A New Year (And the longest entry ever)
*blows dust off live journal*.
Ok. Well, I'm pretty sure the readership of this journal has plummeted to somewhere in the low zeros, so this will mainly be for me I guess. Several startling developments in my life have prompted me to wish some sort of 'documentation' of where I am, sort of a State of the Union if you will. I also realized just how much joy I get from going through my older entries and seeing how I thought, what was going on, and just reminiscing. I see the new and improved live journal has a spell check, because I know I never would've spelt that word correctly. Hm, it's also telling me that "spelt" is not a word. Livejournal Spellcheck, consider yourself discredited.
JOB
The most crucial thing that is happened in my life is in the employment sector. At the time I last updated this I was working two jobs at Lowe's and General Dynamics, while anxiously holding my breath to see if my security clearance at the State Department would clear. Despite the fact that my interim clearance was denied due to my self-admitted drug usage, the final clearance was granted after about 6 months (which is pretty good considering).
I happily resigned from Lowe's and more regretfully resigned from General Dynamics because I really liked the people there, even if my job was so worthlessly easy an unborn child could do it. I definitely regret not e-mailing anyone there, because I feel like I should've at least sort of kept in touch, not to mention I'd like to know what is going on with them and whatnot even if they could give a rat's ass about what is going on with me.
Side Tangent: One of the guys I used to work with there, a temp named Steve who I actually believe I wrote about in an entry at some point, I did end up keeping in touch with. He was the closest person there to my age (23 I think?) and I managed to make it out to a bar with him one night. I think in my last entry about him I spoke highly of him, how he was taking charge with his kid even though his ex-g/f wasn't stepping up to the plate, how he seemed to have turned his life around from being a "bad kid" to a successfully employed individual. Well, he slid back a little. Actually, a lot.
The night I was with him at the bar down in DC he confessed to me that he had been snorting Cocaine earlier that day. Before we hit the bar, we had to track down his wallet, which he had left at a club last night. He seemed a bit zany, but I wrote it off as him just being a little odd outside of work, maybe. I get a call a few weeks later from him, asking if I have a place he can take a shower and do some laundry, because he has been living in his car for the past three days, after being thrown out of his house and charged by his grandmother for assault. Against my better judgment, I met up with him at the McDonald's at University Mall and tried to help him get his life together. I gave him 21 dollars, and tried to help him out the best I could.
Back in the day, I played my saxophone for a stint at an assisted living facility for the elderly, and played for some of the more mentally ill patients there. At this point, Steve would've fit in just fine. The man babbled like a madman, he could barely hold a conversation without randomly switching topics and spiraling off into some other direction. Of the highlights, he told me that the night he spent in jail after his grandmother called the police, he seriously felt a telepathic connection...with George W. Bush. He had quit his job at General Dynamics because he was "disillusioned with corporate America".
Last I heard, the charges were dropped against him because his grandmother was clearly overreacting, but after the trial she threw him out of the house because he wasn't a good Catholic or something like that. He told me he was trying to move into North Carolina with one of his friends, and possibly continue the custody battle for his child at a later date. I told him good luck. And I really meant it.
End Side Tangent
Ok, so I started work at the State Department. I came in at a good time...everyone was relieved because a giant flow of work had just ended and they were beginning to get more people to handle the load. My co-worker who had been at the job for two years had to deal with training a contractor who knew very little about computers, and has an admittedly "assertive" disposition, so he was absolutely thrilled to have someone who could pick up the job nearly instantly. His name was Rolando, and he was pretty much legendary for his inability to work with others because he had a temper, a superiority complex, and was one of those guys that would come down hard on you if you screwed up but gloss over any mistakes he had made. But again, since I am competent with technology, good at following instructions, and followed a shitty act, I was like a godsend and he immediately took to me. My other co-worker liked me too, because I listened to her and sympathized with her having to work with Rolando. My supervisor was awesome, just an amazingly nice person who loved how I was always willing to do more and could pick up tasks quickly. Unfortunately, the job become horribly repetitive, and I was so good at it that it was boring, and I got frustrated with the "people" aspect of it. To explain:
If you have a security clearance, it eventually expires after a period of time. My job was to let people know that their clearance was going to expire via e-mail, collect the appropriate paperwork and their SF-86 (big, long, story of your life form that the government uses to determine whether you should be eligible for access to classified information), and update our databases with their information making sure everything was ready to begin the re-investigation process. You could say we were the first step in the process. Sounds easy, except that some people wouldn't send in all of their paperwork, which meant you had to go and bug them about it via e-mail, which are all too easy to ignore. Sometimes they would insist they sent it, claim we lost it and get mad that their "personal information" was floating around somewhere waiting to be used to a nefarious and enterprising employee. This is despite the fact that everyone except the cleaning crew has a security clearance, so the government has determined all of us are trustworthy.
oh man, too long, can't..do..this...anymore...ok, next installment...soon...ish...ly.
