The Earth Shattering Update

So, in my last post, I promised that the next update would be amazingly earth shattering. And for anyone that knows me, what I am about to say certainly falls into that category.

I am happy.

I don’t know when the last time I could honestly say that. Normally it is “I am fine” or “Everything is OK” but lately, I can honestly say that I am happy. Why am I happy, you ask? well there are a number of reasons, but pretty much everything can be summed up into 2 categories. Home, and work.

That is pretty much all I have, a job I love, a wife I love, a home I love. This is what makes me happy right now

I mean how many people my age can say that they have no debt at all (other than the couple hundred dollars on the credit card that needs to be paid off when I get paid on friday)?  We own our car, we own our house, we own everything in our house.

I mean how many people my age can say that they actually own their homes. most are still paying the bank for it. We are not. It actually couldn’t have happened at a better time, because now we can put money aside into investments while the market is low. This should provide a much larger gain in the future which is always good.

As for work, I love what I do. I took some time away from the call centre industry, and realized that it is basically where I was meant to be. Now I am not saying that work is all sunshine and roses, because we all know that if work was that great you couldn’t call it work now could you?

Sure I am essentially at an entry level position within the company, but I think I will be able to work my way up rather nicely. If not within my own department, then within one of the bazillion other areas within the organization.

For now though, I think I will just keep my head down and bust my ass off like usual. I am on a few special projects that keep me pretty busy, and one of them involves a weekly management meeting so that always helps in terms of getting my name out there.

On a somewhat related note, I am in 4th place in the office fantasy hockey league. I think that isn’t bad for someone who doesn’t really follow sports at all anymore.

But yeah, I am definitely happy. Not moderately content, or pensively dismissive (well, maybe a little).

I have been trying to think over the last few days and even while writing this, when the last time I really felt happy for any meaningful period of time was. I can’t come up with anything. There has always been a part of my life that was totally going down the shitter so to speak. Something that was missing. Something keeping me from being happy.

Whether it be trapped in a dead end job, being in a bad relationship (or not in one at all), or being compared to others that were doing better than me, there was always something holding me down.

I got the biggest compliment ever from my sister not too long ago. She said that she sometimes wished she was more like me. Of course it was for completely shutting my biological father out of my life, but to me it seemed like more than that. She wished she had the strength to be as emotionally disconnected as me.

Let’s face it, I look bored at an amusement park. I am one of those people that really never get excited, or overwrought with grief, or anything like that. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel like that on the inside, just for some reason I developed this rather stoic exterior that does not convey emotion very much.

On some deep level, I am in pain by the fact that my biological father is an asshat, because as we all know asshattery is a genetic trait. I used to divert much of my time into not being an asshat. turns out, I only needed to be myself. That deep level is all but sealed now. with nothing but a little slit in the barrier in case the need arise to pass a message through.

Being told by your older sister that she wishes she were more like you sometimes, definitely a compliment. that means that the person you looked up to all these years (yes… you read that right… I looked up to my big sister) looks up to you occasionally as well. That there is a mutual respect there that transcends all of the childhood trauma inflicted on each other.

Being told by your older sister that she wishes she were more like you validates that what you have been doing is ok. That the course of action needed to be taken.

On that note, I think I have rambled on long enough (judging by the fact that the bus stop is approaching)

Tune in next time when you hear me say “What the Fuck?!?!?!?!”

an update is coming

seriously…. it is…… and it will be big….. and impressive….. and massively earth shattering……

I like the weekends

I must say, this weekend was a good one, even though both the wife and I were not feeling well. Saturday was pretty much taken up with grocery shopping, but then it was off to a friend’s birthday party.

Our friends Ryan and Lorraine threw a birthday bash for Lorraine, and decided to go with a wine tasting theme. Everyone was asked to bring a bottle of their favourite wine, and we all shared. It was nice being able to try a lot of wines that we normally wouldn’t buy.  There were a lot of different red wines there so we were able to sample ones we hadn’t had before.

I am really starting to like red wine. I never did before, but out of all of the wines that we tried, there was really only 1 that I didn’t particularly like. It had an acidic bite that didn’t really sit well with me. I think in the future, that may be a party that we would hold though.

Sunday, we didn’t do near as much as we planned. With not feeling well, we didn’t get nearly as much of the outside work done as we thought we could. We still have to finish winterizing the yard. The water barrel is still like half full. With it about to start dropping below zero this week at nights, we will have to empty it pretty fast.

