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Journal red5's Journal: One week to live... 27

Journal by red5
A lot happened to me last week but the weekend is the best part so I put it up front. :)

Friday:
The day started out with a "Company Meeting" where the boss chewed us out for being late too much (and by "us" I mean those of us who don't live in Glendale ). { Well gee. What do you want, people who leave when the jobs done, or people who come in on time and leave on time?} ("{" denote things I had to bite my tongue to avoid saying ) "For the past six months the business has been stagnating, and I think that if we all start coming in on time we'll get through this tough spot." {Hmm last six months eh. Wasn't that when you started coming in like once a week? What the f**k do you expect is going to happen to a company with no management? }

He then unveiled a new system to get us here on time. Anybody who is late gets docked $25. That money is then put into a pool and the people who are on time every day { like his cousins who live down the block from the office } will split the money. { this is illegal on so many levels I don't know were to begin.} He then ended his speech with something like: "If you're not in the company for the long haul, If you're just using it as a place to kill time till you find what you want to do with your life. Leave." { Oh yeah it's been my dream since birth to one day work at a two bit p0rn company. I've finally lived up to my potential and at such a young age. Oh how blessed I am. } (This is the way he ends all his company meetings. "If you disagree with me you're fired." )

Once the meeting was over. I was like fuck this place and I started to quietly pack the contents of my desk into my laptop bag.

I went to lunch at around 12:30 with Lisa, Oenophile, JWSmythe, and the woman who runs our bandwidth provider. I chose this nice little Italian place on Glenoakes. I wanted to have a good last lunch. Everyone had a few drinks and we spent like 2 1/2 hours on lunch.

After that I took care of my emails and left at around 4:00PM. I didn't tell anyone where I was going or why. I didn't want to make a big scene. I'm not one for goodbyes. I figure that goodbyes are for people that your not going to see again and wish you were. None of the people at work fall into that group as I'm either going to still hang out with them or I don't care.

It was however a pretty emotional experience as I've been working there for almost a year and a half now. Thats a year and a half of my youth I'm never going to get back. :( I walked home to get it all out. I didn't want to dump that crap on my mom.

Abood called me that night and I saw knockaround guys with him and his SO. They almost flipped when I told them about quitting. The movie was good. The acting was so-so but at least the ending didn't suck.

After the movie Abood and I had a beer at his place. He offered to pay me for the work I did on his site. I told him to forget about it but he insisted. "Throw me a number." He said. "Umm okay how about as grand?" I replied. "Okay" he said as he handed me $200 "I'll get you the rest by the end of the month" We talked a little more and he said he could give me some part time work. Like a day or two a week and a grand a month.

I called up Oenophile and went to his place. We drank a little vodka and grape juice. I didn't finish mine. (I've been a little squeamish since the wedding) He got pretty drunk though. We talked about work. He told me he wished he could quit like me but he needs the money. He was too drunk to drive me home so I just crashed at his place.

Saturday:
When I finally got up the next day we went down to venice beach, had a few beer and watch some street performers. Then we met up with Heineken and his SO. We all had coffee at the Coffee Bean by my house.

Heineken threw a little get together at his place that night we invited Lisa. She never shows up to these things, but if we don't call her she gets all offended when we talk about it later. (women go figure). He told me that he feels the same way as Oenophile. If he could quit he would but he has bills (apartment plus two leased cars and a girlfriend). We both know the boss from before this job and we're both in awe about how much the power has changed him.

Sunday:
My brother took the day off and we saw formula 51. This movie was good. just the right mixture of comedy and action. I highly recommend it. We had dinner with the whole family to celebrate his birthday.

