Blackmoor Vituperative

Today was my first day at Circuit City, where I’m a programmer/analyst. This is the second-highest paying job I have ever had, but the highest was a short-term gig, so this is really the highest paying relatively permanent job I have ever had. It’s also the first time in roughly eight years that I have been an employee of the company where I am working. I had been doing the contracting thing for a long time. There are benefits to contracting work, but I am really glad to have a regular job again, somewhere I can (hopefully) work for years and year and feel like I am actually invested in how the company does.

And here’s a real first: no time card, no time sheets, nothing like that of any kind. This is the first time ever that I do not have to report my arrivals and departures, or at least my billable hours, to someone. As long as I meet my deliverables and attend the meetings I am supposed to attend, no one is looking over my shoulder to make sure I am warming a chair at exactly 08:30 and 16:30. Now that’s cool.

Today went really well. If it’s within my power, it will stay going really well for the next 25 years or so. 🙂

I like fairies. Not the little girl fairies (which I think of as “teacup fairies”, for some odd reason — perhaps because I associate them with little girls having tea parties?), the ones that look like grown up women, like Kylie Minogue in Moulin Rouge, or like the fairy in the new Dodge Caliber commercials. It’s not a fetish thing: I don’t fantasize about them or anything. I just think they’re cute and fun.

That isn’t strange, is it?

In general, I despise advertisements on the web. We all do, don’t we? It’s why RPG Library and PBEM News are completely advertising-free, and always will be. So why, you may ask, is there a banner ad over there on the right for Profit? Because there is an exception for just about everything.

(Incidentally, I do not get any money from Anchor Bay for the advertisement.)

Is this sentence grammatically correct?

The vast majority of people never leave the planet of their birth.

“Majority” is the subject. It is implicitly plural. So it seems to me that “cities of their birth” would ordinarily be correct. But this seems to imply that each of the people is born in more than one city, which is nonsense. I think that the above sentence is correct, but I am not certain. Hmm.

I have tremendous respect for people who learn English as a second (or third or fourth) language, and who become as proficient with it as native speakers are.

A how-to guide on home book binding:

Fun and Easy How to Guide to Binding Your Own Paperback Books At Home…FAST

Gorilla Glue. Hmm….

Well, I’m still coughing, but I don’t think I am actually sick anymore. I think my lungs just haven’t healed yet. But they’re getting better. I cough less every day. It’s worse in the evening.

There’s a new update at the Tomb Raider web site. New trailers and downloads and other fun stuff. Check it out.

I’m still sick, but I’m on the mend. I still cough up a little hunk of my lungs now and then, but overall I feel much better.

Step one toward our dream house: buying property.

This is the land that we are currently intending to buy: 8.75 acres in Goochland County. Here is a link to pictures:

Dream House

And here is a link to the location:

Halls Road, Goochland, VA

Now I just need to get a long-term job in Richmond…

Day four of week four: almost halfway there. Still in Richmond, still living in a studio apartment. It pretty much sucks. I miss Susan. I miss my cat.

The Capital One gig is not a bad job at all (I’m not forced to use a damned Mac, for example). Like most contract jobs, the work itself is pretty easy, and the people are all competent. I would prefer to have more responsibility, though. On the bright side, the system I am working on runs Unix (HP-UX B.11.00, to be exact). On the down side, bash isn’t available: the only shell available is one from the 1980s called “korn“. I am not a huge fan of korn. Bash rocks. Long live bash. (Curiously enough, bash was written in part as an alternative to the proprietary korn shell.)

Incidentally, I mean “from the 1980s” literally: this is not the 1993 version of korn shell. This is the 1988 version. If the 1993 version were available, at least then I would be able to remap the keyboard so that the cursor control keys (left, right, up, down, home, end, page up, page down) would work. Not having access to the standard keys that we all take for granted is a little tedious. I can still do my job, of course, but I am not quite as productive as I could be, and that sort of thing bothers me.

It also doesn’t help that I’ve been fighting the flu for over a week. Being sick sucks: it muddles my thinking and makes me short-tempered. At least my nose isn’t running: I am just coughing all of the time. Hopefully, the worst of it is over. I think I’m getting better. I hope so.

I am working on a short-term contract in Richmond, VA for Capital One. Here are some photos of my studio apartment.

Here is a photo of the desk I work at:

It’s not my desk. I have to clean it out at the end of every day. Capital One calls this “The Future Of Work”. Here is my crate of stuff I carry to and from my car each day:

I spoke to a guy on the way to my car.

“You must be in the Future Of Work, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I started last Monday.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll get used to it.”

I wonder why Capital One would want people to get used to cleaning out their desks?