Paul OUT!
Ok. Well, I'm pretty sure the readership of this journal has plummeted to somewhere in the low zeros, so this will mainly be for me I guess. Several startling developments in my life have prompted me to wish some sort of 'documentation' of where I am, sort of a State of the Union if you will. I also realized just how much joy I get from going through my older entries and seeing how I thought, what was going on, and just reminiscing. I see the new and improved live journal has a spell check, because I know I never would've spelt that word correctly. Hm, it's also telling me that "spelt" is not a word. Livejournal Spellcheck, consider yourself discredited.
JOB
The most crucial thing that is happened in my life is in the employment sector. At the time I last updated this I was working two jobs at Lowe's and General Dynamics, while anxiously holding my breath to see if my security clearance at the State Department would clear. Despite the fact that my interim clearance was denied due to my self-admitted drug usage, the final clearance was granted after about 6 months (which is pretty good considering).
I happily resigned from Lowe's and more regretfully resigned from General Dynamics because I really liked the people there, even if my job was so worthlessly easy an unborn child could do it. I definitely regret not e-mailing anyone there, because I feel like I should've at least sort of kept in touch, not to mention I'd like to know what is going on with them and whatnot even if they could give a rat's ass about what is going on with me.
Side Tangent: One of the guys I used to work with there, a temp named Steve who I actually believe I wrote about in an entry at some point, I did end up keeping in touch with. He was the closest person there to my age (23 I think?) and I managed to make it out to a bar with him one night. I think in my last entry about him I spoke highly of him, how he was taking charge with his kid even though his ex-g/f wasn't stepping up to the plate, how he seemed to have turned his life around from being a "bad kid" to a successfully employed individual. Well, he slid back a little. Actually, a lot.
The night I was with him at the bar down in DC he confessed to me that he had been snorting Cocaine earlier that day. Before we hit the bar, we had to track down his wallet, which he had left at a club last night. He seemed a bit zany, but I wrote it off as him just being a little odd outside of work, maybe. I get a call a few weeks later from him, asking if I have a place he can take a shower and do some laundry, because he has been living in his car for the past three days, after being thrown out of his house and charged by his grandmother for assault. Against my better judgment, I met up with him at the McDonald's at University Mall and tried to help him get his life together. I gave him 21 dollars, and tried to help him out the best I could.
Back in the day, I played my saxophone for a stint at an assisted living facility for the elderly, and played for some of the more mentally ill patients there. At this point, Steve would've fit in just fine. The man babbled like a madman, he could barely hold a conversation without randomly switching topics and spiraling off into some other direction. Of the highlights, he told me that the night he spent in jail after his grandmother called the police, he seriously felt a telepathic connection...with George W. Bush. He had quit his job at General Dynamics because he was "disillusioned with corporate America".
Last I heard, the charges were dropped against him because his grandmother was clearly overreacting, but after the trial she threw him out of the house because he wasn't a good Catholic or something like that. He told me he was trying to move into North Carolina with one of his friends, and possibly continue the custody battle for his child at a later date. I told him good luck. And I really meant it.
End Side Tangent
Ok, so I started work at the State Department. I came in at a good time...everyone was relieved because a giant flow of work had just ended and they were beginning to get more people to handle the load. My co-worker who had been at the job for two years had to deal with training a contractor who knew very little about computers, and has an admittedly "assertive" disposition, so he was absolutely thrilled to have someone who could pick up the job nearly instantly. His name was Rolando, and he was pretty much legendary for his inability to work with others because he had a temper, a superiority complex, and was one of those guys that would come down hard on you if you screwed up but gloss over any mistakes he had made. But again, since I am competent with technology, good at following instructions, and followed a shitty act, I was like a godsend and he immediately took to me. My other co-worker liked me too, because I listened to her and sympathized with her having to work with Rolando. My supervisor was awesome, just an amazingly nice person who loved how I was always willing to do more and could pick up tasks quickly. Unfortunately, the job become horribly repetitive, and I was so good at it that it was boring, and I got frustrated with the "people" aspect of it. To explain:
If you have a security clearance, it eventually expires after a period of time. My job was to let people know that their clearance was going to expire via e-mail, collect the appropriate paperwork and their SF-86 (big, long, story of your life form that the government uses to determine whether you should be eligible for access to classified information), and update our databases with their information making sure everything was ready to begin the re-investigation process. You could say we were the first step in the process. Sounds easy, except that some people wouldn't send in all of their paperwork, which meant you had to go and bug them about it via e-mail, which are all too easy to ignore. Sometimes they would insist they sent it, claim we lost it and get mad that their "personal information" was floating around somewhere waiting to be used to a nefarious and enterprising employee. This is despite the fact that everyone except the cleaning crew has a security clearance, so the government has determined all of us are trustworthy.
oh man, too long, can't..do..this...anymore...ok, next installment...soon...ish...ly.
Paul OUT!