Well you know yourself better than your parents know you. If you have what it takes, don't give up on your dreams. If you don't have what it takes, find other dreams. Most parents aren't immune to verbal diarrhea, most will often unleash it upon their children.

I screwed up on my job big time.....The thing is that journalism is a people centric profession and I have always wanted to work as a copy editor instead of acting as a features writer. I absolutely despise my beat on plastics and polymers. I just don't like the subject and each day I feel like I am ruining my literary cadence. We have to run around for everything 1)story quotes from these corporate douchebags 2)get concept images approved for articles;copyrighted ones and I am not allowed to pick stock images either 3)Get exclusive news with images 4) My senior colleague who handles my beat is a bitch 5) The articles are too technical 6) I failed withe requirements since we were paginating yesterday and I failed to submit the article concept images or the exclusive news which means that I am screwed big time 7)This is the biggest media organization in the country and while I would really like to quit it would also mean that I would permanently shut the doors for my chances in any of the other organizations within the affiliation and they are all huge brand names like CNN _ IBN, CNBC TV18, IBN7 or CNBC Awaaz, Viacom 18 etc - so it's a major conundrum. 8)I could take up another job with a smaller organization but it would only mean that I am a failure...funny thing is that I just got a raise and a confirmation of my employment after 6 months on friday. This woman is trying very hard to sabotage my career.

I can write on computers, pharma , lighting technology but not this. I find it to be mind numbingly boring. I have tried talking to my boss but he keeps telling that it's a challenge and all but I think when you're doing something you don't like it's not a challenge but more akin to prostitution....did not word this though. I am not sure what I should do since this is possibly the best opportunity that I might ever get.

Boss messages me on facebook VERY late last night, asking me to come in at 2 pm (on my day off) as he was doing quartleries again. I replied that I had a busy day, but I would try to drop in. He responds back almost immediately that if I couldn't get in for 2, to let him know, and he would meet me at any time available. Ominous.

I go in today, and he goes to the office and gets a check. More ominous.

He asks me to come in to his "office", which is just a three sided room with the open side facing where staff and customers could see and hear us, and tells me that the owner of the company (His dad) reviewed my file, and despite me never having been disiplined once in almost a year of working there, let me go via layoff.

It could be worse, in Canada, a layoff is more desirabe, but I am flabbergasted by where this sudden twist came from. My boss came off as overwhelmed by it as well, though that might just be a management technique. They also refused to give me a weeks notice, or pay in lieu of, and I am (was?) pretty close with the family, so having to file a claim with the Labor Board against them for wrongful dismissal is not going to be pleasant.

I told him that our customers would let him know what they thought of my departure, as I was thought very well of. Believe it or not, I am not nearly as big a pompous jackass when offline ;)

Anyway, I had to walk out, with about a months pay in my pocket from my final check+vacation pay, and now have to pick up the pieces and figure out what's next.

I did want to leave the job in the next couple of months, and the layoff is better than being fired, but the timing and suddenness of it all has me flummoxed.

A very, very long, draining day.

I am living with my parents again. I have to sell a lot of shit, including my desktop PC, because I have no place to put it and can't afford the storage unit costs. I just found out today that I will be getting laid off from one of my jobs by the end of the month, so what was previously just hurting for money has become a severe cramp.

Life blows in the real world, kids. Stay in college forever.

I hate this f**king heat, they say it's going to reach 40 C today (104 F)... awful.

Call centers are based on bidding X, as low as possible, where X = S(Salaries) + P(Profit). The company accepting bids is going to take the lowest bid available, which means that X must decrease while maintaining P. The easiest way to reduce S is by moving the contract/business to a market where minimum wages are the lowest.

All call centers are like pebbles in a river, flowing from higher wage markets to lower. from my vantage point, in an odd gatekeeper to the east position, and the last stop before you leave North America, the jobs tend to go to asia and India once the Canadian wages get too high.
A fucking Men. If I had had any idea at all how much the economy was going to tank, I would NEVER have finished my degree in 2007, instead I would have gotten a job, gotten laid off, and had the government put me through school for a high-demand trade. I was just calling around last week for registration deadlines and tuition rates for a very lucratice course, and I just got laid off. So now, my priorities have immediatley shifted from "Shuffle resources to enable bills to be paid as well as tuition" to "shuffe myself around to ensure I have food to eat". Good times.