My new life thus far:
Monday:
I woke up a free man at around (1:30PM) I didn't really do much of anything I just had a day of R&R. I took Kylie for a walk thats about it. :)

When My dad came home I helped him fix the brakes on his truck. His right-front router was shot. While we were out getting the parts I saw one of those claw games (grab a toy with the claw and win it). A strange feeling came over me. I put in my $.50 and lined up the claw on a box of some sort. I hit the button with no hesitation. To my surprise and amazement the claw took hold. I won! I saw a little girl (about 4-5) watching me and I was going to give the prize to her till I saw what it was. An Ozzy Osbourne coin bank. Hell yeah I'm keeping that. :)

Tuesday:
Pretty much the same as Monday. :) Me and Kylie went to get a chai latte and I filled out the form for my car.

The guy who sold it to me forgot to sign off as registered owner (just legal owner). Now I have to mail (not fax) him a bill of sale form. So he can sign that. My dad ran by a mustang with a really nice paint job today and got the name of the body shop the guy used. Looks like I found my body shop.

My projects are:
  1. Fix and register my car.
  2. Get my greencard.
  3. Learn FCP and DVDSP
  4. Edit my brothers wedding and make a dvd out of it.
  5. Edit a DV project for my sisters boyfriend and SS John.
  6. Make those two cool short movies I've been planning to film for the last six months.

I'm good for money right now. I have about 4.5K in the bank and Abood called me today about having some more money for me. The money should be enough to get my car fixed and keep me in chai lattes for the next few months.

My last week at the office for posterity. (feel free to skip this part)

Monday:
JWSmythe and I spent the day finishing three 1Us plus one more that arrived in the mail. By the time we were done it was too late (11PM) to install them at IDC #2, but we did still have to drive down to IDC #1 and reboot a server that was having problems. turns out whoever built that one used a desktop CPU fan so there was not clearance between the CPU and case. We rebooted it, popped the case off, and left. I got home around 12:45. I was supposed to work on some last minute bugfixes for my friend Aboodes' site but when I got home I just crashed.

Tuesday:
On the way to work I got a call from Lax. Apparently when "we" ( and by we I mean the other guy) rebooted that server at IDC #1 last night. "We" accidentally unplugged one of his servers. We called the guys at the IDC and had them plug it in for us. After that we made a run to fry's for a new CPU fan and installed the servers at IDC #2. when we got everything plugged in the f***ing drop wasn't working. It took the guy an hour to get us a link. Only to discover after that Level 3 forgot to turn on our uplink. We stuck the new boxes in but left the others were they were. We were getting near 100Mbs on that line and need to move some servers over before we redline. I got home late again around 8 or 9.

Wednesday:
Oenophile offered to drive me to work, but I declined as they were tearing up my street that day. They had a bunch of heavy trucks ripping all the blacktop off of my street. Got in really late like 1-1:30. I went down stairs to change and made the mistaker of lying down of a minute on my bed next thing I know it's 12:30. Oops. When I finally got in JWSmythe and I went to IDC #2 to finish the job on that new rack (now that the line was working). Then we swung by IDC #1 to pick up that server as it was dead yet again. I got home around 7:45. I called up Abood and finished those last minute fixes.

Thursday:
Abood came by the office to show the site I built for him to the boss. Apparently he got the boss to invest some capital into it. Good for him. He told me about a few minor issues he was still having with the site and I told him I'd get to them when I got home form my movie or if possible before I left for it. I had lunch with Lisa and Oenophile at Foxy's.

I got home around 6:30 and fixed those issues. I didn't have time to give them a full test before going to the movie but I gave them the quick once over and of to the races. I wanted to see "The Secretary" but it wasn't playing at the Arclight anymore. I opted to see "Swept away" as it was the closest one on my "must see" list. I still had about an hour to kill and the restaurant was closed for the BMW films premiere party hosted by Vanity Fair.

I went to Amoeba and bought DJ Shadow - Private Press (Great album BTW I highly recommend it), Ramones - Eaten Alive, and BT - Ten Years in The Life. Swept Away was a lot better than I though it would be. It's quite good in fact. The ending ruled.

If you actually read through this much of my shit god bless you. :)

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One week to live... More

One week to live...

