Older blog entries for criswell (starting at number 241)

Excuse the blasphemic Simpson's referernce if it offends you, but I am just about at my wit's end.

I'm still up in Green River WYO visitting my family, and I am just about ready to slit my freaking throat. My sunva-beyotching hell, this place is awful. First of all, my family... well... to put it lightly... is a bunch of hicks. Even the most "normal" who have advanced degrees in things are massive hillbillies. It makes it very hard to function.

Second of all, this town! MY HELL THIS TOWN! Look up the population sometime, but the place is flipping small. And everyone knows everyone else! I cant stand all the overly friendly smalltown corn-munching idiots that this town festers with like they were flies on a carcas. Everywhere we go, whether my parents have ever been there before or not PEOPLE KNOW THEM. I cant stand going into a store and everyone knows my parents, and, by extension, me. Give me the sweet anonymity of a cold-hearted big city any day over this gushy, mushy, garbage.

Third of all, the cable TV is atrocious. 2/3rds of the stations are right-wing controlled faux-news channels. Fox News, MSNBC, you name it. No BBC World News... No Democracy Now... Hell, even the Daily Show is on at midnight for crying out loud. These redneck imbeciles cant even be exposed to the truth even if they wanted to somehow concern themselves with something beyond the local county fair and rodeo. Hells freaking bells, they are even taking this "Terror Alert" shit as something more than a political ploy to subvert the recent democratic convention! Mother of pearl! They even think that terrorists from some far away land would be interested in striking this dick-ville!

To top it all off, my mother is trying to set me up with every Daisy May and Molly Mudwallop who's been divorced recently in the surounding 3 counties!

And I'm having to face this garbage alone because my damned ex left me alone to face it. Before, I always had her to keep my sanity, but MAN... now that I'm solo I sure as freaking hell wanna get outta here.

Well, the wedding went alright. And, as soon as I can distance myself from this shit I will be able to calm down enough to write something better about it. I'll be home tomorrow... Expect something more upbeat then..

Oh, and excuse any spelling mistakes or typos in this entry. I am typing this from the ergonimically trendy split keyboard hunk of shit connected to my brother's machine as I try to save it from over 2000 items of spyware, adware, and viri. Yes, that's right, their safe-computing practises are somewhat akin to walking butt-nekkid through the sex-offender wing of your local penitentiary with your ass cheeks taped apart and a sign on your back saying "Call me Debbie".

Well, sorry folks for me losing it lately. Things have been.... well... sucky to say the least. I guess there's just no good way to end a 10 year marraige without me getting hurt... glavin....

I will be out of town until Aug 5th for my niece's wedding. So, anyone trying to contact me will have to wait until then (this includes any responses to the now 287 resumes I've sent out).

Oh, and thanks to those of you who have sent in words of encouragement about their being other fish in the sea and all... And to those who sent me information on Mail Order Russian Brides. Hehehe, pretty funny. Not sure I can afford 'em tho... I can't even afford a decent appartment right now... though a foxy Russian bride may spruce the place up ;-)

Actually, the Russian bride thing reminded me of the Simpson's episode "Flaming Moe's":

Russian Model: After Chernobyl, my penis, is falling off.
Moe: And penis is Russian for...?

First of all, I do want to thank all those who have lent me support during this difficult time. However, as much as this support helps me, I'm still getting rather discouraged.

Why? Well, we found a buyer for our home. So, I need to actually be, oh, idunno, leaving soon. This is hard enough to do because I love the place so much and it's been my home for 7 years now. I honestly have a lot of really good memories there (of course, I have bad ones as well) and I just don't want to leave it.

I also don't want to leave because it means getting an appartment again. I have always hated appartments. I hated sharing a wall with some insensitive clod (like the sex-fiends next door while I was at Intel, or the crazy opera woman when we lived on the Rez). I hated not having real privacy, or enough room for my stuff. I hated not having a real yard that is my yard.

This is made worse by the fact that I am not earning enough to really survive here in Tucson. Sure, I'll get some money from the equity in the home (splitting that with my ex), but that money will only get me so far.

So I have some rather hiddeous limitations on my potential appartment.

• Firstly, I have a dog that needs some sort of yard to (I'll not mince words) defecate in. I have a cat as well, so the appartment must allow animals (and, no, I'm not giving my pets up too... I've had to give up so many other things in this divorce including my best-friend, so I shant be giving up my pets).
• Secondly, I can't afford shit, so my appartment has to be as inexpensive as possible.
• Thirdly, I need room. I have so much stuff from my 10 year marraige (and 30 year collection of video games) that a normal appartment just wont do.
• Fourthly, I don't want to be tied down. I am looking for work elsewhere, and, if I get a good job and have to move I don't want some damned year contract with an appartment complex weighing me down.

My helpful realtor found me a place that meets all these needs. It's big, it has a tiny little yard for my dog to crap in, they let me pay month to month, and I can afford it (mostly, still need to earn more money as I can't afford things like gas, food and entertainment).

The problem? This place is something of a dive. It's in a scary area, I'd have scary neighbors (wonderful, I'm sure they'll love my 3000+ collection of rare and current video games), and it has a two foot circular mound of melted flesh in the carpet...

Ohhh... did I not mention the previous tenant had some sort of horrible burn accident there? I didn't? Well... silly, negligent me....

So this rat-trap smells like barbeque, and I know it twasn't the eatin' kind.

Top this all off with the fact that I've been averaging about 5 resumes sent out per day over the last few weeks, and yet not had one freaking callback. Add to this the fact that, now that my wife is gone, I'm lonelier than hell, and you can imagine just how discouraged I am getting.

What the hell is going to happen? If I cannot get a better paying job ASAP, I am really really screwed. Really.

