Yes.. methinks it is.
No vegaspost yet, reasons are covered in this post.
Pictures though! (no video. grrr)

ITEMS COVERED IN TODAYS LESSON.

1) My love for corporate america
2) People on the road
3) Justification in the fact that girls are insane
4) Music that suits (mp3s!)
5) Customer service aptitude (compusa / frys)

Ahh where to begin, where to begin.. I know many of you probably remember my previous rants that go on and on about corporate america. You might remember me claiming a number of things thats were mostly assumption with some reason behind them based loosely on gay office politics and empty fucking promises from management. Now ultimately I think I have not found more definition, but rather found the reason behind the chaos in tech support. The entire department is Kens little monkey. (Ken being the director) He pretty much dictates what happens, and nobody can say anything to the latter. I had a decent talk with a friend at work about it at great length that claims he was in the same boat as I, but I think there are some key differences between him and I that differentiate exactly how management treats us at work. The guys always been pretty sharp at work and on the ball. I on the other hand refuse to fucking lie down. I’m too strong willed. If I feel I’m being treated unfairly I sure as fuck going to do something about it. See I’ve spent the last year being a marionette for management. I do what they say, I jump when they say jump, I do more work than Im paid for, I stay late and finish other peoples work smiling the entire time. After about a year of this, I started to notice that I was being given very high priority work, level III stuff even. I started working even harder thinking that since I was being given such top level work that eventually this is what I would end up doing. This went on for a few months and promotion time came around. It was me verus my friend Neil in the end. Neil got the job. He swore that I should have gotten it and began campaining to get me promoted the next round. Months go by and I’m still busting my ass. It comes down to me and Dave. Now Daves certainly a sharp guy, but the position was for the lab sysadmin, and *EVERYONE* thought that I was the most qualified. The committee that was chosen deliberated for litterally four hours over this. They toiled and toiled. Finally Ken stepped in and basically said “No dan.” and that was that. They called me in first to tell me the ‘good news’ about other peoples promotions. The ‘evidence’ they stated that held me back was stuff that I had done more than a year ago that I had already taken care of and was WELL in my past. The motherfucker had the nerve to lie straight to my face “Yeah.. drew says that hes been over to your desk multiple times in a day to ask you to answer the phone.” I said “EXCUSE ME? Drew hasnt been to my desk in almost 8 months, back when him and I did the nightshift together and he had questions.” He put on this fake look of concern. He then started to give me the same old song and dance about how I need to talk to my manager about what I need to improve and I stopped him. I said “Stop. I’ve heard this speech 6 times. 6 times I did everything that was asked of me and 6 times I was denied the promotion. I think I’ve just about had enough of this speech. What I’d like from you is to tell me *EXACTLY* what I need to do in your eyes to get the promotion the next time around.” His reponse was “you need to improve your buisness communication.” I said “uhm.. what part, exactly? the customers and sales have nothing but good things to say, as do my co workers, people in QA and the engineers that I talk to and go see on a daily basis. I’ve never ever gotten any negative feedback on my communication” he repeated himself “You need to improve your buisness communication”. .. … at this point I wasnt sure what to say, I thanked him for his input and then got up and walked out of his office. I went back to my desk and I was litterally SHAKING i was so infuriated. Someone asked me what was wrong and I said “I’ve just been denied a promotion, and when I asked why, I was flat out lied to - right to my face.” Someone at that point (who I wont name) went straight to Ken and said “wow Dans been capping on you ever since he got out of your office”. This was music to Kens ears because he said “Thats exactly what I thought. He still has to grow”. Motherfuckers. I cant trust anybody at work and I hate it. My manager immediately called me into his office and my supervisor was there too. I was still shaking at this point. They asked me if I wanted to go up to a customers site in seattle for a few days to ‘get away’ (im sure they knew how pissed off i was.. they were rooting for me, at least from what I understand). Before they could finish I declined. I explained that I had been doing 2-3 times my workload for a year in hopes to be promoted, and that after Ken denying me it was painfully clear to me that hard work and persaverance(sp?) dont get you anywhere in tech support. I continued to state that I would no longer do anything that was out of my job description, and that I would no longer be putting in any overtime. Since then things have kinda stabilzed. It didn’t get better, but it wasnt exactly getting worse. At this point I’m doing only what I’m paid to do. I dont work very much overtime at all, and I’m not given many extra ‘tasks’. My lead thinks I’m great at what I do so I get the occasional ‘fire’ I have to put out, but I can see the guy getting PHYSICALLY UNHEALTHY due to the stress, so I’m easy on the guy and I do what he asks me to. My supervisor is certainly someone I can depend on (sorta) but hes still management so I’m not sure how much I can trust him exactly. *sigh*. I’m leaving. Flat out. I know that I’ll never be promoted, and I know that since I tear through my work and Im on top of the stats every week I’m certainly not getting fired. Im stuck. Entrenched in a job that I hate, talking to morons on the phone that dont know their dick from their firewall from the phone theyre talking to me on. Im out. Period. I cant deal with this shit anymore. Im showing signs of depression and I went from being a cheerful happy go lucky guy who was very openminded to a guy who hates eveyryone, is pissed off all the time, and sleeps 16 hours a day because work wipes me out so bad I get home and just crash. Fuck Tech Support. The End.

