June 18th of last year, I was embarking on my second trip across the country for an event. Not only was it the second trip across the country, it was the second trip I had been on period. The first being to Vegas a month or so before. So, today last year, I was hopping a plane to fly to LA. If I remember correctly, I had a connecting flight in Chicago, but, neither here nor there I suppose. It was a scary thing.. the first trip I had been with 5 other people, and with this trip there were only 3 of us. The one benefit, as I remember, was that the other 2 people were already there and had taken care of most of the initial work. It was my job, once I got there, to help with presentation setup and then to work the actual presentations when the time came.

The problem, as I remember it, was that I had never actually RUN a presentation before. The first event that I went on, my "training event" as they liked to call it, was mostly automated. All we had to do was copy a presentation over to a computer and the presenter started it. It ran itself. We weren't even in the room with them when it was happening. This event.. was quite different. I got a chance to actually see what running a large conference (the nuts and bolts, not really the planning) was all about. I got to see the sound guys do their thing, the video guys do their thing, and I got to finally see how to do MY thing. It was.. hectic, it was frightening, it was completely amazing. The first show that I actually "ran" was.. insane. The actual event coordinator hadn't worked out a system yet for the presenter to key slide changes, so I was pretty much watching for hand/eye signals to alternate slides. All in all, that went off without a hitch. If I remember right, I did.. at least 3 more of those that day. It was a crazy experience, as the two other people that were there with me couldn't really help at all.. one had to man a registration booth we'd set up, and the other was running shows on the opposite end of the hall.

The entire trip/experience was something else.. the amount of overtime I pulled in that week, with travel and everything included, was immense. And it certainly wouldn't be the last time I ended up with lots of overtime due to traveling and running shows. Though, in the end, it wasn't meant to continue much past 6 months of starting here. That show was one of the biggest that I was a part of, aside from the one that I helped with in Chicago.. that one doesn't necessarily count, though, because I wasn't running anything.. none of us that were in Chicago actually were, it was all run from a data center here in Youngstown, we were there to relay and facilitate mostly.

So, June 18th of this year.. I'm sitting at my desk, looking at spreadsheets and trying to test a software product that seems to get worse with each new build we get. I'm sitting at my desk, doing four times more work than I'm being compensated for. I'm letting the stress of trying to fix a broken system tear my up inside, and it's not a happy thing. I remember a year ago.. so excited about these trips, about the chance to do something new and see things I'd not seen before. That was fun. This is not.

Ah well.. leaving a position for new things (whether by choice or necessity) is something that happens. I'm making the best of what I have to do here now.. and I just keep hoping, most likely too optimistically, that it will all work out for the best if I just keep working at it. I guess we'll see.

Sooooooo many things to say, sooooooo many ways to say each and every one of them. So many ways I'm probly not going to say any of them, at least, to people who don't already know.

It's not that I'm trying to be cryptic. That's more just a byproduct then anything. No.. this is more of an entry to remind myself that there ARE so many things to say, and that there ARE so many ways to say each and every one of those things. It's a problem I have sometimes, the ability to sort out the scrambled mess in my brain. Even now I sit here, realizing I still don't fully understand a lot of the things that I'm thinking or feeling. I don't know that I ever will.

I will say this. I don't extremely dislike where I am working right now. I don't even extremely dislike the job that I'm doing. But the manner in which it's currently working, and the way in which things around me are happening.. I'm certainly not happy with it. There's nothing I can do about it, and that bothers me a lot too. It's not exactly easy to find job alternatives right now.. hell, it wasn't easy a few years ago when I tried and that was before everything started falling apart. I know, I should be happy that I still have a job. I am, on a certain level. It's certainly better then not having any income. Is it enough, though? That's got to be the one thing that bothered me more than anything else during our last company meeting. We were told that our profit sharing was a thing of the past, most likely to never return, all the while being told that the company is now doing fine and just needs to make the bottom line look better by keeping more money from us. I can't remember the exact things that were said, or the exact points that were touched, but myself and a few others came out of there with a fairly clear message. "Be happy you all still have jobs. By the way, we need you all to work even harder to keep those jobs, doing the work of 2-3 others in the process because we fired them. By the by, no pay increase for that. Yea.".

That part is just me bitching to bitch, really. There have been good things, too. Both at work and out of work. Maybe some day I'll have the guts and the presence of mind to actually write about it. The more I think about some of the things that have happened recently, the harder it is to write about any of it. I give up for now.

[Edit] An addendum, however. I am an idiot. I really, really am.

Deathcharger's Reins

That is all.

In a further quest to alienate those that I love, I am still attempting to slowly gather all the mounts that I can realisitically acquire in game. These include the Baron's mount, which will drop for me any day now, the 2 ZG mounts, and the 5 skyguard mounts. I'm very close to the skyguard rep, I'll have that soon. I've got the Gnome mounts in the bag (funny!) as soon as the patch rolls around. I got the white chocobo last week, to which I'm still extremely happy about. I may persue the 5 PvP mounts, but damn, that's a LOT of BG marks. The blue protodragon has eluded me thusfar, as Skadi is a bitch. The timelost proto drake is most likely not to be, as I'm seriously not going to fly around stormpeaks all the time looking for it. I've got an egg in my bank that may or may not hatch into a green protodrake, most likely it'll be a tickbird or useless yolk. I has the red drake from Wyrmrest, and I has the bronze drake from NEWSTRAT. There is, however, another mount that I had been.. and still am.. hesitant to go after, because I REALLY hate stupid quest related rep grinds.

