Happy Birthday Jeremy

Sending Happy Birthday wishes to my Brother today. I Love you.

Personally feeling like utter garbage today. Been stuffed up all week, and the Allegra is not helping much. I think I must be fighting a cold. Damn snot why doust thou vex me so?

Been playing Everquest lately. My wizard is now level 64 and has his epic weapon. This information probably means little to anyone that does not play Everquest but to us freaks it means I have been playing too much. Its going to be interesting to see how the MMORPG genre changes with the upcoming releases of Worlds of Warcraft and Everquest II.

Current Music: Todd Rundgren "Never Never Land"

Biltmore

The company I work for took me on a corporate retreat to Biltmore last week. Apart from a few crappy team-building exercises the trip was great fun. I can't imagine living in such an amazing place. That kind of lifestyle is so far removed from my reality that I can't even begin to understand it. Lisa and I will have to go there for a weekend trip sometime.

Current Music: Orgy "Fiction(Dreams In Digital)"

The Carolina Renaissance Festival

It's that time of year again. Time for The Carolina Renaissance Festival

Current Music: David Bowie "Pablo Picasso"

Tattoos for everyone.

I have been getting a new Tattoo for the last few months. Still have another trip before its finished enough to show a picture. I'm really happy with how its going. If you live in the Charlotte area and your thinking about getting some ink, you should check out Nikki's Tattoo Studio. One of my co-workers has gotten two tattoos there and he is just as happy as I am.

Current Music: Rob Zombie "Pussy Liquor"

IT Outsourcing

By now everyone has read at least one blog or article about all of the US Technical jobs being shipped to India and other places. This trend has hurt us directly. Lisa was laid-off when pretty much her whole department was outsourced. Don't bring up the fact that the department was poorly managed in the first place. Also, don't mention that expensive projects were routinely started only to be canceled weeks from roll out, add to that the fact that the company in question posted great earnings for the year. Sorry to all the people that worked hard, because they thought they had a stable job. Grrrr.

I'm not too happy with this trend. In what seems like just a few months the whole Software Industry has shifted. What was once a promising career that everyone wanted to get into has suddenly turned into a mess. Most of these companies will not see the kind of savings they think they will. The overhead costs and slow turn around times can eat away at the expected savings.

All most everyday now someone at work mumbles something about outsourcing. However unlikely it is that our jobs will head overseas, we are still worried. You never know what could happen when the whole industry is looking at outsourcing as the magic pill to cure all their woes.

I don't know what the answer to this problem is. Too be honest I'm a little scared. What kind of job am I going to have in 5-10 years. I think the real problem here is that companies have never viewed employees as people. We are just another resource to be moved around and allocated in whatever manner they like. Making some profit with happy people should be more important than making a lot of profit with fewer people. Constantly trying to make more money should not be the goal that everyone shoots for. Sure you have to stay innovative, sure you have to have new and better products, sure being efficient and not wasting money is important, and sure some people don't know what they are doing and need to be let go. But, indiscriminately firing people so the officers of a company can add another zero onto their income is pretty damn lame.

Current Music: Neil Young "Old Man"

Online Games and Hobbies

I canceled Planetside and Starwars Galaxies. Both games got boring after a while. However, I started playing Everquest again. It can get boring also, but I so far I'm having fun with playing. I have invested so much time in EQ that my character is pretty flexible. I can only hope that EQ2 has the same depth as EQ. Galaxies was nice to look at, but it just didn't have that something extra to make me keep playing.

I have also been messing with Polymer Clay again. I have so many hobbies that I feel guilty spending money on this one. I really want to buy a bunch of tools and equipment to make things easier. I just hope I'm able to stay interested in it long enough to justify the cost.

The Babylon 5 Season 3 box set comes out today.

Current Music: The Cars "Candy-o"

Take my blood please.

Yesterday at the Doctors office the tech tried multiple times to take my blood, each time failing. I was not a happy camper. I had to go to Lab Corp today to have blood taken, which was a quick and easy process. I really need to change Doctors.

Current Music: Cat Stevens "Life"

Being Sick Is Not Fun.

I don't know what I had, but it kicked my ass. It was either some sort of Intestinal Flu or possibly Food Poisoning. I'm still weak, but my system is getting back to normal.

Last week I had the pleasure of watching most of the demo movies for HalfLife2. This is going to be an amazing game. Doom3 is going to have a hard time impressing me after I play HalfLife2. I'm starting to get back into Polymer Clay again. It is a real shame that the only local Guild is based in Ashville.

Current Music: Todd Rundgren "Feel It"

Order of the Phoenix and the not-so jolly green giant

Well I read the new Harry Potter book this weekend. Wow, another great book in the series. I already can't wait for the next book in the series. The only thing I can find to complain about is that once I started reading I couldn't stop.

The Incredible Hulk was very good. I was not expecting it to be any good at all. I kept hearing people say negative things about the lack of action, bad animation, etc... But, what I found was a pretty good comic book adaptation. I think I might actually like this one better than Spider Man.

Current Music: Monster Magnet "Negasonic Teenage Warhead"

Planetside

I have been playing PlanetSide almost every night since I bought it. What a fun game. Everquest was getting very frustrating as I gained in levels. Planetside does not suffer from that problem as far as I can tell. Its so easy to just jump in and have fun without getting concerned over details. I give it two thumbs up.

Current Music: Nine Inch Nails "Please"