DO NOT do an arts degree. TRUST ME.

That sucks. Hope you can replace your desktop PC with a laptop or netbook so you can at least play some GOGs. And hope you can quickly find another job.

Your not the only one. I am also in a similar situation. I am finishing a MSc in International Political Economy and unable to find work. I cannot even get retail jobs and I have experience through volunteering in charity shops (full time in my last summer). The situation is pretty bad. Only choice I have is to move back home after 4 years of independence. Very frustrating.

My plan was to do a PhD but with funding cuts there are less and less funded places. I came second for one place and they did not do a reserve for that funding place. The guy who got it turned it down and the funds were recycled into the department! So basically going to reapply and hope I get ESRC funding second time round. Still means a year living at home in an area which has less job opportunities than where I am currently living and most likely a year on job seekers.

How on Earth do they make the ads so loud? You're just sitting there, listening to some music when suddenly some ad starts playing and your ears explode. It seems counterproductive to me to have people throw the headphones off their heads before they even know what the ad is for.

Not really a big deal in the end, but I've been wondering about that for a while. It seems like the ads are way louder than anything else. Maybe I could try and make an especially loud file with some audio fiddling program just to figure out if it's just mastering or if there's a "hey, it's an ad, +50dB!!" feature in Windows 7.

Online, even? Jeez laweez!

It's a shame that ads are loud. Even TV ads in the US can currently be as loud as the loudest part of the -entire- show! So, yeah, moronic FCC regulations here let that 30-60 second ad (which you'll probably tune out anyway) be as loud as that explosion or gunfire that happens midway into your favorite show.

Of course, the FCC is working on modding the rules so the highest dB level in the set of ads can only match the highest dB level in the preceding portion of the show. Not good enough, but a start. (if it ever gets finished)

EDIT: Has anyone been driving or riding in a car, listening to the radio, when an ad/song plays, and it has a part that sounds like sirens or something like that? It's annoying as hell, and no doubt ten times as dangerous.

A certain ad campaign is annoying me right now (accursed ads, why must you taunt me so!?). This certain business entity is about to be smacked with a new law that'd limit its ability to put ads everywhere, so it's having a really attitude driven campaign against the law. The campaign's ads are titled to be directed to the supporters of the restrictive law, but the way they're made and the attitude in them makes me feel like they're actually directed towards those who are already opposing the law. You know, like something you say to a group of friends to convince and validate your unsavory acts, making sure it's so full of bad attitude that there's no way the supposed target audience would listen. Something like beating someone up and then telling them "You can't complain, you were asking for it with that ugly face of yours" while throwing your hands up and waiting for your friends to make approving noises. That's actually pretty clever, since the loyal fans of the said entity seem to be prone to get on that kind of bandwagons.

I'm being overtly coy, because often when I mention anything negative about ethanol in consumable liquids, people react like I had killed their dog and was showing its guts to 'em with a smile, but yeah, actually, screw that. I'm talking about the booze industry of Finland. And I'm bitching here because I have no other venue.

They wrote an open letter to the supporters of the law, in which they say that the law is driven by ignorance and people who don't understand health (they fail to mention that doctor unions and health places or whatever are supporting the law). They then say that ads do not affect the amount of booze people drink, and in the next sentence say that they had a "when drunk you're an idiot" ad campaign that reduced people's drinking (which they just said ads cannot do). Anyway, there's this certain looming feeling that they might not be after anything constructive with this thing. This open letter ad is visible pretty much everywhere in the capital city as far as I could tell. It also has this certain "we can throw money at ad campaigns and make it seem like you don't have anything to say, when your budget is actually tied to keeping people healthy and not dicking around" vibe to it.

