A Collapsing of Spirit
After a long hiatus, here I am.


Work has been getting to me. I can feel negativity coming to me easier; especially yesterday. Troublesome clients leave me drained and annoyed to the highest degree eliciting profanity after hanging up on their phone calls. I've become snappy. My eye has begun twitching again, something that hasn't happened since the C&S days. I worked myself up so much on a nasty crunch day that my stomach was obviously upset when I got home. My face broke out in bumps for a day or so.

It's been hard for me to deal with all the layers of uncertainty. Threats of another employee being laid off because of the inability to make payroll, which would increase the already high work load on the rest of us. The vaunted deals and business plans that were to be are boon, are starting to lose emphasis and aren't looking like they'll hold true.

The big one is dealing with our usually strongest client. Ever since the new IT company took over control of the servers, things have turned upside-down upstairs. Because they can't get the two domain controllers to communicate properly, they've had a ton of their employees, who have moved into our office, use software VPN's to connect to their Texas corporate office. They've also been running streaming video training courses. To top it off nicely, they've put a VMWARE server on our domain controller. The sysadmin in Texas managed to wipe out ALL permissions on EVERYTHING doing god knows what.

So upstairs, their bandwidth is shot, everyone's Outlook and logins are timing out, and IF they manage to login in the morning, they're lucky to find that yet another folder doesn't have their usual access permissions. And guess what...It's all our fault.

The criticisms range from veiled annoyed remarks to outright rant fests. Ever since the new IT guys took over on the servers, we've been COMPLETELY out of the loop. We can't even give them a reasonable answer as to WHY their shit isn't working. But nevertheless it's our fault. We've had to go in countless times to reset permissions. I probably hold the speed record for rebuilding roaming profiles as I've had to do it so much. Oh, and I won't even go into how evil Blackberry and their Blackberry Enterprise Server; a word to the wise, if your client EVER wants Blackberries and or their associated Server, advise AGAINST it. Horrible customer service, wonky settings schemes that interfere with Roaming Profiles; and I guarantee their recommended fix DOES NOT WORK.

Normally in any other situation, this wouldn't be a problem. An employee gets into any service related field and finds that this sort of mindset is common. But we've been absolutely bombarded by it for the last 5 weeks straight. It's been fucking hell. I'd stand a better chance at going toe-to-toe with Mike Tyson then I feel I could with these clients.

*sigh*


Attended two Magic the Gathering tournaments and promptly got owned. They're fun, but it's a bit disappointing to lose so artlessly to the opponent; i.e. mana screw or being plinked to death by rats and zombies who aren't even running a great deck strategy.

Built myself a storm deck that seems to pull a Scotty by miraculously going off one round before impending doom.

I've also been in the process of inventorying my Star Wars cards so I can start trading/selling to finish up the collection. Have completeled Theed Palace, Coruscant and Tatooine. Currently on Death Star II and Endor, which I've already had hits on TradeCardsOnline.com for an upcoming trade.

Finally got Rage and Pr!vateParts into Counter-Strike: Source which has been a great stress reliever. Rage is taking to it with his usual reluctance citing numerous imbalances and unfair advantages in a game where the playing field is level to begin with. Parts has been studious enough to listen to strategies and tactics that he and I went over, and it's showing in his gameplay.

Also been on and off with Freelancer for Rage's sake which I'm still torn on; which I could pick a faction that I like.

There are rumours of snow this sunday. All the more reason to get the new tires for the car so I'm not sliding all over the place. Going to need to replace the front shocks soon as well.

Birfday is coming up soon. I don't remember how old I'll be, need to ask Lil.