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  • Reminds me of this article I read on Salon [salon.com] about a fun little company called WebResults.
    • PS - Exiting a company in a kicking screaming fit is your Sacred Right. If you are going to go out, go out with a bang. It doesn't sound like "burning bridges" is a concern of yours anyway.

      • Re:Not uncommon (Score:2, Insightful)

        by JWSmythe ( 446288 )
        Going "out with a bang" is almost never worth it. I worked at a mid-sized hosting company that focused on new web entrepreneurs.. One guy tried leaving with a bang.. Servers went down, data got lost, and a lot of shit hit the fan. Within a month everything was fixed, and 6 months later there were only a few people who could recall details of what happened. Now no one cares. He did get in pretty bad legal trouble.

        I guess that's good advice to anyone who thinks they're going to do a "layoff" program. "If I get laid off, I'm getting my revenge." Well, if you get laid off, there's probably a reason.

        I worked with one guy who couldn't serve any sort of technical function, even though that was his job. He was taking classes and bragging about what he knew. He just got done Cisco training, and was telling how he knew Cisco equipment inside and out. But given a simple task, he couldn't complete it. He was kicking and screaming the whole way out the door. Passwords got changed, and the world was happy again.

        I thought about doing a layoff program, but really it may be good to have a good reference in the future. It looks a lot better to be able to say, "I worked for this company, and made them do great. Go to this URL and see my work.", rather than "I worked for this company, and everything mysteriously crashed the day I left." Well, that is if you are looking for work, and you're not looking at scenery from behind jail bars.

        I've made great deals with people because I stayed on good terms when I left, even thought I may have hated the company.

        Connections are everything, especially in our line of work. If you happen to know the admin of a better company because you did a little work with him once, you may be able to get with him in the future.

        Red5 didn't burn any bridges really. He didn't break anything on the way out. I could ask him for a bit of procedural difference in his exit, but nothing that's going to ruin friendships.

        But, as you can see from another posting here dated before this message, some people weren't exactly happy with his posted opinions. That's why I don't post public journals, or even write a personal journal. With any opinion, someone is going to get mad. Not everyone likes me, and I don't necessarly like everyone, but that doesn't mean business doesn't continue as normal.

        It recently came to my attention that my boss doesn't call me by name any more, but says "That asshole" to refer to me. That's fine. I have select words that I'd call him, but I still refer to him by name. My next job, he may be coming to me wanting to make a million dollar deal, and my only answer would be, "So you called me asshole, eh?" He burnt that bridge.

        One thing though, I do have to agree with the hair comment.. Red5, do something with that hair. :)
        • Crashing all the servers??? Gee, I was just thinking more like

          "You want to know what I think of you? I'll tell you what I think of you! [NUMEROUS EXPLETIVES DELETED]!"

          or how about

          "YOU WANT TO KNOW WHO SPIKED THE PUNCH AT THE CHRISTMAS PARTY??? IT WAS ME! AND I'M THE ONE WHO LEFT THE FISH IN YOUR DESK! BWAHAHAHAHA!"

          Well you get the idea. Doing something illegal never occured to me, actually.

          • So *YOU'RE* the one that left the fish in my desk! Damn you Red5. :)

            The more aggressive burning bridges had been discussed in depth on Slashdot before, and had been discussed with other people in the past, so that's straight where my mind went.. Sorry..

            Red5 wrote to me, and was like, "You know he was joking, right?", so I read again, and was like "Doh!" :)
  • The best part about you leaving this company? You'll never have to cope with the thugs again (like this one time when that guy came from behind and tried to put his finger in your ear -- gross ! :)

    Congrats btw. It require some courage to just leave.

    • like this one time when that guy came from behind and tried to put his finger in your ear -- gross

      Yeah that was a little offsides to say the least.

      Congrats btw. It require some courage to just leave.

      I said it once before. "It's rather easy to have principles when you don't pay rent." It's the advantage of living with your parents I guess. I knew there had to be one somewere.

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