In which I contemplate a road trip I can’t afford.

I’m feeling better… physically. My snot’s clearing up, and I don’t ache all over. I talked with AmmZon about getting fired via email yesterday, and she sniffed and said what everyone will probably say, which was something along the lines of, “Well, ya really can’t mix business and friendship.”

I’m still feeling damn stupid, though. I felt the same way when the ISP laid me off, and that one wasn’t my fault at all — they were just cutting back. This time though, I suppose it was my fault: I apparently misunderstood what was wanted of me and gave the impression that I was a flake.

Oh well. Maybe I am. But I suppose it serves me right, for taking a job I found in a bar. Also, I know better than to assume that I can behave the same way other people do in a company: when you’re the new girl, you toe the line. Period. Pay your dues. Regardless. I should have been a Nazi about office hours, because I hadn’t been specifically told to work any other way; I just assumed because that’s what everyone else was doing. I watched their behavior — checking in via the Internet at all hours, loose on being in the office itself — and copied it. Not what was wanted. I wish they’d said something before terminating me, though.

Baby Girl told me over the phone to quit beating myself up about it; she thinks I should have gotten a warning first and that I’m not allowed to feel like a shithead any longer. I was only employed seven days, fer chrissake. If I felt any better I’d go and let her buy me the drink she offered me, bless her heart.

Anyway, the point is that what I really want to do is throw my stuff and my dog in the jeep and go see my mommy. She lives in Laramie. It’s probably a 10-hour drive from here. It’s not like I could live there; there’s probably even less work there than there is here. But it’d be nice if I wasn’t mooching off of my friends for awhile; it’d be a pleasant change to mooch off of family instead.

In other news, I’m still in love with All Consuming.

In which I’m sick. In two ways. At the same time.

I’m sick. Fever, aches, cough, and the sniffles.

I texted work at nine-something this morning; slept; called work at two-something; slept; went out for dog food at four-something; slept; got up at nine-something and had a cup of tea, some rice and dhal, and an icy cold Coke. I finally got online at ten, intending to login and work a little — you know I’m sick when I don’t get on the Internet all day — but first I checked my email.

I was still under new-hire probation at Redux. I received a message from dot-com saying he was sorry and if I’d been in the office today he’d have done it face-to-face, but he didn’t think it was working out. Tardiness. Not dedicated enough. Lack of proper notification when out sick. Redux is very small and dependent on a particular personality mix. I guess mine didn’t cut it, no hard feelings, etc etc etc. I guess my office radar no longer works, either, because I didn’t see it coming at all. I thought they were as happy with me as I was with the job.

I guess that’s why they have probationary periods in the first place. I’m really trying hard not to take it personally, but of course I’m all sick and vulnerable (and PMSing, to boot) and my feelings are hurt and I’m close to tears. But I guess that’s the fast-paced world of Internet dot-coms for you.

So, yeah, now I’ve been let go twice in four months. My self-esteem’s taking a bit of a beating.

Perhaps I really should become a secretary; somehow I doubt it would bother me so much if I got let go from that.

In which nothing much.

I have a cold. I’m eating Indian take-out and drinking a China Cola at my desk. Several servers also have colds, and had to be restarted this morning.

It’s Rockstar’s birthday. I will probably go out for a drink.

That is all.

In which what a difference a day makes.

Happy Sunday afternoon, y’all!

NLW graciously acted as banker for me yesterday so my uncashable check dilemma went away. Yay! (God DAMN I hate not having a fucking checking account!)

I went out last night and played Megatouch with Baby Girl at the Dead Cock, and we ended the evening with a pass through McD’s drive-thru. (HOW DO THEY MAKE IT TASTE SO GOOD!?!?) I blame it on the season: normally I wouldn’t stuff my face full of junk food and go to sleep, but it is autumn.

Today so far I’ve done little more than make chai, and then scrambled eggs with diced tomatoes and cheese, and listen to my Pandora stations and read Network Redux trouble tickets. If you haven’t played around with Pandora yet, please do so. Music Genome Project, my babies. So hot.

Speaking of tuneage, I HAVE GOT TO GET MY ITUNES LIBRARY SITUATION SORTED OUT. My library is on Bread’s laptop and I no longer have access to it… he never did loan me that laptop when I asked him to. Bah. And honestly, it’s probably not even “my” library any more because I think he’s been downloading songs and ripping CDs into it.

I might just have to rip my whole library off of my iPod — which should take, oh, A MERE FIVE HOURS OR SO — and go from there. I need to arrange for an external HDD so I don’t fill Truck’s laptop up with my data… I’ll guess I’ll just pull the hard drive out of my tower (which is still at the farm) and stick it in my USB external HD enclosure and use that. Portable data. No more of this big-life-changes-seperating-me-from-my-data bullshit.

