Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Micks Tayp

So I'm part of a mix tape club where each month an assigned person creates a mix based on whatever they want. Some have had a good mix of songs, some go with a theme, like dance music or off the wall indie-emo music or whatever. Well I made my own which is across the board. From movie soundtracks to country to punk rock. Here is the list. The mix is actually a zip stored on MediaFire which is AWESOME!

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Monday, August 4, 2008

Goodbye boys!

In other news... I had a vasectomy consult this morning. I'm going to schedule it and get my boys snipped. I'm scared, and a little reluctant because I'm considering it permanent. Some say they can be reversed, but I'm not going to count on it. While it would be nice to have another child, I don't think that my wife's back can take it. I'm pretty sure our finances and personal lack of responsibility won't be able to take it either.

Another child would seriously put a damper on our 5 year plan to be well on my way to another job via school. So after prayer and thoughtful consideration, I'm going to schedule it. *gulp*

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Titled for Ben

It's a funny thing when you complain to yourself and all your friends and family about how bad your situation (job) is, just how much worse it can get. I've been a phone jockey for the last 10 years. I started in 98 working for Feature Films for Families doing surveys. I moved to sales and then on to management. After our department got shut down, I got busted back to the phones. I left that company and worked for another doing sales. They laid me off, and I went to do support for GroceryWerks. Then I got my MSCE and worked for the prison and got fired for selling tobacco to the inmates. After that I was back on the phones doing web support for Ikano. I left that job after a year and became a waiter at Village Inn during the 2002 Olympics in SLC. After that fiasco, I did door to door sales for AT&T cable. That was good money, but it made me really hate people. I then went to work for my grand parents doing construction for the summer. In the fall, I went to work for Teleperformance doing dialup support for msn users. I left the next summer and worked again for my grand parents. Returned again in the fall to Teleperformance. It was early November when I heard about my current job opening up at Qwest doing DSL tech support. So in a nutshell, while I've done some other things, I've been on the phones for the majority of the last decade...

Read on for how just about any situation get worse...

When I left Teleperformance I was making $9.50 an hour. When I moved to Qwest, they started us out at $12.50 or so an hour. We could have started at $8 something, and the worked our way up to the cap. But since we started with some experience, they gave us 2 years worth of 9% raises every 6 months. So from December 1 2003, every six months we got a 9% raise till we finally capped out at the current rate of like $23.50 or so. Tack on benefits (about $12k a year) we're doing quite well here at the Q. The problem however initially is that it's still a phone job, and that always sucks your brains away. It wasn't all that bad though, lax management, friends at work and the most I've ever been paid. Things are changing though, the managers are now all about firing people and we have our very own national socialist who happens to share a name with the gayest computer company around. Things were so bad earlier this year that people who have NEVER done anything wrong in their lives were getting suspended (like from high school) for 3 days for browsing the net, or talking about Qwest policies on a public forum... Well all that sucks hard, but I have a group of friends that I work in close proximity with who can share my pain. Well had I guess. My best friend is leaving the company to go to school full time. That was a hard blow to my small amount of happiness at work, but I still had several other people I really like who work right near me. Well today the two that matter the most to me got different jobs within Qwest. I'm happy for them, for sure. Those 2 are going to be making a considerable amount more money and they won't be under the current management. The other guy, well he's on his way out and I can't be happier for him.

Meanwhile, I'm going to stick to my plan and hopefully be rid of this hell hole in 2-4 years. School seems to be my only ticket out of here.

Sorry for the long post, but ah stuff it.

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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

I gots a hit!

Well 2 actually. The first one was some dummy recording telling me that she could sell my car for more than I have listed and blah blah blah, she was interrupting call of duty time, so that was the end of that. The second hit was from a kid who wanted to trade me a 1998 2.5 Impreza with a 2003 WRX motor. Sounds enticing, right? Well it looks like butt, and I'm not a fan of butt looking cars... The search goes on. A pic of my car and his after the jump.

Mine:


His:

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Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Blue Civic

So I might be selling my Civic. But then again I might not be. I dunno, if I'm going to get a different car, then I'll have to. I can't afford insurance on 4 vehicles. I want a car that has a few amenities, like you know... Back seats, Air conditioning... a heater. Things like that. I've got my Civic up for sale on KSL.com, but it hasn't returned any results. I also put up a blog about it at http://bluecivic.blogspot.com, but nobody really knows about it. I'm going to have to replace the driver's side window since I shattered mine the other day after the dang thing fell off the track. I can't sell the car with a shattered window.

I guess I could, but I'm trying to maximize the amount of money I get for the car, and even though it might cost 200 to have a shop do that, I'd probably have to drop 500 off the price. I'm not sure I can do it, it's hard to maneuver in the door area.

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Thursday, June 26, 2008

Testing... I'm making a new blog

To sell my car.

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Monday, March 31, 2008

le sigh

I've done it. I've told myself that I'm frying my brains on Math. Well it's complete. The soft gray matter is now an overcooked waxy lump that is incapable of further thought or learning. Thanks a lot math 1050. That sounds sad doesn't it. It would be much cooler if I could say, "Thanks a lot particle physics" or something like that. But I just don't agree with math.

We'll see how this semester pans out, but based on my last midterm, it can't be all that good. At worst, I got a 33%, and at best I got a 66%. I realize I'm just moaning, but seriously, how does one remember all the formulas and tricks and other crap to make this stuff work? And on top of that, if by chance I can flog my lump of mass formerly known as my brain into remembering the formula for exponential decay and then applying it to carbon dating some imaginary fossil leaf found in some imaginary desert it's going to take me quite a long time. I started to work that particular problem when I noticed that I had 25 minutes left of my 90 minute test and still had 6 of 15 problems to go. I find it annoying that the measure of my knowledge is based on how fast I can pull it from the recesses of what my eyes may or may not have transmitted correctly to my lump. Perhaps I'll study history, or something else. But based on my feelings toward this class and the fact that it's the bottom rung of anything engineering based, I think I'm going a different route.

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