So guess who's done with sales training? Yup. So for the rest of the week, I'm in transition to the floor, hoo-ah. Which means come tomorrow I'm actually gonna be selling real products to real people. Nervous? Yeah. Excited? Er. Yes? Anyway, Monday I at least get to change up my shift from 9-5:30 to 3:30-12. Which on the upside means I can finally sleep again. On the downside, it's gonna get really complicated to have any kind of life outside work. Gonna be trying to work my schedule around some stuff if I can, we'll see how it goes.
Been an interesting few days though. Went into work Monday pretty sleep-deprived. By which I mean I may have, instead of going to bed at 11ish as planned, watched The Breakfast Club and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with Lizzie, Bebel, and Holly. Which continued until about 5am. (For those playing the home game, I set my alarm for 6:30am) So yeah, "sleep-deprived" in this case means "sleep-absent". I'd feel bad about going to work on no sleep, but honestly it was worth some struggling-to-stay-awake. Last week was fucking awful, I needed some actual fun for a change.
And as for today, Command & Conquer 3: The Forgotten was finally released! So for those who aren't familiar, about a year and a half ago we filmed full-motion video for C&C Labs for their C&C3 mod. It was... extremely cold. And I was wearing cheesecloth. Yeah. But so myself and Matt Heron Duranti starred as Salvadore Trogan and Abel Livy in the world's first C&C mod to include full-motion video, produced by Broken Wall Films. Some serious stuff going on there.
I'm 23 and I've starred in a multi-award-winning indie film as well as a groundbreaking video game mod. Very cool.
Interested in seeing where the rest of the week goes. Could be interesting, who knows.
Never was a cloudy day,
rickie-d
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
luck be a lady tonight
So Wednesday night, I was really not in much of a mood to talk about work or life or anything at all, really. It's been a pretty rough week, and if I seem more annoyed than usual (or lazy than usual this weekend), I'd like to give you a quick look into just why that is. It's been an obscenely unlucky week for me, and I'm glad it's over.
So in our prologue (last week), I was ready to roll for my new job, getting in on training, 9-5:30. Gonna borrow my mom's van or SUV, whichever she doesn't need for a little while, it's gonna be great.
Monday. I get a call from my dad. The alternator's blown on my car, so it's gonna take even more time and money to get my car back on the road. I get a call from Randstad (my employer). The first day of training is going to start at 7:15. And I need two forms of ID (my license is out-of-date because I moved), a voided check (I had not yet gotten checks after I changed banks this summer), and my license plate number for security purposes (I could be driving any one of at least five different cars for all I knew. I get a call from my mom. She's in California, and won't be back until Wednesday morning, when she gets into Logan at 7:10, five minutes before my workday starts. Not a good start to the week.
Tuesday. I make a reservation for a rental car on Hertz.com, and it estimates it at $50 to take it out at 6pm and bring it back at 6pm the next night, now that work would presumably be 7:15-3:45. I wouldn't be needing it another day, since I'd have my mother's vehicle by then. I go to Hertz (only getting there AT 6pm), expecting it to cost more because I'm under 25, and the final price comes to... $160. Plus a $140 security deposit of sorts. It cost me $300 that day to take out the car. A drinking-and-games get-together happens at the apartment, unbeknownst to me. I don't fall asleep until about 1am.
Wednesday. I wake up at 3:30am. An hour and a half before my alarm, and after only two and a half hours of sleep. I lie in bed trying to get more, to no avail. I get out of bed at 5am, and get to work. I go to my training thing, and quickly discover that the day, for one day only, would be 7:15-5:30. On top of that, the first day is almost exclusively information overload. And the traffic coming in was bad. More-than-a-half-hour-at-least bad. So when we get out of work at 5:15, I frantically drive out of Westborough back to Worcester. I get to Highland Street at 5:58pm. I call Hertz, and beg the woman there to stay for just five more minutes so I can bring the car back. I get it back, meanwhile encountering a cute blonde that I wish I could have kept up with in a conversation at this point, but was unable, due to my quickly dying brain. I get home. During the day, there were folks who were supposed to check out a leak in our building, and Holly was the only one home when they showed up (unscheduled). They asked to get a call to schedule it so it could get done, and leave. Later that night, I get a call from my mom saying that she wasn't back in Massachusetts yet, meaning I still don't have a vehicle. I wind up borrowing Laffraff's car. That night, due to a million phone calls and texts sorting out vehicle shit, I go to bed at 12:30am.
