like I needed more stress.

To add to my stress, my apartment lease ends at the end of March, and my landlord still hasn't offered to renew my lease. I would expect he would have mentioned the lease when he came over to fix the bathtub back in January, but noooo. I'm not THRILLED about my apartment, but it's the cheapest place I can find in my area, that's not a total dump, and plus this way I don't have to try and move all my stuff. I know I wouldn't be able to lift my computer, or my TV I never watch, or my never-assembled exercise bike (long story) by myself.

I can't believe how much crap I've managed to accumulate in my apartment over the last 12 months. I probably have every handy doodad/essential gadget/distraction that a single male could possibly ever need/want, and then some. Of course, considering how many hours I spend playing WoW every day, I don't really ever make use of these items.

I haven't eaten much in the past couple of days. On Sunday I ate a California Pizza Kitchen Pizza for one. I picked up a salad and Healthy Chicken entree from Pasta Pomodoro, but when I got home I ended up only having time to eat the salad. I logged into the game to check if the Mysterious Egg on my paladin had hatched (it turned out I never got a new one from last week). Then I had to chat with a guild applicant, then I got invited to a VoA raid. After the VoA raid, there was only 10 minutes left in between the VoA raid and the OS25 raid, so I only had time to suck down the salad without really chewing it. I resignedly put the Healthy Chicken in the fridge to prevent it from spoiling while I was raiding. After the raid I didn't go to bed until 2 a.m. because I was too hyper after the raid.

I woke up this morning and finally got through the Toyota Dealership (I got busy signals the other times I called previously). Normally, making an appointment at a car dealership is a arduous ordeal. But surprisingly this was very quick. The guy at the dealership asked me my name, the make/model of the car, and why I wanted to take the car in for. They asked me when I wanted to take the car in. Strangely enough, they didn't tell me when I could take the car in, they just asked me when *I* wanted to take the car in. I said tomorrow at 8 a.m. They said "see you then!" and then said "Thanks!" and hung up. I figure I will have to get up early to drive the car over to there at 8 a.m. then walk the 2 miles from the car dealership to work. But it will be worthwhile walking the 2 miles to work, and walking the 2 miles back to the dealership, to get this brake problem sorted out. I'm just paranoid about car repairs, especially since I work so far away from home. If I can't get the car back by the end of the day I'm probably screwed since my apartment is 20 miles away from work. I guess we'll see, though.

I was so groggy this morning from lack of sleep. I took a frozen chicken quesadilla flatbread with me to eat, so I wouldn't have to stop by Safeway, which in turn would save me 20 minutes of time. Unfortunately, when I got to work, I put my flatbread (in a plain plastic bag) on my desk, and I forgot to transfer it to the my insulated bag. So when I checked my flatbread around noontime it was all soggy and smelly. I just ended up throwing away the flatbread, because I didn't want to risk getting salmonella. I hate wasting food like that, but I can't afford to be sick either. I don't really feel that hungry right now anyways. I guess I could go to Carl's Jr. to eat if I'm really hungry, but just thinking about Carl's Jr. right now is making me nauseous. :P

Anyways, I have a crapton of work to do today, between THREE major client projects on my plate, so I don't have time to eat anyways. But hopefully my appetite will feel better later.

I've got a bunch of crap to do this week at work. It's hard keeping it all straight sometimes. I'll get deep into working on a project, then I'll get an email from a PM saying "this issue is urgent help immediately!".

I'm worried right now about my car. The passenger side wheel in my car has been making a grinding noise for a while, particularly when I drive at low speeds. Sometimes I don't notice it at all, but some days I can totally hear the grinding noise and it freaks me out. I was wondering what would happen if my car broke down. I would be screwed, since I have to drive 20 miles each way to get to work, and I don't think there are any convenient bus routes from the area of Corte Madera where I live, to Novato. And I don't know anyone who lives near me that would drive me to work, and I can't work from home, because I STILL don't have a VPN account to connect into the work network.

I think I should go to bed early tonight so I can take my car into Midas tomorrow, that's located 3 blocks away from where I work. I would go to the Toyota dealership but that's kinda out of the way in San Rafael, and then I wouldn't be able to get to work. Taking a day off to get my car fixed is not an option right now, because of all the projects that keep getting dropped on me everyday. I might need an appointment but I should at least go inside so I can find out if they can do anything about the grinding noise.