The Crucible of Man (Something Wicked Part II)

Iced Earth has set release dates for their upcoming cd as follows:

Germany, Austria, Switzerland: September 5
Rest of Europe: September 8
USA, Canada: September 9

This is the follow up album to 2007's Framing Armageddon (Something Wicked Part I). This also is the first full length release which features the return of Matt Barlow on vocals.

There are audio samples available on the bands MySpace page.

Sakic is backic (wow what a lame title)

Joe Sakic has resigned with the Avalanche for 1 more season. Finally - some GREAT news today!



Thank you Joe - made my day!

I am ashamed to admit that outsourcing makes sense now.

It never ceases to amaze me how some people still have jobs. I have always been VERY against outsourcing. Each day that I come to work I am reminded why companies continue to do it. I can now understand why our econemy is terrible, why companies are losing money, and why we are laying off more and more people and outsourcing jobs.

I work with people that I if asked, I could not explain to you exactly what they do around here. I mean I can explain what they are supposed to do, but not what they actually do. It just blows me away that these people still have jobs, and really just confuses me how management just continues to turn a blind eye.

It was 5 months ago that I was told I would be switching job functions to work on a different system. It wasnt like "Hey, we are going to switch you to work on XXXXXX starting next week after some training." That would have been logical in most situations wouldnt it? Oh no, not around here. I came to work at the start of my week and was told "Oh, by the way, we are moving you up to XXXXXX starting today." To which I responded "I have never worked on that system before, is there going to be any training?" The answer I received was simply "Nope, good luck with that."

I was then told that the two guys they moved from that system to documentation would be responsible for training me. I figured that would be good since they were still part of our group. Holy crap was I completely on the wrong page. Not only did they refuse to train me, but the also would not help answer questions. This was even AFTER being advised more than a dozen times that they were required to do this. What happened to this people who batently refused to do what they were instructed to do? RAISES!

Now the documentation is done and they are back to be work on the same stuff I am. Each day we have about 6 or 7 reports that we generate as well as taking care of any outage tickets, server down issues, among other things. Last Friday I ended up doing all the reports, all the system access requests, server outages, missing file transfers, and basically everything else that came up. What were the two other guys who just came back doing? One was messeging back and forth on some forum while the other was watching movies. Finally after about 4 hours of this shit I turned to one of them and asked if they were actually going to help me by maybe doing their job. I shit you not when I tell you the reply:

"I dont have to do that stuff anymore. That is below my pay scale now."

To which I promptly informed them that they were still in the same position that I was and yes they were to do this. One of them actually told me "You should just shut up about stuff you have no clue about. I dont have to do that stuff and I am not going to. Dont talk to me any more."

I guess it is a sore subject with him or something. That or the fact that he did not get promoted like he told everyone he was going to made him bitter.

Come in to this week and we now have a new guy that moved to our system. In front of everyone the two happy guys were told that they were required to train this new guy. So yesterday the guy that comes in from 2 to 10 actually sat down and did some training. This was a shock, but of the two I figured he would be the one to step up. Come in today and the 6 to 2 person has yet to even talk to the new guy. He flat out refuses to train him, and has yet to do any of the work. Today has been IM'ing his buddy about some game, looking at those stupid cat pictures with the stupid "I haz cheezburger" or some shit saying on it, and that is about it. Oh yeah, and getting coffee every 10 minutes.

The thing that amazes me about this is the fact that nobody with any authority does anything about it. They all just turn a blind eye and let him get away with it. Why? I have no idea. I guess that is the way things are done around here.

And everyone is so shocked and pissed when they annouced lay-offs and outsourcing. The point I have to make here is - at least the India people actually do their work. Maybe if everyone around here would do the same we wouldnt have to get lay offs and outsourcing.

Wow, what an interesting concept...actually DOING the work they are PAYING you to do.

Nah, that would make sense.

Now serving a large plate of old age with a side of pain: TO GO!

Do you know what really sucks?

The point in your life when you finally realize that no matter what you do, how you act, what you think, or how you live, you are getting old.

