Good thing I'm not a sailor
Dawn today was an extremely bright salmon pink--haven't seen one that flagrant in quite some time. The maples are starting to turn, as well, and the weather is dipping back down towards freezing at night. Yes, I think this "Fall" thing is coming along right as scheduled. Time to stuff newspaper into the cracks of my window again.
Tuesday is my 1-year anniversary of starting work at Ryzex. A year ago, I had one single dollar sitting in the bank, and some loose change at home. My October rent was paid, and there was food in the fridge, and I had an annual bus pass, but liquid assets there were none. 12 months later, I have purchased a quite good matching set of pots & pans, and a new computer for Dad, and I have nearly $8,000 to my name--and there's still 2 more paychecks to go before I truly reach the anniversary of my first Ryzex payday. Not bad, says I. Not that I'm trying to brag about money, merely the sense of freedom that comes with it. Never before have I been able to seriously entertain the thought of owning a house. I have often stated that everybody in the world should be poor for a few years out of their life, just to have a fuller understanding of the important things in life (Hint: Abercrombie & Fitch is not one of them), and now I'm thinking that maybe it would have been good for me to spend a few years as a rich person, too, because I honestly have no idea what those people spend their money on. How on earth can folks bring home $40-50 grand a year and still not have enough money? Some of these people are actually living beyond their means! Where does it all go? They can't all be addicted to crack. I understand that I'm saving a lot of money by being single, with no kids or automobile, but come on--I could literally lose half my income and still squeeze by. And some people stress and agonize over getting that 3% raise? Step back and look at the wider scheme of things, folks. Just how many grande lattes does that 3% really work out to?
On a completely different, yet still work-related note, Ryzex lost another employee yesterday. Since I started there, I've known of one guy leaving for a better job, two leaving to move to another city, three terminations for being inefficient, and two terminations for attendance issues. But yesterday was the first time I witnessed a mental breakdown. Although I can't say I witnessed much of it: I saw nothing, and heard nothing but one guy letting out a lot of inarticulate shouting, of which all that I could make out was "It's CARPAL!" and "He'll kill us all!" I was amazed to learn that the shouting was coming from a co-worker whom I will call G (for privacy reasons), largely because it sounded nothing like him, and because I didn't know he was even capable of shouting. G's principal personality traits included an almost complete lack of a sense of humor and being fastidiously clean, in an OCD kind of way (eats his lunch right out of the can with a plastic fork, pops a Beano as a preemptive anti-flatulence measure, then wraps the fork in a paper towel before putting it in a baggie to take home). Sure, he lacked people skills and was generally a boring guy to be around (at least for someone like me), but he was neither rude, ill-tempered, or stupid, nor was he bad at his job. I put a lot of his eccentricities down to having spent the majority of his life in Alaska--being isolated during childhood can do that sort of thing to one's social life. But I certainly didn't expect him to be the type to flip out, especially over something like that: From what I hear, what sparked it was a guy going around with a can of antibacterial spray. (A few people at work had been calling in sick, so Steve went around spritzing the various door handles in the building, just in case.) Apparently, G interpreted this to mean that people thought HE was carrying germs, and snapped. EDIT: Turns out he's not fired after all, which is good: They found out he's been having a good deal of stress in his personal life, so he's just been placed on "administrative leave" for a while.
Anyway, Drastic Change of Subject! I've run into a girl on OKCupid who has (insofar as that is possible) knocked me for a loop! Just about every single word on her profile resonates strongly with me, and as far as I can tell, neither one of us has a single quality that the other would find displeasing! This is uncanny! And she only lives in Seattle, and is easy on the eyes as well! Can you see how many exclamation points I'm using! The downsides: I've already written to her (of course) and she hasn't replied, in fact she never even looked at my profile. But then, she's only been on OKCupid once since I sent her that message, and that was over a week ago. So either she doesn't expect much from the site, or (much more likely) somebody's already caught her interest, either from the site or off of it, in which case I'm just plain screwed . . . and yet, no worse than I was before. Either way, I'm writing to her again--there's no guarantee that she'll ever even see it, but I have to let her know that I'm serious. Yeah. Grrr. Watch me act like me have testosterone.
All my other news is of a rather archaic bent--since I last updated this here blog, I have finally gone out onto the field of skirmish to poke at people with a metal stick. Yessir, I'm taking up fencing, and so far, it's pretty fun. I've decided not to actually compete at events until I've got my set of fencing garb complete, and not to sew a stich of that until I've written and released at least 1 Baldur's Gate mod (prior commitment and all that), so sorry, hirtzenocker, but you're going to have to wait to see all of your students enter a tourney. But hopefully you won't have to wait too long. My first mod should be pretty easy, just a few kits to grant more roleplaying freedom and replay value. Make way for kits like the Sniper, Shieldbearer, and Geomancer! Prepare to have some respect for the long-scorned Beast Master! And before too long, I shall even take on the well-known impossibility of writing kits for Monks! Wish me luck! Ah, ain't hobbies grand.
