Catching up

I’m not sure where the time went, to be honest.  I worked a little late each day to make up for the time I missed to go pick up the car.  But who knows.  I did some reading and such, just didn’t get around to blogging.

So, the car is pissing me off.  Carmax clearly didn’t inspect it.  It has no windshield fluid.  Today I put a full gallon in and I still can’t see it in the tank, so this thing had to be empty.  I can’t see the coolant, which is a much bigger deal.  That means it’s very low, and they are going to get a piece of my mind tomorrow.  There is something not right with the starter.  It takes far too long to kick over, especially for a car with only 25,000 miles.  How were they storing this car? So yeah, I’m just a little pissed off at this shoddy work.

Work, however, is going well.  I’m a bit ahead of schedule, though I’m not sure I’m retaining enough yet, so I’m going to spend more time studying when I’m not in class this week.  I know I need to get the different communication bands better so I don’t screw that up when talking to people.  I also want to spend more time going over my systems so I’m able to follow things in meetings and emails.  It’s nice to have the video lessons to learn from though, as it’s easier to stay awake and pay attention to that than the manuals.

What’s been interesting this week is I have dreamed about work related stuff every night.  I’ve never had a single space dream before that I know of, and now it’s present all the time.  They aren’t stressful or anxiety filled dream.  Instead I have this sense of training or preparing in my dreams, which is interesting.  I’m so fully dedicated to this job, even though it’ll be a while before I’m doing much more than studying.

Thursday I took part in an interesting team building/communication exercise.  I’m thinking it would be good to try for the Jedi community online because it actually requires that the participants are in different locations.  So we’ll see if it’s useful or not.

On the home front, we discovered that the piano is a really great way for Carrie to process and communicate what her subconscious is dealing with.  I’m quite glad I bought it, it’s already been a great help.

I guess that’s it for now.  We’re waiting on housekeeping since we have to be here with the cats around.  Then we’ll drop off the rent and head to Galveston for some water de-stress time.  It’ll be fun. 

Naps and insomnia

Ugh, I enjoyed my nap this afternoon.  Two hours before I had to get up and go to work.  And now, even though it’s 10 hours later I apparently can’t sleep.  Which sucks, because I want to sleep.  I decided to get up, do a few things, and now I’ll try to lie down again and see if I can drift to sleep.  It would certainly be nice.

Washing Dirt

That’s right, washing dirt.  Because clean dirt is happy dirt. 

So today I learned that clay is a pain to break up when wet, and more difficult when dry.  I learned sifting dirt isn’t that easy.  But you can find some neat small fossils and crystals.  I also learned to wash dirt, which really means sifting it through a 200 filter.  At that size you’re washing out the pieces that become suspended in water.  So, you wash this stuff until it’s clear, which can take a darn long while.

I also learned that the people I work with are fun.  There is yet another Navy guy, and the main person I worked with comes from a very military family.  So I feel quite at home.  I really like where I work.  I know I’ll get bored at times, but that’s ok.  At least I’m bored with dirt rather than programming!

In other good news, I was approved for a $1500 loan!  That means we can pay this months rent and also put down a deposit on an apartment.  I’ll have plenty of money for October rent, so this is perfect.  I have crap credit, so this is a huge surprise.  But they decided to give me a chance to prove myself.  Hooray!  I’m going to rebuild some of my credit. 

I’ll update more later, but I’m tired!  Not good sleep last night at all.

It’s real!

My diploma came in the mail. I guess they can’t take it away from me now!

Attempt

Ok, I’m going to try to explain what I think my lesson is at this point.  This is based on gut feeling and all sorts of stuff that I can’t put into words.  But, I’ll do my best.

The way I’ve been going about this job hunt is this:  Check the main sites - careerbuilder, craig’s list, monster, career services through school.  When I find something that is remotely close to what I can do, I send off a resume and cover letter/email.  Then, I keep looking.  If there’s nothing to be found, I keep searching on individual company websites.  As if by pure force of will a job will magically appear online.

I’ve wasted so many hours doing this.  Seriously, it’s possible to spend 4 hours a day on this.  Meanwhile, my house is a mess, I haven’t touched my drums in months, nor played any games.  And I just add more stress.

So, patience isn’t really about waiting.  It’s not stopping the job hunt process.  It means checking the normal sites, applying if there’s anything, and then stepping away.  Leave the computer and go do something else I want to do.  Play mario, play my drums, read, watch a basketball game, go to aikido, or even clean!  But stop fixating.

This is what makes a master.  The ability to do what needs doing and then letting it go until it’s time to act again.  Not forcing it to happen, but giving it the space to happen.  This is my lesson, I believe.  This is what I’m working on.  Today I watched the last 3 episodes of Popular, which has been sitting in our house for months now.  I laughed and laughed and just had fun today at work.  Tonight, I checked craig’s list again, found another job to apply for, and have it sitting for when I have the focus tomorrow to write the cover letter/email.  I also talked to a friend who told me of a job opportunity with his company.  Granted, he hates the job, the hours are crazy and inconsistent, and it probably only pays around $10 an hour.  But, if I don’t have anything else in the next few days, I’ll apply and let him talk to his boss.  It’s better than nothing right?

For a while I thought things would move once I finished my thesis.  I kept saying “I’m going to do ___ after my thesis.”  I figure, that’s silly to try to create and then put it after my thesis.  But now, I’ve graduated.  So I want things to move instantaneously.  But I kept pushing.  I realized now, over the past few days that I hadn’t quite understood what I needed to do.  Now I think I do.

In the end, I figure, my higher self needs to make some sense to my conscious self.  It just took a while to get to that point.  I feel pretty good about this being right.  Today I also felt good about the jobs I was looking at.  I don’t feel awesome, but I don’t want extremes right now anyway.  But, time will tell.  Hopefully not much time.

just because…

And just because I finally figure it out does not reduce how pissed off I am at how difficult this was.  Damn software programmers really piss me off sometimes.

I’m going to just save this and leave it alone now.  It’s time to send this thesis off to my advisor and see what he says.  I’m so done with this…

fuck you word

Why the fuck is it so hard to get you to stop numbering the first 3 pages of my thesis?  The three pages I’m not allowed to have numbered or they’ll reject my thesis - for fucking numbering!  Why does following all the instructions I’ve found continue to give me the wrong results?  Why is this so fucking complicated?  Fuck you word.  Fuck you and your wasting of my time with still no end in site.  Fuck you microsoft for having such a useless website that I can’t get anything actually useful.  God fucking dammit this is stupid.

hospital

taking carrie to hospital.

Dreams from last night

It’s been a while since I’ve remembered enough of a dream for it to matter.  These are the snippets.

I got an email from a person from the Jedi Academy.  It was relatively long, but I only remember the beginning.  Basically, she said I need to meditate more.  That I’m not taking things to heart or something.  In the dream I was told this twice, so by the second time I was paying more attention.  So apparently I’m to meditate more!

Wii

The Wii is insanely fun!  Carrie and I are both thoroughly enjoying both Wii sports and Zelda.

As far as the sports go, we end up trading off who is better at what.  Baseball is my favorite I think.  All the games still involve timing, so there are some challenges.  Also, you can actually break a sweat while playing, which is crazy.

Zelda, is perhaps the most amazing game ever.  It’s beautiful, and real intuitive.  Now we’re just waiting for the servers to not be so overloaded so we can purchase Wii points and download Solomon’s Key.

By the way, if anyone wants to be Wii friends, our code is: 6790 5141 6768 8742