So I only caught part of tonight’s Academy awards.  This is the event where every year, big shiny superstars of cinema pat themselves on the back in glorious tribute to…well, themselves.  Full of glamour, glitz, and fake tits.  It’s the one night where all of Hollywood can get together in celebration of achieving the ultimate respect and admiration for their art, and as a testament to that, it’s a who’s who of who can dress the best.  A regular fashion show.  Oh, and they give out awards for movies too.

Something I noticed.  Every year, they have a little memorial for those that have passed on.  Those in the entertainment business who may have had an impact in one way or another get a small tribute to their life’s ambition in the realm of filmmaking.  In 2007, there were lots of producers, directors, and musicians who, although well noted, were not necessarily all that famous, save for two or three.  What is an academy to do in an off-year for dead thespians?  You throw in a ringer.  Yep, that’s right.  Heath Ledger didn’t even die in 2007.  He had the decency to wait until 2008 so as not to tread on the memory of those who left last year.  You know, the people the academy was supposed to be honoring.  Instead, they decided to tack him on right at the end, out of the already established alphabetical order, thereby ensuing that at least one recognizable name would be there and the audience could clap and cry in solemn tribute.  It didn’t really work you know, and the bastards didn’t even bother with Brad Renfro, who died shortly before Ledger.  Maybe we’ll save him for next year.

I drink your… MILKSHAKE!

I drink it up!

Master actor Daniel Day Lewis won the Oscar for best actor for his performance in There will be Blood, and rightly so.  Seriously, watching this movie was like a religious experience.  His ability to become someone else is absolutely mind-boggling, and I can’t praise him enough.  The movie itself is amazing, captivating, and a superb example of the craft that filmmaking should represent.  I loved it.

Congratulations to all the winners tonight, and finally, note that decent actors and superb movies actually received the recognition they deserve for once, somewhat out of character for the academy awards.  It was a good night for the movies.

I’m back!  Did you miss me?  Probably not.  I haven’t written in a while, for a couple of reasons.  First and foremost, I’m lazy.  That’s a pitiful excuse I know, but it’s getting harder and harder to get motivated every day.  I need to make a change in my recently acquired lifestyle before it drives me insane.  Laziness is unbecoming, and it’s a horrible way to live.

The primary reason though, is technical.  My blog is incredibly slow.  When I click on the URL, it takes an average of anywhere between 30 to 130 seconds to load.  More often than not, it takes about a minute.  Sometimes it times out completely and won’t load at all.  This is unacceptable, and I can’t seem to figure out what’s causing it.  What makes it worse is that it’s not an every time occurrence.  Numerous Google searches have indicated this problem is relatively common among Wordpress blogs, so I did searches for the fix that would hopefully end my frustration.  Alas, it has still alluded me.

Consensus points to several factors that could be the cause.  However after going through each of these several times, I’ve pretty much ruled them all out.  I deactivated all of my plug-ins, although I really don’t have that many running, changed my template back to the default, and cleaned up any bad links or spam that might have sneaked through.  Nothing helped.  I read several articles on using  a cashing system to serve the pages more quickly, but I think the problem is initially either with the server, or my MSQL database, and any amount of cashing won’t help that.  I’m pretty much stuck at this point.

I’ve already talked to my web host, and they insist there’s no problem.  “Your page loads fine.” they tell me, yet when I click to go to it or administrate any administrative duties, it’s slower than Rosie O’Donnell in the 400 meter hurdles.  What do they know?  I’ve been looking into other web hosts, but to be honest, other than the issues of late with the blog, I’ve never had any problems with my current host and they have a pretty good hosting deal.  If it’s not the server itself (and I suspect it’s not, because I host another page on the same server and it’s fine), I’m left with fussing with my MSQL database, which is a frustrating and overly-technical process.  Ugh, I wish things were just easy sometimes.

If I could ask a favor, would y’all leave a comment and let me know how my page loads for you?  I need to nail this problem down.

As many people know, I was recently liberated from my long-term employment at a well-known international retailer. The details of this are a boring story, but suffice it to say that there isn’t a single person who knows the details, friends or ex-coworkers, or even people that I didn’t even get along with, that thinks I got a fair shake. I spent ten years with this company, starting in the state of Ohio in a store location, then branching out to a traveling position which took me all over the country setting up new stores, remodeling older ones, and training employees throughout the company, and finally ending up here in Utah back in a brand-new store location, working hard to make my department and my store successful. For my troubles, I was unceremoniously dumped without so much as a goodbye or a thanks for giving them a decade of my life. Today I received a small, yet frustrating surprise… a big wonderful twisting of the long, curved, bloody knife that’s been embedded in my back for the last four weeks. Let me explain a few things first though.

