Rant VIII: The Reckoning

I'm a selfish jerk, I know I am but damnit I miss my best friend. I miss my Co-Op partner. I miss my therapist. I miss my compatriot. I miss my partner in crime. Basically, I miss my sister.

Don't get me wrong, my wife and I are very close. She is also my best friend and my second half, but it's a different kind of relationship. My wife doesn't game with me, and some of the things my sister and I have been through my wife can't relate to.

I know it's selfish because she's living out her dreams in a way I find myself jealous of every time I think about it. She's finally got nearly everything she's ever wanted (I hope it lasts) but we went from talking/gaming together daily, visits monthly to me getting a phone call maybe twice a month. I know it's because she's got so much to do and doesn't even really get online anymore, but fuck, it's driving me crazy. Of course I haven't told her (and I'm fairly sure she won't read this anytime soon), because I'd never want her feeling the least bit guilty about the things she's doing now, but since we were kids we were never this far apart or had such little contact with each other. Hell I haven't even seen her in person in 5-6 months now.

It just sucks. I don't know how else to put it without sounding like an ass.
 
I'm a selfish jerk, I know I am but damnit I miss my best friend. I miss my Co-Op partner. I miss my therapist. I miss my compatriot. I miss my partner in crime. Basically, I miss my sister.

Don't get me wrong, my wife and I are very close. She is also my best friend and my second half, but it's a different kind of relationship. My wife doesn't game with me, and some of the things my sister and I have been through my wife can't relate to.

I know it's selfish because she's living out her dreams in a way I find myself jealous of every time I think about it. She's finally got nearly everything she's ever wanted (I hope it lasts) but we went from talking/gaming together daily, visits monthly to me getting a phone call maybe twice a month. I know it's because she's got so much to do and doesn't even really get online anymore, but fuck, it's driving me crazy. Of course I haven't told her (and I'm fairly sure she won't read this anytime soon), because I'd never want her feeling the least bit guilty about the things she's doing now, but since we were kids we were never this far apart or had such little contact with each other. Hell I haven't even seen her in person in 5-6 months now.

It just sucks. I don't know how else to put it without sounding like an ass.
I - partly - know how that feels. When my brother moved out of our shared appartment, and wne to live with his then-girlfriend-now-wife, 8.000 kilometers away...Well, that sucks. I'm horrible at skyping, he's horrible about answering mail, and all in all, last I've seen of him in person was about 8 months ago; and it had been a year at the time, too. Bloody sucks. I'm happy for him that he's happy in his new life as father and husband, but I still miss him as partner-in-crime and my main motivator to get me out of bed.

Also, might as well join in on the crowd saying clinical depression sucks, and while I'm managing to live with it, I still haven't been quite able to cope with it.
 
A

Anonymous

Anonymous

My older brother committed suicide a few weeks ago.

I'm watching What Dreams May Come.

This can only end well.

:'(
 
"Hugs" seems inadequate, but thats's the best I got. Condolences, hope you have someone you can talk to about it.
 
Ok. So. Getting ready to move at the beginning of August at the very very latest (and only that late because we have to stay in town for 3 days after our lease ends so we can attend my mother-in-law's wedding). Time is getting down to the wire for us to find a place to live, figure out moving expenses, clear all of the donatable crap out of our apartment, apply for jobs (for me) in whatever area we move to, and on and on and on. Originally, we were going to move to Louisville, but then we couldn't move there because the branch of my wife's company there didn't have space, and then we were going to move to the St. Paul area of Minnesota, but we couldn't move there because the branch of her company there didn't even have their own admins, let alone space in the admin section, so we were going to move to Madison, but today found out that we can't move there because - get this - the branch doesn't have space. Her boss is part of the reason we've been planning on moving (her boss wants her to move, not we're trying to get away from her boss), but has been completely unhelpful whenever my wife has asked for help finding a branch that actually has space, unless that branch is in the Southeast region, because if we moved there her boss would have a direct report in each region of the country. Problem being, we really don't want to live in the Southeast.

