ok, so in a post a few days ago i let everyone know that i work in IT. so, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to the meat of this; WORK.

i hate work. i don’t think i’m alone in this feeling. i would hazard a guess that about 98% of all people do not like their jobs. so, when you find yourself in a situation where your job really bothers you, what do you do? that’s the question i’ve been asking myself for awhile now.

for some insight into me, i like to feel safe in general. i like to have a job so that i can have money. i like the field i’m in, just not too happy about the actual place i work. basically my workplace is a complete and utter clusterfuck. the management is shitty (what management isn’t?), the ordering process is messed up and slow (which, in my profession, you always need stuff right now and if the ordering dept takes too long, it’s my ass that gets chewed out), the hiring process is a joke (we’ve been trying to hire another person for our department for about 4 months now… the job posting is actually going up this week so they say, although i’ve heard that every week for the past 4 or 5 weeks now, so i’ll believe it when i see it), and the actual infrastructure (left to me by my previous boss) is a mess.

anyway, as i was saying, i like to feel safe; meaning i can’t (or won’t) leave one job until i have something else lined up. this causes some problems for me though…

1. i have to hide any kind of job searching from my current employer
2. i have to find a job that is similar to my current one, and my current salary (shouldn’t be too hard) before i can really take it seriously
3. i have an affinity for some of the people here, and i’d rather not leave them in a lurch. which leads to…
4. i can still learn things and grow at my current job if i can handle the freakin stress of everything here

so, where does that leave me? basically i’m stuck somewhere that has great professional growth opportunities for me. i have the ability to get my hands into anything i want here. network security? we got it. network design and maintenance? got that too. email? sure, both ms exchange AND some linux stuff. general windows networking and administration? yep, tons of that. SQL server admin? yep, can do that too. pay for training and testing/certification? they’ll do it.

BUT, there is a down side to all of this variety. if you look at any corporate model for IT, you’ll find that they tend to compartmentalize and specialize people in their IT groups. what does that mean? well, basically, they have one guy that is their email master. they have another guy who is their networking guru, and another for security. here they have…. me. i do all that and more (desktop support anyone?) the problem with this is that i cannot possibly get fluent in one thing well enough to get myself into a job somewhere else.

now i’m stuck, basically hating almost every minute i’m here, hoping and waiting for them to get another person in to our department so that i can finally get enough time (say even just one entire day without interruptions) to learn new things and try to fix the stuff that is actually in my job description.

i’ll keep looking though, just in case…

… whatever you call it, it sure is fun.

anyone who has talked to me for 10 minutes outside of work probably knows that i tend to liberally pepper a conversation with a cavalcade of swear words. nothing really brings a conversation home like a good “fuck” or “shit” or “assmunch.” i was thinking back to when i first started to use swear words. i remember being on the bus in probably 4th or 5th grade, and my friend derek and i experimented with curse. at first i think we were way too heavy on it. like a tarantino film gone wrong…

“did you fucking see that goddamn fucking girl in motherfucking gym today!?”

“fuck yeah! that shit was fucking shitting bitching fucking shit fuck, ya know?”

as you get older you can really get the feel for swearing though. you really start to grow to love the words; the way they caress each other and mingle together with the regular words. it’s almost like they’re unwanted guests in your sentence party, but when they show up everybody loves em. “the hit of the sentence”, they say.

some people say that swearing makes you sound dumb. fuck that. swearing is best way to really convey something to someone. you say “LOOK OUT!” and people might look up. you say “LOOK THE FUCK OUT!” and people will move before they start looking around.

swearing is underrated and abused. i’ll be the fist to admit that they lose their power after awhile. they become used and beat up and boring. so you start to mix it up. you bust out a foreign swear word, you add some nifty izzle on there, but they still get old. you can’t keep up with em.

but yet, they keep coming back. they just slip in there. one day they’re at work too. curse words. evil, taunting, following words.

so what do you do when you find swear is destroying your life? where can you go?

nowhere.

after all, they’re just words, right?

