Welcome to 2009...
It appears that the last time I used this thing was AUGUST... Oops.
Year in review, blahblahblah. I honestly can't think of too much that was noteworthy. I almost got disowned, and then had to pay my parents a ridiculous sum of money for my freedom. Moving in with J was a big step, and worth it! Then Sam arrived. :D :D :D I have never had an animal before (parents never allowed pets) and now I realize I'd been seriously missing out. Sam is the cutest thing EVAR.
All of that happened within 2 months... Perhaps even within 1, I can't remember. What the hell did I do during the rest of the year?? *puzzles*
I suppose I have resolutions, but these were things I've had in my head for a while. (The beginning of a new solar year is not a "clean slate" no matter how much people want to believe it is!) Most things I can work on. Some things I don't know HOW to work on.
Anyway... Flash forward to the present...
Recession recession... To be honest, I hadn't really noticed its effects too much in Calgary. Slowly, I start to hear about layoffs at other companies. Now it hits my company. There were 3 layoffs at my office yesterday, and 2 more today. Fitness subsidizing has been eliminated (and thus now I'm paying double what I had been previously for this THREE YEAR Gold's Gym membership), so I may transfer it away. Technology subsidizing has been eliminated, and I am regretting not purchasing a printer 2 weeks ago. Nobody will be getting raises this year. We've been told to cut down our coffee consumption (LOL), and the prices at our pop/juice machines have been raised. "Lunch & Learns" are now "Sit & Learns", as evidenced by that time in December we were called in for a 2 hour lunch meeting without knowing catering was canned, so we just sat around with stomachs grumbling the whole time.
I guess I should be glad I still have a job? *knock on wood* QA is still intact and understaffed. I don't think they could possibly get rid of any of us without screwing something up... but who knows.
Our Usability guy had made up a little "Beginning of 2010" scenario just to make a point about how future users will view our product, and in it, he had predicted that most companies would lay off all the young Gen-Y employees in favour of keeping the oldies around, so we'd have to focus on them as a user base. :P I found it somewhat dryly amusing this morning, but it's a actually little scary to think about. (Then again, the old dudes have to retire sometime!)
Year in review, blahblahblah. I honestly can't think of too much that was noteworthy. I almost got disowned, and then had to pay my parents a ridiculous sum of money for my freedom. Moving in with J was a big step, and worth it! Then Sam arrived. :D :D :D I have never had an animal before (parents never allowed pets) and now I realize I'd been seriously missing out. Sam is the cutest thing EVAR.
All of that happened within 2 months... Perhaps even within 1, I can't remember. What the hell did I do during the rest of the year?? *puzzles*
I suppose I have resolutions, but these were things I've had in my head for a while. (The beginning of a new solar year is not a "clean slate" no matter how much people want to believe it is!) Most things I can work on. Some things I don't know HOW to work on.
Anyway... Flash forward to the present...
Recession recession... To be honest, I hadn't really noticed its effects too much in Calgary. Slowly, I start to hear about layoffs at other companies. Now it hits my company. There were 3 layoffs at my office yesterday, and 2 more today. Fitness subsidizing has been eliminated (and thus now I'm paying double what I had been previously for this THREE YEAR Gold's Gym membership), so I may transfer it away. Technology subsidizing has been eliminated, and I am regretting not purchasing a printer 2 weeks ago. Nobody will be getting raises this year. We've been told to cut down our coffee consumption (LOL), and the prices at our pop/juice machines have been raised. "Lunch & Learns" are now "Sit & Learns", as evidenced by that time in December we were called in for a 2 hour lunch meeting without knowing catering was canned, so we just sat around with stomachs grumbling the whole time.
I guess I should be glad I still have a job? *knock on wood* QA is still intact and understaffed. I don't think they could possibly get rid of any of us without screwing something up... but who knows.
Our Usability guy had made up a little "Beginning of 2010" scenario just to make a point about how future users will view our product, and in it, he had predicted that most companies would lay off all the young Gen-Y employees in favour of keeping the oldies around, so we'd have to focus on them as a user base. :P I found it somewhat dryly amusing this morning, but it's a actually little scary to think about. (Then again, the old dudes have to retire sometime!)