The Expert

TRO 3087: Bye Week

With the exception of Tuesday, NaNoWriMo/3087 is going well. I felt kinda sick and I don't know if it was because of too much or too little:

1) caffeine
2) alcohol
3) sugar

But I've got nothin' for you today. I'll try to update during lunch, but I've been kinda "working" through those lately.

Progress Report: 07 JAN 14 Close of Business

I'm intermittently keeping track of my progress on a few important projects. I'll have a finale at the end of the week, but here's a random update. Also, I think I have the flu, but then it's not as bad as the version of the flu my roommate has so maybe it's a faux flu? Not sure.

Work - 10 of 30. Not great, but I'll have to see if I can line something extra up before Friday.

Finding Better Work - Currently sitting at about ten of twenty, which is about as many as I put in next week. If I still have a head of steam when Friday afternoon rolls around, I'll see if I can get it to the elusive 25.

Progress Report: 30 DEC 13 Close of Business

Hey, so daily progress report: GO!

Progress Report: 30 DEC 13

So, I have something of a history of heaping too much onto my plate. So I was thinking about what would happen if I kept a record of all of that stuff over the course of a few days so I can see where I'm getting shit done. Not exciting, but good for a few laughs. 

Maybe.

Probably not.

Bitchin' about work

Aw man, I'm just gonna gripe about work. Maybe you want to too? Go ahead. Knock yourself out.

So, I do this gig in a post office where I just take people's boxes and get postage on them and sell stamps and shit. It should be the fucking simplest thing on Earth, but some folks are like "Here's an egg. I don't have a box and I want to send it to Germany. By ground. Don't you have Germany's zip code? I don't want to pay more than 30p."

Sorry for the drop-off lately

I've been wrapped up in a job that isn't just about doing the work, but actively fighting over the job itself to get the work done. It's--well, let's just say that I've lost one of my liquor glasses to the shitty website architecture at this fucking place.

I'll blog about it in hateful detail once the job is done, which might be as early as Friday if I can't get this shit worked out.

Yaaaaaaaaay.

Up to Speed

Jesus, last week was a fuck of a time for me take off, eh?

With all due respect to the Christians reading: Jesus fucking christ.

All that, and those videos didn't impress the legions of spambots that pushed my numbers disturbingly high last month. I'm still breaking 40,000 lifetime hits this month, so that's pretty cool¹.

Anyway, I'm trying to look forward to the future. Preordained blockbuster/social obligation Iron Man 3 hits theaters May 3. So you're just a single is he/isn't he drunk Harrison Ford video away from watching the first buckling bulkhead of a successful movie franchise implosion.

Guys, I Am So Tired

If you're reading this, you probably know a few things about me. I'm well educated. I can put a few words together. I've been a clerk, an retail manager, a writer, a mechanic, and a former sailor in The US Navy. I have a degree in Nuclear Engineering Technology. I say without reservation that I am a friggin' genius.

I've been looking for a permanent job for about a year now. I don't have an engineering degree proper. I have some computer science training, but no actual certifications and I don't have enough knowledge of CSS, Javascript, and SQL. I certainly don't have experience in any of those fields, as I opted to work offshore to pay my way though college because my parents, (and this will be the only time I say this collectively) god bless their souls, couldn't afford to pay for it[1].

I don't want to shock you guys, but there's no blog today

I did some Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay this morning (as I often do on Sundays) and I spent most of my afternoon prepping for my first day at my new job tomorrow (including going over the benefits package). Anyway, I wanted to do a review of Return to Ravnica from the prerelease, but I didn't have the money to go to the prerelease so the best I would have been able to do was a "Top 10" related to the set which I can do tomorrow sometime or maybe next week.

Depends on my mood. And comments I guess. But to be honest, it's mostly mood.

Anyway, hope your Monday is going well.

Videos from Home

I promise that if I show you adorable video of Terry's baby learning how to retrieve Nerf darts:

I'll also show you videos of explosions.

Field Manual Kris: Yes, that is a challenge

Ever since I've returned to Texas, I've been trying to get back to equilibrium. I've been trying to find a job that supplements my savings, get back to school, and establish a rhythm with everyone I share the house with. I've had varying degrees of success: short-term part-time jobs are hard to find, the paperwork for school has been mixed up a few times, and one of the people I share a house with is a two-year-old.

In addition, my car--which has had hundreds of dollars worth of repairs done since I left my well-paying job offshore--is broken again because every mechanic I've seen is a fucking moron. As an upside/downside, there's been a pretty great guy I've been talking to and seeing lately. The biggest downside isn't that he lives in Austin, but that when my time management is about to become a large issue, he presents a very big investment in time and energy. I'm doing it--and I'm all in--but I worry that there might be something good here that will get left by the wayside if the demands of school ratchet up or if I just have another spell of flaking out. Is that a thing that a lot of people have?