so i work in IT. it’s basically a thankless, shit filled job. one thing i’ve come to notice is the way in which people relate to you as the “computer guy.” for one, people are always afraid of doing the wrong thing in front of me… afraid that i will somehow destroy their jobs by making their computer impossible to work with… or that i will turn them in for some crazy security related rule that they don’t know about. it makes it hard to be friendly with the people around me when they see me as somehow being above them or something.

haha little do they know that i could give two shits about what they do all day, or really what they do with their computers. as long as they aren’t fucking up my shit (i.e. infecting the whole place with virii — which is actually really hard to do since we lock their shit down tighter than a baby’s asshole at a priest convention) then they can feel free to do pretty much whatever.

but of course, this job induced distance between myself and my co-workers isn’t all that bad. i’m one to subscribe to the philosophy of “don’t shit in your own nest” i.e. making friends at work is bad b/c then they want to be friends when you go home too.

and who the hell can relax at home if they have people from work there? i sure fuckin can’t…

i’ve never really been what is known in the biz as “a ladies man.” i tend to get nervous and insecure when i get to a situation with a girl that i like or find attractive.

take, for example, last night. i go out with my roommate, his gf, and some of their friends to one of our local watering holes. it turned out this particular event was a live journal group meet up. i’m not a member of live journal, but the people were cool so it was all good.

well, in walks these two amazing girls, and to my surprise they sat down at the other end of our table. we are introduced and then they start talking to the people they know. well, being the total asshat that i am, i never really make any attempt to talk to them b/c they are at the other end of the table.

for me the real problem comes from trying to discern those situations where it is ok to walk up to the girl and those where it is not. i always assume it’s not ok, b/c they are either there with someone, not (what i would consider) interested in me, or whatever. basically what i’m getting at here is that i have no balls.

—

i just recently read two of the best books i think i’ve ever read in my entire life. one being blink by malcom gladwell and the other being freakonomics by steven levitt and stephen dubner. both of them are very interesting; blink is about your unconscience ability to “thin slice” or in other words in a very short amount of time reduce any stimuli to only that which matters in a particular situation.

freakonomics is just about the different incentives we all have in life, and how two seemingly disperate things (like, say, public school teachers in chicgo and sumo wrestlers in japan) can actually be very closely related in a lot of ways.

i would recommend either of these books to anyone that is interested in sociology or psychology or just someone who would like to find out some very interesting things about themselves and the world around them.

so i bought a new car. it’s a 2003 mazda 6s. ok, so it’s new to me. shut up.

anyways, i thought i might have some more thoughts on buying a car and the whole experience, but nothing is really coming to mind. i must say, the dealer i used (byers mazda subaru here in clmbs) was really, really great. they even called me after i took the car home to tell me that they got me a better interest rate on my loan! fucking rock.

what i can say is that buying a car takes a long fucking time. i mean, i was at the dealership around 1:30. i brought the car home around 5:30. 4 hours? insane, but well worth it.

i was driving a 95 plymouth neon that was a real POS… paint chipping off the roof, 127k miles, fucked up doors, dent in the trunk. this new car is such an upgrade i can’t even believe it! i actually have POWER LOCKS AND WINDOWS! it’s like going from riding a big wheel to a 10 speed. so great.

after looking around online at cars for the past 2 or so months i decided that i would get something nice. mazda 6’s were on the list, so i figured i’d go and test drive this one after i saw it on the internet on sunday. well, actually, i thought i would go and look at it since i figured they wouldn’t have anyone at the dealership on sunday. i was wrong, they were fully staffed (good for me). after i drove the car and came back, they had a line of 2 couples waiting to drive it. someone else had just driven it before me as well.

the salesman gave the keys to the next people and told me that most likely this car would go to one of the couples after me, so i told him to work up some numbers for me while they drove it. turns out they got me a pretty good interest rate and i said “i’ll take it.” it was great eavesdropping on the salesman telling the other couples that i was taking the car and i was there first. so awesome.

anyway, i’m very happy with my purchase. now all i need is somewhere to go!