norb

not that anyone reads this one, but if you do, come over to http://norbz.org and check out my site.  i'll be doing all future blogging there.

so i figured i'd give this thing a try.  it's seems to be kind of interesting.  it downloaded the format from livejournal, and now i'm typing in a window that looks suspiciously like my livejournal page.

the app seems to have all the usual word processing doodads you'd expect.  spell checking, font and color management, etc etc.  you can insert pics and links from the thing as well.

it seems that you can also have a number of different blogs from different sites hosted in here, but i only have this one for now.

i would say, if you hate writing in the livejournal page, this app might be for you.  you can write a blog and save it as a draft for later editing/updating, and you can post directly from here (which i'm about to try...we'll see how that goes)

so far, i like it and might try to stick with it for awhile to see how it works out.

 

update:  one thing i noticed right away is the inability to update the metastuff on here.  by that i mean the location, music, and mood sections.  i did find out however that you can open any previously posted blog from the app and edit then reupload it.  that is pretty nice too.  so i guess, all in all, you will still need to use the lj page to edit certain things (however the software is still in beta so it might be better in newer versions) but writing in this seems much easier than writing in the lj editor window.

so i came to the realization yesterday that i am probably a fairly shallow person.  i've always thought that my inability to pick up girls related to the fact that 1) they hardly ever approach me and 2) i get all nervous when they do.

yesterday a couple of my friends and i went to the beach (well, as close as you can get to a beach in ohio anyways).  we were hanging out on a sand volleyball court, just hitting the ball back and forth over the net.  the sand was really, really hot so we weren't really playing a game, but rather just messing around.  well up walks this girl from somewhere else, and she asks if she could get someone else to come over and play 3 v 3.  i turned to her, did a quick once over, saw she was kinda fat, and just said "well, we aren't really playing.  we're just messing around." she goes "oh, ok" then stands there for another minute, then walk away.

my friend's gf goes "why can't she play?"  at that moment, i realized that i kind of wasn't very inviting to this girl, never really made eye contact, and kind of just shut her out right away.  last night while i'm laying bed trying to get to sleep (which was neigh impossible due to the fact that i failed to put any suntan lotion on my back, so it got burnt the fuck up) i started to replay the little exchange in my head and figure out what it was that made me not be too friendly to this girl.

it came to me in a flash of brilliance... it was her looks.  i gave her the once over, dismissed her as fat, and that was that.  i wasn't interested in spending time with her or getting to know her.  i didn't even bother to find out if the other person she wanted to bring was another girl (maybe a hot one) or even a dude.  once i made that realization, i started thinking back on a lot of  different encounters i have with different girls.  i started to see a pattern where i'm not as friendly with the fat ones as i am with the hot ones.

so i started to ponder this new found personality flaw, and it dawned on me... why should i even care if i'm shallow?  it's always seen by society that being shallow is a bad thing, yet i think to some extent everyone is shallow in one way or another.  just the term itself, shallow, seems, well, shallow.  heh.  what i'm getting at is, if it is in your nature to be attracted to a certain body type, intelligence level, whatever, then why should you fight that?  why should you go against your own nature just to please society?  i don't think that is a very good way to go about your life, really.

so i'm an internet junkie, you might say.  i've had the internet since back in 95 or 96.  i've made plenty of friends on the internet, mostly through gaming, but also from forums and other "community" type sites.  i've gone to lan parties and hosted lan parties.  i'm a nerd, what can i say?

anyway, it's always interesting to meet people from the internet.  that was even more the case back in the days before voice communication and the proliferation of digital cameras and/or scanners.

the first time i met people from the internet was back in 1999.  my friend chris and i were playing qwtf (or quakeworld team fortress, for those of you that are lame and i have no idea what i'm talking about) in a "clan" and had gotten to know a couple of the guys pretty well (well as well as you can get to know someone w/o actually speaking to them in person or seeing them face to face).  one of the guys is married and lives in chicago and is having a party.  a bunch of people are going to be there, including a guy from quebec who speaks broken english at best, and a guy from down south a bit (i forget where he lived then but now he lives down in TN).

i have to say that it was a very good time.  we hung out our friend's apartment, played games, went downtown to disney quest (which, btw, was the best arcade i've ever been to and is no longer there :(  ), and even went out to a party at one of the other guy's friend's apartment.

since that time i've met other random people from the internet, either at concerts, bars, or whatever.  since that first meeting, however, everyone that i've met has been local to CLMBS or OHIO in general.  that is, up until last weekend when a bunch of our WoW buddies came to town and we went up to beautiful geneva on the lake for a meet-and-greet/get-really-fucked-up-with-a-bunch-of-people-you-hardly-know party.  i should qualify and tell you that a couple of the people that i met for the first time at this party i have known through the internet for a number of years.  two of them i've known online since back in the late 90s but never got the chance to meet before.  all in all, it was probably one of the most fun times i've had and there were plenty of crazy/funny things going on to keep it entertaining for the entire weekend.

