I really shouldn’t spend the money (especially considering my car decided that the last 7 months of payments aren’t enough and decided to prope the depths of my credit), but I don’t have a choice. My monitor, a venerable Sony Multiscan 17seII, has finally given up the ghost.
Part of the new job duties is that I’m occasionally scheduled to work shift duty on Saturdays. Working this shift means one gets the next Monday off, so I still get 2 days off as a pseudo-weekend and the previous 6-day week is balanced by the promise of a 4-day week to follow. Of course I hadn’t been copied on the schedule and, being the new guy, didn’t even know that there was one (or that I’d been scheduled). Luckily one of my coworkers noticed I was scheduled for this past Saturday and let me know Friday morning.
I need to take a break from ranting about the way things are. I could spend all my time bitching about how corrupt and degenerate we all are and it wouldn’t make a lick of difference. I could also spend all my time championing to cause of those we are wont to forget, but no one would really notice. Besides, there are people who do it better.
All I know is that it snowed Saturday, but I’ve been riding the motorcycle to work this week. As much as I enjoy the cold (no sarcasm, I really do prefer cold weather to hot), I don’t mind extending the riding season by a week or two. I said I’d keep the bike on the road until the snow flies, but that’s a promise I’m willing to break. I ordered my cold-weather gloves from Foxcreek Leather and am giving serious thought to ordering some chaps to extend my riding season a bit more. I may hold off on that last one though, and not just because certain people I know might make some choice comments about the hairy guy in assless chaps, but because I don’t have a place to store my bike and have to mooch off friends and relatives. It makes it a little more challenging to drive 45 minutes in the midst of a nice winter day in order to ask a friend to haul a bunch of shit out of their garage so I might get my bike out for a 3 hour cruise (assuming sand on the roads doesn’t try to make me eat my own face again).
Anywho, the weather is nice and I’m going to enjoy the bike while I can. I’m sure something will punch my buttons again and I’ll get back to the ranting soon enough.
…I’m merely MIA. I’ve started my second week at the new gig and am still getting accustomed to the new schedule. Hell, I don’t even have a desk yet. By the time I get home, I’m way too tired to even think about blogging. So once I get settled and get a better handle on my new responsibilities, I ought to be able to get back to some ranting and raving. Hopefully I’ll adjust to the new schedule soon so I won’t be quite so tired at the end of the day.
I’m just on vacation. This is the week in between the old job and the new job. I’m busily getting all kinds of errands taken care of as well as hanging out with the local family contingent that often complains that I don’t see them enough. Anyone who knows me will wonder why anyone else would insist on my visiting on any kind of regular basis, but I guess family has to make the effort or seem somehow less than familial. Now I just need to keep working on getting up early so I can get used to the new (and painful) work schedule; a sacrifice I’m more than willing to make in order to escape from the insanity of the last workplace. Hey Texas, DUCK! Someone might need to explain to me why we’re planning on rebuilding New Orleans in the same sub-sea-level spot when shit like this crops up mere weeks after the city got destroyed. Maybe they ought to consider relocating somewhere a bit further uphill.
I should know better than to blog anything about my work, but I find myself in such a bizarre situation that I can’t resist (company names will be omitted, but most people who read this blog know where I work). Perhaps writing about it will help me get it straight in my mind. First, a little background:
A little lyrical post in celebration of Labor Day. This song, written by Ed Pickford, had been performed as an acoustic song by Scottish folksinger Dick Gaughan. However, I came to hear it when the Dropkick Murphys put it on their 2004 album, Blackout.
I just got the news: my friends in Gulfport, Mississippi made it through the hurricane all right. The news is reporting up to 80 people dead in their area. They live a little over a mile away from the Gulf Coast and are near the Biloxi line. Apparently everything from the train tracks (about 1/2 mile away from their house) to the water is rubble. 75% of the houses in the area either have extensive roof damage of lost their roofs altogether. My friends snuck through the storm with no flooding and no roof damage, although they have other damage to the house. According to their parents, who live up here in the Northeast, they have a stockpile of water but no phones and no electricity. Once their cell phone batteries are out, that’s it for communication.
Highway 90, which runs right along the beach, is gone, buried under sand and water. The casinos, that are the lifeblood of Biloxi and surrounding communities, are trashed. Houses disappeared under the storm surge. Many people didn’t evacuate because the track of the storm wasn’t expected to shift far enough to the East to hit Mississippi as hard as it did. New Orleans is getting all the news coverage, but it’s the towns to the East that took the brunt of Katrina’s fury (EDIT: since posted, the levees broke in New Orleans, flooding the entire city).
Now I want to figure out a way to get a care package shipped out to my friends to help tide them over until normal services are restored, which may take a while. I think I’ll be better served giving cash to the Red Cross at this point.
I originally told the crew I work with that I was getting my license to carry and, after all the idiotic fallout from that decision (must remember: friends@work /= friends), I just assumed that any discussion of my enjoyment of shooting was off-limits at work. Let me just sum up the situation: in my state, owning a gun means that I’m either a murderer-in-waiting, a shooting spree about-to-happen, or a moronic thug. Few of my coworkers are willing to see beyond this idiotic stereotype. Of course, in my opinion, the vocal gun owners don’t help things much by insisting that anyone who questions gun ownership is a flaming liberal with no brains. It’s all part of that simple evil that so many groups like to push: hype differences and encourage segregation.
To the three people who actually read this site: sorry for the inactivity. I was on vacation then absolutely flooded at work upon my return. Now that I’ve got a better handle on things, I’ll be getting back to the blogging. By the way, I’m getting a better handle on things by implementing the planning philosophy known as Getting Things Done, or GTD. I even built myself a cool Hipster PDA (although, technically it’s a PAA, but I won’t quibble).
