September 2004 Archives

This is a new template I lifted from Ruthsarian, and adapted to my own needs. I will tinker with it more in the next few days, I hope.

UPDATE: Because this template is hard on browsers running at 1024 x 768 or less, I will take the new template offline until I can fix this. When I do fix it, it WILL return, because I definitely like it.

CLARIFICATION: This template I am referring to was for the main page of The Scrawl. I have also added a new individual entry template that I like, although some people seem to dislike the picture. Take a closer look at it.

Just spoke to the HR woman. I had sent her an email regarding the crappy severance I thought I had. Apparently I misread the document and I thought that they were giving me one week of severance. In fact, I am getting two, the absolute minimum. In addition to this, I was able to get an extra day of vacation pay out of them, because they neglected to include the day of vacation that I didn't take last year.

Go me.

Yesterday was a day like any other.

I got up, went to work, this time a little earlier than usual in order to impress my boss. I talked to the same people (not women), I did the same stuff. I called the same people. I started on a new campaign for outbounds. Everything was normal, except that the president called a staff meeting for 3:30 in the afternoon. But this was way overdue. We had been expecting this for a couple of months, because we always get a quarterly report on How Things Are. Of course, we normally get for than five hours notice for these meetings, and food is often served.

Again, the HR woman complimented me on how good I looked. The outfit: yellow dress shirt (ironed, that's the key), my good black dress pants, black dress shoes, and my hair was held back with a black elastic (you can't see it because it's black, very ingenious). She was one of the three who complimented me on Friday.

I know I might sound conceited or something, but this is all for the sake of documentation. Really. I assume that she is like the old me, giving compliments when someone deserves it. I think she'll be just as flattering when I win the TV in the fundraising contest.

As of the time of this writing, three (3) women have complimented me on how I look in this new outfit I am wearing. The sweater, in particular. This is, of course, being duly noted.

Université de Montréal doesn't know who I am. How fucking typical. I'm not registered and can't get into a class for the fall session.

They say that they lost my application or such such shit. It's online for Christ's sakes. They don't ship fee statements to mature students, apparently, they have to show up and pay themselves, although they don't know exactly how much they owe. There's more, but I am quite pissed. Thankfully, I have all of my documentation. I'll call back tomorrow and be on hold for an hour.

I am neither amused nor surprised.

As you might notice, I have installed a word count plugin from Adam Kalsey. This allows me to display the number of words, or "words" that are blogged here. Michael Croft has modified it so that I can only display the number of words in the body text, or the extended text if I want to.

I called Adam today (I am impatient sometimes) because I had some problems running it. Turns out it was a dumbass mistake I made, and it works perfectly fine. Very nice guy, and he was willing to help me out. I appreciate that. Good open software spirit.

Someone else created a script that allows me to display the total number of words in the blog. That is displayed above. I'm a little over 50 000 at the time of writing this entry. That's a lot of words, enough for a short book of just over 200 pages, but really, it's nothing. Nothing. And it took me a while to come up with this. Nanowrimo writers are expect to top that in a month, the month of November. I won't participate this year, but I might sponsor someone who does. I am proud to say that one of last year's winners was a local girl.

I suppose I should get writing.

This is me, complete with red eyes and a frisbee. Rose's daughter thinks that I play frisbee for a living. That's her reasoning. She plays all day, so everyone plays all day. If I could play all day, I'd blog all day.

If I could, I'd blog, read blogs, read news, everyday. For a living. I'm pretty good at reading stuff that I want to online. If I had more time and felt less guilty I'd do a better job, I think. At home I'm with Rose, or playing some videogame, or something, which is why I don't blog more. But if I could do what I want to do for a living, then I might choose this for a while.

Anyone want to pay me for enjoying myself? I guess not many people get paid for that. I suppose I should spend some time here. There seems to be such an emphasis these days on finding what you are meant to do and going after it. But what the hell does that mean? Finding out why you were put here? What if I was put here to wonder why I'm here? Or to be tired of leaving messages all day (it's really not THAT bad)? And why is portrayed as a guarantee of a full and successful life? There are no guarantees.

Hmph. Pay me for doing exactly what I want to do, all the time. Pay me for playing Warcraft. Pay me for spending time with Rose. Now THAT's a charmed life.