The Latest From The Front

"Unofficially Fired" is how I would describe my current position at Carson Masonry (note the lack of a link - bastards...).  This morning I had a little meeting with my manager (assistant manager Mark) and the general manager Chris.  Essentially they told me that I wasn't welcome here anymore and that as a courtesy they would give me 2 weeks to decide if I wanted to "get on the wagon" or "get out".  After I have decided on what direction to go they would then give me another 2 weeks (I guess only if I choose to get on, not out) to prove that I want to be here.  Bastards.  They told me that I wasn't giving 110% - again.  Check out my post from April 27th where you can find a similar prediciment.
This time, I think I am going to find an alternative source of employment.  They told me that I was being sub-standard when neither of them has given me any direction.  If only they would give me a project they would see that I shine.  They even went so far as to tell me repeatedly that I am the only person who can do what I do.  Chris said that it would take him years to get another person that could do what I do.  Well we are closing now, I'd better get the floors clean - lest they have another reason to be mad at me.  Fuckers.
  ~ Mr. Me ~

It Makes You Think

Today I found out that my puppy's sister is in critical condition at a local pet hospital.  The theory is that she may have found a little rat poison.  My prayers are with her, she is the cutest little pup and it would tear me up if she didn't make it.  That said, I am going to go home and love the hell out of my puppy tonight.
  ~ Mr. Me ~

Thankfully

Very thankfully I came into work on Saturday and was reminded by my handy Palm Desktop software that the 24th of July was my anniversary (prior to us getting married of course [pictures still to come]).  I left work as quickly as possible and stopped by a local florest where I found a nice arrangement, which I purchased with rapid action.  Needless to say, my new wife was very happy that I had remembered and I was showered with praises.

The last few days have been slow and relatively uneventful.  I did see a couple movies which I have commented on below.  Read them if you are interested, I will review "I, Robot" and "The Bourne Supremacy".

I, Robot:
  Mr. Me Rating: 7.3 / 10
I found this movie to be a fairly good movie over all.  Although I read many reviews that rated it extrememly low, I checked it out for myself and found myself caught up in the storyline instead of the expertly rendered CGI.  The CGI was what originally caught my eye and what held the story together, without the very well done rendering, the story would have fallen flat on it's face.  I give this a 7.3 for a high quality rendering and good acting - not for a good storyline.

The Bourne Supremacy:
  Mr. Me Rating 6 / 10
This movie intreagued me from the beginning, the original ("The Bourne Identy") was a top notch action flick.  I thought that this movie would be much the same, with the same thought provoking imagry and spooky behind the scenes 'Big Brother' feelings.  This one had none of that and even left me thinking "now why am I watching this again".  As an up note, they tried to keep the action flowing even though the storyline was hindered by some of the longer, more brutal, scenes (look for the agent on agent scene when you see this movie, and I think you will agree it seemed to last longer than necessary).  Overall this movie scores a 6 of 10 for near edge-of-your-seat cinematography as well as having a believable cast.

Until next time,
  ~ Mr. Me ~

The latest and greatest

Today's post is being brought to you via a complicated set of computers and hardware for your viewing pleasure.

Additionally, this post is going to double as a ROTM - as you will quickly see.

Last night sucked.  I probably shouldn't say sucked because it wasn't all that bad but I'll let you decide.  At about 7:30 PM my father-in-law, my wife, and I went to Applebees (note the lack of a link).  We were seated within 5 minutes, very acceptable.  Our server was a little behind and didn't get our drinks until we had been seated for 10 minutes.  When we ordered our drinks we also ordered our food (since we had so much time to think about it).  Our drinks arrived in short order, within 5  minutes - ok as far as service goes.  We all sipped at our drinks and talked - and talked - and talked.  Finally 45 minutes later our server revisits our table to apologize for the delay and told us that our food would be out in about 10 minutes.  By this point my drink has been empty for at least 10 minutes (and would continue to be empty until our meals arrived).  He apologized and that he would send our his manager to talk to us.  The manager, obviously frustrated, told us that he didn't know what was wrong with his staff tonight (except that our server hadn't put in our order) and that he would discount our bill and include free desert.  A few minutes later our server returned to apologize again and reassure us that our food would be out soon.  The manager returned again to give us a gift card worth $30 and reiterate that our deserts would be covered.  By the time we got our food we had been in there for an hour and 5 minutes, now that is what I call a lack of service.  We all finally got our refills on our drinks and we enjoyed the exquisitely fresh food.  After our meals were complete we waited for about 5 minutes for our slacker server to notice and come by to clear our plates and take our desert order.  After what felt like forever, but was acutally 10 minutes, our desert arrived and we enjoyed it immensely.  Our server came by shortly after we finished and took our plates, we also asked for the check.  After 15 minutes he finally returned with our check, slightly discounted (basically got our drinks comped) and we paid him immediately but we didn't have exact change and in favor of leaving before we had been there for 2 hours, we opted to give him a 7 dollar tip (that in my opinion he didn't deserve).  So that was how my night was spent - in at 7:30, out at 9:15.
Hope your night went better than mine,
   ~ Mr. Me ~