Thursday. I wake up about once an hour all night, and get out of bed at 6:30. I get myself ready, and leave around 7:45, to guarantee the traffic wouldn't make me late. I somehow arrive at work at 8:12. I am now passing out in my car, trying to wake up (I didn't stop for coffee or anything because I was worried about the traffic). I finally go inside at 8:55 to find that half our 11-person training class was stuck in traffic that had apparently gone apeshit mere minutes after I passed through a few areas. Long, productive work day, I come home at 6pm and... my mom is still not back east. But she's had someone get her keys and bring them to the van so that I could pick it up. I ask Bebel if he can give me a ride to Waltham (about 45 minute drive), and he declines. In a 20-minute period my day goes from "Ah, finally" to "RAAAAAAGE". I spend about two hours trying to find an alternative ride, and an hour waiting for said ride (Steve DiTullio brought be east). At 9pm we leave. At 10pm we realize we got disgustingly lost. At 10:15 we find the van, and... the keys are nowhere to be found. I call my mother, who after ten minutes of helping me discovers that the guy who was supposed to bring the keys... forgot. And he's half an hour away. And my mom needed her cleaning supplies from the trunk stored so she could get them the next day. After 45 minutes of waiting with no sign of Key Guy, I say fuck it and we leave. I get Laffraff's car another day. I get home at 12:30am, having wasted six and a half hours... for nothing. I had plans. I wanted to watch a movie. I wanted to have people over for some good, de-stressing hanging out. I wanted to make myself a good dinner. I wanted to relax for the first time all week. I did not. I go to bed at 1am.
Friday. I wake up at 6am, having beaten my alarm clock every day this week. I go to work. I get a text from the landlord. He's furious because Holly was the only one there when the leak people showed up on Wednesday and they all decided not to check then, which led Bill to believe Holly was living here and just not paying rent. On top of that, it would cost $45 to have them come back next week. Wonderful. Eventually it all gets sorted out and the leak people show up and do their thing. So the day continues and we get let out at 4:45pm. I was pumped. It's the weekend. YES. I get to the car and put the key in the ignition. It doesn't start. Fuck. I try to take the key out. It's stuck. FUCK. I call Al, he says there's jumper cables in the back and that there's this complicated way to open the hood (it's a pretty old Saturn Ion). I then ask him the million dollar question: How do you open the trunk if the key is in the ignition (it requires electricity to release for some reason) and the remote won't work (since the dead battery prevents the car from responding). Silence. "Through the backseat?" Fuuuuuuuuck. I dig through the back, find the cables, manage to get the hood open, flag someone down, jump the car, and get on the road... at 5:28pm. I get home and discover that there's some kind of get-together happening tonight as well. Not in the mood for anything but sleep, I stay up and drink. Around 1am, I finally go to bed. Nine and a half glorious hours of sleep.
So yes, I've had a shitty week. And I'm glad it's over.
rickie-d
So in our prologue (last week), I was ready to roll for my new job, getting in on training, 9-5:30. Gonna borrow my mom's van or SUV, whichever she doesn't need for a little while, it's gonna be great.
Monday. I get a call from my dad. The alternator's blown on my car, so it's gonna take even more time and money to get my car back on the road. I get a call from Randstad (my employer). The first day of training is going to start at 7:15. And I need two forms of ID (my license is out-of-date because I moved), a voided check (I had not yet gotten checks after I changed banks this summer), and my license plate number for security purposes (I could be driving any one of at least five different cars for all I knew. I get a call from my mom. She's in California, and won't be back until Wednesday morning, when she gets into Logan at 7:10, five minutes before my workday starts. Not a good start to the week.
Tuesday. I make a reservation for a rental car on Hertz.com, and it estimates it at $50 to take it out at 6pm and bring it back at 6pm the next night, now that work would presumably be 7:15-3:45. I wouldn't be needing it another day, since I'd have my mother's vehicle by then. I go to Hertz (only getting there AT 6pm), expecting it to cost more because I'm under 25, and the final price comes to... $160. Plus a $140 security deposit of sorts. It cost me $300 that day to take out the car. A drinking-and-games get-together happens at the apartment, unbeknownst to me. I don't fall asleep until about 1am.
