joshkelahan.com

Well, not a lot has happened since my last post.  The latest in the string of annoyances is that when they switched my coworkers and I from salaried to hourly, they had to reset our benefits. Well the dental provider got the termination notice, but not the renew notice.  I found this out yesterday when my dentist called and said that deltadental was refusing to pay for my recent filling.  So I called and yelled at benefits, and they said they would call me back, but they haven’t yet.  I get really sick of having to fight for the things around here that I am supposed to get by default.

In other news, I have officially hired a Realtor (finally, yeah I know), and am really starting to look for a place.  I got pre-approved last week.  Its kind of exciting I guess.

My mom got some of these topsy turvy things, so for mother’s day I got her $23 worth of tomatoes and dirt.  The place she hung these things, I don’t really think they will grow, its right behind a tree, and I don’t believe there is much sun there.  In fact, the tree blocks from the North and West, and the house blocks from the South and East.  She may as well have hung them up inside, but we’ll see I guess.

So funny story.  A week ago I was invited to go to my brother’s girlfriend’s graduation lunch out in Chesterfield, MO.  At first it was supposed to be at Olive Garden (OG), but due to threatening weather, they moved the graduation to later in the day, so the lunch got changed to brunch. So my sister the social coordinator for our bunch called to let us know that the event had been moved to IHOP. Now don’t get me wrong, I like IHOP (a lot more than OG), but I thought it was a little strange that it would be moved from OG to IHOP.  But whatever. so I drove out to Chesterfield, and was sitting in my car at the IHOP.  I of course was really early, I always am.  But I started getting worried cause I didn’t see anyone I knew after a while.  So at 10 minutes before the thing was supposed to start, I went inside.

I still didn’t see anyone I knew, so I asked the host, “hey I’m here for a graduation party, lots of people.” He said he hadn’t sat any parties, and wanted of course to know how many.  So I called my brother and was all like,

“So, where are you guys at?

“Where are you at?”

“I’m waiting for you guys here at IHOP, if you know how many people there are going to be I can get a table…”

“Why the hell are you at IHOP?”

“Uh…cause I was told this thing was moved from the OG to the IHOP.”

“Who the hell told you that?”

“Amy.” (that would be my sister)

“Heh, no, its at the pancake house, not IHOP”

“Uh..whats the difference?”

“The place is called ‘the original pancake house, its just down the street.”

“Oh, okay, I’ll be there in a few.”

So on my way out to the car, I called my sister, who had been going crazy trying to get ahold of my parents cause they were supposed to pick her up, but she didn’t know if they knew they were supposed to pick her up. But of course my parents don’t actually carry their cell phones with them, instead they generally just leave them at home.  In any case, I let my sister know we were not going to IHOP, but instead the pancake house, and should she ever get picked up, this is where we would be.  The pancakes were pretty good, I would definitely recommend going there if you like pancakes or omelets.

Afterwords we all went over to my sister’s boyfriends house for a little while.  It was a nice place, but what do you expect for Chesterfield? After a while my parents and my brother left for the graduation ceremony, and my sister decided she wanted to go to the Butterfly House and she wanted me to come along.  So I did.  I had never been there before, so it was interesting, though honestly, not worth the $6.  You can check out some photo’s my sister took while we were there.

After that, my sister’s boyfriend, Neal, wanted to show me this bbq place called Annie Guns.  It was a neat place I guess, but honestly, it is just a store where they sell food. I don’t really care all that much.

Well, I think this post is long enough now.

March 8th, 2009.  That would be today.  I sit here today wishing that it 2009 were over.  So far 2009 has been a thorn in my side, one thing after another seems to draw my attention from that which is more important.  Sure my friends and family are happy and healthy, and that should be enough for me, but its not. I don’t really think its enough for anyone.  Never before and never again will the moments and instants align to create a day, this day, the exact way that today has unfolded.  Despite its uniqueness, I wish it were tomorrow. Why? Because I don’t have anything to do today. I don’t have anyone to talk to today.  Next week, I will sit at work, wishing the week away despite having someone to talk to, at the job that I once enjoyed, that I at one point was actually excited to do, that was always unique, that was interesting, and allowed me to learn something new – my job over the past few months has become increasingly more routine, a place where I cannot learn anything new, and for lack of a better word, depressing.  And so, I sit, wishing it were tomorrow, and that tomorrow were next weekend, and so on and so forth, slowly wishing away time.

