I'm back! It's been almost two weeks since I've written in here. The weather was so nice this weekend that I didn't feel like being holed up working on this. It's been a very rough week. I've been sick and I haven't gotten the proper sleep and work has been hell. I've been wandering from one day to the next, not feeling like doing anything, yet having things to do, and things to accomplish. So, I've been functioning, but barely. Work is only going to get worse, as far as I can tell. I'm going to lose my co-workers one by one until it's just me. I can feel the weight of the world on my shoulders starting to settle and I'm not exactly happy about it right now. I like having responsibility, but I don't like it when things spiral out of control. And if things don't go right, I'm going to have that very situation upon me. I was chewed out for the first time in I don't know how long, I don't think I fully deserved it, but I can see where my department has responsibility. It didn't help that I felt like I was going to collapse, and I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die. But, I didn't. I stayed for the rest of the day and even managed to make it to my first volleyball game of the season. It was at Volleyball that I confirmed that I was getting older. I pulled my first muscle ever. I started to run after the ball and when I planted my foot in the sand I pulled my right thigh muscle. I was just like, "What next?" Fortunately, Tuesday has as many hours in the day than every other day, so mercifully I went home after getting some food. Food was a necessity, I hadn't eaten in over 24 hours, because I had no appetite. I still don't have an appetite, and I'm spending my days in a daze. Back to being chewed out, I think that will propel me down to Virginia faster than anything else. Money doesn't buy you happiness, but it can buy you security. If work becomes an unhappy place, than I'll have to go sooner than later. In any case, I still have to update my resume. My boss never gave me my review last year. All this time, I thought that he never finished it, but as it turns out, he just forgot to give it to me. I'm hoping the (hopefully) nice things he said can be used to fuel my resume. I wrote my first resume based on my reviews in the Air Force. So, it would be nice to get a different perspective than mine when I write this thing.
I'm going to Denver. The company is sending me for about 4 days to begin training our replacements. It's been three and a half years since I've been there. I've already talked to my old roommate and I plan to see him while I'm out there, which is nice. I'm looking forward to it, though I'll miss one softball game and a pool match, which happens to be the first round of the playoffs. I didn't realize that I was going to miss it until after I made the reservations. I hope that they don't lose because of me. I would feel bad. I played last night and probably played as good as any week I've played. I even ran six or seven balls in a row before missing the shot on the 8-Ball. But I still didn't win any of my games. The guy I played, played very well, and I was disappointed that I couldn't come out with a win. He was ranked a few higher than me, but I've beaten higher ranked players before. Fortunately the league is weighted.
Our first softball game was canceled this week because they were doing work on the lights at the field. I'm glad because I had pulled a muscle and I couldn't run like I usually do, and to a certain degree, my speed is my best asset. So without it, I'd feel kind of useless. The leg feels pretty good today, so it must have been a minor pull. I'm going to have to actually stretch out before the game. I'm only 26 and I'm feeling beaten down. Our new first game is on Wednesday. I think that we'll be competitive, which is all that I can ask for in the beginning of the season, it takes a little time before we'll groove. Last year, it took us about a half a year before we started to really catch on, and we finished really strong. We'll see what happens this year. I hope that we don't fall flat, but I sort of doubt it, we have the core players back and a strong support crew, so I think we'll do well.
I've written enough for one night. I'll try to write this weekend, after my activities have completed. Hopefully, I'll feel better.
Oh yeah, Happy Birthday to all those who are celebrating this week! May is a big month for birthday's in my life. Happy Birthday to friends and Family.
Goodnight.
Wow, it's been over three weeks since I've touched this site. A lot has happened to me, some good, some not so good. Work has finally got to me, and I've made Memorial Day weekend a 4 day vacation for myself. I need the break. I've been going non-stop for the past two weeks. Let's see if I can break things up a bit, so I can keep the events in line.
The pool league is done. Our team was knocked out of the playoffs on Wednesday. Unfortunately, I did not play well enough to win. I was kind of upset with myself, and I wasn't in the most stable place on Wednesday. One of my teammates, who is a bit high-strung, kept touching me after the game, and I just couldn't handle it, so I politely told her that I needed a 1-foot square around me. She got really upset with me. I tried to explain that it wasn't her, but she wouldn't listen. I was the one who was having a bad day, but she made the issue about her. I hate when I have to be perfect all the time, or when I have to be the adult all the time. Every once in a long while, I need people to just move away for a few minutes. It happens very infrequently, so I don't think that I'm asking for too much. Then again, most people would see the look on my face and leave me alone, I wouldn't have to say anything. Yeah, it was just a game, but for some reason, all of my disappointments over the past couple of weeks was present in my head, and I felt like crying. The funny thing about this is that I have enough positive things going on that I have no right to feel sorry for myself, or feel this overwhelmed by work. Having the right to feel something, and feeling something are entirely different. I'm on my second healing day right now. Working on my website is a good sign, I think. It means that I have things together enough to put myself into something.
Volleyball is Ok. This activity is by far the least stressful of the activities that I am involved in. I'm not the coach, I am part of a team, but we can win, even if I don't do well. People rely on me less in volleyball, so even though I play hard, I don't take it as much to heart. Some days, when I'm playing, I'm playing to fill the void that work is leaving open. Mostly it's just nice to connect with the friends that I see less and less of these days. We win a few games, lose a few games, we're in a better place than we were in the indoor league. We got spanked on a regular basis in that league.