So, now that we've found out - again - that we can't move to where we wanted to move, we've decided that, since we could have lived in any of our previous three choices on her current salary just fine ($40k+), we should have no problem living on my salary if I have a job that pays $40k+; so I have to polish up my resume once again and start sending it out to every business intelligence analyst job in the upper Midwest and hope that one of them is interested enough to bite, and if one of them does, and then offers me a job, my wife's boss can sit and spin.

But all of the other stress at my wife's job (the company is kind of coming apart at the seams right now), plus this notification that we couldn't move where we wanted to, meant that her stress level boiled over and I got to spend about 2 hours at work today before I had to drive to my wife's office and take her home, because I didn't want her driving into a bridge abutment on the way home. On the plus side, she's feeling much better now.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Note to everyone who does not want to repeat my mistake: Throw away check-books that have your old bank account on them. That is all.
Surely you mean shred old financial documents with personal information on them, right? (Oh, and if you really want to deter identity thieves? Mix in the shredded paper with used kitty litter.)
 
Surely you mean shred old financial documents with personal information on them, right? (Oh, and if you really want to deter identity thieves? Mix in the shredded paper with used kitty litter.)
Very true. But I'm afraid this isn't a tale of identity theft, more a tale of forgettfulness. See a while ago I had another bank account that I had to close but I forgot to get rid of the check book. And when I was signing paper-work for my new job, I think I used the bank routing number of my old bank account. And now I may have to wait a week if not longer for my first pay check to come in.
 
An open letter to the graduate secretary who told me that she doesn't have time to calculate a student's GPA:
*ahem*
I'm trying to offer this student a chance at a $10,000 scholarship and you're telling me that you don't have time to calculate a GPA? It takes 20 minutes! Fucking make the time! We're talking about financing this student's future and you're too lazy to get off your ass to do your job? Don't make me take this up the line to your supervisor and department head. I will make your life miserable, you condescending, manipulative, lazy waster of my oxygen!

I feel better now.
 
Surely you mean shred old financial documents with personal information on them, right? (Oh, and if you really want to deter identity thieves? Mix in the shredded paper with used kitty litter.)
I usually just burn that stuff (not the kitty litter). ProTip: if you don't have kitty litter, you could always just poop on it yourself.

--Patrick
 

Dave

Staff member
My older brother committed suicide a few weeks ago.

I'm watching What Dreams May Come.

This can only end well.

:'(
Damn. I'm sorry, man. I was coming on here to rant about how bad my last couple days at work have been. I'm not going to do that any longer.
 
A

Anonymous

Anonymous

Found an error in some reports I've been running for the past 2-3 years. The dude who wrote them (now a senior director), missed this code. It's a pretty big deal. On the bright side, it's about a $500,000 uptick in revenue, so that's good. On the other side, they are trying to blame me for missing it for so long. I hope I have a job after tomorrow. I'm posting anonymously in case someone is looking for this, but let me say I'm TOO OLD to be looking for work.
 
Found an error in some reports I've been running for the past 2-3 years. The dude who wrote them (now a senior director), missed this code. It's a pretty big deal. On the bright side, it's about a $500,000 uptick in revenue, so that's good. On the other side, they are trying to blame me for missing it for so long. I hope I have a job after tomorrow. I'm posting anonymously in case someone is looking for this, but let me say I'm TOO OLD to be looking for work.
That really sucks, man. I hate it when companies go after the person who finds the error instead of the person who committed the error; especially when the new results are better for the company.
 
Well I had hoped to not type this particular rant, but not that lucky. So there was a Canadian friend of mine that I fist met a few years ago when I was working in another city. We got a long very well and spent a lot of our time hanging out, as good ex-pats do. Later on, I moved to Shanghai, and we kept in touch. He even came down to visit for a while. Well, last year he got to feeling that English teaching wasn't for him anymore, and he needed a change from the frozen north. Shanghai seemed like a good city to try and start doing something different, so he made plans to come down and find a job in Shanghai.