People in cars seriously need to have their heads examined. I fully understand that this is like.. 90 percent of people, but seriously we should turn california into a marshall law state for a year, and put *EVERYONE* through at least some light testing to prove their worthiness to drive. Just simple common sense testing. People that fail are denied the ability to use a computer, or drive. I’m very certain EVERY GEEK READING THIS will agree with me. Some of you will try to retort, or say something, or maybe youre thinking that its a bad idea or its kinda harsh, but seriously I have *FLAT OUT VIDEO* of two people PURPOUSELY TRYING TO SWERvE INTO ME. I was driving on the shoulder on the way home today and two trucks like.. swerved at me to try to ‘deter’ me from using the shoulder, I guess. Now, I wasn’t on the shoulder just to be a rebel, but I was getting on i-15 north at carmel mountain ranch. Those of you familiar with that exit will know what I’m talking about. The onramp is LITERALLY a mile long. Theres about 40 feet to your left before the slow lane starts, and theres always those cocky motherfuckers that turn their car 30 degrees into traffic and *STOP* when theres a good half mile of runway after them so eveyrone behind them can WAIT while they squeeze their way into traffic. I say fuck that bullshit, I go around them. I drive a jeep, I get 13 miles to the gallon on my commute, and im not waiting for some fuck in a camry to get into traffic. At that point I was a quarter mile from the next exit (camino del norte) so i said fuqqit and just used the shoulder to get to the next exit. During this little excursion the two idiots swerved at me just to dick with me. I made a video wherein you can clearly see the trucks swerving at me for no good reason. I’ll be posting the video up as a comment later when I get it encoded right. Grrr.

Now to COMPLETELY JUMP TOPICS, I am going to prove that beyond a doubt girls are insane. Out of all the girls I’ve ever met, especially the ones online (mainly irc), and a few in real life have certainly demonstrated to me that sanity is not something born into females. I cant speak for males, either but this particular rant is about girls, so lets stay on topic :). I was recently told a story wherein the last thing said to me was ‘god girls are retarded’. the *GIRLS* I know call girls retarded more than the guys I know do. THIS EQUATION is proof, for most girls. The ones that this doesnt apply to are by no means free and clear. I have some more footage I’m somewhat reluctant to post wherein a party I was at, a friends girlfriend was going on and on about another girls nipples. The girl whos nipples were being talked about demanded “womanly love”. Shortly afterwards the first girl got angry at someone (a guy) that slapped her boyfriends ass. I swear to god the lot of them are fed paint before theyre let into the world. I thought for a while I could understand them but I just cant. You take a girl out, you show her a good time, and she’ll go for your buddy. You ignore them, give them a general ‘go away’ vibe, and the only way you can get them away is the threatan them with a gun. I dunno wtf anymore I fucking give up. I’ll wait till im 40 when women want emotional stability and financial security and safety over shiney shirts, shiney cars, gifts and other superficial bullshit. *groan*.
Not only in my extracurricular life, but at work as well I have found many many songs that seem to have been practically written for me, and a few of my friends. We have to endure stupid bullshit circus antics at work, and when we’re not at work we have to deal with the crowds of infinite idiots. I’ve been living in san diego for about 22 years now. Every year the place seems to get increasingly stupider. I swear to god its like watching water drip out of a cooler with a leak. I have a few in mind that fit certain occasions, and I’m willing to share a few with you. Tracks 4 and 5 describe me at work, track 1 describes basically what I would say to the new guy at work, and track 12 describes the stupid fucking hoardes in san diego. Track 10 is a good example of half of the girls around here too. its pretty horrid. So ideally the tracks you want are 1, 4, 5, 10 and 12. Give them a listen. If you want the lyrics you should be able to google for them.

