My little sister filled out her annual personal evaluation for her employer at the last possible second before shipping it off to both her boss and the vice president of her division. This is the thing her raise is based on.

Under the section of “Respect for Diversity” she put (and I quote):

“I am always courteous and understanding of my fellow workers. I am able to portray a professional and friendly attitude with all of my contacts to make a situation worse by adding inappropriate comments or attitudes. I enjoy working in a happy and professional environment and will do all I can to retain that type of atmosphere”

All I can say is…. It’s a damn good thing that the people she sent it to never read these things! Next year, I think she might proof read before she hits “send”.

I never laughed so hard in my life.

In other news: a good friend of mine is coming to town today for the Pixies reunion concert tomorrow. I haven’t seen him in a good number of years, so this should be fun!

It’s 3 am, and I’m bored.

While it’s unbelievably cool that I can work this shift from home, it’s still very lonely.

I’ve been passing the time between scheduled tasks listening to music on my laptop (with headphones, as to no wake my family). I’ve decided that out of my mp3 collection there are 4 unsigned bands who need some sort of recognition: Doll Factory, The Echoing Green, mrmoth, and ATP.

Favorite tracks by each:

Apparently, I have nothing new to say.

At least that’s what my wife told me. She’s heard all of my stories, multiple times. To her credit, she sits there while I blow nostalgia out my butt, softly smiling… but she’s heard them all before.

I need to have some new experiences.

It’s time to live on the edge… take risks… live life to the fullest! No more taking the safe road for me! No sir! I’ll be the extreme guy… jumping out of airplanes, snowboarding down dangerous slopes, wrestling alligators while holding a newborn baby in my arm!

I’m gonna start today! Yeah… I am!!

No more “same ol” for moi. Today… I’ll eat with my fingers, wear my socks inside out, and run around the house naked!

Hehe… that ought to put my kids in therapy for sure!

It’s my first night of my two week stint as the graveyard operator, and boy am I bored.

It’s been a while since I’ve done this shift. Since I’m unable to drive due to the damn medications I’m taking (I haven’t driven since September, 2003), they pulled me off the graveyard rotation. With the advent of me getting a laptop and a VPN connection combined with the hosts file from hell… I’m now able to get in from home and monitor every system at work.

So… I’m sitting here doing operator duties in the middle of the night.

We had hoped that they could hire someone else to do this, as we’re pretty much all Sr. Engineers and therefore kinda expensive for duties like this, but with the budget the way it is, it doesn’t look like we’ll ever be able to hire an operator.

Hopefully, having all this free time will encourage my creative side… as I have plenty of time during the night to think my own special brand of weird and bizarre thoughts. Last time I worked graveyard, I came up with this little diddy (which reminds me… I need to create that as a poster for sale at the wwbd house of style (aka: my crappy online store which I make 0% profit from).

I don’t really have much other news at the moment. My wife has recovered from her surgery enough to drive again and I’m still waiting to find out when my pre-surgery appointment is. I’ll keep you up to date (like you really care).

And finally… apparently there’s been a problem with the website loading as of late. It’s taken up to 60 seconds for the sidebar to come up. A big thanks to Eve for pointing it out. I’ve found the issue and corrected it (I hope)! Let me know if there’s any other problems.

I went to the SMo-g on Saturday (see post below).

There were a few people there (60ish computers and about 80 bodies) and it had the potential for fun… but it was actually pretty boring.

There were very few servers running games and most everyone was just sitting there watching movies or playing solo. They did do a few fun things though, so it wasn’t a total loss.

A competition called “eyes and drivers” was an exercise in frustration. It’s a two round 1:1 death match in Classic Unreal Tournament and requires 2 – 2 man teams. The hitch is this: the person on the controls is blindfolded and the other person on their team is their eyes, giving directions.

All you could hear is “LEFT, LEFT, LEFT, RIGHT, RIGHT, FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!” from throughout the room.

I’m pretty sure that the team we were against was peeking. The final score after the first round was 11 – 2 (we lost). Several times, the walked in the room and just blasted us with the first shot (luck, my ass!). We did better on the second round where I was playing and my son was my eyes. It finished at 5 – 9 (and there wasn’t nearly as many one shot kills).

We left at 7:30 in the morning, though we could have left at 11:00 at night (as there really weren’t any games after that). My son and I tried to entertain each other by playing against one another, but we couldn’t get anyone else to join us.

I told my wife that I’d go again, but only if I could round up a crew from the old BYOD parties to go with me. We’d show them what the hell a real lan party was!

Oh… and on a totally unrelated note: I start the graveyard shift tonight at 2 am PST. I’ll pry fire up the webcam for the first time in months. Tune on and watch if you’re awake (and bored outa your skull… because I’m pry not gonna be all that entertaining).