2007-08-11

so it's 8 o'clock on a Saturday night

and it's obvious to me that i have nothing better to do than post something...anything, really, just something.

i have a mild headache, most likely brought on by inactivity, or lack of caffeine until a relatively late hour, or the lack of actual nutritional value offered by the scant remains of most of the easily prepared substitutes for real food, through which i've half-heartedly ruminated periodically over the course of the day, or by some other reason which i'm either failing to notice or opting to omit, or some combination thereof.

i could turn to the medicine cabinet, which would require my leaving this chair, negotiating the doubled-back flight of stairs to the 2nd floor hallway, which shortly leads to the upstairs bathroom. there, a few tablets of generic naproxen sodium would likely take the edge off the dull pain in my head within 20-30 minutes, at which point i might feel entirely more motivated than i do presently. whether i ultimately summon the motivation to do so remains beyond the scope of this narrative to this point.

it's likely no coincidence that the pain in my head seems to a fair degree to be exacerbated by smoking cigarettes; after all, nicotine is a well known vasoconstrictor. i suppose it's entirely possible that my cranial discomfort is due to a restriction of blood flow, and further restricting my brain's access to gas exchange might very well increase my discomfort. or maybe it's all in my head.

i have the impression that being more physically active increases blood pressure and circulation and raises the body's metabolic rate. i'm generally quite active, typically, especially on working days, but this morning i made a vague resolution to attempt to "rest" today, as it's necessary for me to work at least a partial day tomorrow, in order to meet the demands of the following day.

despite the fact that smoking cigarettes makes my head hurt worse, i've chosen to light one as i remain seated here, typing, rather than make that journey to the medicine cabinet upstairs.

after all, i made, earlier this afternoon, a special trip to spend around $25 of hard-earned money i've not yet been paid on 100 of these little paper-wrapped tobacco-and-chemical nicotine delivery devices, for the express purpose of ensuring i need not today confront an interruption in their supply- a familiar occurence which periodically occurs to all those who've succumbed, willingly or torturedly, to their addiction. clinging pitifully to their (our, my) short end of the stick, they (we, i) reach that familiar point in their (our, my) often decades-long love/hate relationship with the seductively evil product of American Tobacco and dutifully, resignedly march, head bowed, to renew their (our, my) financial/physical/emotional bludgeoning at the hands of gleeful corporations and perennially thirsty government revenue collectors.

the cigarette i lit when i began that above paragraph has done its damage. its contribution to my (presumably worsening) Pulmonary Obstructive Disease is complete, and having fulfilled its mission it died, predictably, its quiet death with neither comment nor protest. its crushed, lifeless body lies motionless amid the foul-smelling corpses of its brothers, a pile of tar-stained cotton filters in random disarray, sporting charred shocks of tobbaco filaments like haircuts of punk rockers burned in their beds.

and there is still the question, the unresolved issue of whether i'll traverse the staircase to the medicine cabinet.

it's certainly not the only possible course of action. i could light another cigarette, for instance, or put my fist through the monitor before me. i could take off my pants and run screaming around the circular cul-de-sac outside the front door. i could put the 2nd DVD of the evening into the player in the other room, and once more vegetate before a cathode-ray tube, this time in the more-fitting darkness which has accrued in the hour i've taken describing these things. i could opt to tell you which DVD i've already watched today.....which might or might not be entertaining to any with eyes following this narrative. perhaps i'll do exactly that, later. perhaps not.

looking inside the finely engineered, foil-paper-lined, precision-folded, mass-produced utilitarian marvel which is the "pack" box, an apt term for the tightly-packed delivery vehicle in which 20 of the aforementioned cylindrical, smoldering kamikaze soldiers infiltrate our lives, i chose to select the left-most of the two remaining candidates. exhaling the last of the particle-laden exhaust, for which it was conceived and created, and to which it owed both its existence and ultimate destruction, i began this sentence.