And now finally, the news you all have been waiting for. The vegas post. I went to vegas almost two months ago, and i got a shitload of awesome pictures and video. Unfortunately I really wanted to do up the video like the other ones I did, sd drivers 3, the AX video and the florida video.. in Imovie and with subtitles and music and all the bells and whistles. Since im not a pro at premiere, and my laptop is still in the motherfucking shop, the post has been delayed over a month. The motherfuckers at compusa took my laptop on 9/11 for warranty service and today its the 6th (7th?) and I still dont have it back. They called me a week ago to tell me it was in, but when I came to pick it up, they hadnt fixed what I had said was wrong with it, so I told them to take it back. I have a friend who works at apple who says its likely theyre just gonna send me a whole new laptop.. which is rad.. but…the fucking pictures and video from vegas is on the goddamn laptop.. (*@#&^*(@#&^*(&@#*(&@#^ .. god dam stupid motherfuckers at compusa(@#&^. On top of that, the linux box at my house died. Squidy and I had to drop 600 dollars to replace the stuff in the linux box. The money was very well spent as we’re not going to have to upgrade this box for a *LONG* time. Its currently running a 20 player counterstrike server, ftp/movie/mp3/raid server, samba, httpd, named and its the house firewall all at the same time and it doesnt go over .5 load average. Its gnarly as fuck and im proud :). Only catch is it was a bitch to get the morons at frys to give us the goddamn hardware we asked for. we bought a nice msi motherboard, and a hyperthreaded pentium 4 2.4 ghz and some twinx dualchannel ram. When they gave us the ram, they delivered some shitty weird noname brand ram. We said ‘Uhh.. this isnt what was at the counter.’ Turns out what they did was the good ol bait and switch. They took the best price for the fastest ram and swapped stickers at the ram station with some other brand.. so if you look at their chart you get the speed/prices across the top row, and the brands down the left side collumn. We found twinex, and went across the row to the speed/price we wanted and wrote down the upc number for the ram. Turns out what the morons did was swap the stickers so that the end sticker for the ram we wanted was really the UPC for another fucking brand.. so when you get to the counter and youre ready to pay, and they pull the fucking switch on you, they hope most people go “oh.. shit.. oh….w ell…. okay fine whatever”.. well we didnt submit. We said’ no fuck you dick, go get our ram.’ the guy was suprised. “we asked for dual channel twinex ram. this isnt even twinex ram.” … the guy says “uhh.. well.. it matches the upc thats on the sheet they printed for you..” .. “oh.. does it now?.. well lets go back to the memory station and have a little chat with your associate there”. *groan* Everytime shit like this happens, squidys always saying stuff like “God what a fucking imbecile. I cant belive people could mix up ram that is so viusally different like that. How do you make that kinda mistake? i mean.. what kind of fucking idiot do you have to be?” and I remind him “dude look… if this person WAS NOT an idiot, would they be working the back fucking counter at frys for 7 bux an hour?” .. and he laughs.

Anyway, on a lighter note, and certainly one everyone can appreciate (except lacey, because shes going to fucking slaughter me for this video) Lacey came over tonight and drank a bunch and we played on camera, and had fun and dressed up and jumped around. I love hanging out with people that are as creative as she is. It makes playing around while the cam is snapping photos really fun. We had a great time screwing around, I took video and pictures(listed below at the end).

OH, incidentally, I have the vegaspictures.. (most of them.. the TRULY important ones are on my fucking laptop which is whoknowswhere.) The video is a whole other story. I have it all but I refuse to post it untill I can actually edit it and make it worth posting, so it might be a little bit till the good stuff goes up. Soon as I get my laptop back (fuck compusa) ill get the shit up asap. For now, Here are the pics, vegaspics first, then lacey/dan/billy pics. Enjoy!