Tuesday is my 1-year anniversary of starting work at Ryzex. A year ago, I had one single dollar sitting in the bank, and some loose change at home. My October rent was paid, and there was food in the fridge, and I had an annual bus pass, but liquid assets there were none. 12 months later, I have purchased a quite good matching set of pots & pans, and a new computer for Dad, and I have nearly $8,000 to my name--and there's still 2 more paychecks to go before I truly reach the anniversary of my first Ryzex payday. Not bad, says I. Not that I'm trying to brag about money, merely the sense of freedom that comes with it. Never before have I been able to seriously entertain the thought of owning a house. I have often stated that everybody in the world should be poor for a few years out of their life, just to have a fuller understanding of the important things in life (Hint: Abercrombie & Fitch is not one of them), and now I'm thinking that maybe it would have been good for me to spend a few years as a rich person, too, because I honestly have no idea what those people spend their money on. How on earth can folks bring home $40-50 grand a year and still not have enough money? Some of these people are actually living beyond their means! Where does it all go? They can't all be addicted to crack. I understand that I'm saving a lot of money by being single, with no kids or automobile, but come on--I could literally lose half my income and still squeeze by. And some people stress and agonize over getting that 3% raise? Step back and look at the wider scheme of things, folks. Just how many grande lattes does that 3% really work out to?
On a completely different, yet still work-related note, Ryzex lost another employee yesterday. Since I started there, I've known of one guy leaving for a better job, two leaving to move to another city, three terminations for being inefficient, and two terminations for attendance issues. But yesterday was the first time I witnessed a mental breakdown. Although I can't say I witnessed much of it: I saw nothing, and heard nothing but one guy letting out a lot of inarticulate shouting, of which all that I could make out was "It's CARPAL!" and "He'll kill us all!" I was amazed to learn that the shouting was coming from a co-worker whom I will call G (for privacy reasons), largely because it sounded nothing like him, and because I didn't know he was even capable of shouting. G's principal personality traits included an almost complete lack of a sense of humor and being fastidiously clean, in an OCD kind of way (eats his lunch right out of the can with a plastic fork, pops a Beano as a preemptive anti-flatulence measure, then wraps the fork in a paper towel before putting it in a baggie to take home). Sure, he lacked people skills and was generally a boring guy to be around (at least for someone like me), but he was neither rude, ill-tempered, or stupid, nor was he bad at his job. I put a lot of his eccentricities down to having spent the majority of his life in Alaska--being isolated during childhood can do that sort of thing to one's social life. But I certainly didn't expect him to be the type to flip out, especially over something like that: From what I hear, what sparked it was a guy going around with a can of antibacterial spray. (A few people at work had been calling in sick, so Steve went around spritzing the various door handles in the building, just in case.) Apparently, G interpreted this to mean that people thought HE was carrying germs, and snapped. EDIT: Turns out he's not fired after all, which is good: They found out he's been having a good deal of stress in his personal life, so he's just been placed on "administrative leave" for a while.
Anyway, Drastic Change of Subject! I've run into a girl on OKCupid who has (insofar as that is possible) knocked me for a loop! Just about every single word on her profile resonates strongly with me, and as far as I can tell, neither one of us has a single quality that the other would find displeasing! This is uncanny! And she only lives in Seattle, and is easy on the eyes as well! Can you see how many exclamation points I'm using! The downsides: I've already written to her (of course) and she hasn't replied, in fact she never even looked at my profile. But then, she's only been on OKCupid once since I sent her that message, and that was over a week ago. So either she doesn't expect much from the site, or (much more likely) somebody's already caught her interest, either from the site or off of it, in which case I'm just plain screwed . . . and yet, no worse than I was before. Either way, I'm writing to her again--there's no guarantee that she'll ever even see it, but I have to let her know that I'm serious. Yeah. Grrr. Watch me act like me have testosterone.
All my other news is of a rather archaic bent--since I last updated this here blog, I have finally gone out onto the field of skirmish to poke at people with a metal stick. Yessir, I'm taking up fencing, and so far, it's pretty fun. I've decided not to actually compete at events until I've got my set of fencing garb complete, and not to sew a stich of that until I've written and released at least 1 Baldur's Gate mod (prior commitment and all that), so sorry, hirtzenocker, but you're going to have to wait to see all of your students enter a tourney. But hopefully you won't have to wait too long. My first mod should be pretty easy, just a few kits to grant more roleplaying freedom and replay value. Make way for kits like the Sniper, Shieldbearer, and Geomancer! Prepare to have some respect for the long-scorned Beast Master! And before too long, I shall even take on the well-known impossibility of writing kits for Monks! Wish me luck! Ah, ain't hobbies grand.