Now, ten years is a long time in retail. In that decade, I saw so many people come and go in so many ways. The turnover rate in that industry is absolutely hideous, and no one is exempt. Everyone from the lowliest part-timer to district managers, vice-presidents, and even presidents come in and go out with surprising regularity. The nature of retail is so volatile and sketchy that you never really know from one day to the next what’s going to happen. Sure, you can speculate, but you tend to be wrong more often than not. For me to survive ten years in that environment is quite the achievement. It’s actually something I’m proud of in a lot of ways.

You may ask why I spent so long working in retail. After all, isn’t that for starving college kids and just-out-of-school teenagers looking for their first jobs? Don’t retail people make minimum wage and curse themselves daily for filling out that damn application in the first place? Do you have a vast collection of plastic name tags and khaki-styled pants? How could an intelligent, college-educated person subject themselves to the torture of retail for an entire decade? Shouldn’t you be dead or in jail for shooting the place up by now?

Well, most of those are valid points. I’d say a majority of the people that work on a store level are young adults, or even outright kids. The average age is probably about twenty, give or take, and for many of them, it is their first or one of their first jobs. Retail is easy to get into, and it offers a lot of promises if you stick it out. Sadly, a vast majority (and by vast, I literally mean over 90%) don’t stick it out, and those that do realize that those promises will eventually be broken.

As for that other stuff, well, I do actually have a pretty good stash of old name tags, and I do own probably about 10 pairs of khaki pants. I’ve never actually fantasized about shooting the place up, but I’ll admit that if I were to have had, say, some sort of cool super powers, like electromagnetism, it would have potentially served me well in a number of occasions. I never worked for minimum wage though, and I actually made pretty good money at my level. The benefits were fantastic (ten years had its advantages), and there were perks, like a healthy employee discount and a good social experience.

Lest you think I’m actually advocating retail however, know that it wasn’t all fun and games. The biggest problem with retail is that it promises lots of things but doesn’t deliver. Do a search for your favorite retailer and you’ll undoubtedly come up with all kinds of articles and posts about how this person got screwed and that person got screwed and so forth. You’ll get some positive responses as well, but it only takes one negative experience to balloon out of proportion, and the whole thing collapses. Retail is hell on Earth, and you don’t have to look any farther than Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) in order to know that. It’s a day of absolute misery for employees and customers alike.

I stayed in retail for selfish reasons and stupid reasons. After a point, I made pretty good money. Money isn’t a huge driving force for me personally, but like anyone, I have to eat and have a place to live. I also have expensive hobbies, so good money was definitely a positive. As I mentioned, the benefits were good as well, so I didn’t have to worry too much about medical expenses killing me. Mostly though, it was my life. It was routine, it was normal. After so long, you get to a point where you just sort of cruise on autopilot. You don’t have to think about work, you just sorta know it’s there and you go. Like eating a meal that you don’t particularly hate or like, it’s just sustaining. You know what to expect, you know how it tastes, you know the routine and the outcome, and you just let it happen. A little effort is required here and there, but nothing too spectacular. You just drone on, day after day in sort of a numb capacity. It becomes who you are and how you define yourself. You stop thinking about it.

This is so unhealthy. You should never, never let a job you don’t care for define your life. If you love what you do, say if you’re a musician or an artist or whatever, and you are lucky enough to make a living from that, then that’s a different story. I’m not a retailer though. That’s what I did, not what I am. My existence became about going to work, getting my paycheck, then getting some sleep so I could go back to work again the next day. That’s no way to live.

A parting shot

So today I’m looking at my finances and I discover that I’ve received a paycheck from my former employer. Now, It’s been four and a half weeks since my liberation, and they’ve already paid me for my vacation hours and whatnot, so I’m a little surprised. I logged on to my direct deposit account, and low and behold, I see this:

This is an actual screen grab of my paycheck. I’ve taken the liberty to blacken out the sensitive stuff, but I highlighted some things to prove my point.

Firstly, I know that I have no argument in this case. I know that this is all perfectly legal and I have no recourse. I’m simply posting this because IT SUCKS. It’s a perfect example of why so many people can never get ahead, and that there are certain rules and laws in effect for no reason other than to make life harder.

As you can see, during my last dying gasp with the company I managed to accrue 4.62 extra hours of vacation time beyond what they paid me after termination, at a rate of 16.15 per hour. This equates to $74.63 in taxable earnings. However, they’ve deducted $56.61 in pre-tax dollars for my health plan. This is all well and good, except that my health plan was discontinued last month. As of January 31st, I was no longer covered by my health care plan. What does this mean? Exactly. I just paid $56.61 for nothing. Gone. Vanished into thin air, never to be seen again. I get absolutely no benefit from that $56.61 at all. Nothing. That money was stolen from me.

