BeMused

ARRRRGGGggggg….

Bloody….

Stupid….

Background…
IMAGE…..

I quit for today. I’m going home.

damnit.

Ok, so it’s mostly back to “normal”, or at least what passes for normal around these parts. Now if I could just get the right side navigation menu’s background to go all the way down the bottom of the page, I’d be happy.

Guess I’ve got more work to do.

Yes, it’s a bit slow here at work today….

I keep breaking the layout.

I’m trying to go with a more centered look, similar to my Harleyroads site, but I’m trying to do it all with CSS. Naturally, I’m screwing it all up.

Ah well. The fun of experimentation

Deciding to forgo the pleasure of paying the late-return rental fee’s to the Nazi’s at Blockbuster, I opted to go the long way into work this morning so that I might drop off The School of Rock (not a bad movie if you can handle Jack Black’s over-acting…). On the way there, I realized I was hungry. After dropping the movie off, I became aware that I was more than hungry, I was at the point where I was starting to shake. As McDonalds was right there, I zipped into the drive-thru and ordered breakfast. Or what passes for breakfast at McDonald’s…

I drove to the window after placing my order at the chatterbox, and gave the man my money. He punched it in, the change was automatically dispersed from its little change machine and he handed me the dollar bills. This got me to thinking. I think there’s somebody, somewhere, who’s job it is to figure out how to make out lives more convenient at the expense of actually having to think, or even move. We don’t have to bother counting change out anymore, ’cause it’s automatically dispersed. All we need to worry about is bills, and most people can handle 1’s, 5’s and 10’s. Not so for the change aspect apparently. God forbid we actually have to use our brain to think about the correct change.

After leaving, I decided to take a way into work I haven’t been before. I try not to be a slave to routine, and, as I was feeling a bit rebellious this morning (after all, I did refuse to pay the late fees. Our normal MO is to just say “Well…we’ll watch it again then…”), I figured what the hell. So, left turn instead of right, and off we go.

Back to the convenience aspect: They say there are two sides to every story…well, I began to wonder about my car stereo. It’s not a bad stereo, and comes with 18 FM presets and 12 AM presets (who actually listens to 12 AM Stations?). This is obviously a convenience built in to the car stereo to help the driver get to his or her preferred stations at the touch of a button. Very nice and quick, and probably safer than trying to drive and tune in your station.

But why don’t any of my home stereos have the same convenience? Why do I have to manually turn a dial just to find my preferred radio station at home? Do home stereo makers figure that we don’t face the same kind of dangerous distractions at home as we do on the road? What if I’m mixing something with my power mixer and don’t want to stop just to change the station? I want preset stations on my home stereo’s damnit! If my life is going to be inundated with conveniences, I want them everywhere.

Ok, after a couple of lefts, a right or three, we’re lost. Well, not lost lost, just misplaced. Ourselves. Me. Whatever.

My life is convenience squared. I can look up anything in a matter of minutes with the power of the Internet. Go down to the library and read through a database of articles and then find the particular one? Heck no! I can do that from the comfy confines of my own convenient home. With it’s automatic garage door opener, so I don’t get wet if it’s raining (or use my muscles), and my food processor for chopping veggies and what-not, so I don’t accidentally cut myself and it’s quicker (and I don’t use my muscles), to my remote controlled TV, so I don’t have to get up and (heaven forbid) walk 8 feet to change a channel. Oh, or use my muscles.

No wonder I’m fat.

So, I’m no longer misplaced, and I’ve found work, and being rebellious as I am today, I’m not going to park as close to the door as possible. No! I’m going to the TOP FLOOR. I feel special parking up there today. See, I didn’t know this before today (having never parked up there before), but apparently if you have a certain class of car, i.e., BMW, Mercedes, Porsche…something in the 50K plus range, you have to make sure you park way up top so no one scratches your car. I decided to park between a nice BMW 740 and Mercedes’ SL 500. They’d thoughtfully left a space between them for me. Might have been so they had room on either side to avoid door-dings, but I refuse the believe that. I like the fact that my little Honda Accord is parked with the Big Boys.

So wow! I’m all the way on the top floor. Now…do I use the stairs when I leave? Or opt for the convenience of the elevator and forgo any exercising of my neglected muscles?

Well…we are creatures of convenience….

There are days where I feel my job, and to lesser extent my way of living, stifles any creative inspiration I might have. The job is creative in trying different ways of breaking the software, but that in itself is not very fulfilling to me. For awhile there, all I wanted to do after work was play Playstation with my buddy Jeff, or play games on the computer, or watch TV. Definitely not creative nor productive.

After reading my friend Krysta’s on-going story (which is quite excellent and I suggest you check it out. Easy to read short chapters, and will be especially enjoyable if you like edgy types of stories), I felt the old familiar urges of inspiration, desire and creativity settle in. This time, I think I’ve started doing something about it though.

I find that to feed my creativity and keep it alive, I must continue to be creative and productive. Instead of playing computer games, I’ve been learning how to use Reason and creating music. Instead of watching TV after dinner, the kids and I started shaping their rockets for the upcoming Space Derby. Shaping the wood with sandpaper was time consuming and hard on the fingers, but it was satisfying as well.

Along the same line, and to keep this momentum going, I am enrolling in a photography class at the local community college. I’ve have a fairly decent camera, and while I can take half-assed decent shots with it, I’d like to understand better what I’m doing with it, and how to get the most out of my shots. I’m also going to be writing more. I know, I know, I keep saying that (or so it seems), but if I push myself to write more, the more that creative spark keeps firing. I checked into a screewriting class, but it cost three times as much as the photography one did. So we’ll go with photography, and get back into some of the higher level English classes when I’m back in school towards my degree.

And who knows, maybe some day I’ll be able to quit my job because I was hired as a photo journalist for one of the big time Harley magazines out there…

It’s twenty ’till two in the morning as I sit and write this.

I’ve been up and down with the damn dog since going to bed in a stessed induced state of exhaustion almost four hours ago. I think the poor dog has some sort of bladder issue. Or pooping issue. Some issue at least. She’s had to go out at least once an hour, and then she squats and tries to do her business.

The stressed part comes from, among other things, a job-interview I had today. The place in question sounds like an excellent place to work; however, I have a feeling that while the interview itself went well, the technical knowledge needed is not there. Which got me to wondering if I even wanted it to be there.

I’ve been in the computer/Internet industry for over nine years now. It wasn’t something I planned. I never went to school for computer related classes, I never was a gamer. About the only thing I did was MUD. I knew the Internet before I knew a computer, oddly enough. Now, nine years later, I’m contemplating if it’s something I want to continue on with.

I’ve had a variety of jobs within this industry, starting with tech support and working my way up through the call center atmosphere until I moved out here to Virginia. A stint at development, and then landing where I am now in QA. Unfortunatly, I think this was the wrong place to land.

The problem lies in not only what other sectors to look for jobs in, but trying to find one where the pay will at least be comparable to what I’m making now. I feel as if I’ve trapped myself into a position where if I make a change in careers, it’ll be detrimental to my lifestyle. We’re having enough problems making ends meet as it is, what with mortgage going up because the tax assement went through the roof, or gas prices going through the roof, or kids expenses going through the roof, or vet bills going through the roof.

Because my dog has issues and can’t pee.