(no subject)
Yay for another monster 4+ month update.
September
I received an invite for CM’s wedding on 10/10/10 but I had to turn it down because of all the things going on with work and the lawyers. I went online and picked out some gifts from a place they registered at and then shipped it to their place.
I took the day off on the 30th so I could be home when the concrete place came and poured the new patio. I stayed in the basement most of the time trying to get the wall back up after taking it out to seal the crack in the foundation. They did a good job pouring the patio and they kept the leaves off it while it was drying. Although they did do some damage to the neighbor’s yard with the concrete truck. I didn’t notice this until afterwards and apologized to the neighbors for the damage they were ok with it and said not to worry about it but I still feel responsible for the damage. There was also some minor lawn clean up I had to do after they left too, but all in all it was a good job. I also dated the corner of the patio and put my thumb print in the concrete before it set.
October
I started having some performance issues with my PC and decided that it was time to get a new one since this one just reached its 4 year mark. So I gradually bought parts that I needed as they went on sale. Some parts I had already and wasn’t using or could pull from my old PC so I didn’t need to buy everything new. Once everything was in I took the ATI HD4850 video card, secondary 320GB HD, and Blu-ray burner out of my old PC and installed them into my new one. Then I put the original video card and DVD-RW I bought with my old PC back into it so I could have a functional second PC for Maer to use when she is here. Here are the stats of my new PC:
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
HEC Black MicroATX tower with 585W PSU
MSI X58M Intel MicroATX motherboard
Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz Quad-Core Processor
A-Data 6GB DDR3 1600 RAM tri-channel
320 GB SATA HD
ATI HD4850 video card
LG Blu-ray burner SATA
2x Acer 22” LCD monitors
Maer was able to get through the border for the overnight at the Willard library with the paperwork the new lawyers provided but she could only stay 2 weeks. Before she came down she told me she had damaged the screen of her laptop. I purchased a replacement one online and swapped it out once she got here. In the end it cost about $110 and took 20 minutes of my time to do the replace it.
I took the 22nd through the 26th off so I could be with Maer and go to the overnight at the Willard Library in Evansville. The overnight was ok, but not real active this year and there was an issue with a certain person at the overnight that kind of made people feel uncomfortable. The trip to Oak Hill cemetery was pretty fun I had a chance to use Maer’s EMF meter there. We were getting some spikes on it which is kind of unique considering we were in the middle of a very large cemetery with no electronics around. I took video footage with my camera of the readings but the file was corrupted when I went back to view it.
Over the next couple of months we started gathering papers and info for the lawyers to show as proof of our relationship, employment, income, pictures together, conversations, and pretty much everything else we could think of.
Sometime during this month I was able to get a large chunk of the old Battletech books and started reading them. I also started writing down some ideas for a movie script for the MechWarrior universe.
November
Somewhere near the beginning of the month I received a thank you letter from CM for the wedding gifts I got them. There was a picture enclosed with them holding the gifts I sent and a note congratulating me and Maer on our wedding in August.
At one point I did some research on the pay rate for the work I was doing which was based on the region and I’m in and found out that I was being severely underpaid compared to others in the same field. When I was first hired on full time I didn’t want to push the pay part to much for fear that I wouldn’t get hired since I was just a contractor so I left it alone. But being there for 5 years now and still being under paid I went to my supervisor to discuss this. He seemed to be understandable and would go to our manager about it, but he could not promise anything. During that meeting we also discussed the cut in our benefits for next year and it also turns out that I will be losing 8 vacation days as well. So that was just more stress and disappointment in the way the company is being handled.
Luckily Maer was able to come down during Thanksgiving for 2 weeks. We left early in the morning for grandma’s place on Thanksgiving so we could help her set everything up for lunch. Maer was able to meet the majority of the family on my mom’s side there too. We mostly chatted with various family members and then left around 3pm to go to my sister’s place. Maer met my other sister from Virginia there since she was home for the Thanksgiving Holiday. We also had a lot of cousins on my step mother’s side there as well. We chatted some and played a few rounds of apples to apples. Maer started helping my sisters with family their ancestry too. We left around 2am and on the way back to Fort Wayne we noticed that all the Wal-Mart parking lots were packed with cars already for the early bird sales.
That weekend we went out and did some Christmas shopping. I bought a few gift and finally got my list put together and decided on what I was going to give to everyone.
December
We had all hands meeting at work with the president for our location. He announced that they had to lay off 150 people by the end of the year. This put a lot of people in a somber mood and put a ton of extra work on me since I process all the terminations for our location.
I finally finished up all my Christmas shopping and then shipped the gifts out to the people that I would not see for Christmas.
I was able to get the 18th through the 2nd off from work so I finished patching the wall up in the basement and cleaned the whole house since I haven’t had the chance to do that in a long time. The basement was the worst because of all the work I had done on the wall. Since we didn’t get any really heavy rain storms this Fall I wasn’t able to test and see if the crack was sealed all the way. So far no water has come through, but I’ll have to wait till spring now to make sure it is sealed all the way.