the longer i remain in this chair, slouching slightly toward the monitor, the more discomfort i feel in my neck and upper back. this is an ergonomically challenging chair which came to me approximately 15 years ago in what i believe was a random series of events involving a former friend and the redecoration of a bank lobby. it's certainly no chair i'd choose to purchase. in fact, i've never purchased a chair, nor a table for that matter. nor a bed or bed linens of any sort. nor a nightstand, bookcase, entertainment center, or desk, nor any dishes or plants. i could make a very long list indeed of the things i've never purchased. suffice it to say that nearly everything furnishing my residence requiring the expenditure of any significant amount of money had that expenditure provided by others. the furniture manufacturers are simply not winning the competition with the tobacco companies for my business.

my stomach is increasingly attempting to persuade me to follow the "put-the-frozen-pizza-in-the-oven" scenario, while my head concurs, and suggests i make the journey to the medicine cabinet.

2007-08-07

but enough of all that

in the elapsed time between March 2, '07 (when i dropped the blog ball) and the present, i've both been on vacation and worked a lot. vacation was fun. work...not so much.

summer is here and business is booming. everyone's working a ton, and my boss seems to be balking at the OT i'm putting in. most of the people there have a lot more OT than i do; i imagine my wages are somewhat comparable to most of the other guys', but i'm starting to get the impression my boss has the impression i'm spending too much time on things he didn't intend me to spend this much time on....which is another way of wondering if he thinks i'm not getting enough done...? i feel like i'm working pretty hard, and staying plenty busy. i move pretty quickly most of the time. i feel like i'm doing a pretty good job, overall, though i have been late a couple times. it's not unusual for me to feel some anxiety over things that are naturally stressful (like working a lot of hours, always flying by the seat of my pants putting out fires, commuting a lot, trying not to make mistakes when i'm thinking about a lot of things...or forgetting something). overall my job's pretty stressful, and i think i have less authority with the long-timers there than my boss thinks i do (or should? or will exert?), so i'm also trying to work hard enough, to be organized enough, to get on top of everything enough, to get credibility with them.

work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work

i have work on the brain. that's not too surprising since i got home just a little while ago. i guess it's just buggin' me that my boss has actually told me to go home the last couple days in a row- even though everyone's working more hours than me. i bet he didn't expect this position would run into OT, or as much OT during the summer, as it has so far. but he seems to be happy with me, overall, so...i'll just keep working hard and keep my fingers crossed. the last job i had which lasted for a long time (working in Newcastle at Precis Architectural) didn't pay very well, but it was a pretty good place to work. this is a decent job, working with pretty good people; the worst thing about it is the commute (long and expensive). if i'm not at the top of my potential wage scale, i could stick around a while. some paid vacation would be nice- and good benefits are a plus. i guess you can only show up, play your best game, and hope that you make the cut. i suppose that's the extent of my confidence in my ability to hold a job long term.

i suppose that's enough for now. there's actually a lot more to talk about, but maybe i'll be able to catch up on some of that in future posts...considering i've done all the writing about work that i can stomach. PEACE

ok, ok- i give, already

i cannot use my normal tools to post posts anymore, ever since blogger got swallowed by google. that truly sucks. i hate having to run my post through their form in internet explorer. i used to click very few buttons to post. surely there must be a better way. i may have to switch blog hosting services. i've always wanted to check out Movable Type. i wonder if Macromedia makes a 3rd party blog-posting app that interfaces with any (free) major site? UltraDev pretty much rocks....posting blog posts thru internet explorer via web-based posting tool via external site logon is unnecessarily unwieldy.

so, plenty of stuff has happened since i posted last time, including the composition of the backdated, belatedly-posted previous post (May 10, 2007) which i will now re-create from a saved file, from a time when i was still too stubborn to log on to blogger to post....which, incidentally, is even more hassle than logging on, etc.


