Networking at Home – Thoughts from January 2, 2003

That’s right, the date is 1/2/3 (or 01/02/03 if you want to be official about things). It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3, and it’s another year. I am actually done paying off my consumer credit debt. Now we have to stop using the credit cards and start saving for the future. Good luck to us both. I bought Patti a laptop and me a new computer to make my own DVDs (which goes right along with our saving for the future plan). We bought her laptop so she can go on the Internet, and we can’t do that right now. We bought my computer so I could make DVDs and that’s not working right now either. Life is working out perfectly to plan. (As you read the last sentence, picture a psychotic look on my face.) I just wish we hadn’t gotten the plan out of the trash.

I’m not working at Disneyland, damn it! I would have had to work two nights during the regular weekday starting at 5:30 pm. That would have been a tough pull to get from San Bernardino to Anaheim by 5:30 pm in Five O’clock traffic. It doesn’t look like we’re going to renew our Disneyland annual passes this year. We never got to see the snow on Main Street. I am not having a lucky Disney year.

There is some good news in my life. I may be out of a job soon. (You can bring back a picture of the psychotic look on my face for the last sentence.) By June, it is likely that I (and several others like me) may be “reassigned.” Actually, I’ve already been reassigned to one of our satellite offices (Colton TAD). I’m going to be working with Eileen and Wilma again. I’m still going to have Mike as my supervisor. The basic reason for this is the State lost a bunch of money and will probably lose even more. I’m so glad we voted an alcoholic idiot into the White House. This is “good news” because it’s forcing me to look at other jobs and actually apply for work that uses my skills.

I need to organize. My life is disorganized. In some ways, I’m more organized than many other people, but I’m not in competition with other people. I’m in competition with myself. One thing I’m going to do this weekend is buy (great, more spending – just what the credit card needs) a 4-drawer filing cabinet for my files that are out of control. I’ve purchased those cheap plastic filing boxes in the past, but that’s not cutting it. I need to be as organized as I am at work. My drawings, writings, manuals, bills, and assorted paper items need to be systematized. This sounds like an ultra-conservative, conforming, and machine-like thing to do, but I assure you, it’s an act of freewheeling rebellion. You can’t create something new without referencing the old. The only question now is where I can put it in my computer room. I have two computers in there right now, after all. (Future note: Two computers in one room may sound like I have plenty of space for them, but you must remember that this was 2003. As I’m typing this future note, that was 20 years ago. The computers I’m talking about were large towers that must sit on the floor. I was already limited on space in the room as it was.)

I networked my computers together. This was not an easy task. I had to read manuals and talk to people on the phone. Until a couple of weeks ago, Patti and I could both go online at the same time. As usual, there are problems with something (I don’t know what!) and we can’t access the Internet at all right now. I talked to the Tech Support people on the phone. I’m having a hate-hate relationship with Tech Support people. They speak in condescending ways about things they really know nothing about. Most of the time, I can tell they’re just moving through a computer program which says if this happens, try that. I can get that from my stupid manual. Most of the things they’re telling me to do I’ve tried myself. As it is now, they narrowed my problem down to the phone line. But the phone company did a check on the phone line and it’s fine. The Internet still doesn’t work. I did nothing to the phone, so it works, right? Wrong.

I’m going to take the storyboarding class I’ve been wanting to take for some time now next semester. Which is next week, by the way! There may only be a few people in the class, but that’s good. Next semester, I want to take the Photoshop class. I’ve wanted to take it for a while, but it’s more expensive than the rest of the classes, so I’ve avoided it. As you can read, I’m still following the dream, but not while working at Disneyland. I took last semester off because I was trying to take the storyboarding class but was too late. I’m hoping to develop at least one of my story ideas so I can have something (even if just a storyboard run through) of my story ideas. I will complete a thought, yet!

In a final paragraph sized note, I will recount my recent adventures through Sickland. Just after Christmas and before New Year, Patti and I got sick. I got sicker than she. She was not as sick as me. I was the winner of the illness contest (and the rhyming contest) with my winning entry of the Colors of Fall Out My Mouth display. I always like to take note when I throw up because it is usually years between throwing up (it has been a hobby of mine for decades now). This is all I have to say about being sick (mainly because I’m out of space on this page and I don’t want to print out a whole page for one sentence). I’m out! (Future note: I don’t know if I was serious about printing out the pages or not. I can’t imagine why I would have printed them out or who I would print them for. I think I just pictured them being less than one page, so I stopped before I went over that arbitrary limit. I liked being ambiguously arbitrary and still do.)