3 of the guys that came were from chicago and are probably some of the coolest people you could ever hope to meet.  it's unfortunate that they live so far away b/c i could see all of us spending a lot of time together and getting into a lot of trouble.

i guess the whole point to this little rant is that there is a stigma associated with the internet and meeting people who you've only been introduced to via the internet.  i remember back in 99 when i told my parents that we were going ot chicago to meet a bunch of people from the internet, my mom freaked out and got all worried that i would be abducted or raped ,or both (or even killed).  the funny things is, the guy that we stayed with is still one of my best friends in the world, and we get to hang out (in person) a couple times a year usually. 

so is it dangerous to meet people from the internet?  i would say yes it can be, but no more so dangerous than meeting a stranger at the bar.  and in all honesty, i would say that it might be safer to meet someone from the internet, b/c i think in most situations you have already spent some time getting to know that person (unless it is a dating site, which i'm not really talking about here) gaming or posting on forums or chatting over IM or whatever.  whereas, if you meet someone in a bar one night, you might go home with them after only and hour or two talking, and who knows what you get then?

there was a time in my life when i thought i would be a writer.  i always excelled at english and literature class.  i always got As on any papers i handed in.  i got a 5 on the AP english test senior year.  in other words, i thought, "hey writing.  this is easy.  this is fun.  yeah."

well, it should be pretty obvious that i never got to be a writer.  what i found out is that if you give me a topic, yeah i can BS as good as the best of them.  i can write a report about fucking cantaloupes and make any teacher shed a tear over it's beauty.  what i can't fucking do is write about real shit.  the shit people actually want to read about.  an interesting story with a myriad of characters that interact and have adventures or some shit.  can't just get my brain to work in that way.

i was really disappointed about that for awhile, until i realized that you can't really make money as a writer.  there are hundreds up on hundreds of new books that come out every year, and maybe 20 of them will make someone rich.  not that what i do now is ever going to make me rich, but at least i earn enough that i don't have to wait tables or something else equally demeaning (sorry to those of you that work in food service, not a job i could ever do so mad respec')

last night as i was drunkenly falling asleep (victorian's midnight cafe being 1 block from my house for the win!) and i had some brilliant idea for a new journal entry on here.  fucking problem is i was kinda drunk and really sleepy, so i just thought to myself "well this is so great i'll totally remember it in the morning, no big deal."  right.  so here i am the next day, and all i have is this faint idea that i had something amazing to write about and now it's gone.

oh well, live and learn.  i need to keep a notebook next to my bed or something.

by the by, if you can get your hands on this little gem, i'd highly recommend it.  i don't even like van halen, but this shit is ... well.  i guess you'll just have to see.

ok, so in a post a few days ago i let everyone know that i work in IT. so, now that that's out of the way, let's get to the meat of this; WORK.

i hate work. i don't think i'm alone in this feeling. i would hazard a guess that about 98% of all people do not like their jobs. so, when you find yourself in a situation where your job really bothers you, what do you do? that's the question i've been asking myself for awhile now.

for some insight into me, i like to feel safe in general. i like to have a job so that i can have money. i like the field i'm in, just not too happy about the actual place i work. basically my workplace is a complete and utter clusterfuck. the management is shitty (what management isn't?), the ordering process is messed up and slow (which, in my profession, you always need stuff right now and if the ordering dept takes too long, it's my ass that gets chewed out), the hiring process is a joke (we've been trying to hire another person for our department for about 4 months now... the job posting is actually going up this week so they say, although i've heard that every week for the past 4 or 5 weeks now, so i'll believe it when i see it), and the actual infrastructure (left to me by my previous boss) is a mess.

anyway, as i was saying, i like to feel safe; meaning i can't (or won't) leave one job until i have something else lined up. this causes some problems for me though...

