May 11, 2007

  • Current Mood: Happy (*Insert cheesy happy smiley here*)

    I feel like writing again.  I've got something floating around in my head, but it all depends on if I can get my thoughts to make it onto paper in the form of groups of legible letter-like symbols.  I need more inspiration though.  I need a muse.  I need someone or something to inspire me.  I haven't quite figured out who or what that would be just yet.  Someday I'll figure it out.  Some people have a picture.  Some people have a person.  Sometimes it's an animal or a song or whatnot.  I haven't found mine yet.


    I'm in a rather good mood today.  I think I know why though.  Most of the webcomics I've been reading have been leaving off in spots that are rather "feel-good" areas.  But even so, it feels a bit strange.  It's like something's missing, something that's been there for a long time has suddenly vanished.  Do you know what that is?  Stress.  Going back through all of my Xanga entries, I see that I wrote a lot of things about being upset at various things and people at work.  Now I look back on all of that and I can plainly see the stark differences between now and then.  It's almost amazing, what with the kind of transition I've made over the past several months.


    I've been in this government job for going on eight weeks now.  They've moved me into the server room, which some people around here feel pretty bad about.  Not because of the fact that no one can look over my shoulder, but because of the fact that I'm not out in the cubicles with everyone anymore.  Everyone seems so concerned that I'm in here all by myself.  Really, it's not a bad thing for me.  I prefer privacy.  It would only get better if I could use IM programs on anything other than my SideKick, but on the other hand I actually have a use for my SideKick again.  This job is turning out to be the very best thing that's ever happened to me.  I've got zero stress, more pay, and friendlier people to deal with.  I don't think I'll ever go back into the private sector.  Well, at least not for a very long time.  I really like it here.


    The contract that I'm in is being transitioned to a new company which will be upping the period of performance to seven years.  Seven years.  That's stability right there.  And the way it looks, I will be going through the transition with little to no issues.  I might have to get a new set of clearance though.  I currently have Confidential clearance, and they want people to have Secret clearance.  And there's talk of upping the clearance again to Top Secret clearance.  Man, that'd be simply awesome.  Me, with Top Secret government clearance.  Which is understandable, I suppose.  I mean, I do have physical access to the servers here, and remote access to almost every other server in the network, and that's nationwide.  They need to be able to trust people with that kind of access.  Of course, I can't say what's on these servers.  All I can say is that they are some pretty sweet machines.  All brand new Dell stuff too.  Well, it was brand new a year ago when they bought it all.  But still, it's all very nice equipment.  I'm in heaven here.  I could only dream of this stuff when I was back at the law firm.  I could only dream of the support I'm getting now when I was back at the law firm.  I always had to do my own research, make my own white papers, etc etc.  Now I have a whole team of people dedicated to just supporting me to support my end users.  All I have to do is send out a question, and I usually get more than one response within the hour.


    And even when I have to get help from Dell, it's simply top notch service.  Dell's support team has drastically changed over the past couple of years, and is a complete 180 from what I used to deal with when I was working at the law firm.  They used HP.  HP's support team is located somewhere in India where english is not taught as a primary language.  Whenever I call Dell, I get an american person, someone who's first language is english.  They fall over themselves to help me.  An example of this is my most recent problem.  We had to order new motherboards for some machines that had gone bad.  We got the motherboards (one was bad so we had to get another one) and once I had installed them, I didn't know what to do with the old boards, and I was told to dispose of them.  Now, it's fairly common knowledge that most computer manufacturers, including Dell, have some kind of recycling program for their old equipment, since most of this stuff isn't biodegradable, and can probably become toxic if certain parts do get broken down.  So I checked out their site, and while they have a slew of information up there about what they do with the old parts, I couldn't figure out if they took loose parts.  So I called them.  I got this nice girl named Rebecca.  I asked her how I would go about getting these old motherboards recycled.  She had never heard of anyone wanting to recycle motherboards, but she did point me to a section of the Dell website where I could print up DHL airbills so I could ship this stuff.  The site lets you make airbills for whole computers, monitors, printers, ink cartridges, and "other".  As it turns out, loose parts like motherboards are catagorized under "other".  She gave me a case number and told me she would call me back the next day to check up on me.  Not paying that any mind, I went ahead and packed up the motherboards, printed up airbills, and prepared the boxes to be shipped.  Unfortunately, we missed the DHL pickup that day, but our mailroom lady told me that they would make it out on the pickup on the next day.  With my work done there, I moved onto my next task, which I had to leave for the next day.  The next day, I'm in the middle of finishing up my work when my phone rings. 


    It couldn't be. 


    It was.


    Rebecca had called me back to check up on my case.  I was a little surprised.  HP never called me back to check up on the cases I had opened with them.  They just assume that the case is closed when they send out the part or give an answer.  This nice lady called me to confirm that I didn't have any trouble with the website and that my packages had gone out.  They hadn't gone out at that time since DHL hadn't arrived yet, and I told her that, and she seemed satisfied with my response, and then told me she was going to close the case.  I have never had a better experience with a customer support person.


    Alright, enough of how awesome my job is.


    I recently got myself caught up on Megatokyo.  That is to say, I've gotten caught up on the last five years of comics that's been drawn.  I haven't looked at MT since sometime in 2000.  Instead of trying to locate where I left off, I just started over.  It took me all of yesterday and half of today to get through the almost 1000 pages they have.  That's not a comic anymore.  It's a freakin' graphic novel.  But I can't get enough of it.  I remember now why I got hooked on MT back in college.  I guess for me, and a lot of other people I would assume, it's the equivalent of a soap opera.  You, personally, have nothing to do with the lives of these people, and yet you can't help but feel some strong attachment to the characters, even to the point where you get all emotional when things get sad or angsty or whatever.  If you're caught up on the story, the part where Piro says "I didn't deserve that", I had to take some deep breaths and sit back.  It was so moving.  If I hadn't stopped myself, I would have actually cried.


    Understand something.  Comics don't normally move me like that.  Very few things actually do move me like that.  For MT to nearly move me to tears really says something.  What says even more for MT is that when that portion concluded, I actually heaved a sigh of relief.  I won't spoil the story for you though.  You need to sit down and read MT from beginning to end.  The story is so good, you may actually find yourself crying or laughing out loud or feeling the hurt that some of these characters are portrayed as feeling.  I can't describe it any better than that.


    ...


    My job is really awesome.