Looking back - ranting again - moving suggestion
Looking back
Looking back over the last 20 or so posts I have made, which go back to the beginning of the year, I noticed something. A pattern you might say. The pattern is one of tiredness. I mean, I am usually tired by 3pm. Well up to yawning by then, but I am usually feeling tired all day now. In recent memory, I have had one day of long sleep/sleeping in. Even with that, I was feeling run down and sleepy after 2 hours. On the weekends, I got to bed at a decent hour most Friday nights, but wake up between 7 and 8:30am. I am still tired, yet can't sleep any more. It's like my body won't let me. I can't even nap later in the day, as I still won't fall asleep until well after dark. I am so far meeting or exceeding all my dealines this week, for which I am greatful. It helps keep the boss off my back. I'll have to have a technical meeting with him soon, to verify which changes he wants, as I believe we may have to shell out $30 for some software to get things the way he wants them. I am just not a skilled programmer in the needed language to accomplish the task.
I have also noticed that my study habits totally suck. I started working through one of the many programming/reference books I have, but at a certain point, I hit just enough knowledge to get me going decently. I haven't picked up the book since. Part of it I put down to the large amount of activity we have going on at the office. But if I really look at it, I could feasibly work at leats an hour a day into my daily schedule to study more.
Ranting again
I mean, I made the time to do a website for my friend's new radio station in Athens, GA, out near the UGA campus. He sent me the logo and the basic info he wanted on the site. Two days later, he had a full site made from scratch, ready to upload after some last minute copy edits he wanted to do. If I can do that after work in less than 4 hours time in all, why can't I schedule an hour study time during "work hours" and maybe another 1 hour block "after hours"? The answer - is drive. I never liked English in school. I didn't like writing essays or anything long. Writing web pages for my friend was easy, mostly retyping a long e-mail he sent into the editor, and adding allo the code to make it work. The site is simple and straightforward. He could have anyone with a decent knowledge of HTML 4 to XHTML 1.1, and a little CSS do updates for him without any real learning curve for them. The site at work is a chore because of the restraints. I am bounded by the boss' perception of how it should be, as well as walking the fine line between being informatine and being blatanatly self advertising while we await stock sale approval from the government. Doing anything is a very laborious prospect of refining everything. I mean it took somewhere like 30 revisions of THE SAME looking logo before our new marketing guy got approval to hand it over to me. That was just one graphic, which got shrunk down pretty small and replaced the previous one. I have to do the whole site that way. Every creative direction I have tried to go in gets shot down.
For example, I started a new look for the site, just working on a single page, converting it to the new style. I spent several days in Photoshop creating some really nice 3D glass/plastic buttons for the navigation. Everyone who saw them and how the new look was shaping up seemed to love it. One button color stood out and needed to be changed, but there were no major issues, even from the boss. That should have been a warning sign. One day, earlier this week, he blindsides me with, "What are you doing that look for? I didn't want buttons. I wanted dropdown menus." I mean, I drew it out for him on the whiteboard when I saw how the new Logo was taking shape over a month ago. He said he liked the concept alot. It was simple, stylish, and elegant. I managed a whole new stylistic look for the site based on our new, sleek Logo. No complaints about my working on it for hours on end making everything line up perfectly. Then, when I only have a day's worth of work left on this page to get it all done and ready to roll out easily to the entire site, I get told it isn't the right thing to be working on. Not only that, but he attacked the buttons I had created. "Why throw away all the previous work I did with X, Y, and Z over the past few years to get a nice touchscreen look?" Maybe because all of those "buttons" are big grey single color ovals, with 4 black pixels on them in the "corners" to make them "look 3D" I don't have a degree in bussiness, nor in art, nor in programming. But I know a horrible looking interface when I see one.
So I stop work on the new styke project, and spend a day programming drop down menus with PHP. One day, and I have it working, and a prototyped page to show him. "Those are nice, but I want the ones like chevrolet.com has." So we look at the site. Slide out menus on the left, drop down and slide out menus on the top. Quite obviously done with javascript. I mean they can afford software for several hundred dollars to do that stuff with, or to pay some fulltime java people to make it happen. Both are resources the company, much less myself, have. After spending the rest of that day finding some javascript examples to do a similar, but far under par imitation of the listed site, I went home. More work insues the next morning. Then to check how well I am, or am not doing I go back to the example site given. Guess what? They changed thier entire website navagation that night, to a format EXACTLY LIKE what I had laboured over writing in PHP. All the boos had to say ways "I guess Chevy made you right, as it's the latest-greatest." What the hell ever. I am going to do my best to give him what he wants for his website, but my heart isn't really in the current site anymore. If I do good enough with all my various job responsabilities, I will remain with the company. Which I do want to do. I just figured I was hired as much for my creative talents as my technical ones. Guess it was only for the latter.