Update: I did this and then used this to get my library and metadata off my iPod and into iTunes on the laptop. (Later I’ll copy it to some external media of some kind — though Truck’s laptop has plenty of unused space, and my iPod’s only a 20Gb and it’s not full — and that media I will backup ad infinitum and guard with my LIFE.)

Copying your MP3s off of your iPod onto a computer, then getting all the artwork and playlists and shit organized, takes FOR FUCKING EVER. Just sayin’.

In which one is what one does.

I went to the grocery store and tried to cash my check; they refused to do it because it’s handwritten and drawn on an Oregon bank. Not having a checking account makes me feel like a goddamned second-class citizen.

I spent my last $2 at Taco Bell, then went to the car wash and used their trash bins to empty a bunch of garbage out of the jeep. I found the receipt for the battery core I’ve been hauling around since last November and went to the parts store to turn it in. They gave me $8.52 for it.

I bought $4 worth of gas and drove out to the farm. I have just enough money left for a pack of cigarettes.

Bread wasn’t home. I was half relieved and half heartbroken. I took my mail, some clothes, a thermos and a box of tea out of the kitchen. I got shoes and jackets and scarves and hats so I won’t freeze. I got my knitting and my guitar so I can have hobbies. I got the rest of my ID out of the desk in case I should need it. It was weird and made me equal parts sad and angry: sad because my marriage is over and I’m moving out and that sucks rocks, and mad because everything I took out of there is filthy and dusty and corroded or covered in spider webs and pet hair.

So here I am, with a check in my purse that’s useless (plus I owe cash to two of my friends, who spotted me a little here and there lately and who need their money back) and a jeep full of clothes and other junk packed mostly into garbage bags. I’m a fucking bag lady, only I have a car instead of a shopping cart.

I’ve marginalized myself. I can’t cash checks or do normal business transactions because a creditor fucked up my checking account and I *hate* that. And a significant portion of the few material things I still own are sitting in my car. And I had to turn in a battery core just to get enough gas money to drive to Batavia. If I am what I do, I’m a loser.

On the other hand, if I am what I eat then I’m a half pound bean burrito especiale. Yum!

AmmZon’s making chicken and cheesy broccoli rice and green beans for dinner. I don’t eat chicken, of course — and you shouldn’t either because chicken’s WAY TOO STUPID to eat — but cheesy broccoli rice sounds totally awesome. If I ever get my check cashed I’ll be able to pay her for groceries.

In which I’m nervous about visiting the farm.

I need warm clothes, so I’m driving out to the farm to get some. I’ve emailed Bread a few times about this but he hasn’t responded, which makes me feel weird. I try to assume all kinds of negative reasons for it, but probably he’s just ignoring it because it’s easier than dealing with it… an approach I can totally resonate with because I deal with things the same way myself.

I’ve made a list of the things I need to remember to get, and I think I have enough gas to get out there and back. (I got paid Friday, but my payroll check is drawn on an out-of-state bank and I don’t have any friends who can cash it for me because they’ve all got like $80 in their accounts this weekend. I’m going to try to cash it today at Econofoods; it’s a payroll check so they might. Not having a bank account IS REALLY FUCKING PISSING ME OFF.) I’m going to spend my last $2 in cash at Taco Bell on the way out there.

And if I can get my check cashed, I’m gonna dye my hair dark red. It finally became entirely my natural ash brown as of my last hair cut, and I hate it. Plus all the gray is a bummer. So: dark red, for fall. Yeah.

Truck has recently purchased the latest GTA — the one that came out first for PSP and finally got ported to PS2 — and is playing it in the other room. When you steal a cab, their radio stations are tuned to a totally awesome Indian pop channel. It makes listening to someone play GTA for hours and hours a little more pleasant, IMO.

In other news, I really wanna see A Scanner Darkly.

In which I’m out late.

I went out and had drinks with my boss and his wife. How cute is that? (AmmZon’s baking a layered chocolate-almond cake.) Widget is having a birthday this weekend, and they’re going to Chicago tomorrow for a few days, so I’ll be alone in the office tomorrow. I think I’ll come in to work in my pyjamas! Yeah!

In which I write a little update in an effort to be more personal than yesterday’s total geekfest post.

It’s getting cold. When I left work this evening, it was only 41 degrees. The streets and lawns are covered in leaves; people have their porches decorated for Halloween. It’s getting dark earlier and it’ll be DST soon enough. The fall weather is a little depressing to me and I’m chilly all the time, too.

Work was great again today; I like the work and the company. I’ve been sitting on a straight-backed chair for three days but this afternoon a leather executive chair showed up — dot-com bought me a kickass chair! — and it’ll be much better for my back.