Anyway, nothing funny or insightful today. I'm sorry about not being funny, but you guys should be used to the lack of depth by now. Anyway, hope your week goes well.

GoMnomnom: It doesn't get blogged anymore...

Last week, Kris mentioned how he quit his job to go back to college and how torn up inside he was about it and all twelve of you had a good cry about it. Since he &@#$ed up talking about his last hitch and torturing you with slides of the same, it falls on me to get this done.

I'm only doing the torturous part, naturally.

GoMnomnom: Sunsets on the Shipyard

Everyone thinks that the new year is a time to do something different with their lives. It's an arbitrary line that people take as permission from heaven to begin changing their life for the better or maybe a point at which they feel obligated to examine their actions from the last year.

I don't adhere to that; I've had my life uprooted and overturned in all four seasons, with and without cause. If change is going to roll out of bed and randomly decide to find us for a visit, I think we're entitled to hold a four am fire drill in it's apartment building.

To that end, I've decided that 2012 is the year I go back to college and finish my degree. Once. And. For. All. I've put enough cash away that I can afford to go back and finish up and live for a few months without the hassles of a full-time job. I have to cut back on the luxuries, but it'll be worth it to finally have a degree and be able to

Exit Past Through Doors on Right, Part II

Last Monday, I started a blog with the intention of talking about the best things of 2011[1], but ended up waxing nostalgic about one of Earth’s few female specimens which had gained my attention and respect.

After the assertive, confident woman I'd come to expect act so demure in a new setting, uncertainty was all I had. To this day, it's all I have. This isn’t a story where an omnipresent point of view reveals the full depths of each person’s character and the audience comes away with a clean resolution and an appreciation behind the A-Type personalities they encounter every day. It’s a real story, and like most real stories, we can only read the tea leaves and divine our own meaning from it.

People aren’t constants; a person isn’t a static value impervious to other factors. It’s easy to see people that way:

IGNORE ME!

Ha-ha. Seriously. I was on boat all day yesterday and most of today. The original post here was an outline that I had scheduled to run and couldn't take down or finish because I was incommunicado (and pretty much comatose).

Fingertips

“I’ve always wanted to work at a club.”

“As what, a bouncer? Bartender?”

“No. What I do now, just at a club.”

“…”
“I like the atmosphere.”

* * *

Not dead, just really, really busy.

Usually, my job affords me a little bit of downtime to fuck around on the internet or to just write up blogs so I can post them later. Lately, things have been really, really busy. Like; I'm actually working for twelve hours of a twelve hour shift (minus poops).

Anyway, I'm sorry that Monday's blog was a rough cut that was simply in the queue. I'm not going to have anything tomorrow, so enjoy Friday's "Boxes Precinct." BP and the Weekend Music should keep updating for a while (things will be officially bad when that last scheduled WM posts on New Year's day).

Things should be less busy over the next few days and I can get the ball rolling again, but y'know, it all still depends on what my work looks like.

I also want to address some rumors--probably spread by seditious jump-dolphins--that this is also due in some small part to doing bonus maps for Portal. This is untrue.


Those distinctive *twhop* sounds are all in your heads.

GoMnomnom: Early Sunrises Over Matagorda

My time off is going well. My car window got fucked up right before I had to go offshore last time, so I'm just now getting it worked on. Thankfully, I dropped it off at the shop Friday afternoon, so all the rain we're getting hasn't been messing it up (hopefully). Should be getting fixed some time from this afternoon to Tuesday afternoon. I've made some plans for tonight and tomorrow night, and rumor has it Katie's in town, so my entire schedule despite my best efforts, is #*$@ed...again.

As a special bonus, I left my phone charger in my car and I'm juggling back-up phones so that when the shop is done with my car, I'll know. But hey, first world problems, right?

GoMnomnom: My Office

I just realized that 6/16 was the sixth-month anniversary of me trying to do this thing on a regular basis. I’d hoped that being this far in, I’d have developed a better and more consistent style. Instead I have 43 MB of MCChris pasted over Magic cards and…

Ah well, life continues, as it does.

As some of you know, I work on a barge in The Gulf of Mexico. My barge removes and (it is rumored, in whispered tones) installs the oil platforms that get gas and oil out of the Gulf, or as Grant Morrison might put it, "extract explosive Non-Solids from the sub aquatic graves of The Great Lizards beneath the oceans themselves!"