Now for the week at hand. It is only a 3 day week for me as I decided to take an extra long weekend next weekend. But it promises to be a busy one. If all goes according to plan, I should be getting my 9 month probationary review today. I can’t believe it was already 9 months since I was converted over from being a contractor to a regular employee. But I think a 9 month probation is a little on the extreme side. I suppose it does give them a greater amount of time to determine if the person s really the kind of person that they want in their organization.

So one of three things can happen in this meeting today, either I am told I am good, and am taken off probation, I am told I need to get better, and have 3 months more probation tacked on, or I am told I suck and get a pink slip. Of course, I am quite confident that it will be the first option. There have been no issues that would leave me to believe that the other two options are even a remote possibility.

I mean seriously, with the amount of extra work I have taken on, they couldn’t possibly say I haven’t been doing what is needed. I also thing that there is a good enough rapport with myself and my team lead/manager that they would tell me if there was something I needed to work on at any particular time.

I am of course writing this on the bus on the way into work, so when I actually get to posting it, I will know what the results of the evaluation are.

All I can hope for I guess is to no longer be on probation,,, and maybe a raise, that would be nice.

Other things to look forward to:

• This weekend is thanksgiving which of course means turkey dinner.
• Monday we are going to the corn maze with Ryan and Lorraine, should be fun
• this weekend is a 5 day weekend for me
• I get to wear jeans to work all week because I paid to support our charity event

Insert Post Title Here… because I am too lazy to think of one.

I am not quite sure what I want to write about today, so this post may be a little more random than most. Not that previous posts have exactly been structured or anything.

We picked up a new computer bit recently, the My Book World Edition II Network attached storage (NAS) device. Basically in a nutshell it is a File Server that will allow the Wife and I to put all of our important files on a 1 Terabyte drive that backs itself up onto a second 1 Terabyte Drive using a Raid 1 configuration. This of course will mean that all of our music and media will be centrally located and accessible from all of the computers on our home network.

I started the process of moving our files over yesterday and have made it as far as the media files and various installers I had on my desktop computer.  Pretty soon we will have everything in there. Nice thing about it is I have my own folder on there, and the Wife has hers, and we have a common folder.

When you look at the specs on it, it is pretty much a small linux box. I am wondering if it would be a good idea to hack into it and make it do other things it wasn’t originally designed to do. Stuff like using it for a print server as well, that way I can use my printer from the laptop easier.

When everything is said and done, I must say that we will have a pretty sweet little home network. The only thing that will be missing is a device (be it a computer or otherwise) that will allow us to watch downloaded movies on our projector. I am sure there are numerous options out there, I will have to do some research into which one I choose.

Meanwhile, we have a lot of TV to watch. Monday, we watched 1 show then played Lego Batman for the rest of the night. Yesterday, we watched 1 show and I spent the rest of the evening configuring our NAS. The PVR is sitting at about 30% full right now.

That is certainly one of the nice things about having the PVR. There is no such thing as a missed show for us anymore. We set up the series we want to watch and it just records them when they are on. The only drawback to this is that we find that in general we watch a lot more TV. The upside of course is that it is TV that we want to watch.

Currently we are actively watching Chuck, Survivor, Terminator, House, Bones, CSI Miami, CSI, Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, and Heros. I am sure there are more in there, but since I don’t have the PVR screen in front of me and I don’t feel like thinking about it much, that is pretty much the list.

I am currently contemplating whether or not to record the leaders debate tomorrow. I think I have already pretty much decided who I am going to vote for. There seems to be some rather strong thoughts in my head when I think about the big 3 parties.

Conservatives: I trust em as far as I can throw em.
Liberals: No Thank You.
NDP: they seem to have some pretty good ideas in terms of social programs, but they don’t seem so strong on the country’s economical growth

All in all, I like the NDP Platform though. There are some parts of course that don’t really apply to me as an individual, but they do apply to people I know and care about. For instance, I personally could care less about child care programs and incentives. I however have many friends and family members with the little people. and one must never forget the little people.

I do however feel very strongly about education. A big part of that has to do with my wife being a teacher and hearing about all of the utterly bullshit things that happen in Edmonton’s fine learning establishments. It really does make me worry about the future.

But that will have to wait for another time. I am almost at my stop.