Wednesday. I wake up at 3:30am. An hour and a half before my alarm, and after only two and a half hours of sleep. I lie in bed trying to get more, to no avail. I get out of bed at 5am, and get to work. I go to my training thing, and quickly discover that the day, for one day only, would be 7:15-5:30. On top of that, the first day is almost exclusively information overload. And the traffic coming in was bad. More-than-a-half-hour-at-least bad. So when we get out of work at 5:15, I frantically drive out of Westborough back to Worcester. I get to Highland Street at 5:58pm. I call Hertz, and beg the woman there to stay for just five more minutes so I can bring the car back. I get it back, meanwhile encountering a cute blonde that I wish I could have kept up with in a conversation at this point, but was unable, due to my quickly dying brain. I get home. During the day, there were folks who were supposed to check out a leak in our building, and Holly was the only one home when they showed up (unscheduled). They asked to get a call to schedule it so it could get done, and leave. Later that night, I get a call from my mom saying that she wasn't back in Massachusetts yet, meaning I still don't have a vehicle. I wind up borrowing Laffraff's car. That night, due to a million phone calls and texts sorting out vehicle shit, I go to bed at 12:30am.
Thursday. I wake up about once an hour all night, and get out of bed at 6:30. I get myself ready, and leave around 7:45, to guarantee the traffic wouldn't make me late. I somehow arrive at work at 8:12. I am now passing out in my car, trying to wake up (I didn't stop for coffee or anything because I was worried about the traffic). I finally go inside at 8:55 to find that half our 11-person training class was stuck in traffic that had apparently gone apeshit mere minutes after I passed through a few areas. Long, productive work day, I come home at 6pm and... my mom is still not back east. But she's had someone get her keys and bring them to the van so that I could pick it up. I ask Bebel if he can give me a ride to Waltham (about 45 minute drive), and he declines. In a 20-minute period my day goes from "Ah, finally" to "RAAAAAAGE". I spend about two hours trying to find an alternative ride, and an hour waiting for said ride (Steve DiTullio brought be east). At 9pm we leave. At 10pm we realize we got disgustingly lost. At 10:15 we find the van, and... the keys are nowhere to be found. I call my mother, who after ten minutes of helping me discovers that the guy who was supposed to bring the keys... forgot. And he's half an hour away. And my mom needed her cleaning supplies from the trunk stored so she could get them the next day. After 45 minutes of waiting with no sign of Key Guy, I say fuck it and we leave. I get Laffraff's car another day. I get home at 12:30am, having wasted six and a half hours... for nothing. I had plans. I wanted to watch a movie. I wanted to have people over for some good, de-stressing hanging out. I wanted to make myself a good dinner. I wanted to relax for the first time all week. I did not. I go to bed at 1am.
Friday. I wake up at 6am, having beaten my alarm clock every day this week. I go to work. I get a text from the landlord. He's furious because Holly was the only one there when the leak people showed up on Wednesday and they all decided not to check then, which led Bill to believe Holly was living here and just not paying rent. On top of that, it would cost $45 to have them come back next week. Wonderful. Eventually it all gets sorted out and the leak people show up and do their thing. So the day continues and we get let out at 4:45pm. I was pumped. It's the weekend. YES. I get to the car and put the key in the ignition. It doesn't start. Fuck. I try to take the key out. It's stuck. FUCK. I call Al, he says there's jumper cables in the back and that there's this complicated way to open the hood (it's a pretty old Saturn Ion). I then ask him the million dollar question: How do you open the trunk if the key is in the ignition (it requires electricity to release for some reason) and the remote won't work (since the dead battery prevents the car from responding). Silence. "Through the backseat?" Fuuuuuuuuck. I dig through the back, find the cables, manage to get the hood open, flag someone down, jump the car, and get on the road... at 5:28pm. I get home and discover that there's some kind of get-together happening tonight as well. Not in the mood for anything but sleep, I stay up and drink. Around 1am, I finally go to bed. Nine and a half glorious hours of sleep.
So yes, I've had a shitty week. And I'm glad it's over.
rickie-d
Thursday, September 16, 2010
one minute up and a hundred down
So the first day of training goes without (much of) a hitch. Other than not getting any sleep and thus being half-zombified for the whole day, anyway.
