/dev/zero

Where to start…?

After seeing The Lady in the Water¹ yesterday with Kestrel, we met up with chuck_lynn, hubs, vulpine137, techie_, gwyndragon, lllvis, kingdom_key1 and a couple of others who’s names I don’t remember <edit>After checking vulpine137’s LJ entry re: this event, I can fill in masonstone and synapticdreams</edit>. I think Kestrel was the only LJless one there.
Oh, and kingdom_key1, if you’ve added me to your friends list yet, Kestrel figured out why I kept insisting we’d met somewhere before. A couple weeks ago, at California Pizza Kitchen. Heather’s birthday thing.

Happy Birthday to smoofy!

Work has been… work. Two people have been fired recently for being idiots. One I’m not sorry to see go (he was truly an idiot and I don’t know why he hadn’t been fired a long time ago. Especially after he threatened me, his supervisor. But then, those of us with supervisory responsibility don’t have supervisory authority, so what do I know?) one I’m kinda sorry to see go, but not sorry to see the messes he made disappear.

I still don’t have the raise I was promised 3 months ago. Last paycheck I was assured it would be taken care of, with back pay. Is it bad that I was not at all surprised when this paycheck came around and it wasn’t fixed?

I was told I could not take vacation time in Aug, as I won’t have passed one year with $POE until Sep. 20th, and the new rules say you have to have 1 year with the company to draw on your vacation time. So in last night’s shift report I read that one of our newest level 2 employees, who’s been with us barely 2 months, was out on a vacation day.
Color me unimpressed.

I’m loving the new car. Not going to be loving the payment, or the insurance premiums, but the car I love.

1 A movie I highly recommend. I think it’s my first M. Night movie (never did get around to seeing The Village, Signs, The Sixth Sense or any of his others) and I’ve heard some of them sucked, but this one is pretty good. Not scary at all (though it has it’s suspense moments. Decent story, reasonably well acted. Plenty of dry humor.

Auf Wiedersehen, BMW.

I traded in the ol’ 1990 325i. She was a good ride, but she was falling apart. Cruise control quit before I even moved to Texas. Front end was crunched in December. Sun roof was sticking quite badly and would no longer open more than a few inches. The drivers seat has been broken for years and the rough edge of the broken frame was starting to poke through the padding behind my shoulder. The passenger seat never did lean forward to give access to the rear seat. The drivers airbag has been off line ever since I had the turn signal switch replaced and the garage didn’t reinstall it correctly. The steering wheel would squeak like mad if I didn’t have my right hand on it (extra maddening, when the girlfriend likes to hold my hand in her lap when we’re going anywhere.) The suspension was shot. The odometer quit working a month or so ago at 144K miles. The paint was starting to show it’s age.

But she was a nice ride while she lasted. She had power to spare and I was occasionally seduced into using it.

I traded her in on an ‘05 Toyota Corolla. I wanted a Scion TC, but I just couldn’t swing the financing (odd, since it wasn’t any more expensive than the Corolla.) I’ll miss the power of the 6 cylinder engine and the cache of a BMW (let’s face it, a Corolla is just a Corolla), but I have one of the world’s most reliable cars, it’s comfy, everything works and it’s in pristine shape. The engine isn’t as powerful, but it has a very smooth transmission and it just glides over the road. And while the Bemer wasn’t bad on the gas, the Corolla is much, much better.

Now I just have to live with a $500/month car payment for the next year and my insurance premium doubled.

But in a year’s time, hopefully, I will be able to either refinance the loan to a more favorable interest rate (I’m being raped on this loan, but I only have myself to blame for my poor credit) or trade it in on the Scion (AND a lower rate on the loan.)

Oh, and Ford? Thanks for nothing. No, I really didn’t want your gas-guzzling 6-cylinder Ranger. Had you been a little better about your promises of financing, you might have got my business and I would have taken one of those ‘05 rangers off your hands. Toyota was willing to work with me on it.

<edit>Turns out Toyata was even worse than Ford. I had to GIVE THE CAR BACK a week later when the promised financing fell through.

I eventually found a nice ‘05 Ford Focus at Carmax.

I got a call from the weekend overnight team lead to ask if I knew the password for the Plesk licensing web site.
At 04:06 freaking AM.

Needless to say, at that hour of the morning I was not in any mental state to recite, from memory, the login and password for anything.
I was very not-pleased to be called at that hour, on my day off, to be asked for a password the caller should have had in his own records for months now. He should be using it about 5 times each and every shift, so why he suddenly doesn’t have it I don’t understand.

Later in the day I read in my email that another employee has accepted the position of weekend overnight team lead.
I can’t help but believe the two are connected.

Great site, cribbed from kitiara.

This one, of course, made me think of vulpine

(And there’s nothing like being given another copy of an album you love, but lost a long time ago.)

All right you Scion owners, post your opinions.
Love your car? Hate it? What do you love or hate about it.
I’m in the market for a new car and I’m looking at a Scion. I really like the tC, but I test drove an XA the other day at the dealer and it kinda speaks to me to. Rode in an XB and it was nice on the inside, but I can’t get around the fact that they’re butt ugly on the outside.

Wow, it’s been almost a month since my last entry. I haven’t read LJ in that time either.
Something about this “having a life” that seems to interfere with my LJ time.
Can’t spend time on LJ at work, since I’m too busy (being a supervisor, I hardly have time to even take lunch these days).
When I either don’t want to be near a computer or I’m at Kem’s place where there is no Internet access. And I’m usually got better things to do than be online anyway.