1. i have to hide any kind of job searching from my current employer
2. i have to find a job that is similar to my current one, and my current salary (shouldn't be too hard) before i can really take it seriously
3. i have an affinity for some of the people here, and i'd rather not leave them in a lurch. which leads to...
4. i can still learn things and grow at my current job if i can handle the freakin stress of everything here

so, where does that leave me? basically i'm stuck somewhere that has great professional growth opportunities for me. i have the ability to get my hands into anything i want here. network security? we got it. network design and maintenance? got that too. email? sure, both ms exchange AND some linux stuff. general windows networking and administration? yep, tons of that. SQL server admin? yep, can do that too. pay for training and testing/certification? they'll do it.

BUT, there is a down side to all of this variety. if you look at any corporate model for IT, you'll find that they tend to compartmentalize and specialize people in their IT groups. what does that mean? well, basically, they have one guy that is their email master. they have another guy who is their networking guru, and another for security. here they have.... me. i do all that and more (desktop support anyone?) the problem with this is that i cannot possibly get fluent in one thing well enough to get myself into a job somewhere else.

now i'm stuck, basically hating almost every minute i'm here, hoping and waiting for them to get another person in to our department so that i can finally get enough time (say even just one entire day without interruptions) to learn new things and try to fix the stuff that is actually in my job description.

i'll keep looking though, just in case...

... whatever you call it, it sure is fun.

anyone who has talked to me for 10 minutes outside of work probably knows that i tend to liberally pepper a conversation with a cavalcade of swear words. nothing really brings a conversation home like a good "fuck" or "shit" or "assmunch." i was thinking back to when i first started to use swear words. i remember being on the bus in probably 4th or 5th grade, and my friend derek and i experimented with curse. at first i think we were way too heavy on it. like a tarantino film gone wrong...

"did you fucking see that goddamn fucking girl in motherfucking gym today!?"

"fuck yeah! that shit was fucking shitting bitching fucking shit fuck, ya know?"

as you get older you can really get the feel for swearing though. you really start to grow to love the words; the way they caress each other and mingle together with the regular words. it's almost like they're unwanted guests in your sentence party, but when they show up everybody loves em. "the hit of the sentence", they say.

some people say that swearing makes you sound dumb. fuck that. swearing is best way to really convey something to someone. you say "LOOK OUT!" and people might look up. you say "LOOK THE FUCK OUT!" and people will move before they start looking around.

swearing is underrated and abused. i'll be the fist to admit that they lose their power after awhile. they become used and beat up and boring. so you start to mix it up. you bust out a foreign swear word, you add some nifty izzle on there, but they still get old. you can't keep up with em.

but yet, they keep coming back. they just slip in there. one day they're at work too. curse words. evil, taunting, following words.

so what do you do when you find swear is destroying your life? where can you go?


nowhere.


after all, they're just words, right?

so i work in IT. it's basically a thankless, shit filled job. one thing i've come to notice is the way in which people relate to you as the "computer guy." for one, people are always afraid of doing the wrong thing in front of me... afraid that i will somehow destroy their jobs by making their computer impossible to work with... or that i will turn them in for some crazy security related rule that they don't know about. it makes it hard to be friendly with the people around me when they see me as somehow being above them or something.

haha little do they know that i could give two shits about what they do all day, or really what they do with their computers. as long as they aren't fucking up my shit (i.e. infecting the whole place with virii -- which is actually really hard to do since we lock their shit down tighter than a baby's asshole at a priest convention) then they can feel free to do pretty much whatever.

but of course, this job induced distance between myself and my co-workers isn't all that bad. i'm one to subscribe to the philosophy of "don't shit in your own nest" i.e. making friends at work is bad b/c then they want to be friends when you go home too.

and who the hell can relax at home if they have people from work there? i sure fuckin can't...

yeah, so live journal huh? i guess i'm pretty late getting to this thing, but based on an experience i had last night (and a few of my friends who happen to be on here already) i'll give it a shot.

the whole thing about this site is that it is quite self indulgent. the community part is was intrigues me, so i'm going to check it out. the whole "post some boring shit about your life" part isn't all that cool to me, unless it somehow fits into a community. i guess we'll see how this goes.

so anyway, here i am. maybe i'll find out how this all works later.