Yeah, I am at that point and it sucks.

Last Friday I flew up to Seattle to help a friend with an addition to his house. This particular friend is part of a group of friends that I have had since way back to 4th grade. We all keep in touch, and try to get together at least once a year. So when he called saying he was trying to get a guys weekend together I was ready to go. He let us know that he was asking us up to help with his house and also to have some fun.

I really like doing remodel work so this was going to be a great weekend. He hired builders to come in and do everything except the floor, painting and trim work. There was going to be 6 of us up there to help so we figured it would go by really fast.

It took us about 6 hours on Friday to get the Pergo floors done. It wasnt that big of a room, only about 600 sq feet, but we split up on floor and painting. I have officially been given my pornstar name by my friends as "Pounder". I had one guy cutting and placing the first set of boards on the left while the other two guys cut and placed the right side boards. I charged through all the middle boards, placed them, locked them in, pounded them tight, and made sure we were even on both ends.

The bonus to this particular day of work is the fact that people in Seattle have a strong fear of air conditioners. "It only gets warm a few weeks out of the year, you dont need one." Well let me tell you something Mr. THEY LIE! Friday turned out to be one of the hottest days they have had up there all year, and there was no AC. Imagine this...6 guys all doing flooring and painting in a room with no AC and 98 outside. The meat packing plant by my house stood a better chance of winning a pleasing oder compitition than the 6 of us.

So after we finished the floor we decided to call it a day for work. We got the volleyball net set up and proceeded to play 9 games of ball.

This is the point in the story when I can tell you that the next morning when I woke up I had an apiphany. It hit me like a 2 ton brick. There was no way to describe the horror I felt, the soul shattering knowledge:

I am officially old.

I hurt in parts of my body I didnt even know had the ability to hurt. It took me 25 minutes just to crawl my way out of bed and to the shower. The best part was knowing that we still had the baseboards, and trim work to go as well as moving all the excercize equipement into the room. I was going to need a long hot shower and a jug of Advil.

So you would think that after the experience of waking up in that kind of pain I would have relaxed after we were done moving everything in. Oh no, my mind was not going to let my body decide when I was old. 9 more games of volleyball!!!!!

It is now Thursday of the following week and I am STILL sore.

Old age sucks!

Hello neighbors, we are the police. OPEN UP!

So last night Jayna and I were laying in bed trying to go to sleep. It was one of those nights where we were both tired, but could not fall asleep. So what do you do when this happens? Well if you are us you watch really terrible movies. Like the one we watched last night. The Tommy Lee Jones CLASSIC:



If anything might work to make me nod off, this shining example of film making most definatly had a good shot.

We were about 3/4 of the way through the movie, and sitting at about 1:30am by the clock in the bedroom when we hear a really strange banging sound. We jump out of bed and I head for the door to check down the stairs while Jayna looks out the window. It turns out that there were police officers in the backyard of the house directly behind us banging on the sliding back door.

If you have read my previous post about hating people, you will note that this is the same neighbor that set the speed record for me not liking them. The very same neighbor who feels it is vital to the exestance of her grass to water it daily with a mobile sprinkler set to full blast. This blast has now officially washed the back side of my house clear of any dust, as well as washing my entire back patio clean and turned my grass to a nice swamp area.

Now we get to deal with cops busting down the door at 1:30am?

I hate people!

Home for sale! No charge for the swamp!

I hate people.

I know that sounds pretty harsh, but I have come to the realization that we as a society have become oblivious to anything that happens outside our immediate bubble. There is no such thing as respect for others. There is no concern or care for anything that is not MINE MINE MINE.

What made me finally realize this. One word that I think everyone can sympathise with me on:

NEIGHBORS

I think I need to write a letter to the Lord of the Underworld suggesting he create a 10th plane of hell reserved for neighbors. There really should be a special place for these special people.

We have these neighbors that moved in two doors down from us. We live in a cul-de-sac that seems to get a fair amount of traffic turn around in it. So, these neighbors move in to the house as renters. They are only the 4th set of renters in this house in the last year. Yup, a revolving door a new inhabitants. This set of renters managed to surpass all of the others for trashy. The other 3 sets were all really great people. Kept the yard up, were very polite, and quiet. This couple? Yeah no, not so much.