I went to my sisters on Christmas Eve for dinner this was our Christmas gathering for my step mom’s side of the family. We had dinner then opened up presents. After that we watched the kids play a new Donkey Kong Wii game they got then I went home. On Christmas I went to Grandma’s to help her get things setup for lunch and talked to Tony on the phone. We had dinner then opened presents. I waited around and helped put things back then left for home.
Maer was able to come down on the 27th for 2 weeks. We watched some Boston Legal and a few movies. We also made some clay koi, cranes, and frogs for my Zen garden. We also played Guild Wars since the Wintersday festival was on and we also caught up on some quests that were had open. I finally broke down and created a Facebook account since the majority of my family had accounts and kept in touch that way with some coxing from Maer.
Sometime near the end of Month the MechWarrior Living Legends finally released the 4.0 update. There were a lot of updates with new equipment new maps and the Team capture function added. This really changed the way the game was played and brought in a lot of people. They have already release 3 new patches to the update and those are now automatically downloaded when you log in too. So far they are doing a good job in putting the game together and I’m enjoying it a lot.
At one point me and Maer went out to a furniture store that I haven’t had the chance to go to yet. I have been looking for an armless loveseat for the basement in a similar color as the couches down there. I needed something without arms because the spot the couch will sit in would block part of the projector screen if it had arms. It was kind of a unique and hard item to find but this place had a sectional piece that looked good and was cheap so I bought it. That pretty much finished up the last large thing I wanted down in the basement for right now. So now I can get the hand rail for the stairs picked out and installed, but I’ll need to get help to do it.
For the past 6-8 months I’ve been doing some research on different types of E-readers. I finally decided to use the money I got for Christmas and choose the newer model of the 9” Pandigital e-reader. It is basically like the iPad but has less storage space and a lower screen resolution. The main selling point was its price at $200 with the iPad’s price at $500 it was an easy choice to decide which to go with. I was a little wary at first since the original Pandigital e-reader didn’t get very good reviews but it looked like they fixed everything with the newer model. When I got the device it took some time to get used to the Android OS and find all the apps that I needed. The main issue I did have with it is the android market place was not installed on it so getting apps was difficult to do. This was a pain since the majority of the apps for android are on the android market place & you cannot install the market place on this device. Over all it was a good purchase and I would recommend it if you are looking for a cheaper e-reader that can connect to the internet, read many versions of e-books (with the right apps), read comics, play videos, play MP3s, view pictures, & play app games.
We had originally invited my Mom, Darin, and Colt for dinner on New Year’s Eve, but they weren’t going to make it because they had other plans. They called us the day before and said there plans were canceled so they would be able to make it. We went out and got stuff for the night and got things cleaned up. When everyone got here the neighbors came by to see how we were doing and chatted a bit in the basement while I started on the stuffed red peppers for dinner. The neighbors left and we had dinner then watched How to Train Your Dragon on the projector. I tried to get a a TV signal set up on the projector screen for the countdown but it kept freezing up when I moved it over. So we watched the New Year count down on my PC screen instead. Shortly after that they left since it was getting late for them.
January
On the 1st we went over to my Aunt place for my Dad’s side of the family's Christmas. We almost went to the wrong house at first because it had been awhile since I’ve been there and the houses look a lot alike in there addition. Maer was able to meet most of the family on that side except for my Grandma since she was in Florida for the winter. We had lunch and chatted some then opened gifts. I went downstairs to play apples to apples with some of the family while the rest stayed upstairs talking. Not long after that we left because it was getting late and I had work the next day.
On the 6th I had a small accident in my car at the exit to where I work. The exit kind of curves out to the right and merges onto the road it was slippery from ice/snow and I started sliding forward instead of turning right and ran over the curb. The car was still drivable so I drove it home and then took it over to the Tuffy’s near my place. It turned out that the rods/wheel/and brake on that side of the car were heavily damaged and needed to be replaced which would cost me about $900 to fix.
Last week at work everyone received an email from corporate with some sudden news. The company decided instead of merging everything together like they announced last year that they would split the company up into 3 individual new companies. This split was to take place by the end of this year. This was a shock and surprise to everyone apparently this decision was made by a small group of people at HQ and never told anyone else even the individual value center presidents knew nothing about this. After many meetings of people discussing the new changes we found out that one of the primary reasons this was done was to boost the stock price for the company so they could show something good to the shareholders. There are many rumors flying around and no one really knows what the reasons of this split were and why they were decided, but it is certainly not helping moral for the company as a whole. The main part that affects me is all the work IT did over the last year to help merge the companies together and support them was for nothing and now we have to dismantle what we put together and try to fit into place for the needs of the 3 new companies that are being created. It’s just disconcerting that the company can’t make up its mind to what it wants to do and it doesn’t look at how these constant rash changes are affecting its employees. This place used to be a really nice place to work for, but it looks like everything is going down the drain now. Their main motto is hang in there well I’ve been hanging in there for over a year now and things just seem to be getting worse instead of better.
Well that’s a large chunk of what has been going on with me for the past 4 months. There are most likely things I missed or forgot but I will try my best to update more often if I can. Hope everyone is doing well and had a nice Holiday and New Years.