Moving Suggestion
The boss's wife owns a condo, which one of my co-workers currently lives in. It used to be a really nice place, but while they were living in California for 15 years, the renters they had apparently trashed the place. Even with all the carpeting and padding gone, the place reeks of animal urine. (at leat upstairs, downstairs isn't really noticable anymore) Monday the entire crew gets to go over there and remove fragments of padding still stuck to the occasional staple in the floor, and hammer the staples flat into the floors so they can be painted and sealed, then recarpeted. Part of this is to give our newest team member the option of somewhere to live down this way so he isn't driving 5 hours between here and Tenn. 2 times a week, and also to keep the company from having to pay the hotel bills to put him up for the week. The place is getting alot of new plumbing (by a professional) a new dishwasher, oven fixed, icemaker fixed, and the upstairs rooms will get keyed locks for privacy. The guy living there currently sleeps on a couch in the "Living Room" and his massive computer desk is set up on the far side of that massive open area in the "Dining Room", leaving two rooms upstairs free. Basic cable and cable modem access will be brought in as well. The new guy seems all for it if we can get this stuff done Monday so it doesn't smell. As part of this, the invitation has been extended to me to also move in there, into the other bedroom. Now this came out of the blue for me, but apparently hints had been dropped the past several weeks to the other two guys, and this all came out after the boss had a talk with the current resident at length on the subject. For new guy, it would be great. Someone to help get him settled in and learn his way around. A pal for the current resident. A space that the new guy can truly call his own instead of a hotel room. As for me:
This would put me 30-45 minutes further away from all my friends and family due to distance and traffic.
This also would mean moving a good portion of my crap for the 3rd time in 18 months.
This means I would have to start buying food, unless the company paid into a fund for that. (which I can't afford to do with no steady paycheck.)
This also means even LESS sleep for me because of the time taken to get to and from work
I could go on, but I'm not going to. Clearly my answer will be "No." but I will have to make sure this isn't something expected of me to stay working at the company. I may end up having to do it, even though I don't really want to if that is the case.
Looking back over the last 20 or so posts I have made, which go back to the beginning of the year, I noticed something. A pattern you might say. The pattern is one of tiredness. I mean, I am usually tired by 3pm. Well up to yawning by then, but I am usually feeling tired all day now. In recent memory, I have had one day of long sleep/sleeping in. Even with that, I was feeling run down and sleepy after 2 hours. On the weekends, I got to bed at a decent hour most Friday nights, but wake up between 7 and 8:30am. I am still tired, yet can't sleep any more. It's like my body won't let me. I can't even nap later in the day, as I still won't fall asleep until well after dark. I am so far meeting or exceeding all my dealines this week, for which I am greatful. It helps keep the boss off my back. I'll have to have a technical meeting with him soon, to verify which changes he wants, as I believe we may have to shell out $30 for some software to get things the way he wants them. I am just not a skilled programmer in the needed language to accomplish the task.
I have also noticed that my study habits totally suck. I started working through one of the many programming/reference books I have, but at a certain point, I hit just enough knowledge to get me going decently. I haven't picked up the book since. Part of it I put down to the large amount of activity we have going on at the office. But if I really look at it, I could feasibly work at leats an hour a day into my daily schedule to study more.
Ranting again
I mean, I made the time to do a website for my friend's new radio station in Athens, GA, out near the UGA campus. He sent me the logo and the basic info he wanted on the site. Two days later, he had a full site made from scratch, ready to upload after some last minute copy edits he wanted to do. If I can do that after work in less than 4 hours time in all, why can't I schedule an hour study time during "work hours" and maybe another 1 hour block "after hours"? The answer - is drive. I never liked English in school. I didn't like writing essays or anything long. Writing web pages for my friend was easy, mostly retyping a long e-mail he sent into the editor, and adding allo the code to make it work. The site is simple and straightforward. He could have anyone with a decent knowledge of HTML 4 to XHTML 1.1, and a little CSS do updates for him without any real learning curve for them. The site at work is a chore because of the restraints. I am bounded by the boss' perception of how it should be, as well as walking the fine line between being informatine and being blatanatly self advertising while we await stock sale approval from the government. Doing anything is a very laborious prospect of refining everything. I mean it took somewhere like 30 revisions of THE SAME looking logo before our new marketing guy got approval to hand it over to me. That was just one graphic, which got shrunk down pretty small and replaced the previous one. I have to do the whole site that way. Every creative direction I have tried to go in gets shot down.
