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Update via LoudTwitter
Update via LoudTwitter
Update via LoudTwitter
So I’m belatedly posting about my trip to Charleston, to visit Niquie and Jared. I blame Niquie, for not getting back to me with a picture. It is not my own lax attitude. Seriously.
Though it was a bit rushed — only stayed one night — it was fun. There was beer, and lots of walking around downtown Charleston. They have some beautiful historic buildings there, and there was lots of wind by the coast. I love me some wind. I also watched Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels for the first time ever. Guy Ritchie films remind me of Ravel’s Bolero. They start out slow, and then eventually build to a fever pitch where blood is flying, things are exploding, and baby Jesus is running around twirling his umbilical cord like a lasso and crying out, “Yippee kayay, motherfucker!!!” as he ropes in triple-cunted undead hookers.
Anyway, here are a few pics from the trip. Apparently the new WordPress 2.5 “gallery” feature doesn’t work so well for me, so I’ll have to do this manually….
I run my personal site’s blog using WordPress. It automatically posts everything I write there to LiveJournal. Well, WordPress has recently come out with a major upgrade, so up shall I grade. Hopefully nothing bad will come of this.
EDIT: Looks like everything went swimmingly. For those of you who have a similar setup, there was one small change that needed to be made to the LiveJournal crossposter plugin, and that change can be found here.
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After having gone through a metric fuck-ton of resumés, many first-round interviews, and a sum total of only three people who got to the technical interview (two of which bombed it), it’s become apparent to me that my current workplace simply can’t replace me. At least, not without a lot of luck — it’s nearly impossible to find someone with the necessary management skills and tech skills, who will be willing to work for the salary that they can afford. They got lucky with me originally because I was a White Wolf fan boy, and not quite yet out of engineering school when they hired me. So I was willing to take (far) less-than-average pay for the job.
So, seeing the writing on the wall, I gave the company owners two options. One: July 30th, hell or high water, would be my last day. Two: I remain with the company, contingent upon certain non-negotiable demands being met.
They chose option 2, and I’m satisfied that I will be able to find the personal and professional growth that I’ve felt has been lacking in my current position. In fact, they went above and beyond my demands — for example, I demanded a raise, they gave me a bigger raise, saying they thought I deserved more. As well as the promise of “decent-sized raises, especially in the next two review periods.”
This was a really tough decision to make — the White Wolf guys really are like family to me, and I’ve always wanted to be a game programmer (specifically, for RPGs). And the perks of working for White Wolf are nothing to sneeze at: on-staff chef providing free breakfast and lunch daily (and dinner two nights a week), cool-ass custom-made gothic “cubicles” (more like 4-man work areas), the most awesome work environment in the history of man, full benefits package with healthcare included in salary, a gym, a never-empty keg fridge in one of the conference room named “The Enabler,” monthly alcohol-soaked cookouts, etc. And more than anything, I miss my old boss, Chris McDonough. Having an awesome boss makes any job palatable, and having an awesome boss at an awesome company is exponentially better.
It is still possible that I might go in that direction eventually; I’ll be keeping my ear to the ground for possible college grads whom we might be able to train up to replace me. But if that does happen, it won’t be any time soon.
This does take a lot of stress off of me, though. In addition to everything else that’s been weighing on me lately, I was trying to learn a new programming language, and I’ve felt split in too many directions at once. That’s really been getting to me these past few months — I really can’t accept performing at anything less than my best, and I’ve been too unfocused to do my job as effectively as I can. Also, I won’t have to worry about money quite so much any more, which is another big weight off my shoulders. This means that I should be able to visit some of you that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to, even if it’s just for a weekend trip.
Overall, I feel as if there’s a weight off of my shoulders, but at the same time I feel a sense of loss. But though I won’t be around the White Wolf crew on a daily basis, I am still invited to the company parties at least.
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