Of course, there's guilt over my looking for a better paying job. My boss loves me, and I know that I'd be sorely missed from my current place of employment. I feel terrible that I've been forced to look, because I am someone who has always been as loyal as possible to those that depend on me (like my employer, and wife... but then again, where did that get me?)

Speaking of wife, I've stayed here in Tucson these last 4 years because of her. Because she was going to school here. Because we had a home together here. Because, when she graduated, she was going to have a better job here (which would allow me to spend more time finding better work myself). This, in an of itself, has screwed me too.

Because I have been anchored to Tucson, a place with a very weak tech economy, I've been forced to take System Administrative-type jobs (since there's been scant few development ones here). This means that, aside from my Open Source work, I've not done any "professional" programming in 4 years now! So, when people see that on my resume, they tend to pass me over.

Well, damnit! I'm a good damned programmer! I'm a good damned system administrator too! I'm good at just about anything related to Linux and Open Source software! If someone would just give me a chance to prove it to them, they would never regret it! But how in the freakin' hell do you convince someone to give you a chance? I mean, I think my resume is pretty impressive. And I am more than willing to pay to relocate myself (the money from my house would make a great relocation nest egg). Why isn't anyone willing to give me a chance? Hell, at least interview me. Let me convince you in person that I have the potential to be one of the best employees you've ever had!

I've just had so many bad things happen in my life this last while that I think I'm karmically (sp?) due for something better.

Okay, I may be panicking a bit now. Whether that panic is warranted, I don't know. I really don't earn enough in my job. The benefits are great, and I like my coworkers and environment, but my pay is pretty bad. Recently, the U of A announced they had something like a 13 billion dollar deficit, so my job is not going to be seeing a raise any time soon, and my teaching work on the weekends (which, I was actually making twice to three times as much as my weekday job from) is all but kaput (entire program is effectively shut down).

I have been struggling for the last few years to help put my wife through school, and support her, with the intent that, after she graduated, she would support me as I try and get more money or better employment. But now that she has divorced me, she has left me with a rather sizable debt in my student loans, debt stemming from the accident we were in four years ago, and no way to really get out from underneath it. This debt is all secured to, so bankruptcy wont help.

So what am I going to do? I earn $1200 per month, and will have $1400 per month in bills starting in August.

As much as it pains me to say this, I think I may have to find other work elsewhere. I hear Linux jobs have picked up in the last few years, and I have been looking. But I'm concerned that my experience paints me as a Jack of all trades instead of someone who is really quite knowledgable.

And then there's the fact that I will feel a tremendous amount of guilt if I leave my current job because they really do need me (and I have always been a very loyal person).

I mean, I really havent had much success since the 90s when I was working at Intel making upwards of $90/hr. Back then, I could devour a whole 8-900 page computer book in a week and absorb enough to teach it to others. At Intel, I taught myself JSP in two weeks and was able to turn around and train my staff. I also developed a P2P distributed computing embedded Linux project from scratch in under 2 months, and then had a team working under me to maintain it. I know the skills are there, I just haven't been able to showcase them in a while.

So what do I do? How am I going to survive? We're selling our home, and I may get $8-10k out of it, which will get me a little bit further, but certainly not keep me alive forever. I'm thinking if I were given a good job offer elsewhere, that money would be ideal to relocate myself.

Anyway, I've not had much success in the last 4 years, and, what with the divorce, my self-confidence is at an all time low. I was never good at selling myself, and I'm sure I'll be a lot worse now. I just wish someone could see that I have potential but have been beaten down and would give me a chance. I know they wouldn't regret it.

Man have I gotten behind lately. And it hasn't been the fault of the time-sink I mentionned last entry. Basically, I've been so busy I can't hardly breath. Between clients (who never seem to pay me on time.... hmmmm) and viral outbreaks at my day-job, it's been a real nightmare.

If you are expecting an update on something for me, please, please, please give me a bit more time.

Just been sick... and a bit preoccupied by a serious time sink. Woah howdy...

Just so I dont get any emails from people as dumb as this sysadmin- I run Linux. I use Mutt. I have not, nor ever will, distribute an email virus (intentionally or otherwise).

MailMarshal (an automated content monitoring gateway) has stopped 
the following message:

    Message: B00002388f.00000001.mml
   From:    criswell@geekcomix.com
   To:      d.vila@rentantigua.com
   Subject: Mail Delivery (failure d.vila@rentantigua.com)

 Because it believes the message contains a virus.
The virus scanning software used was: Sophos AntiVirus (SAVI2 Interface)
Virus name: W32/Netsky-P

 Please clean the file and resend it.

 MailMarshal Rule: Inbound Messages : Block Virus 

 For more information on email virus scanning, security and content 
management, visit http://www.marshalsoftware.com

YEARGH! Sysadmins who still bounce viral warnings should be killed in the most gruesome way imaginable. They should be done so in a public-type arena to stand as warnings to other sysadmins.

Yeah, and MarshalSoftware.com, you are sure selling me on your email gateway. Boy, howdy, does it seem keen and dandy.

Freaking hell, my rather robust email gateway (the classnotes need updating) catches most of my spam and all of my viri, so now the only unsolicited crap I get in my inbox is from stupid MTAs set up by even stupider sysadmins. AAAARGH!

BTW, FFXI rocks. This damned game is too damned fun for its own damned good.

Wow! I just found another person to loathe.

Wow. All I can say is wow. I'm still waiting for my letter ;-)

I want my WM to have identity problems. Oh, and I really want to like E... Damnit... This DR17 looks so damned slick. Well, if the embedded tabs in Fluxbox continue to be enabled without the option to disable I may just make the switch.

Freaking hell... UT2k4 is like crack-cocaine. We played the hell outta it this weekend in clanam. Damn and dang.

No real updates? I know. I'm a lazy SOB.