Lets go back to a different time, September 2008.  Things were less bleak then.  We had just hired a new CIO at work. The state of things had, for the first time since I started, an aura of hope around it.  Soon the chaos of decisions made would be gone, and in its place would be order, driven by common sense and logic.  And so, in steps a new guy, with a new plan – to provide the masses with a level of support unforeseen before – noble plan.

Strike One: Anyone having anything to do with helping the masses, became a direct supporter of the masses. Before, my job predominately consisted of me doing reasearch, designing, programming, and implementing new ideas – working with different people, on different projects.  Only a very small sliver of my time was devoted to actually helping the masses.  My job is now only technical support. I hate it.  If it doesn’t help to fix a problem that someone currently is having, I can’t work on it. Tech support requires no thinking, no strategy.  It is not a good use of my computer engineering degree.  I am not the only person that this happend to, and its not the worst thing that could of happened, so I try to look on the bright side. The bright side being that I still have a job. Others were not so lucky.

And so, September turned into October, and the excitement of my paper being published and me off to Portland to present it took over everything. But my employer didn’t acknowledge it.  Did anyone say, “Hey here is a guy that got a paper published, that was asked to present about it. Maybe he’s smart, and should be doing something more than just setting up printers for people that don’t know how.“  There was no acknowledgment.  I still have the same crappy job.

I had high hopes for 2009 when it started.  Then my primary hard drive on my computer died – a time-consuming pain in the ass.  But the bright side, was it gave me time to install that fancy new Blu-ray drive. Cool!  The blu-ray drive doesn’t work, and work continues to go down hill.  Mid-February rolls around, and I am just discusted with 2009 as my tv starts to die.  When I turn it on, I can hear that annoying high piched noise that TV’s make, but nothing appears on the screen.  Sure I could probably get it fixed, but why bother.  I made the decision to get a new tv instead.  Yes it would cost more, but it would be new, and exciting, and might just turn around the bad luck I had been having.  I was so excited the day I arrived. It’s an amazing TV.  46 inches of glorious 1080p high definition.  I had to get the blu-ray player too so I could watch all the cool movies in HD.  It’s totally awesome!!!

A week later, I was submitting my “leave report,” which is kind of like a timesheet, but you only have to fill in the days you were abscent, and when I clicked to open it up, I was greeted with a message stating that there was no record of me in the system.  Um what?  So I called payroll, and asked if there was something going on.  Obviously, I have worked there for 3.5 years, I should definately be in the system.  Strike Two: This is how I had to find out that I have been switched from a salaried employee, to an hourly employee.  So I called my boss and asked, what the hell.  He responded with: “I knew this was going to happen, but I didn’t know when.” WHAT!?! He knew it was going to happen but didn’t bother to tell me?!? This is a bunch of bullshit.  In August of this year, I would have been here long enough to start getting 22 days of vacation per year, instead of the 15 I was getting. Now that I’m hourly I get 10.  Clearly this is a reward for 3.5 years of hard work and loyalty.

Last week I took over on a situation where another person, in the same job as I had dropped the ball, and the user was becoming more and more frustrated that he couldn’t get his job done after over a month of this other guy working on the system.  My boss asked me to intervene.  I talked with the user, about the symptoms of the problem and came up with an attack plan.  I told him his computer would be fixed before the end of the week.  When our first plan of attack failed, I ordered an new part from Dell, and told him that it would be Wednesday or Thursday at the latest.  On Thursday morning, he called me, angry and frustrated that he still wasn’t able to get his job done. I calmly said that as soon as the part came in, I would swap it out, and everything would be good to go.  When I returned from lunch that day I had several messages from my boss. The user had put in a formal complaint against me for this not having been taken care of already.  An hour later the part came in. Apparently, it had been held up at the loading dock (who could lose a battleship), and so it took an extra day to get to me.  I swapped the part, and the user is happy.  But I still have this formal complaint against me.  I did my job, I cleaned up a mess that a coworker couldn’t do, and I am the one that gets in trouble for it.  Where is the justice in that?