2007-05-10

absolute total utter neglect

argh. i bet if you looked back through the archives, you'd find this isn't the only time i've neglected the site.

no, i've not abandoned it. i hereby proclaim to all members of The Readership, those of all sets, subsets, classifications and unique instances, that you may, at will, sleep soundly and easily once more. i remain a light, howsoever exceedingly, infinitessimally, imperceptibly small, in the great dark void.

with pulsating waves of warmth radiating from the geometric center of my being, i once more push back the inky cold. this experience, simultaneously affirming, exhilirating and futile, will, as all experiences do, tint the colors on my palette of future courses of action.

"Ah, but ultimately," you say, with proper humility before futility, "the darkness will win." to which i answer: a correct, if bleak, assessment; but therein lies the beauty of the thing.

my brush is steady, my eye is sharp, my stroke is true. my palette is not yet bare. the darkness is patient, it will wait.

2007-03-02

i'm absolutely certain i did some stupid things, but

(i just thought that was a khoul sentence. that's all.)

it snowed nearly a foot at my house yesterday. freak weather. i've never seen it snow in western Washington this many times in one winter, and every time it snowed there was more snow than usual, and it came down harder, and piled up quicker. temperature fluctuations for any given 4-7 day period are wider than i remember seeing, and it's been much colder overall than normal. we got our quasi-annual windstorm later in the winter (accompanied by the largest power outage i've ever seen here), and yesterday's snowfall, coming at the end of February, occurred unusually late in the season.

quite strange driving to work this morning- traffic was light, and the roads within a few miles of here were very slippery still, but once on the freeway it was basically bare and dry all the way to Seattle, where i spent a fairly chilly but mostly sunny day. sure enough, driving back within a few miles of my house put me right back in the thick of it.

however, it's plenty warm in here (it should be with the fairly higher-than-normal electric bill i just paid), and i'm fairly comfortable, all things considered. i have a little strong, black coffee; i have Chowder sleeping under my chair. it's quiet. i can hear the power supply fan from Loren's computer over my right shoulder, and from my own computer below my desk i hear the power supply fan and a slight high-pitched whine from the hard drive.

another work week nearly finished. Loren won't come until Saturday, since he's attending a friend's birthday party Saturday afternoon. i'm determined my time not be cut short over another birthday party. not that i begrudge Loren the opportunity, far from it, just that i see no reason not to arrange things so that Loren gets his party and i still get to spend a little time with him this week. we spend altogether too little time together as it is. some might disagree, but be that as it may, i doubt many- if any- dispassionate, objective bystanders would.

i've been a little tired, so i kinda scaled back my work hours a little this week. i should only barely get into OT tomorrow. i've accomplished a lot so far, with a little help from the people around me, but there's still a long way to go to get the shop up to speed. i'm trying to accomplish what i can in the time i have.

the way i interpret my work priorities, my primary responsibility is keeping track of the gear sent out to shows or lent to the production lighting dept. (in which category i would include keeping the shop organized in general), followed by (in order) making sure it's either staged (time permitting) or ready to be staged by the time a show sets, offloading trucks as quickly as possible, transferring gear to Tacoma or Portland from Seattle and vice-versa, maintaining the vehicles, washing gear as necessary, and running people around to job sites when necessary.

on my lunch break today i ran into my old boss Todd, the former production manager who, before being fired himself, hired me to fabricate at Trade-Marx sign, back in the day. he valued my contribution(s) there, and quickly promoted me to lead the light fabrication dept. after his termination things went rapidly downhill there. i liked the type of assignments i was given (for the most part) and i certainly improved the quality, consistency, and timeliness of both the work i did myself and the projects other guys were working on, but i never actually liked working for that company.