Softball has been really topsy-turvy. Our first three games were canceled. We finally got our first game under our belt this past Monday. It was a crazy game that we finally won in the last at bat. It was a great comeback and I'm really proud of how everyone played. We made our share of mistakes, but we never gave up. Final score: 25 - 24. Yep, a pitcher's duel. It rained and the balls were dieing in the outfield. The score would have been much lower if the weather was different. I reached base 6 times and scored 4 runs. It was the first time that I have gotten on base in every at bat. Buck Star was the hero of the game, hitting an inside the infield homerun. They threw the ball around the bases, and he was able to score the winning run. It was nice to start off the season with a win. We'll have to play a bit better in the future, if we want to continue to win in this league. I think it will happen as we get comfortable out there again.
I went to Denver last week, for about 5 days. The trip was a mixed bag for me. Socially, it was great. Professionally, it was a bit confusing and overwhelming. I didn't find what I was looking for there. I was hoping to find someone like me that I could transition to, instead, I found a group of people. Everyone is very nice, professional, and extremely busy. My job is going to land in several different hands. I guess I was hoping to have someone that can directly take some of the burden off of me. They will be able to do so, but in the meantime, I feel like I'm drowning. The list of things that I have to take care of is growing, and I don't have the time to slice much off of my to-do list. Meanwhile, I'm losing staff, and I'm losing other support that has made my life easier, because they do such a good job. What I need is a plan. My boss is helping in this respect by putting together some ways to relieve me of the burdens of everyone else's job that I've had to assume responsibility for. I would prefer to stick it out here, but I first need to make sure that my mental health is taken care of first. Which is why I took Friday off. I just need a break, to catch up on sleep and to put my affairs in order. I've handled the stresses here pretty well over the past two years, and I am surprised that I'm not handling it well. There is another wild card in it for me as well, which is personal, but it adds to the mix. I haven't been able to tell how much it affects me, because it's new and everyday it has a different impact. Sometimes minimal, sometimes large. All I can say, is that one day it might make a good movie.
While I was in Denver, I was able to see my old roommate. We spent 3 evenings together, and it really helped me to connect with old friends. He's doing Ok and I'm happy about that. It was like no time passed between us, and furthermore, it reminded me that I had a life before I got here to Albany. Let me explain that. I sometimes think that I didn't arrive in life until I got this job, but my roommate reminded me that I had a large influence on him as a person during that time in his life. I always knew that those were happy times, but I guess I didn't remember how important I was to those people. I knew that they were important to me, but you tend to forget that you were also there contributing and growing with them. They were the best friends that I'll ever have. Denver is such a culturally cooler town than Albany. It's also 2000 miles away. The only drawback that I can see at this time. On Saturday, before I left Denver, a guy that works for my parent company gave us the grand tour of Denver and the outlying areas. We had a great time, he and I are so attuned to the same music. He notices guitar work more than I do, but he does have an appreciation for lyrics and vocal inflections which can highlight and punctuate certain moods in a song. He's a U2 fan, and we went to a half dozen record stores, looking for any piece of memorabilia that would make our collection larger. I was also able to make a purchase recommendation for a James album. He said that he loves it. It's satisfying to be able to introduce people to music that I like. I also picked up another James album. It's not available in the states, which is disappointing, because it's probably their best album in the past 6 or so years. I couldn't find it around here, so going to Denver was a bonus. Even though socially it was great, I was running on no sleep for about 10 - 12 days, which has contributed to my sense of drowning. I think this weekend will help me a lot in that respect. I just need to get my head back on, get some sleep, work on the site, clean up the apartment, do my bills, and breathe.
I've added seven albums to the U2 portion of the site, and I have changed some of the layout of those pages. So check it out. I've tried to make the links stand out more, and to get rid of extraneous information that will make things more confusing. It's a work in progress, and every once in a while I come up with something that I like. Well, I think my life is caught up now. If I create some cool images this weekend, I'll throw some links in here too.
Take care!
Hmm, I have a dilemma here. I've figured out why my scans are coming out poorly, and I've found a way to make them excellent, but I will not have the ability to keep the size of the pages down. I know it sounds like a fundamental part of building a website, but at some point, I started scanning everything in as a gif and not a jpg. Some albums scan in fine as a gif, and some look horrible. If I start scanning in everything as a jpg, I will have to reduce the size of the pictures, so the pages will load in a reasonable amount of time. Quality vs. Speed. I think I'm going to opt for speed right now, since the rest of the world is running at the same speed that I am. 6 months to a year from now, I'll probably have my own domain, and a faster connection, so when that occurs, I'll retool everything to fit into that scheme. The rest of the world will have to deal... ha... ha... ha...
One of the other problems that I've encountered is that Microsoft Photo Editor stinks for quality, but is sooo easy to use. Microsoft Image Composer has great quality, but is not as user friendly. They need to rework their thinking on that product. Cropping images shouldn't be as difficult as it is in Image Composer. I normally scan the image in using Composer and then bring it into Photo Editor. It's a pain, but I like suffering for my art ;-)
That's it for the mid-morning notes. I need to get back to the rest of the site. I have a few ideas in the hopper and I'd like to get them down on pages.
I just completed my coolest page ever (so far)! I'm so very pleased. I got ahead of myself, because the page is for the U2 single "Lemon" and that came out in 1993. I'm only on 1990, and I haven't finished those sections yet. I got the idea to look through some pictures of mine for Desire's Fact page. I had a group of pictures of Bono in various states of singing, and I decided to try my hand at putting together a stream of Bono pictures, as I was scanning and cropping, I realized that I could make a cool remake of a part of the Lemon video. It's not a dead on remake, I had to recreate it from memory. In any case, I created the background in paint. then I created 10 separate animations, with a picture of the background attached to each animation, with varying speeds so that the pictures would crop up at different times, and frequency. The page is a little slow to load, but I figure I can indulge myself a little bit. Here's the link, since you won't find it in the U2 section yet. Lemon Facts.