One hundred days to Christmas. I'm already feeling the ill effects, unfortunately. I was already exhausted upon coming home from doing literally zero work other than listening, and upon finding out that every individual facet of having a vehicle ready for tomorrow had come undone, I had a hard time not doing the same. I did nothing with my evening, wound up not trying to pull together a movie night like I'd hoped (to de-stress from the day -- I did, however, watch Ed Wood later on), and now I'm going to bed way later than I planned... again. God damn do I miss college.
Maybe this weekend'll be a bit more forgiving? Here's hoping, I could really use it.
All work and no play makes me a wound-up boy,
rickie-d
One hundred days to Christmas. I'm already feeling the ill effects, unfortunately. I was already exhausted upon coming home from doing literally zero work other than listening, and upon finding out that every individual facet of having a vehicle ready for tomorrow had come undone, I had a hard time not doing the same. I did nothing with my evening, wound up not trying to pull together a movie night like I'd hoped (to de-stress from the day -- I did, however, watch Ed Wood later on), and now I'm going to bed way later than I planned... again. God damn do I miss college.
Maybe this weekend'll be a bit more forgiving? Here's hoping, I could really use it.
All work and no play makes me a wound-up boy,
rickie-d
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
with my mind on my money and my money on my mind
Money. It's a gas.
Just got back from Hertz to rent what I thought would be a $50 car. It turns out that after the fact, I paid $160 for it, plus a $140 deposit they're going to give back when I return the car... tomorrow. This came up because not only is my actual car still inoperable, but unfortunately the plan to borrow one of my mom's vehicles fell through at the zero hour, which didn't leave me a whole lot of options.
For bonus points: I need to have three pieces of information with me tomorrow. First, two forms of ID. Well, I have my license and birth certificate. Except the license is out-of-date, as it still lists me as living on Highland Street. Which I couldn't change until I paid an extremely old parking ticket. Which I was planning on changing when I re-registered my car. So... that didn't happen. Second, a blank check so they can set up a direct deposit. In addition to moving recently, I also changed banks. And as a result, I don't have checks yet. So I ordered some (at a ridiculous price so that they'd arrive by Thursday). Which means all I'll have with me is account info and no check. Third, my license plate number. Well now I have four plate numbers to give them. This was all told to me for the first time yesterday. If I'd known about that when I got the job offer, I would have had all of this sorted out long ago.
Factor into it that the first half of my training classes' pay is going directly to rent for October, and we've got me with next to zero money (trying to sort out old bills and such in the meantime) until Bebel settles up, which could take a while still.
In other news, I got to help Guerilla Improv and { Empty Set } out with audition stuff last week, which was fun. It was great to put on the old shirts and mess around some. I'm proud to congratulate GI's newest members Ian Hawkes, Alex Kafantis, Molly Ott, and Michael Riggieri, and { }'s newest members Orange "Sidney" Batchelder and Alex Geyster. I hope I get to see some shows before the end of the year!
Not psyched about 7:15am training classes, but at least I've got three more weeks of nightlife left in me. We'll see what happens, I guess.
Money money money money... MONEY!!
rickie-d
Just got back from Hertz to rent what I thought would be a $50 car. It turns out that after the fact, I paid $160 for it, plus a $140 deposit they're going to give back when I return the car... tomorrow. This came up because not only is my actual car still inoperable, but unfortunately the plan to borrow one of my mom's vehicles fell through at the zero hour, which didn't leave me a whole lot of options.
For bonus points: I need to have three pieces of information with me tomorrow. First, two forms of ID. Well, I have my license and birth certificate. Except the license is out-of-date, as it still lists me as living on Highland Street. Which I couldn't change until I paid an extremely old parking ticket. Which I was planning on changing when I re-registered my car. So... that didn't happen. Second, a blank check so they can set up a direct deposit. In addition to moving recently, I also changed banks. And as a result, I don't have checks yet. So I ordered some (at a ridiculous price so that they'd arrive by Thursday). Which means all I'll have with me is account info and no check. Third, my license plate number. Well now I have four plate numbers to give them. This was all told to me for the first time yesterday. If I'd known about that when I got the job offer, I would have had all of this sorted out long ago.