AmmZon and I made dinner together tonight: black bean soup with cheese-and-broccoli quesadillas and corn bread. It was really good and the whole house smells like onions, garlic, and homemade corn bread. Yum. (I am a soup-making machine. Soup is my be-atch.)

Yesterday I had a feeding frenzy, though, OMG. I ate no fewer than four seperate times. I got up early and made myself a breakfast of scrambled eggs, hash browns, veggie sausage, and gravy. At lunch I made pasta pesto. For dinner I had Mexican. Twice. (Taco Bell drive-thru. Yes, I know I’m an idiot.) By the time I went to bed last night I felt like the Goodyear blimp.

Now that I’m employed I have to address my financial situation before some creditor learns I have a job and garnishes my wages. I’m totally overwhelmed and don’t know what to do… actually, I do know what to do first: I have to make a list of my debts. After that, though, I don’t know where to go for advice. Credit counseling? Bankruptcy lawyer? I don’t know which I should do. I’ve been in total denial about the whole thing and haven’t called anyone at all, nor have I been getting my mail from the farm, so I don’t even know which debts have gone to collections yet. Student loans, three credit cards, a bunch of utilities… Christ. It sucks. And if I’d just deal with it and make those phone calls, it’d probably be less horrible… but in my own defense I was depressed, phoneless, jobless, and being a fucking schmuck about it.

I need to go out to the farm and get some things. Warm clothes. Socks. Sweaters. A coat. My knitting, my guitar. Things like that. I’ve emailed Bread a couple of times but I don’t think he checks his mail very often, so he probably doesn’t even know I’m trying to get ahold of him. I could drive past BoSe’s house to see if he’s there, but I feel like a stalker doing that. He left me a note in my car the week before last inviting me out for coffee, but neither of us had phones then and I never got ahold of him. He may have thought I was ignoring him, but I was mostly just being my normal lazy self. I have a lot of stress about seeing him, but it’s probably pretty much in my own head. *bangs head on desk*

I think I’m gonna go read some of the info dog-com’s given to me and be productive, rather than sitting here typing about my problems and making myself feel all dejected. I mean, I’ve got a roof over my head, my dog’s cute, I love my job, and my belly’s full. Ain’t nothin’ here to complain about!

Big love, my babies. Stay warm!

In which school is TOTALLY cool, bitches!

Today at work I haven’t done so many trouble tickets because I still haven’t been trained on the whole billing side of things, but I got an excellent personalized lesson on RAID and general server health from dot-com, a lesson which came complete with IMed wisdom like this:

2:02:32 PM redux: RAID 5 — 4x146GB drives
2:02:39 PM redux: 3x146GB drives worth of storage
2:02:54 PM redux: raid 1 + raid 1 + raid 1
2:03:03 PM redux: 4x146GB drives in RAID10
2:06:20 PM redux: netstat -an |grep LISTEN
2:10:05 PM redux: shift – m
2:10:17 PM redux: shift p sorts by highest processor usage
2:13:53 PM redux: free -m
2:15:31 PM redux: sar -r
2:17:39 PM redux: ps aux | more
2:18:28 PM redux: pstree
2:20:38 PM redux: ps aux | grep nobody
2:24:24 PM redux: ssh-keygen -t dsa -b #
2:24:28 PM redux: to generate keypair
2:24:38 PM redux: inside of .ssh
2:26:01 PM redux: ssh networkredux.com -l user
2:26:06 PM redux: ssh user@box.com
2:26:21 PM redux: ssh user@pennsylvania.box.net
2:28:40 PM redux: cd .ssh
2:28:50 PM redux: cat id_dsa.pub
2:29:21 PM redux: pwd
2:29:27 PM redux: mkdir .ssh
2:29:39 PM redux: chmod 700 .ssh
2:29:59 PM redux: vi authorized_keys

Now, I realize that doesn’t look that cool ’cause it’s all out of context and shit, but believe me: ROCKASAURUS. Seriously. Geek City. I also have a list of crap to read. Plus my mom finally mailed my b-day card so I’ll have some cash soon. Yay!

In other news, my fucking PocketPC died — AGAIN — and took with it ALL MY DATA. (I haven’t been anywhere near my desktop machine in a month, so: no recent backup.) Fuck that thing! I’m throwing it out. Gah.

In which you check out my big-ass monitor.

This morning I reported to work at my new job. Here’s my desk:

This job rocks. I’m gonna love it here. I’ve already processed tickets and EVERYTHING! The coolest thing is that I already know how to do so some of it cold; so I don’t feel totally overwhelmed right off the bat. Now if I could just get used to Apple+C for copy instead of Ctrl+C I’d feel like I was really getting somewhere.