Proof, though, that I should be declared insane, even with the increased rep gains.

Life continues.. post layoff of 20+% of the company, things are still trudging along. We're still dealing with the same issues as before, would be my guess, but now with a smaller staff. I can't argue with some of the choices, honestly I was susprised that some of these people were working here for as long as they did. Some of the others, though, it's kind of sad to see it all coming down to numbers.

I like this place. As mind numbing and tedious as it can be sometimes, it's generally full of good people working for a decent product/service that can be a genuine benefit to the people it's marketed towards. I sincerely hope that the COO wasn't just bullshitting when he told us all that they had finished doing what needed to be done, and that we shouldn't worry about the rest of our jobs for the forseeable future. If this place falls through, if something happens, I truely believe that I would be up the proverbial creek without the proverbial paddle.

I'm generally tired lately, as I usually am towards the beginning of a new year. Seems to also be a trend around the beginning of the year, I get pretty depressive and angsty. About pretty much everything, too.. so.. I can't really narrow down and say it's one thing over another. I find myself getting very, very angry at things that I shouldn't let bother me to begin with. I take personal insult at things that aren't really even directed at me. It's a very rattling thing, to have yourself so.. on guard all the time, jumping at shadows, against the wall as it were. It's rattling, and it's very very draining. I don't like it, but I'm honestly not sure that there's anything I can do about it, short of waiting it out and doing my best to not let it impact every facet of my life.. anymore then it already has, anyway.

Regardless of that, I'm still angsty about yesterday and probly will be for a while, this time of year aside. Maybe it's my problem, maybe it's not, I don't really know. I'm trying to hardest to not put anymore thought into it then I already have today. It's sad that I'm 29 years old and still using the word "angsty" to describe myself, but it seems to be the best qualifier I can come up with at times like these.

New friends are good, enjoying time with old friends and new friends is happy. Sunshine on a cloudy day, as it were. Of course, it's not cloudy here so much as snowy. Drifty. Coldy. Yea.

I knew it was coming, as I was more or less warned to expect bad things before I left work Monday night. Fortunately for my sanity, I was also told Monday night that I personally didn't have to worry. This came as little comfort, though, as around 10am today they started calling people into conference rooms and letting them know that their services would no longer be required.

Now.. some of you will see this and say.. "So what? 31 people doesn't seem so bad". Well.. it is bad. As the article said, they'd hired around 50 new people last year.. bringing the total employed by the company to a little under 200. When you let go 31 people out of a base of less then 200, well, it hits a lot harder. Especially when some of those people are in the same department that you were in only a short time ago. I've been sitting here at my desk all day, doing my QA thing, but kind of stunned in the back of my mind. Granted.. it's not like the company is going under. They didn't let these people go becuase they're in the hole or anything, they let them go because they didn't make as much last year as they thought they would. So, the company will definitely still be here tomorrow.. but it does start to bring a shadow of doubt on everything. Living where I do, my choice in employers is pretty damn small.. if something dire were to happen, there aren't many places left to flee to that I haven't tried already.

Yes, I still have my job. But the worry is there, the fear is there, and the lingering doubts in the back of my mind still won't keep themselves quiet.

I'm also fairly certain I'm not going to be seeing any kind of raise anytime soon, even though I'm doing easily five times the amount of work I was as a CS at the same pay rate. Saving the company money is great, ensuring employment is great, but work to pay ratio is also kind of important.

So, today is obviously Halloween. Bunch of people at work dressed up.. some pretty elaborately, like the guy behind me dressed up as the Hulk. Good times.

I, on the other hand, am rather lazy and broke, so I mostly pretended to dress up.

( It's fun to pretend.. )

So, I was watching Heroes last night whilst playing WoW.. cause I'm pretty leet like that.. and I have to say.. I'm very, very confused.

I'm not confused as far as the plot.. I understand exactly what's going on, and could probly guess with reasonable certainty how this season is going to play out. That's what gets me, though. The first season of the show, I'll admit, I didn't watch until the second season had already started. But when I watched it, I was enamored.. stunning characters, vividly drawn and detailed. The universe in which these people lived and struggled wasn't so far removed from our own.. it wasn't anything special, but it was real.. and that was cool. The plot.. sometimes it seemed like it was there, sometimes it seemed like it wasn't.. but then BAM, something hit you from left field and left you kind of wondering exactly what they'd do next.

Well, that was season 1. Season 2 was just.. well, it wasn't that. Season 3 had me going for the first couple of episodes, it really, really did. But then.. everything became just a little too predictable. A little too anti-climactic. A little too blech-y. It's still fun enough to watch, but it doesn't have me glued to the TV the way the first season did. I still KINDA care about what's happening to the characters, but.. not as much as when I wasn't sure if they were going to live or not. There was a moment in last night's episode where I was a little worried, but that faded pretty fast and kind of put an exclamation point on what I'd already been feeling.

Will I still watch it? Yea. Hell, I was 3/4 watching My Own Worst Enemy and I don't even like Christian Slater.

It was good times while it lasted.. I guess I'm just kind of settling for a prime-time drama turned mid-day soap opera now.

Riiiiiiiiiight..

( Lolz behind cut )