I know this is an automatic process. Still, it feels like they screwed me. It feels like a knife in my back. It’s not enough to take away my livelihood and my means of supporting myself, no… You have to dangle a tiny carrot in front of my face, and then snatch it away at the last second while laughing gleefully at my expense. I get $16 of my original $75. A pittance. Somewhere, the retails gods are rolling on the floor in a fit of laughter and spite. I can just hear them now. Fat bastards.

Happier even though

I don’t regret my time in retail. It’s given me invaluable experience in dealing with people, it’s given me a skill set that can prove handy in other aspects of my life, and it’s given me some friends that I’ve come to know over the years. It’s also given me some money that I was able to invest and live off for the time being until I find a new job. Still, what did I trade for that time? What did I give up to get these things? Was it worth it? Was the price too high? It’s hard to say right now. I can say this though, I’m happier without it. The job I mean. It was eating me from the inside out, and controlling my life in a way that I didn’t like. It was like a cancer growing and stealing away precious time. You should work to live, not live to work. Life comes first, job comes later. Notice I didn’t say second… I said later. These things I’ve had lots of time to ponder over the last few weeks, and in the end I have to admit, I’m happier now. I have more control over my life, and I don’t miss the old job one bit.

Now it’s time to move on and find my path.

Here’s to the future.

Technorati Tags: employment,Best Buy,retail,electromagnetism,life,happiness

It’s not that I have anything against voting, or that I’m unpatriotic, or that I’m against democracy in any way.  There are two main reasons why I didn’t vote in the primary election today:

1. I’m not registered to vote in the state of Utah.
2. I simply don’t like any of the candidates

Now, I know I’m going to catch a lot of flack over what I’m about to say.  Believe me, I’ve heard it all a million times and I’m sure I’ll hear it a million more.  Even some of my best friends have had this particular debate with me, so if you feel so compelled, have at it if you will.

I haven’t voted in a presidential election since 1992.  That’s sixteen years.  Why?  Am I some sort of communist?  Do I hate the democratic process?  Should I move to Canada?  Well, the short answer is that I’m basically lazy.  Beyond that, I guess the biggest reason is that I simply don’t put it very high on my priority list to think about who becomes the next president.  To me, and in my experience, they’re all more or less the same.  Sure, they have different agendas and true, they all go about things in different ways.  What I mean to say is, they’re all politicians, and for me that means that whatever they say or whatever they pretend to stand for is irrelevant.  They’re going to do what’s in their best interests to get elected, and then forget whatever pledges they made thereafter.

I follow the polls somewhat.  I have a passing interest in who these people are and what they say.  Most, if not all of them, say exactly what they think you want to hear.  I listen to the news and I know the candidate’s platforms for the post part.  I guess it comes down to this:  All I want is for one of them to actually do the things they say they’re going to do.  This is mostly impossible however, as the promises they make aren’t generally within their power to accomplish.  They have some pull, of course, but to accomplish major goals in this country requires large committees and budgets and lots of arguing.  A candidate needs to be able to admit this, and be honest and realistic about their goals.

I don’t like the candidates this year.  Not any of them.  Sure, I could just say “screw it” and pick the lesser of all evils, but that doesn’t get me anywhere.  I’d still have voted for someone I didn’t especially like, and I don’t want that.  I want someone I can get behind.  Someone I can trust to be honest.  Thus far, none of the candidates have shown me that.  I don’t trust any of them.

Some of the things you hear

• “If you don’t vote, then you don’t have any right to complain later.”

Yeah… We’ve all been hearing that one all our lives.  This is based on some sort of guilt trip that people like to bring out to make you feel sorry for not voting.  Here’s what I believe.  It’s backwards.  If you vote for someone, you’ve spoken.  You’ve had your say.  You’re done.  Now you need to back up your candidate.  You need to support the person you voted for, and you no longer have any more objectivity.  No more complaints.  You’ve made your bed and now you need to lie in it.  If your candidate does some good things, then congratulations.  You made a good choice.  If he screws up, then sorry about your luck.  You have no one else to blame but yourself, and you can’t take the decision back.

However, I didn’t vote for him.  I didn’t vote for the other guy, either.  I am impartial.  I can now be objective, and say, “look… you voted for this guy, and look what he’s done.”  I have every right to complain, because of that objectivity.  I haven’t had my say, and I can look at things from all perspectives and point out all the problems as I choose without bias.

• “You really should vote.  It’s your responsibility as an American.  George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Paul Revere and Pat Tillman all fought and died for your right to vote!”

