Jodag.NET

You may remember a spanking I received a year or two ago at the SCVPA photo contest.  Time marches on, my tears have dried and my wounds have healed and I entered another local gallery’s photo contest.  As you can probably guess by the title of this post, I did much better this time around.  I entered five total photos and took first place and honorable mention in landscape category, as well as an honorable mention in the man-made scenery category.

Three new ribbons, 25 dollars cash money and a picture on the front page of the local newspaper.  I could get used to this high rollin’ lifestyle.  Small pictures of the pictures I entered are below, along with a shot of the dolla dolla bills I won.

I originally wrote a thought provoking post on big brain descriptions of each of the pictures, but I wrote that on my phone and somehow lost it.  Looking at these shots, I want to get back up to Bodie to do some more lens work as the place is just teeming with potential shots.  Even better I’d like to work there for a season and see all shots the behind the closed doors.  I obviously am getting back to Death Valley this year, once the temperatures are a bit more benign.

It feels good to get some applause for the shots I put up, we’ll see if this starts anything big.

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.

I wish I knew as big a scifi geek as myself so that I could buy them one of these sweet sweatshirts.  I have never in my life spent that much money on a clothing item (that wasn’t a required uniform item), but I am severely tempted to do so now.  That thing is calling my name!

In other news, the bailout can go to hell in my opinion.  I don’t care about Wall Street and Main Street, blah blah.  People done screwed the pooch somewhere and my tax money isn’t to get them out of trouble, they can suck it.

Now back to drooling over that sweatshirt, just why is it so damn expensive?  Because I want it that’s why.  Marc Ecko is a dick.

Now it’s getting ridiculous. I got a fifth overdraft charge, and just had to take a screenshot of this so that in 10 years when I’m playing golf with Bill Gates and the Sultan of Brunei, I can look back and laugh. Or maybe I’ll hire someone to laugh for me.

Here’s the screenshot and I’m an idiot.

I set a new personal record today. Being right around the holidays is a cool time to set records, especially records like this. I was hit with not one, not two, not three, but four overdraft charges today by my bank, Wamu. Each one is 30 dollars. 30×4=120 dollars in fees in one day.

What’s Christmas without a little eggnog and overdraft?

Happy Holidays to all my little fans out there.

I’m back from Chicago.

I’m tired of the ‘next month will be better’ cycle I’ve been seemingly stuck in for the entirety of my time while employed at my current job. I get paid once a month, on the last day of the month, which is odd all by itself. In addition to the oddity of the once monthly check, add some financial damage from last October’s truck repair/replacement fiasco and a seemingly never ending list of shit that needs to be replaced, repaired, restored, birthdays, and $3.50 per gallon of gas and I’m already broke for the months of May and most of June.

Note the date this is being written, April 30th and I’m already broke for the entire month of May and what looks like June too. It’s like being on a financial treadmill, you get behind just a little bit and can’t ever get off of it. If the state would pay me the overtime it owes me in a timely manner I could get on off the treadmill, or at least slow it down drastically. But, that doesn’t appear to be in the cards.

Right off the bat, my job isn’t supposed to get overtime as a paid commodity. It’s supposed to convert into time off at a rate of 1.5x. So, I work for four hours and I can take six hours off at some point in the future. God only knows why everyone is so dead set against paying motherfuckers for their hard work but they are. Every week to two I hear some kind of comment from a supervisor, manager or someone about overtime. The only way it’s possible to get consistent overtime is to build up your own personal bank of overtime to 480 hours without management noticing. After that you can get paid as long as you stay under the radar and again only for as long as management stays out of your hair.

So I finally built my bank up to 480, that took alot of fucking time and work and I’ve been there since January. I’ve only gotten one overtime check since January. They owe me 3 months of overtime. Who would have thought that any entity could be less efficient than the federal government.

One of these days I’ll get off the treadmill, and maybe even write about Chicago while I’m at it.

Truck summary, recap and update. During August, I had the truck running and available on the following days:

1, 2, 8, 9, 10, 22, 23, 31. That’s 8 days out of 31, an uptime of almost 26%.

Yes, it’s been back in the shop since the driveline fell out last week. Thankfully when it fell out it managed to crack the transfer case so it cost even more to fix. The good news is that they are going to replace my headlights for free.

1st trip to shop this month total = 3200

New windshield = 200

New cd player/XM radio = 300

2nd trip to shop = 3600

Total for month = 7300.

Jesus, if I had known that’s what it was going to cost I would have obviously traded it in the first time it died. But now, when I pick it up later today it will be like new… except it’s not. Looking at the bright side of this, at least I’m saving money on gas when it’s broken down.

Here’s a tangent, someone stole the phone lines in Gorman (my “town”) for the copper in them sometime yesterday. So, all the residents (~24) and business have had no phone service since yesterday. Only in Gorman does this kind of shit happen, seriously wtf?

Some updates are necessary. The pack weight I listed above was without water, which I obviously had at all times during the hike. Generally about 1.5-2.5 liters depending on how many creeks and water points we’d be seeing during the day. So add an extra 4 pounds to that weight I listed above (36) and my final pack weight was 40 pounds. Thanks to Gant on the noticing my oversight.

The repair bill for my truck has also gone up, that was my personal estimate. The actual estimate from the dealer is 3200, plus tax. Plus, since the aforementioned Dr. Gant broke my CD playa, I’ve got to get a new one of them too, though that’s kinda nice actually. I have wanted an XM deck for awhile now and this gives me a great reason to get one.

I have finally extracted most or all of the data from the GPS, and it tells me that our mileage on the tripwas over 90 miles and over 20,000 feet of vertical ascent in total. No wonder my feet hurt. When I post the APM story, all the final information will be listed there.

Well, I’m about to get back to the Sierra after a couple years of pansiness.  I haven’t done anything out there besides snowboarding and a little snowshoeing since October of 03, when I went out to Banner peak with a couple buddies.  Since then, I’ve just whined and moaned about my lack of Sierra time without really doing anything about it.  It all changes next week; Split Mt, Cloudripper, Mt. Tom are all on the hit list.  Not sure which ones we’ll wind up hitting, but I’m sure as hell excited about doing them in general.

Outside of that, I seem to have lost my Suunto watch, which was a great little mountaineering tool.  I have no fucking clue where it could be unfortunately, and I have no where near the funding available to purchase a replacement.  It’s a sad truth that everyone knows, but doesn’t really understand until they need to, but you don’t know what you have until you lose it.  I have not only lost my watch, but an amazingly large income.  I now make about 1/3rd of what I used to.  I don’t rightly know what I used to do with all that discretionary spending money that I used to have, but in all honesty now I have zero.  I actually don’t know if I can afford this job, I go into the red every month and pull some out of my savings account to cover it.  Obviously, this is an unsustainable situation.

The following are things I can no longer afford; new shoes, new LCD screen for my laptop, car repairs, short sleeve uniform shirt, camera camping and biking gear.  I honestly I have no idea what I did with the money I used to make. But, I’ve never been happier.  Money is only as valuable as you make it.  I don’t miss it a bit.

There is no real reason for this one except to put this picture up.  It’s a great reminder of my last days at Interplay and how sketchy the ending was there.  I outlasted most, but that’s because most of the other people saw the sinking ship and got off voluntarily.  I am just waiting on my next job that starts later this month, so I’ve got nothing better to do than wait and enjoy the fireworks around here.

I’ll miss a lot of things about Interplay, like the people and the work we did.  I won’t miss the management, as they led the company down this road that ends with paychecks bouncing like a hot girl in a bikini.