quite unexpectedly (although i had about a day’s warning), today i was laid off from the job that i’ve had for over a year. at first i felt sort of confused about how to feel, but i’m feeling pretty good about it now. i was completely miserable at that company, doing incredibly tedious, boring, not-at-all-what-i-want-to-do-with-my-life tasks, and i was planning to leave before the end of the year anyway, so this just moves things up a bit. and plus, now i get unemployment! all around, a win. plus i get to enjoy my vacation to argentina (i leave tomorrow!!) for real, because i don’t have to worry about coming back to The Job. word is there’s going to be a celebratory pub crawl when i get back in town. see pat for details.
Archives for category: workin’ for the man
i started work yesterday and so far it’s pretty good. i got a nice work computer (dell m4300) with all the newest (windows) programs (vista business, office 2007, cs3) and the people are really nice. everyone’s really laid back and there’s a lot of joking around – reminds me a lot of mythryn during its golden age. i feel pretty comfortable in the ux group and am looking forward to kicking sharepoint’s ass.
what’s not good about this job? well, once i’m done training i’ll mostly work on-site at clients’ offices and from home. BUT while i’m training i have to drive down to costa mesa. in orange county. 55 miles away. a 45 minute – 2 hour drive depending on how craptastic the traffic is at the time. each of the past two days i’ve spent 8 hours at work and about 2.5 hours in the car. not. fun.
i’ve learned something though: it’s a MIRACLE there aren’t more accidents on the freeway. with the way some asshats drive and how narrow lanes are i can’t believe how accident free this city is! i mean – these aren’t open country roads. these are 12-lane interstates where (gridlock-free) cars drive at 70mph in the slow lanes and the lanes themselves are so narrow i can practically stick my hand out the window and touch the giant car-carrying semi next to me.
luckily i avoid the traffic circus tomorrow and thursday when i get to work from home. as a reward for keeping my nerve and not getting into an accident, i think i’ll sleep in till 8 like the good ol’ days before i was gainfully employed.
i have a job! i start on monday at a tech consulting firm where i’ll be doing front-end coding. hooray!
i am sad.
the art market was fantastic! we made a lot of money for lisa and had so much fun. there was a steady stream of people the whole day and the vibe was so fun and positive! i did, however, blow any profits i might have made on cupcakes, on buying other people’s stuff. it was well worth it though! congrats to everyone who partcipated, hugs for lisa and thank you to everyone who came!
at work, every day for lunch we make a smoothie. some days it’s just blueberry or pineapple (which was awesome last week) but there is always a smoothie. today katie came up with something new, inspired by a smoothie she had at soul veg. basically, it tastes like a liquified peanut butter cookie. it is awesome. it contains: soymilk, ice, protein powder, peanut butter, packets of instant maple oatmeal. yum!
sorry i haven’t posted in awhile – i had a big deadline to hit yesterday and i’ve been at work a lot – till 1:30am one day and in on weekends too. all day today i’ve been totally exhausted. yesterday i spent like 6 solid hours in a complete panic, running down errors and coding as fast as i could. then i went to lbc afterwards for the hump. soooo today i am no longer panicking about this site and instead find myself without enough energy to sit up straight.
tonight i’m going to cecile’s to watch the last two episodes of battlestar this season and eat some irazu. probably another unwise decision when all i want to do is sleep sweet sweet sleep. then tomorrow night is lindsay’s birthday party and saturday is hot doug’s and the host. sunday i was going to go out to the arboretum to do some bike-learnin’ with sgmt (the birthday boy) but it’s supposed to rain so i guess i’ll stay home and finally do dishes and take out garbage and read the foot-high stack of mail (i’m totally serious) that’s accumulated on my coffee table. also the comics kareem lent me. and my tivo is really backed up too. like backed up from february. got some freelance to catch up on too.
literary side note: i read the last 3 volumes of fables, which was fantastic! but i wish i’d started at the beginning. couldn’t wait tho. currently reading ex machina. the filth will be next, then this metal gear solid comic and paul pope book. in between there i’ll finally finish the big con and all of my magazines from the past month (did you hear premiere is being closed down?? that’s like the only good popular movie magazine out there. gd it.).
i have a ton of new links to cool things to post a la the robot+cupcake post earlier this month, but i’ll do that like tomorrow or sunday. in the meantime please enjoy the letterpress video i posted this afternoon.
i can tell when i’m hitting a coding brain-block, because all of my comments become less semantic and more completely useless.
so what was once:
becomes more like:
opened up my giant javascript reference book to refresh my memory about objects, when out fell my old business card from my last job. weird.