No… wrong.  George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Paul Revere and Pat Tillman all fought and died for my right to CHOOSE.  The freedoms that our Founding Fathers and American patriots fought for are, among many, the right to choose whether I want to vote or not.  It’s not my responsibility, it’s my decision.

• “If you hate America so much, then move!”

I hate this one.  I’m also confused by it.  I don’t hate democracy.  I don’t hate America or the freedoms we have or the values we stand for.  I’m sorry if you somehow got that impression, but you are mistaken.  This ultra-patriotism you seem to have just around election time doesn’t become you.  I love my country and my freedoms.  I just happen to not like the candidates for president.  I don’t want to vote for any of them.  That doesn’t make me a bad American, or a bad person.  And as much as I like Canada, I don’t want to live there.  It’s cold in Canada, and they have shitty beer.

Traditionally speaking

Traditionally, the president has always been a wealthy, popular white guy.  Always.  Sometimes, he’s also a military figure, a successful lawyer or businessman, a congressman, or some other sort of politician.  He’s always a rich and popular white guy though, so based on that tradition and that tradition alone, not racism or sexism, but purely tradition, we can safely decide who our next president will be.

• Hillary Clinton.  Rich, white, popular, but not a guy.  Take a seat.
• Barack Obama.  Rich, popular, is a guy, but is only a little bit white.  Mostly black.  Better luck next time.
• Mitt Romney.  Rich, white, popular, and a guy.  Perfect right?  Nope.  He’s a Mormon.  So, you ask?  What does religion have to do with it?  Well, it shouldn’t have anything to do with it, but it does.  I live in Utah, where more than half the population is Mormon.  I know lots of them, and I also know lots of people who are voting for Mitt Romney specifically because he’s Mormon.  They may not even know anything about him, other than some vague recollection about him having something to do with the 2002 Olympics, but that doesn’t matter.  They will vote for him because he’s a Mormon.  Likewise, I also know people that will NOT vote for him because he’s a Mormon.  No other reason, just a prejudice against religion or even specifically Mormons, for whatever reason.  Mitt Romney = not gonna win.
• Mike Huckabee.  Rich, white, is a guy, but not that popular.  At least, not yet.  When compared against the aforementioned candidates, his popularity is behind.  That’s not a good sign.  Plus, he’s got a stupid name.  Can you imagine President Huckabee?  What is this, the Andy Griffith show?  Chances:  Very long.  Maybe, but not likely.
• Ron Paul.  Rich, white, is a guy, not popular.  Seriously, who is this guy?  I haven’t even seen any campaign signs for him.  I do know exactly two people that support him though, but that’s not enough.  Not a chance.

Well, that pretty much leaves John McClane.

  Personally, I think John McClane would make a kick-ass president.  We definitely wouldn’t have any more terrorist issues.  Foreign policy would be settled quickly and decisively, and the State of the Union address would be peppered with obscenities and sharp one-liners.  America’s new catchphrase?  “Yippeeki-yay, motherf”… wait, John McCain?  McCain, not McClane? 

Bummer.

Well, OK.  John McCain.  Rich, white, is a guy, popular, plus he’s ex-military, a current senator, and he’s old.  Perfect ingredients for a president.  Of course, he’s also an asshole.  Still, traditionally speaking, he’s the guy.  Plus, as I write this, he’s leading his party.   Consensus:  Good.

Final thoughts

The real election isn’t until November of course.  That still leaves plenty of time for the candidates to all show their true colors.  Today it’s being whittled down to two, one for each party.  Tomorrow, all the real mudslinging starts.  Perhaps a candidate will emerge that impresses me.

Maybe I’ll even go and vote.

Update:

As of today, February 7, Mitt Romney has “suspended” (dropped out) of the race for Republican candidate.  Pussy.  He was running second to John McCain, but that wasn’t good enough.  He got mad, took his ball, and went home.  What a douche.  What about all those people who voted for him just two days ago?

You ever see that episode of Saturday Night Live where all the Star Trek nerds are at a convention and Captain Kirk shows up and tells them all to “get a life”?  Then all the Trekkie nerds look all dejected and confused?

That’s how I picture all of his supporters right now.  Lots of little Romney followers with their foam Romney hands and their Romney hats and their Romney pins and t-shirts, all sitting in the crowd waiting for their wonderful leader to emerge and tell them to keep fighting the good fight… all the way to the convention and maybe even the White House!  But no, instead, Mitt Romney steps up to the lectern, unbuttons his cufflinks, rolls up his sleeves, and in a quick, decisive movement, extends both middle fingers towards his supporters with a big, shit-eating grin on his face.  Then he leaves, while the crowd looks around in confusion, their Romney swag suddenly feeling heavy and awkward, having lost some of its magic.

Good riddance.  See ya.