the owner, Don, is one of those guys who one moment wants to act like an obliviously (annoyingly!) condescending buddy, and the next becomes a fully red-faced, screaming twit. he's the kind of guy you'd like to like if he didn't spend so much time being a jerk and a bully. i honestly think he had no trust in the good intentions of those who worked for him, nor an appreciation of their skills (which, in my mind, requires a comparable level of competency in those skills). however, he wasn't responsible for my departure- that would be one Mr. Bart Haynes, a prick on an entirely deeper level. Haynes is a man with a profoundly ugly personality, almost pitifully arrogant, and often completely incapable of basic civility. as you might imagine, i have no respect for someone embodying those qualities. in one such circumstance i was forced to leave the room to avoid losing my temper with the man, and- rather than allowing some time to pass, allowing the situation calm, or attempting to resolve the disagreement in a more positive manner, he chose to chase me down, grab me by the coat, spin me bodily around, and start shaking me like an abusive parent might a child. i believe my exact words at that point were, "take your fucking hands off me or you're a dead man," at which point he laughed and gave me one more little shake before releasing my coat. it was like middle school all over again. i was actually extremely happy with the degree of restraint i showed, since i refrained from acting on the nearly overwhelming urge to punch him right in his smug face- and he (with authority i'm sure was more assumed than specified) fired me. i told him, "you can't fire me, i fucking quit." as fate would have it, there were no witnesses. so be it. then, since i seem to be (re?)telling this story in detail, i told him he was lucky i'm able to control my temper. i don't remember the next words out of his mouth, but they were derogatory, and i told him, "that's right, Bart, just keep digging your hole." i think he realized the precarious position he'd put himself in by physically assaulting me, and he followed me around the shop making more insulting comments for the next 20 minutes while i tried to gather my tools and things. i think he was trying to make me angry enough i'd actually lose my temper and take a swing at him, hopefully in front of some witnesses. well, he got no satisfaction there. i shook some hands with my co-workers, and generally took my time leaving. he tried to get my supervisor to have me sign a termination paper stating i'd verbally abused and physically threatened him. you can guess my reaction: no chance.

in any case, i was the 29th (by all counts) employee to be fired or quit as of the time i was terminated, followed soon after by my supervisor Donna, who was 'promoted' into her role after my old boss Todd was fired. i've never seen turnover like that in any company i've worked for. madness reigned (reigns?) at Trade-Marx Sign & Display Co., and i think this is directly reflected in the quality of the work the company turned out. i saw, and all too often was forced to fix, project after project that had what could easily have been the killing stroke laid down on it by a varying combination of sloppy fabrication and lack of adequate or accurate planning. sometimes those projects were truly beyond help, and in some of those cases, rather than admit their error to the client and fix the problems, they almost inevitably chose to wordlessly deliver substandard product on time. over and over projects were wrong, installed, then uninstalled and brought back for additional work, and sometimes that became a repeating cycle of failure. certainly, in some cases there may have been no alternative but to deliver on time, but i believe the choice, between doing that and delivering what the customer is paying for in as timely a manner as humanly possible, is best left to an informed client.

in the interest of fairness, i'm attempting to restrict my comments to my personal experiences there, which occured over a period of about half a year, ending about 2 years ago. i would have to say that a majority of the product they put out the door during my term of employment was flawed to some degree. it's rather ironic that the owner's projection of his company's commitment to quality could be so diametrically opposed to the manner in which it operated. dysfunctional is the word that most comes to mind, a company with a systemic problem that flowed from the top down, exhibited frequently by cascades of mistakes brought about in large part by a remarkable lack of effective communication, occuring in an often manic environment pervaded with personal tension. most of the product delivered by the 2 other sign companies i've worked for was consistently higher quality. Trade-Marx was one of the most inneffectively managed companies i've ever had the displeasure to work for- and that's a shame, considering i had high hopes for my prospects there when i started.

having said all that, i did form some friendly relationships with my co-workers there, so the experience wasn't a complete loss.

i think i've written most of what i wrote in the preceding paragraphs as catharsis, but also in the hope that someone casually interested in either working for or purchasing work from Trade-Marx sign, and happens to bump into this information online (which i grant is quite unlikely) might have a little better insight into the history of the place. i encourage such a person to take my (true!) comments to heart in their decision-making.

enough about old jobs. and new ones, for that matter. and enough for one post, already...since i've managed to spend considerably more time on the latter subject than i wanted to anyway. PEACE

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