fontosaurus

Today, I am just beat. I slept alone last night and it felt very alien/weird. I kept reaching over and finding an empty spot on the bed and then waking up because of it. Wow. I've got it bad for this girl, don't I?

Work today SUCKS ASS. I am going to be here like 11 hours so that I can get done with all the pre-release shit that is supposed to happen tomorrow. Last week, I was looking at this week as an opportunity to get caught up on all the craziness that I've been dealing with, and now shit is blowing up left and right. ARGH.

I'm so freaked that I am cutting this short and getting back to it. I hope you guys aren't having the DAY OF OH FUCKS that I am.

Day dragging. Set alarm for same time as yesterday, but today I had to be in at 8AM instead of 8:45AM. Made it in plenty of time, anyway. Hallelujah. Day dragging though, and am tired. Sat here for 20 minutes wondering why my ColdFusion code wasn't working...turned out I was looking at the wrong file with my browser. Ow.

The good news is, those 20 minutes of troubleshooting went quickly. Stay busy = shorter day.

Well, my first day of being back at work is now water under the bridge. It was great to be back at it again...I got a lot done for my first day, and have a solid understanding of how the one site I'm renovating/updating works, and I'm starting to piece together a mental idea for the layout of the new one I have to build. I can't tell you how good it feels to be back at it. The people I work with are cool, quiet, and calm, and there's not this constant "hurry up and do this, even though we're going to change the project spec while you're working" attitude like at the dot-coms. It feels orderly, planned, and professional, and I love it. As it stands, my contract runs until Sept. 20th, and I'm hoping to god it becomes a fulltime gig.

Anyway, not much has happened since I got home. My dad is, of course, being a pain in the arse about shit. "Why are you so calm and quiet? Is something wrong? What's wrong? Is something wrong?" Yeah, dad, I didn't get much sleep last night, I'm fucking exhausted from my first day back at work in 8 months, and there's this guy who won't stop asking questions. *sigh*

I did, however, teach him to use iMovie today...he went out and got a DV videocamera today, which is coolio. I am going to play with it and maybe post some video later this summer of me doing silly shit like BMX racing, goofing off with my friends, and so on. Stuff to post on here.

In other news, I'm skipping out on Acme Comedy Club tonight. I'm pretty sure mso is still annoyed with me for not checking my voicemail/having my cellphone on me 24-7 this weekend, and not being around when I was needed. I mean, yeah, she's been very supportive and a good friend, but some of the shit she said on the phone when she called last night really pissed me off, and I think she was out of line.

Is it bad that I want to spend some money on myself already? I've been wanting to move all the components on my BMX bike to a new frame and fork, and it'll cost about $400. I think it's good after 8 months of being frugal and doing things like selling my Bianchi and my Olympics tickets. I'm entitled to buying myself something nice, right?

Anyway, all in all, though, I'm happy. I had a good weekend, the first day of work was good, and things seem to finally be looking up... :-)

I am at my first day of work. It is fun. :-)

First, lemme thank all of you who have been so supportive of me in my quest for the new job. It's meant a lot to me. I owe all of you for the good karma, encouragement, good thoughts, etc. I'm not sure how I'll repay the kindnesses, but I'm sure I will...

Anyway, for those that don't have all the details yet... I have a position that's an 8 to 12 week contract, fulltime, with the potential to go full-time after the contract is up. It's with the Carlson Leisure Group -- one of the Carlson companies. Schwanky facilities over by where 494 and 394 join up. $26 per hour. I am going to go in there, kick ass, and take names. I'll be doing some intranet development and design, and doing some stuff with their travel bonus site. Should be pretty fun. I'll be doing a lot of front-end user-interface stuff, and some light ASP and ColdFusion dev... I'm totally looking forward to it.

Friday evening I hauled ass down to Mankato to hang out with Carolyn...we were going to go out and get hammered, but by the time I got there, I was pretty tired. We played a bit of Chez Geek, then went down to the bars. I didn't feel like crowds, so we went over to Mexican Village, and had a tequila shot and a beer. Then to bed.

Saturday, we came up here and helped Dave shop for a new Macintosh system. He, as usual, was very methodical about what he should buy. In the end, he got a new G4 desktop. 933 MHz, 768MB RAM, 60GB internal drive, and then an additional 120GB external drive, a new digital camera, a router (which I have to help him configure once his cable service is back online), and some other miscellany. Oh yeah, and a 17" flatscreen. Beautiful system -- I'm mucho jealouso.

Anyway, after setup fun and getting him hooked up with a bunch of the important software, and then Carolyn, myself, Dave, and Kristin went over to Calhoun and went rollerblading. Quite fun. Kristin and Carolyn called it time for a rest after the first lap, and Dave and I did a faster second lap while they sucked down Powerade and kibbitzed.

Carolyn and I went and cleaned up and then had dinner at the Something Original Roadhouse Grill Something Something, which was good. They seem to be an Americanized knock-off of the Outback Steakhouse...their Bloomin' Onion equivelent wasn't very good. The steak and garlic mashed potatoes were awesome, however. Once I got us to 169, she drove the rest of the way -- I was so tired, I fell asleep almost immediate, woke up briefly in LeSueur, and then woke up again in Mankato. Crashed out.

This morning, we went and had a healthy (yeah, right) McDonald's breakfast, then went and saw Lilo and Stitch. Normally, I have a love-hate relationship with Disney. You can never fault the art, music, etc., it's just sometimes a little to saccharine for my tastes. This one isn't the typical Disney fare -- it's got a lot of juvenile humor and a lot of non-whitebread/suburban characters. It managed to make me laugh like hell, and even had me a little choked up at a couple of points. Does that make me a wuss? So be it.

