Jodag.NET

I seem to have had an odd effect on my last two employers.  You may remember in April of ‘04 as Interplay was seemingly in the final throes of a long, drawn out death I quit.  Mainly because I had my current job lined up and finally ready to start, but also because they were bankrupt and bouncing checks.  So, I received my final paycheck and the very day I received it, I tried to go cash it at my company’s bank.

After some snickering and muffled laughter the teller gives me my check back with this neat little NSF (Non-Sufficient Funds) stamp on it.  Eventually I did get it paid sucsessfully, but it was just a delightful way to end four or five years of employment with them.

You can read a bit more about that here.

Now, seemingly happily ensconced in my current job there’s economic turmoil coming to find me here as well.  The good Governor has seen fit to cut everyone’s paychecks by 10% starting next month and all sorts of other fun ideas.  Whether or not that’s necessary isn’t anywhere near my scope of practice or knowledge so I’m not going to get into that.  I will say that I personally believe that unions can be a huge portion of the problem.  Unions protect the jobs of those who don’t perform their work adequately and demand equality in pay for the entire range of competence in job performance, instead of being based on merit.  Honestly, I respect Arnold for what he’s trying to do here.  I think the unions are too strong though, and stay strong by feeding off of California’s carcass.

We’ll see what happens there, but again like in April of ‘04 I’m beginning the job hunt process again.  I can stick it out here just fine, but my job has recently lost most of its appeal, nothing to do with the budget.

Speaking of money though, in other worrisome news I am either getting audited or have a fan at the IRS recently.  The last five days of visits to jodag.net include some visits from everyone’s favorite federal agency.

Hopefully it’s a fan.

So, in general it’s been a ton of time since this place has been updated. No storytime shit, no new pics no new backpacking or snowboarding and nothing new at all. Sucky.

Now that the academy is over, hopefully I can rectify that situation, starting now. I have my badge and am starting work tomorrow (Nov 1) at an anonymous location. It’s an Off Highway Vehicle park, so mainly I’ll be handling enforcement and medicals, which is good to go. It’ll be a good solid learning experience and the location is awesome. About an hour north of L.A. proper, but in a completely different world. It’s out of a small town named Gorman at the top of “the grapevine” which is the mountain range that seperates the central valley from Socal itself. So it’s a small town (less than a thousand fifty people and no other towns for miles), in the mountains, but just about 1-1.5 hours away from the biggest city on the west coast.

I have state housing, in a canyon with no neighbors and a locked gate. I have a cost of living bonus every month because the park is in LA county. I have no real reason to complain about anything yet. I’m excited as fuck.

What I start tomorrow is called the FTO portion of my training. For the next three months my FTO (Field Training Officer) and I will be attached at the hip. Every time we interact with the public he’s going to be grading me and making sure I’m doing everything from writing tickets to arrests to medical aids correctly and most importantly safely. After these three months, I have 9 more months of probation and then a fat raise.

What else is going on…I went back to OC at the end of my 1 week vacation between the academy and work. I was going to have dinner with Efong and he wound up inviting a bunch of old Interplay clowns (Jmitchell, Egood, Dchee, Pchan and Jkirkland). So we spent alot of time just looking back at the Interplay days fondly. They are mostly still all in the game industry and are working for different companies since Iplay is essentially dead. And each of them said that Interplay was just fun, the people and the environment. Which is something that the companies they are working for now are definately lacking in some ways. Sad in a way I guess. I miss Iplay on occasion. There were some damn fine people there and I learned alot while I was there. RIP BIS, once again.

Oh well, one other thing I’ve realized over the last 2 days is that I am blessed with amazing friends. Truly blessed and in all honesty, I have no idea why.

Since I’ve never stated which company I work for on this site, I feel like I can speak of this.

Yeup, huge layoff today at work. From the minute they shutoff email/internet access we all knew big things were going on today. The premiere RPG producing division in the industry is gone now. Up to this point, since Feargus left it was gone in all but name. Now it is even gone in name. My department lost 12 last week, and another grip of people today. As recently as a month or two ago we had about 60 people, now we’re down to 17 or so. I’m sure there are more cuts to come sometime in the near future as well.

I’m almost disappointed in not being laid off. It would have worked out well for me to go back to school, collect GI bill fundage, maybe some unemployment fundage and just relax for awhile until I got bored of that. Almost everyone I know is now gone, peeps I’ve worked with for almost 4 years, side note - it’s odd to think I’ve almost worked here for as long as I was in the Corps.

I think one of the worst things about today was the lack of email/internet access. I was bored out of my mind all day long. I suppose the Street Fighter tournaments we had distracted us from the tumbleweeds rolling through the offices though, so that was good. From over 400 employees at it’s peak a few years ago to fewer than a hundred now, quite the fall we have had.

So, I just feel like blabbing still. Quite a few good people are gone now, one of my mentors is gone, some people I would consider friends and now all that’s left is a skeleton crew. I’m done.