It only took 2 days for me to realize that I hated them. That is a new record I think as I am usually willing to look past a lot. I think it was the second night I came home and they had 13, yes 13, cars at their house. Oh yeah, not a single car was park along the curb. They all pulled straight up to the house and were piled 5 rows deep out. I had to squeeze between the car parked in front of my house (not visiting us) and the line of other cars just to get to my driveway. Okay, one time I can handle until the next night = same thing. This went on night after night after night. Turns out the guy renting the house owns a bar and everyone was coming to his place to party. He also had his 23 year old daughter and her 2 kids living there with him. Oh yeah and his girlfriend/wife. Did I mention she was 21 and he is 46? Oh yeah, and her kid. Great invironement for the kids with all those party people around all the time at night.

Add that to the fishing boat, revolving round of cars, and the trailer full of ATV's permenantly parked there makes for one really busy neighborhood. Then there is the fact that the feel they have to drive at 100 mph in and out of the place with kids trying to play, mainly my son! doesnt make me too happy.

Then there is the house directly to the right of us. This is where I get to have fun by telling everyone never, and I mean NEVER use a company called Power Enterprises as your landscaper. Unfortunately we didnt have a choice as that was the company the builder used and they would not let us change it. Yup, we purchased during the boom and builders in our area pretty much got away with anything they wanted.

Anyways...at the time we built our house everything was flat. Somehow we are now a good 12" lower than the house next door. You know why that is important? Draining. When we moved in and planned our landscaping the last thing I thought would look really good on the side of our house was a mini swamp. I mean swamps can be pretty nice looking, just not in suburbia. Every time the neighbors run their sprinklers the side of our house floods. I have not turned on the side sprinklers once this summer. We even built a mound on the front side of our fence in order to hopefully pool the water up on their side - yeah that didnt work. I have a huge section of lawn that has died due to severe flooding and is now a rotting swamp. The best part about this...the house is empty and owned by a bank. The agent that is selling the house? He doesnt do anything but show the house. He stated it was not his responsibility to control the water at the house.

How does this relate back to Power Enterprise? Note the mention that this whole area was flat before we started building. Power Enterprises came in and did the grading on the property and removed so much top soil that we were now 12" + lower than the neighbor house. It just so happens that I knew the builder of the house next door and when he saw what they did, he brought in several trucks of nice new top soil. He spread it in our yard, redid the grading and it looked fantastic. We came out the next afternoon to check on it and Power Enterprises had already been there, REMOVED ALL the dirt he had brought in, graded to even MORE of an angle so now we were lower than before, and had put the front yard in. When we called the builder they said that it was at code and there was nothing we could do. Now we are dealing with flooding and going to have to call someone out to completely redo that side of our house beacuse of these idiots.

Oh yeah, we called them at least 12 times to come out and fix it as that side of the house was flooding from day one. They came out several times and finally said that it was not their issue any longer since the water was coming from the other yard. Which didnt make any sense since there was no yard put in yet. Then it was our fault for running the sprinklers too long and too often. Then they just stopped returning our calls after I told them I had not had the sprinklers on in over 5 weeks.

NEVER USE POWER ENTERPRISES
NEVER USE POWER ENTERPRISES
NEVER USE POWER ENTERPRISES
NEVER USE POWER ENTERPRISES

In case you missed it.

Now we just had a new neighbor move in behind us. A single mom with her kids. She now has taken the record for pissing me off the fastest. Yesterday was the first day I had even seen anyone there. Last night I got home and they had a sprinkler hooked up to the hose and were watering a section of the back yard. Now, when you are going to water your yard isnt the main point to it to actually get some water on it? She had the water turned up so high it was actually coming over the fence and all the way up to our back porch. I woke up this morning and that fucking sprinkler was still on and now my back yard is a swamp.

If I wanted to live in a swamp I would have moved to one.

I hate people.