Anyway, I also hit Old Navy -- mom was nice enough to float me $100 for some biz casual clothes, and lo and behold, they had polo shirts on sale, so I grabbed a trio of them. I'm going to hit a few other places tomorrow for more. Variety good. Variety very good.

I guess working in biz clothes is the last step in growing up eh? I can't say I won't miss the jeans-and-t-shirt jobs, but I miss money more than I'll ever miss that.

I was reading Paul Attner's analysis of the salary cap system in football today, and how it has made football a better sport. And I got to thinking...what America needs is a salary cap for corporations!

Think about it for a minute! This would create a system in which companies were free to innovate, set prices, etc., but in which there was an upper limit on how much money could be spent on employees' (including management) salaries. This prevents things like parasitic management and huge CEO salaries, because if management starts gobbling up too much money, there's nothing left for the workers, and in the end you end up with an office full of managers with no one to manage and no income stream.

The trick to making this work is to increase the salary cap annually, equal to inflation -- call it a cost-of-living allowance. Furthermore, to increase employee and management incentive and to create more efficiency, you institute a bonus plan.

The bonus plan works like this -- first off, the company's books are open to any employee that wants to examine them, to ensure there is no management trifling with the money. There is money set aside for salary bonuses every year -- how that works, I haven't yet determined, but probably needs to involve the management, workers, and stockholders. At the end of the fiscal year, the stock is split evenly among the people that have been employed by the company in the last year, even if they are no longer with the company, and based on the amount of time spent with the company. This prevents workers and management from hopping from job-to-job to get tons of bonuses, and prevent management from cutting workers loose prior to bonus time to get more money for themselves.

This bonus plan also motivates workers to produce more and management to find more efficient ways of doing things, because as the amount of money made goes up, so do the bonuses.

Whaddaya think?

Since this web thing isn't exactly panning out, here's some alternatives I have considered:

1. Apache pilot. Pros: be the Angel of Death; marketable skill on leaving the Army. Cons: 6 year term of enlistment; have you seen the skanky women around military bases? NOTE: I am already looking into doing this. I meet the qualifications. Not thrilled about the idea, though.

2. Homelessness. Pros: low rent, low cost-of-living. Cons: cardboard and newpaper are poor insulation; no Internet connection.

3. Musician. Pros: creativity involved; chicks dig musicians. Cons: don't play any musical instrument; can't sing for shit.

4. Writer. Pros: creativity involved; chicks dig writers; like to write. Cons: inconsistent source of income, which I needed as of yesterday.

5. Professional Killer. Pros: steady source of income, big paychecks; lots of free time between gigs. Cons: guilt complex; guys like me get gang-raped in prison; illegal as all hell.

So not long ago, I had an interview with a design firm. Prior to being downsized, I made $70K per year. This place in mid-interview offered me $24K and made it sound like they were doing me some huge favor. That's the first time I've ever said "fuck off" in an interview. I walked. I just got a phone call from them offering me the "grandiose" (their words) salary of $32K. Hello...I was making $70K, my skills are worth that...for you to think that I am going to come aboard and work my ass off for you for less than half of what I was making a year ago indicates you are either a.) delusional or b.) a fucking parasite. Either way, get stuffed.

[2/27/2002 4:02:53 PM | Dan Bailey]
Okay, so I'm writing again within 15 minutes. Sue me. I feel like it. I've been pretty damn unmotivated lately. Depressed, even. I need to get my shit together. That starts today. Going to take care of all the little petty shit I've been neglecting. And I'm going to kick serious ass in the proecss. How ya like me now???

Perhaps it's because I finally, finally beat Roller Coaster Tycoon yesterday. I'm trying to ignore the fact that I have the expansion packs and the Mega Park scenario that was unlocked when I beat the game, because dammit, it's addictive. No more Roller Coaster Tycoon until I get back on track and have a job. Period.

Incidentally, things on the to-do list: get this site redesigned, get caught up on my Font-of-the-Month shit, and get some new free downloads on here.

Well, last night I was jonesing to update this thing again, and Blogger.com was down for 16 hours, which put a bit of a crimp in things. Anyway, I can only remember about half of what I was going to ramble about...

Yesterday was a pretty cool day...I came in to the office and discovered a $50 Barnes and Noble gift certificate on my keyboard, with a note of thanks for all my hard work. So the entire day, I didn't get much done, jonesing to get out of the office and go buy some books. Anyway, I picked up the new issue of Bicycling and three novels, and while I was there, I started to slide back into Writer Mode.

Back in college, I had ideas for dozens of books rolling around in my head. And for some unknown reason, I left most of those behind. Last night, all these ideas started flooding back into my head. So I have concrete ideas in my head for three new novels -- one called Baikonur, Minnesota, which is going to be extremely surreal, another one, still untitled, about miracles in the modern world, and the last one is going to be a look at the aftermath of the Gulf War.

I seem to have found my Muse again lately. This excites me, but at the same time, it's terrifying. I don't want to upset the applecart of my groove -- so I live in fear of doing the wrong thing and ending up falling apart mentally, and losing my Muse again. Anyway, if anyone knows any good and reputable literary agents, let me know.

Something weird happened last night. I think I had a Writer's Epiphany -- I realized how to separate the wheat from the chaff, to dig out where the story really is, and to make use of that. Baikonur, Minnesota once lived under and entirely different title and would have been developed into a bad piece of science fiction, had I pursued it at the time. Now, it will be "spacey", but not in a science fiction way. Trust me. It'll be groovy. The book about miracles in the modern world was going to incorporate the Gulf War as a small detail, and then I realized that a major story lay right there...and a story centering around the Battle of al-Khafji is going to bloom from that...

Anyway, it's like 1:30, and I'm working a half-day today. So, I am outta here. Heading for home.

Peace out, honkies.