10:30 PM
Blogging a little over a week after our last one, spending some time listening to music and trying not to let work get me down. Here’s the line up if you want to play along at home:
Broken by Belly
Building A Mystery by Sarah McLachlan
Dear God by Sarah McLachlan
Silence (aero space trance) by Sarah McLachlan
Strawberry Fields Forever (Beatles Cover) by Peter Gabriel
In Your Eyes (Special Extended Mix) by Peter Gabriel
All You Want by Dido
Here With Me by Dido
Thank You by Dido
Creep by Radiohead
My Lips Are Sealed [Go-Go’s Cover] by Poe
Uninvited by Alanis Morissette
Skateaway by Dire Straits
Don’t by Jewel
Smells Like Teen Spirit (Matt’s Mix) by Tori Amos
Butterfly by Crazy Town
Surrender by Cheap Trick
Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order
Starting to think about looking for more work or changing jobs. My problem is that I’ve had 4 jobs in my life and I haven’t had to look for extra work or another job in years. So I have no idea what my skill set (term ripped off from Martin Sargent), is and what I’m qualified for or what I’m worth. Plus I still have my dad to take care of and a house full of left-over animals so relocating would be problematic. Where I work now is a dream for that since I can work from home, but you know, lately with all the changes going on — I’m not at all happy.
Obviously, I have a little creative talent. I’m also a whiz at solving problems. In my off hours I’m constantly asked to help with computer or personal problems from the hundreds of people I’ve met from being on-line since 1993. I could fill all of my off-hours with those questions if I really wanted to. But I don’t, so I won’t and no, I won’t answer your question either. 🙂
That brings up a funny story to digress with about my friend Kevin. Kevin is one of those guys who always has a question. No matter what the topic is, no matter what is going on, Kevin has a question to ask. A couple of years ago I noticed that Kevin’s computer questions were increasing in frequency. He was going from one or two questions a week to 10 or more. I mean he was asking things about systems I knew he didn’t have and I was struggling to find answers to all of them. After a couple of weeks of it I finally broke down and asked him what was up. It turned out he had just started a new job teaching math at a middle school and he had mentioned me to the teachers there. So I was getting every computer question they could think of and providing IT support for free to a school in one of the richest areas in the country. LOL. I was dumb enough to keep answering them as well until they ran out of questions or until Kevin learned enough from me to solve them on their own.
Another quick story of another time. Another teacher was having problems with her CD-RW drive. Kevin went over to her house to help her out. The problem was that it would play the CDs okay but it wouldn’t actually burn a CD without constant errors. He checked all the connections for her, checked device manager for a problem and when there was none he was going to try to pull the CD out of the machine and remount it. I stopped him and asked a simple question: “Is the computer on a flat surface?” He says “No, the table is kind of lopsided because one of the legs is broken.” Turns out the machine was resting on the computer table at a near 45 degree angle and the cd wasn’t lining up properly. I had them move the computer to a flat surface. It worked fine after that. I think I’m still owed a kiss by the other teacher if I ever feel free to collect it.
Last quick story, up until about 1998 or so I was the guy to go to if some pro wrestlers/pro wrestling personalities were having problems with their computers. Wrestlers are kind of cute because they’re so big and mean in the ring but a lot of them become total frady-cats when it comes to computers. More than one occasion I’d get a call late late at night from guys who were nearly in tears because their systems were screwy. Right around the big Windows 3.11 to Windows 95 conversion was the best and the worst. None of the guys had Windows 95 and I had already upgraded to it. So many a night I’d be woken up by a phone call to solve problems in windows 3.11 and be lying in bed, half awake, doing setups and changes to their systems from memory. The screens would just sort of appear in the back of my head and we’d always get the problem fixed so I could go back to sleep.
I met a lot of people through my wrestling connections. Both fans and wrestlers. Most names no one is going to remember now. The late Brian Pillman is one I find myself missing a lot lately. Brian and I knew each other, I won’t call us great friends and we never met in real life, but we did talk on the phone ever now and then and I think we went down in history together as putting on the first ever Internet Wrestling worked shoot on a message board.
For those who don’t know Brian, in the early 90’s he came into a league called the WCW. He was right out of football and he was both blessed and cursed with a pretty boy body and good looks. That’s baby face material. You know, goodie goodie. Always in the short short tights and playing up to the 12 year old girls in the crowds. Brian HATED it. In his heart he was a bad guy. His idols were all bad guys. In real life he was nothing like his character and there’s nothing worse than having to be nice all the time. Especially when you’re Brian Pillman. I didn’t know him well enough to know all the road stories but now that he’s gone, the stories are coming out and I can tell you that the road stories prove that the Brian in real life wasn’t the Brian on TV. I’ll leave it at that.
It was like a year before Brian got his chance to become a bad guy. He was new to the on-line area and back then I was a first or second year volunteer. Things were looser back then. No one really cared about the rules since we were only a partner to the service and not a “real” area. Brian came up with this idea to get some exposure for the area: I’d give him a message board and he’d go in as a heel (bad guy), and get things rolling to get it some exposure. Brian would be his controversial self and I’d be the straight man, trying to explain why he couldn’t go over the line and trying to keep the “loose cannon” in check. It was his way of doing two things — breaking his baby face curse — and trying to get the area some exposure.
The plan was to convince everyone that we hated each other but, in reality, like with nearly everything in wrestling, we were working together and playing off each other privately to keep the story line rolling. It was great fun while it lasted … unfortunately … we did it too well. People started believing that we hated each other. I’d start getting hate mail from people literally hating me for trying to keep Brian in check. While the lines were never crossed and I’d never let him get away with breaking the rules I had to apply to the area, it ultimately had to stop because the service got wind of it and wondered why I let this crazy person have a folder and I had to stop him from going off on a very high level person at the service. It got weird after that. LOL.
I miss him. It’ll be four years in October since his passing. We had lost touch towards the end. He had signed with the WWF and the WWF wouldn’t let him play in my area any more and put him on the road a lot. His wife would call every now and then just to talk and share stories of how their kids were just as crazy as their daddy. Still have his two WWF Action figures around here to remind me of those times when working on-line was a lot of fun and Brian was the resident wild man.
More stories at another time, I’m heading to bed.
k9