Um, yeah, I missed that. Must be all the dirt, grit and grime I've been wallowing in on this filthy machine, affecting the humor cortex.

Fuck my luck.

Backstory: I've been looking for full-time, long-term (1 month+) work with a recruiting agency. They brought to my attention a position that a nuclear power plant operator has been looking for recently. I immediately said yes, since I knew it was nearby.

Anyway, get to the phone interview, paperwork, and drug test. All passed with flying colors. The same day of the drug test (afterwards, of course), reefer.

Less than 5 days later, I am apparently to take another drug test, on-site. The first was administered (paid-for, setup) by the recruiter, and this second one is administered at the plant, but still sent out. Both to Quest Diagnostics.

During the (admittedly immense) paperwork for the plant (separate from the previous recruiter paperwork), I put down that I had done illegal drugs in the past 30 days, since they are going to find out from the on-site test anyway.

After I'm done with everything, I go meet my boss, and tell him first thing when we sit down in his office. I try to let him know this wasn't a planned thing, and I'm obviously not going to be doing it while there, but, yeah. FUCK.

He said he'd find out what the procedure and shit was and call me by Wednesday. It's 9:30PM Wednesday night.

Yep. Fucked. Damnit. Oh, and my recruiter, or rather, the one that got me the position in the first place? Not talking to me, either by phone (goes straight to voicemail), or e-mail. :-(


I'm sooo sorry, I had to rate this post, and quote it for posterity. It made me laugh, it was awesome, and now it will be DOUBLE-AWESOME for years to come!

I still love the forum, but it seems harder and harder to find a topic that doesn't have to do with giveaways or promoting something or someone looking for participants for one thing or another. I just kinda feel like, damn, where did all the discussions with substance go?

Being earlier (long time ago) in a similar situation was a big eye-opener for me, as finally I could see the breakups from also from the "leaver's" point of view. After that I wouldn't just cry "Why oh why everyone just leaves me, why can't they just love me?", since now I knew that even I can't love just anybody, even if at some point of time I might have felt differently.

I guess one important test for me is whether we laugh to the same things. If I find the lady a bore, or she seems to think similarly of things that amuse me, better to run the hell out of there. In fact, this also includes whether he finds computer and video games childish, something that a man of my age shouldn't do (yeah I've had those too).

And in shorter term sex has to be great too, of course.

Yeah I miss the DRM and Steam rants too! :)

Not really, but partly I feel the same way. But in the end, if I don't start interesting discussions myself, I won't blame others for not doing the same. That's also why I feel a bit bad for some people complaining of certain people (like Elmofongo) starting too many topics (which are not about giveaways or backing up some another silly indie kickstarter). Hey, at least they are trying to initiate some non-inflammatory discussion!

Too bad all the interesting "What bad games do you love?" or "The most unknown game that you never played but hoped you had played?" topics have been covered already. Been there, done that, jaded. But sometimes it's nice to reply to them, for the umpteenth time. It gives the warm fuzzy illusion that someone really cares about your opinion!

The problem for me was that while we did laugh at many things together, this was probably the only major thing we had in common and it just couldn't carry the relationship, although I am surprised it did for this long. The main problem, I think, is that our mindsets were or became fundamentally different: although I generally consider myself outspoken and honest to the point of coming across as a bit of a dick on many occasions and to many people, I do often try to argue my viewpoint and make the other party understand where I'm coming from (even if they don't really agree with me, and usually I don't even care so long as they understand), whereas she was the kind of person who preferred short answers and often disregarded the philosophy behind them. The good thing about the clash of personalities is that there's no one to blame in my opinion. Silver linings and stuff.

Still feeling bad, mostly for her to be honest, and even the thought of revoking everything I said has reared its ugly head somewhere in the back of my mind. It would be pointless, though - the relationship may have ended, but the reason it did still exists and we would just go through the same notions all over again.

First song I heard when I woke up this morning was Jane Child "I Don't Wanna Fall In Love".

I can't get it out of my head.

Someone shoot me...please.

While quite old, and a fan remix, have you heard "So fucking crazy" yet? That should do the trick, though not sure if the cure is better than the disease...

Misread the calender when I was calling customers to arrange visits down in Texas. Since I was already headed to Kansas to pick up the machine mentioned earlier, I figured I'd check with a technician buddy to see if he needed a hand with anything. He passed me some work from the OEM, some maintenance visits which are usually crap and have little to do with "maintenance".

Got done with the scrap machine yesterday and I was driving down to Dallas today. Got near the OK / TX border and thought about the dates. "Uhh, shit!". I arranged those visits for the week of 13-17, not 06-10. There's no way I can just sit here for a week. Quick scramble to call the customers and ask to move things up to next week. Two of them are good with it and I'm hoping the third one can make it work, too. Fortunately, they all said previously that we might not be able to get much machine time anyway on the original schedule (this is why maintenance visits are crap - they never let you have time with the machine to work on it), so either way we gotta play it by ear once I arrive on-site.

effin' Gareth Bale strikes again....the Gunners better run roughshod over QPR.

You make me rethink my plans to start my own business way too frequently:(

Hope it works out for ya.

Thanks - I think it'll come out fine. This is a fairly casual industry, and these guys all sounded pretty flexible and easy to get along with. The hard part is that they all said - on the original <ahem> schedule - that we'd still have to play it by ear since production requirements are day-to-day. That's why "PM" (preventative maintenance) visits are often a crock: if the machine is working, then some production manager wants it to be running. The monkey wrench is that I'm 1,000+ miles from home so the travel costs are a consideration, and I'm too far away to tell them, "No problem - I'll come back in a week or two."

Do take a serious look at working for yourself. I would struggle if forced to go back to working directly for someone else. Yes, there is this constant worry in the back of your mind about where the next job comes from, but that's the only big negative that I've encountered. Some small stuff is there, too, but those matters can all be dealt with. Honestly, I don't regret the decision at all, and these periodic issues are small when considered as a whole.

Shoot me a PM if you have questions.

I've been trying to come up with the best way to complain about my allergies for a few hours now. I haven't had anything else to do since the allergies are making me feel less-than-great. Here's the best one I could come up with:

:'<

So many f*cking idiots in this world!
This is all for now :D

What sort of medication have you got? I recently dumped the old cetirizine and bought a packet of ebastine instead, and though it's probably too early to say for sure, it seems to be working a hell of a lot better.