The effect of these ads isn't in the ads themselves, but the environment they help shape. Earlier, their strategy was to ask the question: "would you drink less if this ad wasn't here?" in ads. Ignoring that the ad "this" referred to had a whole another point than making people buy booze, it clings to a very literal and direct interpretation where a single picture would directly cause people to drink more. They're then using that to try and claim that by extending it and uniting all the pictures, ads and whatnot under the same general idea, a town full of booze posters everywhere with both radio and tv having their "it ain't summer without booze" and "we're not marketing at kids, honest, that's illegal, but Harry Potter brought to you by booze" ads has no effect on its habitants' drinking habits.

The general attitude has shifted from "why do you drink so much, something wrong" to "why aren't you drinking, something wrong with you" in a few decades (hearsay, admittedly. I'm too young to have seen it). I claim having booze be visible and hence "accepted" everywhere you go has facilitated that change. I hear there's some actual research gone into this as well.

Felt good to finally let out that rant..

People not wearing earplugs at concerts.

Why does this concern me? Because people who don't wear earplugs at concerts will recieve permenant, irreversible hearing loss. As a result, to maintain the same percieved level of loudness they expect, bands have to play louder and louder every year. This means that I have to wear earplugs at every concert.

"Y'know that ringing in your
ears? ... Once it's gone you'll never hear that frequency again"

- Children of Men

Tinnitus. Be afraid. Very.

Even though I don't go to concerts frequently, I've been meaning to buy earplugs meant for listening music. I can't understand either why they play so loud in concerts. In the last concert where I was (Lady Gaga with my gf), I used normal earplugs all the time, and the music still sounded very loud even though we were quite far in the stand, not close to the speakers. I can't understand how my gf could be there all that time without earplugs, she didn't want to use them.

But I feel even bigger problem than concerts overall are all the people using headphones to listen to music. Everyone does it, with their smartphones, Ipods... heck even I do it if I play games late at night. Since the sound source is so close to ears, your ears are very susceptible to any even slightly louder sounds. And people use them for hours upon hours, every day.

It is not only the loudest sounds that destroy your hearing, but even being constantly stressed by less louder sounds. I recall reading that among some native tribes even old people have a very sharp hearing because they live most of their life in what would feel to us as complete silence. They don't have IPods, traffic all around them, or have radio or TV open all the time... Urban people have their hearing being stressed most of the day, every day of the year.

I'm in this mood again right now. I want to play pc games to somehow tackle my huge backlog of "games to play" but somehow I lack the motivation to really invest myself into something deep. On the other hand I feel I'm not able to play filler games just for the sake of gaming any more.
I crave for an experience that gives me the feeling of achieving something of meaning. Somehow Ultima 4 or 7 seem appealing right now but I lack to motivation to go through all this "talk to every npc everywhere"-drag and I'm certainly not going back to taking notes and drawing maps on paper again.
The worst thing is even if I would find the game that motivates me to invest myself into its setting, all this motivation would be wasted as I usually lack the time that is needed to experience such games for real. There are periods that I do have some time available (like right now) but even then, all motivational aspectes aside, my life tends to remind me that there is no such a thing as autonomous time management - usually in the form of my gf.

A related question. What do you do if she wants to listen to music all the time (really all the time) and you do not have the luxury of having multiple rooms available? Not that I don't like the music, it's just that I think it would be nice to be able to watch a movie or play a (non muted) pc game from time to time.

I just dropped my favorite vase (and only big vase), it had 2 week old flowers in it and it shattered everywhere, moldy water too (it had just started to fuzz up). I sliced my hand open (on my pinkie finger right above the quick) in that dirty ass water, bled forever, the water shot high enough to hit me in the ear and soaked my shoe, carpet all over the kitchen. The glass took too long to clean, laundry is still going, I had to shower the filth off, and, come to think of it, I have a headache.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, shit like this just pisses me off. My new flowers are sitting in a quart jar until I buy a new vase.

Oh yeah, my favorite plant is dying and nothing I do is helping, I've had it since I was 9 years old:(