No Job Today

Well, went in for my 7:30 interview and as you can see by the time on this post, things went quickly. The whole thing was over with in 5 minutes, which I know isn't good. I was expecting something that wasn't there I guess. Good news is that my application is going up to corporate where I could get another interview. My wife thinks that this guy didn't want to step on corporate's shoes and is letting them have the first go, and then if they don't want me she thinks that today's interviewer may be interested in me.
Personally, I think that he was less than impressed with my credentials - I told him that I had taken A+ and Net+ courses in high school and everything else is self taught, something that I am rather proud of but obviously he wasn't.

I think that my BTRSS program has essentially stalled, I haven't worked on it in over a month now and I don't think I plan on starting again. I made the mistake of trying to build the GUI around the underlying framework but found that I should have been incorporating the GUI from the get go - a mistake that will probably kill the entire project. Ideally I would like to completely rewrite the program from the ground up and build it right this time, but I don't know if I can get properly motivated.

My next big programming thing that I am interested in is making a stable point of sale (POS) that can easily communicate with multiple stores (15+ stores ideally). Tragically, this will potentially take forever since I know next to nothing about how a POS works and how to integrate multiple programs that share data. Also, I am unsure of exactly where to start - something that is typically known way before the project ever begins. My current programming language of choice is Python primarily because I haven't taken the time to learn C or C++. Any help you can provide will be most appreciated.

Well, what started as a short note to tell you that I haven't been employeed yet turned into a project update / new project announcement - now how did that happen?
Until later then,
~ Mr. Me ~

Blogger & Blogspot: Terms of Service

Well I found it, turns out that there is no specific section of the TOS that forbids the use of pornographic material. However upon further inspection of the TOS you will see a few things that could be used to shut down these websites, I bolded them for your convenience.

Blogger: Terms of Service: "You agree to not use the Service to: (a) upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable"

New Job Looms on Horizon

Now does it have to loom?  For that matter I don't even like looms - or fruits there of.  Yet there it is, just sitting there ... on the horizon and all.  Jeez, I don't know what to do with it, but I am sure that I will find something.  Sorry for that incoherent ramble, but I did promise one of those once in a while, now on to the real reason I am posting this message.

The first time that I talked with my new Mother-In-Law (MIL? maybe...) she said that the company that she works for (Meeks, a lumber store) is looking for a new computer person to oversee their computers at the local store as well as a secondary store that is in the area.  With rapid action I had filled out an application and have all ready been called in for a interview.  Well, called in is more of a term than reality.  I had to call the guy that "wanted to talk to me" repeatedly until he finally answered his cell phone this afternoon.  He set me up with an interview tomorrow morning - 7:30 AM.  Now while I am typically awake by this time every morning, I didn't plan on being functional until about 8 - 8:30.  Tomorrow should be interesting, I'll have to take a shower and put on some clothes that have a minimal number of wrinkles in them (for those of you not in the know, I haven't owned an iron for many many months).

The primary reason that I am trying to get this job is because my creativity is rather stunted at my current job (CMS, no link this time asshats! [that would be for my bosses, not you the reader]).  I can't seem to get motivated to do anything creative and I don't know if this is because they have been stunting me from the get-go or if I am simply stagnating with the hideous lack of management.  Today for example, I completed working on a simple yet pointless advertisement that will probably never see the light of day, now how is that for upbeat?  For those of you that are new to my blog, I will rant a little more about the CD & website, you can safely ignore the rest of this paragraph.  Another thing that seems to hinder my creativity is when I complete a project from above there is no appreciation for my labor.  All that I really ask for is a "thank you", "good job", "looks good", or even a "fix this, this and this and it will be great", but do I get any of those?  Not a bloody chance in hell.  All I get from the General Manager is a "I'll take a look at this when I get a chance" and then he proceeds to go on vacation every other week for at least 3 days!  Shit, I just wish that I could have a little respect for something that I do at work, but I guess that would be asking too much.  Nuff said for now.