My roomate at the time was out traversing around Europe, so I let him come and stay at my place in the summer so he would be on hand to do interviews as he got them while not wasting money on a hostel. A couple months went by and he still hadn't found any work and his savings started to drain to zero. It was then that my roommate informed me the landlord wanted to tear down the walls and redo everything (lawl..twice in a year for me) so we'd all have to gtfo.

Right at the end of September we both managed to find work and I made plans with my Canadian friend to share an apartment together because prices of apartments where we both needed to live were off the charts expensive and the only way we could pay the rent and live without resorting to eating tofu left in yesterday's mud was to split the rent.

Things went well at first....then it started to fall apart. Within a month, he decided to leave his job because his boss was spotty on pay and another woman offered to hire him while helping him find a better company to work for. She paid him some up front and went from there. During this time, I payed all the bills myself because I knew his financial situation wasn't all that great, and I was OK with that because I felt, at the time, he was trying to work and wasn't just sitting around, and after all, we knew each other for years and were good friends.

Of course, this new boss was also spotty with pay. She took trips to Hong Kong, and at one point took a trip and never came back, and he didn't see any more money. At this point I was getting nervous, because rent was due and it was either had to be paid or I'd have to look for a new place and honestly, that's not what I wanted to do. I couldnt afford to put up four months (3 months + deposit) for yet another apartment, and I lived right were I needed to be to be both reasonably close to work and near my girlfriend. He promised he'd tried to find a teaching job to make some money for a few months before he called it quits and went back to Canada.

I went back to the US to visit, and upon returning, I was informed that he was having visa issues and he was gonna give it up and just go back to Canada and not come back to China because, in his words, "What's the point"?

I pointed out to him that while it might not be convenient for him, he left me over $600 in the hole, money that I need and it was frankly unfair that I covered all his expenses--rent/bills and he was going to up and leave without trying to pay me back. All he could do was promise to pay me back when he got to Canada and there was pretty much nothing I could do when he left a few weeks ago.

At this point, I've tried contacting him several times and I've heard nothing, so chances are I probably won't hear from him or get my money back, and I feel rather terrible about it all.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
The best way to ruin a friendship is the move in together.
I've seen it happen first hand. Two of my friends roomed in college... after ONE YEAR they got separate dorm rooms and never suffered each others' company again.
 
The best way to ruin a friendship is the move in together.
Ask any married couple. They'll tell you.

--Patrick
Disclaimer: I did not in any way say that married people could not remain friends. I just said that it will ruin their friendship.
 
Who the fuck shims a dial indicator with Scotch tape?

Some one who's looking to get they spine snapped that's who!
 

GasBandit

Staff member
OF COURSE one week before our migration to new automation, one of our existing automation workstations shits the bed in the form of a bad hard drive. This week has been SUPER let me tell you. I LOVE REBUILDING A MACHINE I'M GOING TO REPLACE IN A WEEK.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I am, however, amused by the fact that the feedly tab in firefox (my replacement for google reader now that google is casting us out to freeze in the rain before the wolves eat us), at casual glance, seems to be titled "f today."

Yes, feedly. F today. F today in the A. So hard.
 
So how thick, exactly, was that tape?

:trolllol:
? The tape was around the dial indicator shaft as some form of shim for the housing of the indicator. Given that the dial indicator is accurate to ±0.000010", the tape ended up really messing with the results.
 
Our cable company sucks in ways that wouldn't be appropriate to say in front of my kids.

The retard they sent out to hook up our new tv managed to f it up, screw up the main cable box and make our Internet unusable.
 
So my boss calls in sick 2 hours after calling in late. Tells me its my job to fix everything and make sure everything goes to plan. I am captianing this ship like a boss while keeping my urge to off myself in check. Also everything that could go wrong is....It must be my birthday...oh wait...it is....
 
Who has two thumbs and just got fired?

... This guy.


Technically, they're calling it employee downsizing, but it sure feels like being fired.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Who has two thumbs and just got fired?

... This guy.


Technically, they're calling it employee downsizing, but it sure feels like being fired.
The difference between getting downsized and getting fired is often palpable - it can determine whether or not you can get a good reference from them, and whether or not you're eligible for unemployment benefits.
 
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