So yesterday I had a dentist appointment. Everything went smoothly. The cleaning took about 10 minutes, but then I had to wait for the dentist to look at my teeth.  He wants me to get my wisdom teeth out. He’s been telling me that for 3 years, but they aren’t bothering me, so I don’t understand the point.  I woke up today, and went to use my real computer, when I found that the partition table on my hard drive is unreadable. Huh? Why?  I restarted several times, and finally my computer decided to a.) work or b.) not work.  Yeah, my computer won’t even post now.  It looks like the SATA controller is shot.  I really wish this year would end….

I get so impatient this time a year. Everything just seems to move in slow motion.  It’s cold and gray outside, and there is nothing to do inside. You can try to go places, but no one pays attention when they’re drivng, and so you end up driving 20 mph in a 45.  And you can’t pass cause everyone else around is apparently plagued with the same winter retardation.  If you get where you are trying to go, there are 90 billion retards there.

I tried to go to Borders this weekend, but there were so many people there you couldn’t even get down the isles.  What the hell?  There were actually people sitting on the floor reading!  Don’t get me wrong, I think its great that more people are reading but can’t they get out of my way?  On Saturday my brother, sister, their significant others and I tried to go get some dinner.  A random Saturday in Janurary.  Chilies had a 2hr wait, Texas Roadhouse had a 2 hour wait.  We ended up going to O’Charleys.  And keeping with the theme, it was about a 45 minute wait, and the food as all over cooked.  I think they need to change their name to Meh’Charleys.

The good

Well lets see, whats new. The holidays have come and gone of course. For the most part I had an enjoyable time. Working for a university does have its perks this time of year.  I got some neat stuff this year: a 22 inch 1080p monitor to sit next to my smaller 20 inch monitor.  I just love multiple monitor setups. It really makes me wonder how I ever lived with just one screen.  To go with that Santa got me a blu-ray drive for my computer.  I haven’t had the chance to test it out yet, but how could it possibly be anything less that totally friggin awesome?  I got the 310 lb upgrade for my bowflex, which means I am getting stronger if nothing else.  It is kind of a decieving name though really cause its only an extra 100 lbs, but it increases the total to 310. Whatev. I have had the bowflex less than a year now, but I can already tell an improvement.  Hmm what else…I got some pants. Everyone needs pants.  I also got a box of gatorade, which I think is pretty cool.

The Ugly

Over the holidays the primary hard drive on my computer went out.  I knew it was going to happen, as I had been experiencing data corruption issues for a while now.  I was hoping to get a few more months out of it though (I’m cheap what can I say).  Because I new the end was so near I was able to get a lot of data off the drive before it went boom.  I may have lost some pictures though.  None taken by me, just images I collect to use as backgrounds on these high resolution monitors (normal backgrounds just don’t do them justice).  I picked up a fairly inexpensive enterprise class drive that should be a little more stable than the run-of-the-mill drive I had before.  So far it is running very smoothly, but only time will tell what happens from here.

Work on the bathroom project continues. The big issue or snag or whataver is that I don’t really have time to work on it all that much.  I am at work during the day throughout the week, and then 3 nights a week I do my bowflex (90 minutes).  Also, since the bathroom is accessible only through my parents bedroom, I can’t work on it when everyone is asleep.  Likewise, my parents would never shower in the other bathroom, so at the end of any work, I need to make sure that everything is already useable for them to take their showers and whatnot.  It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but when you have people trying to use what you are just installing it makes it a little trying.

So one day last week I was looking for the leather reconditioner stuff for my docs (as in Dr. Martens shoes, not word docs).  And everywhere I looked, I couldn’t find it.  I was getting so mad at myself, how could I lose this.  I even went as far as actually cleaning my room (shocking yes?). I threw some stuff away, stacked some books, etc, but I just couldn’t find the stuff.  Disgusted with myself I eventually gave up, and went to bed.  Yesterday I finally got around to actually taking the trash bag of trash out of my room, and you know what I found under the trash bag? Yeah.  That’s right, the leather conditioning stuff.

So this coming Thursday is Thanksgiving (that’s for those of you living under a rock).  Thanksgiving really isn’t a good holiday in my opinion.  Don’t get me wrong, I like that we get a couple of days off of work to watch football and eat retardedly dry turkey, but seriously I would gladly just forgo the whole holiday and just go with the days off of work.