I don't know if my new job will give me more creativity and thanks for my work, but it should definitly give me more work to do.  Today I managed to ring up no more than 5 dozen transactions, finish the advertisement, push some paper around my desk, take no more than 6 dozen calls, and surf the list of recently updated blogs for several hours.  My how time crawls when you have nothing to do, but I guess it pays ($11 an hour).  Which brings me to another tidbit of information that I would like to know: wasn't it against the blogger rules to post pornographic materials on a blog hosted a blogspot?  I could swear that it was, but don't know for sure.  The reason that I wonder is because I have found an abundance of porn blogs such as Lesbian-Tit, don't ask me - really, I don't know.  All that I know is that it was on the list of recently updated blogs and I stumbled upon it.
I'll leave you with that thought for now,
  ~ Mr. Me ~

When was it that I posted last?

Yeah, it was on 6/16 ... yeah - a full month +5 days.  I wanted to take the time to appologize profusely to all-ya'll for not being more current.  Things have been odd to say the least.  I had a hum-drum birthday that involved 0 alcohol and winning an astoundingly small amount of 25 cents on the video poker machine.  After that, things quieted down for a little bit until no less than 1 week before my wedding (wait for the pictures, they will come...) I traveled the 550 miles to Salt Lake City to hammer out all of the little details that you can't even hope to plan out.
Upon my arrival in SLC, I promptly twiddled my thumbs and was the good groom-to-be while the time ticked away.
Thursday was fairly unimpressive, but did contain a bachelor party that involved nothing more than a visit to a local Hooters (and for the record, it's not just an owl thing) and a tasty cake shaped like a woman from the neck to the thighs.
On Friday, when my fiance informed me that I had better get something done, I talked with my co-best man and fanangled some of his high speed internet from him to requisition some muzak for the festivities.  So I went and managed to find some half decent music, happily proposed by www.ultimatewedding.com.  However by the time we needed to go to the rehersal, it turned into a measly 35 songs (5 of which were unusable if others were chosen for specific events).  I rushed out from Matt's (co-best man) house to get to the rehersal at our wedding site.  We were not the first, and not the last (thank god!) and managed to only arrive 2 minutes late.  After the rehersal we had arranged to have a rehersal dinner a few hours later which let me appropriate a few more songs before eating dinner.  By this point, I had and I decided to kick back, enjoy the night and enjoy the rental house that had the majority of the out of town fam staying in (which coincidentally had a very relaxing hot tub - which we squeezed six and a quarter people in). 
Saturday, the wedding day, I awoke early and dashed over to Matt's house to finish the muzak which we had to arrange and burn to CD since the site wouldn't let us hook up to their equipment.  We finished assembling the musik at 2:00 PM, just a mere 2 hours prior to the event, which was nerve racking to say the very least.  I ditched my vehicle (attempting to save it from the inevitable decorating) in the local mall parking lot and scampered off to the site to get ready.  I arrived at 2:45 and piddled around finishing some miniscule details (cameras on tables, black socks for everyone etc) until about 3:10 when I decided that I needed to drop the kids off at the pool, shave and generally start getting ready.  When I was just about to get done, I realized that we were one pair of black socks short, even though just two minutes prior we had just enough.  People came and went from the mens dressing room, no body could find the missing socks!  Finally I had to take a pair that I had given to my usher so I could finish up and take "the great walk".  After the rather rapid ceremony I spent a great deal of time taking photographs and mingling with the people.  All and all it was a good time.
My new wife and I ventured to a local spot for anniversaries, The Anniversary Inn where we spent the night.
Sunday morning, at 5:30 AM when I went out to get some meds from our car (which we had swapped back immediately after the reception on Saturday) I discovered the debacle that was our vehicle (a picture or two coming sooner or later).  The worst part of it all was the dark colored "Good Day" - Oreo replacement that merged into the paint on our vehicle by the time we were able to wash them off (at 11:30 in the morning).  Sunday afternoon we made half of the long journey to the house we rented on the Oregon coast.  Which involved coming down out of some beautiful mountains into a little town that I can't remember the name of but had a beautiful hotel, The Geiser Grand where we stayed the night.  Monday we finished our long journey and arrived.  Primarily we lounged about the gorgous house and enjoyed the ocean view with very little other activity.

Well this has by far been the longest of my posts here, and I am sure that just reading that has made you not only tired, but also regretful that you spaced sending something small for our wedding and now have the chance by pressing that little button up top that says "Make a Donation".  Alternatively you have decided to skip this entire post and skip straight to the ones that sound like I make a bigger ass of myself. 
Either way, take it easy,
  ~ Mr. Me ~