Digitally Born

Ok .. so it’s been a few days since my last post .. a lot has happened ..
I’ve had a constant battle with HP on fixing my laptop .. I’m not sure what award they got to qualify for “award winning support” .. maybe the “most cost effective outsourcing of support staff” award .. in a nutshell, they’ve screwed it all up and my laptop is still sitting in a box at my front door, ready to be shipped.

The Cars, Part 1000:
If you’re just getting to hear this story, I’ve got 2 1990 Mazda RX-7s. The black car, which is mostly stock, and the white car, which has almost nothing stock from under the hood. The black car is to be my reliable daily drive, while the white car my fun, fast, and sexy weekend ride. The black car bit it with no warning. When I got the white car, I had a lot of fun driving it, so I drove it to work a lot .. like the first month solid. THEN, I got rear-ended by a Jeep Grande Cherokee. I was not happy. That night, I went home, and decided to pull the black car out of the garage, and put the white car in until it had gotten it’s repairs. To my dismay, the black car would not start. The engine turns by way of the starter, but it will not go on it’s own. So, while the white car was getting fixed, Tami and I shared a car .. which sucks, but shortly after I got it back, I went on driving it. That’s the short recap .. on to current events ..

This week .. My white car died. It’s been having “issues” for a while, and my mechanic buddy and I have been working on it, like replaced the fuel pump .. Tuesday when I was on my way to his house to continue our work, it finally gave up. Luckily, I made it into his driveway before it did. So, we messed with it, to no avail. Wednesday, we replaced the fuel filter. It seemed to to get better, but still remained in the “undriveable” status. Next is to replace the spark plugs and get the fuel injectors cleaned. BUT, I am going to change our repair focus back to the black car, as it should be, as Tami helped me realize, the ONE car that I keep running at all times. It IS afterall, my daily driver, isn’t it?! So for now, the white car will sit bleeding in Ray’s driveway and once it’s fixed, I’m getting rid of it. I can’t break myself for a car. It’s just a car! Tami will be so proud of me!
Finances hit all time low.
So .. in trying to pay off these two loans (wood floors and living room set) that I’ve been avoiding for so long before their “interest-free” time ends, we’ve gone broke. Litterally. It really hurts. I went $500 OVER my credit card limit (I don’t know how that’s possible) .. It’s REALLY stressed Tami out, which is a lot of my fault. I came to her in a “we need to talk” method, which is really the worst way you can start a serious conversation .. but, I really thought it was time she really knew what our situation is like, especially since it had hit such a rock bottom. I want to blame myself so badly, but looking back, there’s isn’t a lot I could have done about it all (except not avoid paying them off earlier) .. but we really haven’t had many “wants” purchases. My laptop was hardly a real want. I did want a laptop, but Tami needed a new computer, and my old one is perfect for her .. and I REALLY didn’t get one that blew my mind like I wanted to .. I really did shoot low (the difference between my want, and what I got, is about $2000) .. The one thing we didn’t absolutely need right then, was the hard wood floors .. but the cats were slowly destroying our carpet, and with the introduction of Bebe, our kitten, they would have been absolute crap by now, so it would have become a need.

Work:
Work sucks. Period. It’s a fact of life. I know that every job I’ll have, even if I own my own company, will suck in some fashion. I don’t know why I even decided to write about work .. it’s the same story.
We (the developers) have an idea to make things 1000% better, “V” or “S” get ahold of the idea, but don’t fully understand it. Instead of learning more to understand it, then twist the idea to fit in what they do understand, and the final result ends up making everything worse.

Prime example, we wanted to bring the office to more of a paperless office. Where papers CAN’T get lost on someone’s desk for a year after they quit. I did research on scanners and document managment software, and came up with a good plan for how the process should run. We explained that when a document enters our office in the mailroom, it gets scanned and thrown away. It never makes it out of the mail room. There’s no need. Someone sitting at a desk “sorts” the mail, by opening the document, and telling our system what that document is. The document gets routed to whoever needs it, who will then place it in it’s final resting place.

Instead, a document enters, gets indexed in our mail tracking system (that we’ve had forever), and gets delivered to the same people the same way it always has. Then that person will find the final resting place for that document, and PRINT OUT a page containing bar codes which gets scanned with the document. Our system uses the barcode to put the document where it belongs, then everything is thrown out.

Now, not only are we PRINTING OUT MORE PAPER, but we’re giving MORE work to the people who shouldn’t have more, paper is still flying around our office at the speed of a ‘93 Ford Festiva, and we’ve had to hire ADDITIONAL people to scan the documents. WHY did the idea change so much? Because we already bought 3 $9000 scanners (which run on windows 95 .. aka, they suck bigger balls then Jenna Jamison has ever seen) and we needed to justify having them. AND GET THIS, since we’re doing so many documents, they want to get 2 more scanners, this time at $10,000 a peice. Can anybody else in this office spell R-E-T-A-R-D-E-D?!

Mike, you are lucky you got out of here when you did. If I had only this job in my life, and nothing else (Tami, house, debt, etc), then I would probably sleep with a candle next to my bed slowly burning a hampster on a wheel that is tied to the trigger of a loaded gun duct taped to my mouth. But alas, I leave work, and find a happier place.

Speaking of, Tami should be here at any moment to pick me up.

Song of the moment:
No music going .. how boring

Site of the day:
Heavy.com
A very entertaining collection of humerous movies and sound. Including, my favorite, the GI Joe spoofs. You gotta see those!

PS Check back often, but don’t get mad I haven’t posted, remember, I don’t have a lappy at home to type sweet nothings into your ear with.