The un-what?

It’s our job…we have to be nice to the unfuckables.

— Adri, commenting on the hordes of people obsessing over whatever newest Dragonball Z video is on the shelves

Quicker archiving, twins, frustration

Seeing as how I’m actually starting to update this thing on a more regular basis — and given my tendency for loquaciousness — I figured I’d drop the archiving settings down to weekly, instead of every two weeks, so that this page didn’t just keep scrolling on and on and on and on and on…. I also removed the link to the old hand-generated archive pages (from before I started using this software to automate the updating process), since it’s all really old stuff, and it’s easier for me to just stay with the automatically generated archive pages.

Even though I picked it up a couple of weeks ago, I just got around to watching Dead Ringers last night. Wow…what an incredibly fascinating film. David Cronenberg almost never fails to dissapoint me — he’s got an incredibly twisted mind and excels at putting his ideas on screen — and the one time he has (Crash, which I never even made it all the way through) I’m now starting to consider renting and giving another try. Anyway, the combination of Cronenberg and Jeremy Irons‘ absolutely mindbending performance as a pair of identical twins in Dead Ringers was absolutely mesmerizing. The fact that Irons could play two such identical people and put just enough subtle differences into the performances that it was always clear which was which was absolutely incredible to watch…he just proves yet again why he’s on my list of favorite actors.

In other news…well, not much. E-mailed my resume over to the temp agency, so all I can do now is ‘hurry up and wait.’ Spent most of last night here at home being frustrated with life in general…I’m so burnt out on just about everything here in town, especially with all this drama with TimeFrame, that I’m looking forward more and more to the day that I can just pack up and leave. Ah, well…some days I do better than others.

Now, I’ve got to go jump in the shower and head off to work at Suncoast, selling movies for a few hours. Fun fun fun….

First steps…

…into a field I haven’t investigated in years: job searching.

Went ahead and took Friday off to do a bit of job hunting. Ended up going by Chugach North Technical Services and turning in an application and getting an interview there…hopefully that might bring something my way soon. Things seemed to go pretty decently, I took one test on Microsoft Word and got a 94% (only missed two questions), and my typing test clocked me at 81 WPM with 95% accuracy…not bad in the least. Just have to get my resume e-mailed over to them and harcopy dropped off on Monday, and then wait and hope. If they’re able to find me something, then in goes my 2 week notice at TimeFrame. Hard to believe I actually got to this point, but if it’s time, it’s time.

Ups and downs, and some possible changes

Yesterday was not exactly the best day I’ve ever had — not the worst overall, but certain moments may have some fairly large impact on days to come.

I’ll start with the good stuff, though. First off, my bowling continues to improve, which is cool. After last week’s run I brought my average up to 113, then surprised myself by managing to pull off my best series yet — 142/168/140! Not just my best series so far, but that 168 is my best score so far…I’m hoping to be able to get at least one game where I break 200 before I stop bowling.

Secondly, I got a chance to swing by Suncoast and picked up Love’s Labours Lost, and watched that after I got home from bowling last night. It turned out to be a really fun film, though it takes a little getting used to at first. Since Branagh combined Shakespeare with a 40’s style musical for this production, it opens with a ‘newsreel’ to give you some background information, then moves into some expository Shakespearian dialogue…then breaks into “I’d Rather Charleston”. Really caught me off guard at first, but after one or two numbers you just get caught up in the spirit of the experiment, and it just becomes a whole lot of fun. The only real downside I found was Alicia Silverstone trying not just to act, but to sing — luckily, she only gets a few verses completely on her own. I found her character to be this film’s eqivalent to Keanu Reeves in Much Ado About Nothing — an essential character who is unfortunately really badly miscast. Aside from lil’ miss Clueless, though, it’s a wonderful little romp, once you get past the initial shock.

Unfortunately, those were the highlights of the day. Not that they were bad highlights…just that the rest of the day kind of overshadows them.

Did my taxes — I owe $146. Bleah.

The big thing, however — if I’d had any more money in the bank than I do, I would have walked out of my job at TimeFrame yesterday. This is a really major thing for me — one way or another, I’ve always had an almost overdevolped sense of responsibility to whatever job I’m working, and will stick out some really uncomfortable situations when I deem it worth it, and I’d been doing my best to deal with all the little things at TimeFrame that bug me for a while now, as I didn’t want to either lose the paycheck or throw away the four and a half years I’ve got there just a few months before I leave state. However….