Factor into it that the first half of my training classes' pay is going directly to rent for October, and we've got me with next to zero money (trying to sort out old bills and such in the meantime) until Bebel settles up, which could take a while still.
In other news, I got to help Guerilla Improv and { Empty Set } out with audition stuff last week, which was fun. It was great to put on the old shirts and mess around some. I'm proud to congratulate GI's newest members Ian Hawkes, Alex Kafantis, Molly Ott, and Michael Riggieri, and { }'s newest members Orange "Sidney" Batchelder and Alex Geyster. I hope I get to see some shows before the end of the year!
Not psyched about 7:15am training classes, but at least I've got three more weeks of nightlife left in me. We'll see what happens, I guess.
Money money money money... MONEY!!
rickie-d
Saturday, September 4, 2010
i'm just a regular joe with a regular job, i'm your average white, suburbanite slob
So they offered me the job! Whoo! (Apparently I was one of their favorites from the whole of their interviews too, which is cool.) Unfortunately, it'll be the 3:30 to midnight shift, so let's wave bye-bye to what little of a social life I had left anyway, but I'll be making an extra buck an hour which is nice, plus the class I'm in is the one they tend to pick from first when looking for more permanent hires, plus they liked me a lot so... yeah. Good news on the work front. On top of that, they moved up the training classes a week, so I'm now 11 days out from that. Summer vacation's coming to an end, mi amigos.
So that means getting my car back on the road, which is gonna be interesting. I already paid off an extremely old parking ticket (that was preventing me from renewing my license and registration), so that's step one I guess. Gotta get new brake pads, now that I can afford them. Lotsa steps.
It's time to grow up a little bit, friends. Getting a job, check. Getting my car to work again, check. Doing an honest-to-god grocery run, check. I spent $200.42 today on various groceries and home supplies. Hoo. Gotta do a lot of cleaning, but for now at least, the fridge is stocked and we've got light bulbs and paper products and all that good stuff. How do I celebrate? By having a breakfast of Java Monster and yogurt. I am a man, god dammit.
Oh and hey, my first "real" episode in Open Lounge came out today. I've been on there before, but they were mini-episodes for the Gen Con series we did, so it was a bit different. We went down some... interesting roads. Check them out:
Open Lounge - "Gen Con: The Prologue" (August 5, 2010)
Open Lounge - "Gen Con: The Epilogue" (August 11, 2010)
Open Lounge - "Episode 21: Squat Dogs" (September 4, 2010)
And uh, stay tuned. I got a mysterious package the other day. (I think I know who sent it, though.) It contained a DVD and a cassette tape (who mails a cassette tape?). The DVD had what looked like people singing in Vietnam. So... yeah. Gonna check out the cassette later, but this is... weird. I dunno, I'll keep y'all posted if it turns up something interesting.
Hey Earl, rain on this,
rickie-d
So that means getting my car back on the road, which is gonna be interesting. I already paid off an extremely old parking ticket (that was preventing me from renewing my license and registration), so that's step one I guess. Gotta get new brake pads, now that I can afford them. Lotsa steps.
It's time to grow up a little bit, friends. Getting a job, check. Getting my car to work again, check. Doing an honest-to-god grocery run, check. I spent $200.42 today on various groceries and home supplies. Hoo. Gotta do a lot of cleaning, but for now at least, the fridge is stocked and we've got light bulbs and paper products and all that good stuff. How do I celebrate? By having a breakfast of Java Monster and yogurt. I am a man, god dammit.
Oh and hey, my first "real" episode in Open Lounge came out today. I've been on there before, but they were mini-episodes for the Gen Con series we did, so it was a bit different. We went down some... interesting roads. Check them out:
Open Lounge - "Gen Con: The Prologue" (August 5, 2010)
Open Lounge - "Gen Con: The Epilogue" (August 11, 2010)
Open Lounge - "Episode 21: Squat Dogs" (September 4, 2010)
And uh, stay tuned. I got a mysterious package the other day. (I think I know who sent it, though.) It contained a DVD and a cassette tape (who mails a cassette tape?). The DVD had what looked like people singing in Vietnam. So... yeah. Gonna check out the cassette later, but this is... weird. I dunno, I'll keep y'all posted if it turns up something interesting.
Hey Earl, rain on this,
rickie-d
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