For example, I started a new look for the site, just working on a single page, converting it to the new style. I spent several days in Photoshop creating some really nice 3D glass/plastic buttons for the navigation. Everyone who saw them and how the new look was shaping up seemed to love it. One button color stood out and needed to be changed, but there were no major issues, even from the boss. That should have been a warning sign. One day, earlier this week, he blindsides me with, "What are you doing that look for? I didn't want buttons. I wanted dropdown menus." I mean, I drew it out for him on the whiteboard when I saw how the new Logo was taking shape over a month ago. He said he liked the concept alot. It was simple, stylish, and elegant. I managed a whole new stylistic look for the site based on our new, sleek Logo. No complaints about my working on it for hours on end making everything line up perfectly. Then, when I only have a day's worth of work left on this page to get it all done and ready to roll out easily to the entire site, I get told it isn't the right thing to be working on. Not only that, but he attacked the buttons I had created. "Why throw away all the previous work I did with X, Y, and Z over the past few years to get a nice touchscreen look?" Maybe because all of those "buttons" are big grey single color ovals, with 4 black pixels on them in the "corners" to make them "look 3D" I don't have a degree in bussiness, nor in art, nor in programming. But I know a horrible looking interface when I see one.
So I stop work on the new styke project, and spend a day programming drop down menus with PHP. One day, and I have it working, and a prototyped page to show him. "Those are nice, but I want the ones like chevrolet.com has." So we look at the site. Slide out menus on the left, drop down and slide out menus on the top. Quite obviously done with javascript. I mean they can afford software for several hundred dollars to do that stuff with, or to pay some fulltime java people to make it happen. Both are resources the company, much less myself, have. After spending the rest of that day finding some javascript examples to do a similar, but far under par imitation of the listed site, I went home. More work insues the next morning. Then to check how well I am, or am not doing I go back to the example site given. Guess what? They changed thier entire website navagation that night, to a format EXACTLY LIKE what I had laboured over writing in PHP. All the boos had to say ways "I guess Chevy made you right, as it's the latest-greatest." What the hell ever. I am going to do my best to give him what he wants for his website, but my heart isn't really in the current site anymore. If I do good enough with all my various job responsabilities, I will remain with the company. Which I do want to do. I just figured I was hired as much for my creative talents as my technical ones. Guess it was only for the latter.
Moving Suggestion
The boss's wife owns a condo, which one of my co-workers currently lives in. It used to be a really nice place, but while they were living in California for 15 years, the renters they had apparently trashed the place. Even with all the carpeting and padding gone, the place reeks of animal urine. (at leat upstairs, downstairs isn't really noticable anymore) Monday the entire crew gets to go over there and remove fragments of padding still stuck to the occasional staple in the floor, and hammer the staples flat into the floors so they can be painted and sealed, then recarpeted. Part of this is to give our newest team member the option of somewhere to live down this way so he isn't driving 5 hours between here and Tenn. 2 times a week, and also to keep the company from having to pay the hotel bills to put him up for the week. The place is getting alot of new plumbing (by a professional) a new dishwasher, oven fixed, icemaker fixed, and the upstairs rooms will get keyed locks for privacy. The guy living there currently sleeps on a couch in the "Living Room" and his massive computer desk is set up on the far side of that massive open area in the "Dining Room", leaving two rooms upstairs free. Basic cable and cable modem access will be brought in as well. The new guy seems all for it if we can get this stuff done Monday so it doesn't smell. As part of this, the invitation has been extended to me to also move in there, into the other bedroom. Now this came out of the blue for me, but apparently hints had been dropped the past several weeks to the other two guys, and this all came out after the boss had a talk with the current resident at length on the subject. For new guy, it would be great. Someone to help get him settled in and learn his way around. A pal for the current resident. A space that the new guy can truly call his own instead of a hotel room. As for me:
This would put me 30-45 minutes further away from all my friends and family due to distance and traffic.
This also would mean moving a good portion of my crap for the 3rd time in 18 months.
This means I would have to start buying food, unless the company paid into a fund for that. (which I can't afford to do with no steady paycheck.)
This also means even LESS sleep for me because of the time taken to get to and from work
I could go on, but I'm not going to. Clearly my answer will be "No." but I will have to make sure this isn't something expected of me to stay working at the company. I may end up having to do it, even though I don't really want to if that is the case.