It just isn’t worth the headache anymore. While it’s not the job itself that bugs me, and I still enjoy the actual work I do, the work environment is so screwball that I’ve finally reached my breaking point. So, today I’ve called in to take a personal leave day, and I plan on running around to some of the temp agencies in town to take their placement/skills tests and see if I can find anything upwards of $10/hr for the next few months. I figure if I can find some data entry position — the kind of thing that often pays $12-$15 an hour because nobody wants to deal with it (usually a night position, shoved in a hole somewhere typing numbers in for hours on end), then as soon as I’m confirmed there, I can turn in my notice at TimeFrame and lose a fair amount of the stress in my life at the moment.

It’s really kind of bizarre for me to have gotten to this point — I’m still kind of amazed at myself for being willing to do something like take a day off to go job hunting. But, things have been going steadily downhill for me in regards to my job there, and there’s really only so much that I can take. So, today begins something of a grand adventure, in seeing if I can find something else to do for the next few months until I can afford to bail state. Should be interesting.

Of course, what’s going to be really interesting is if someone from TimeFrame actually ever stops by and checks my site and reads this….

Of blogs, site content, and something funny

So it appears I’ve (without really knowing or planning it) become one of the growing number of ‘bloggers’ on the web. Blogger? Well read on…the following text is from Blogger, a service for helping people create and maintain their blogs. While I don’t use them, the definition was useful:

What is a weblog/blog?

A blog is a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically — like a what’s new page or a journal. The content and purposes of blogs varies greatly — from links and commentary about other web sites, to news about a company/person/idea, to diaries, photos, poetry, mini-essays, project updates, even fiction.

Blogs posts are like instant messages to the web.

Having realized while websurfing today that I’ve joined the blogger community, I went ahead and retitled this column on my page to reflect that, and added a couple of blog-related links to the lefthand sidebar on the page.

As far as site content goes, I’ve taken down the link in the Contents bar to the Ak Events side of my site, as I’m planning on going ahead and discontinuing it in the near future. It just isn’t getting the traffic I was hoping for…a good idea, but others are doing similar things, and I’d rather let someone else a little more into the idea play with it.

And finally, an amusing link I found while bouncing around the ‘net today: Pornolize! Warning: don’t follow the link if you’re underage or easily offended (or both) but if you’re neither of the above and have a good sense of humor, it can be all sorts of amusing. Don’t say I didn’t warn you….

Bleah

I so don’t enjoy being sick. Came down with a really nasty flu virus a couple nights ago that has just knocked me for a loop…no fun at all. Worked all of about 3 hours yesterday, made it through 7 today…but am feeling better, though, so hopefully will be back to normal (whatever ‘normal’ is defined as in my case) by tomorrow. The worst part about the whole thing, though, was on top of battling the flu and feeling like crap, plus I spent all of today battling really strong hiccups too. Not a combination I’d recommend.

In other news, I picked up the 2-disc collector’s edition release of Disney’s Dinosaur today. Should be fun to play with. The only question will be how much of it I can make it through before the NyQuil kicks in.

Why I collect movies

Every so often I get people expressing amazement, wonder, or just shaking their heads in confusion when they see my DVD collection, either by checking the listing here on my site, or coming by my house and seeing the bookcase full of discs. I just found a page on the ‘net that had a really well-written explanation of why I (among other people) enjoy collecting movies, so I’ve added it to my site. There is a link to it in the contents listing on the home page (underneath the heading for my DVD list), or if you’d rather, you can just start reading.

Bowling

Had a good night, tonight. Got picked up by my friend Airy, and we went out to La Mex for dinner (one of the few places left that you can get dinner and enjoy a cigarette, if you’re so inclined) and then headed out to Jewel Lake Bowl to meet Bill and Rich for midnight Neon Bowling. I got a 148 my first game (great, since my average right now is 108), and went steadily downhill from there. Not that much of a surprise, though, as we didn’t start until right around my normal bedtime! Afterwards we came back here, and Airy passed out for a bit while Bill and I talked…but, once it hit 4:30 in the morning, I figured it was time to get them home and get me to bed.

So after this quick site update, I’m off to bed. Gotta make it to work tomorrow….