Archive for October, 2008

Mike Needs a Life Blog Reposts – Part 14

October 21, 2008
It’s been a while

How is it there just seems to be not enough time in the day for all the stuff we want to do with ourselves. It’s an interesting phenomenon that as we get older it seems that time moves faster.. add to that a myriad of personal projects and no job to frame the day, and it’s a wonder I get anything accomplished. Most times I find myself staring at the computer screen running the list of things I need to finish through my head… and I just kind of get brain lock.. nothing gets done because I don’t know where to start, and if I work on one project I feel like I’m shirking my duties on another… sigh. I’ve been feeling pretty crazy lately.. too many things going on.

The back porch and roof over it are finished, sound system is installed, electricity is all wired up.. ready to accept a kiln for working, and a host of friends for a backyard BBQ to christen it.. the weather is truning nice, and it’s time I had one.. it feels like it’s been years… probably has.

My mom brought me some palm plants to plant in my yard, so I gotta go do that before they die in their meager pots.. one more thing to add to the list.. of course I cant plant them where I want them without pulling up some sod and finishing the planting bed that will surround them, so that means a trip to lowes for more mulch and an afternoon of getting dirty.

Halloween is less than two weeks away, and I have yet to finish the drum riser and the decoration panels for the stage.. they are built and painted black, now I need to hang a couple black lights and start painting.. yet another reason to go to lowes to get a couple plug ends so I can wire up the lights. I know I have a ton of these things in with the rest of the halloween stuff, but Dave hasnt pulled the boxes out of his attic yet… I hope we can pull all this together in time.. it’s starting to stress me out.. but that’s nothing new.. halloween always stresses me out.

I bought a whole new clutch assembly for my car since the old one is just about to give up the ghost, that’ll be a fun weekend project.. yet another thing to do… while I’m at it, I might as well replace the leaky power steering hose and the timing belt, both parts I bought years ago and have never taken the time to replace…

I’ve been reading alot about metal casting the last couple days, seems very cool.. I think I’ll be trying some of that in the future along with our glass casting enterprise.. I just want to do everything.. this I think is part of my issues with life in general.. I can’t decide what I want, because I want it all.

The back yard is really getting to be a comfortable spot to hang these days.. the porch and pergola are great.. now with tunes and electricity it really is cool.. now if I could only KILL my neighbor’s basset hound that seems to enjoy nothing so much as standing at the fence barking at me for hours on end, my picture of serenity would be complete. Goddamnit that fucking dog pisses me off.. what is wrong with people that they let their dogs do that.. I swear it takes everything I have sometimes not to load up my BB gun and shoot that fucker in the ass.

Nothing to report on the Job Front, I haven’t heard from rick regarding the potential job or the potential contract work.. I did talk to another colleague of mine who does contract work for another small local firm and they asked if he knew that ‘guy from my old firm that did all their marketing graphics, because they wanted some stuff done for their website and collateral materials, and they loved the style. I said great! I’ll sit and meet with them.. haven’t heard back on that either.. haha. Seems I am great at making people want me, but not so great at actually getting them to actually DO anything about it. Story of my life.. I’m sure it’ll all work out in the end. I’ll start my actual Job Search sometime after Halloween when I have some time to devote to it. Then I can really start freaking out.

Christina Bought 7 dollar tickets the other day to St. Thomas.. she said it was too good to pass up.. I have to agree. 7 bucks each way per person.. grand total round trip airfare for two people after taxes and such.. 120 bucks. We’ll be down there for 5 days and will be staying with my friend Ray who owns a home on Water Island, right next to St Thomas.. WOO HOO! Damn, I love the Caribbean. Maybe I’ll look for a job while I’m down there.

If I don’t come back, don’t bother looking for me

Mike Needs a Life Blog Reposts – Part 13

October 3, 2008
The Glass House

So I’m almost finished with my deck out back! Next comes the tin roof on the pergola. It’s looking very cool, and Jeff and I are bursting at the seams with ideas.. we just need to find the time to make it all happen.. haha. Add all that to Halloween which is coming right around the corner, and I have almost no free time these days. Good thing I’m unemployed.

So Christina and I are going camping this weekend to Wekiva springs. The weather is getting nice, and I definitely need a weekend away from all the house work. Gary and Karen are going with us as usual, and I suspect there will be lots of eating and drinking around the campfire.

Mike Needs a Life Blog Reposts – Part 12

October 3, 2008
The interview

I met with mr X and his colleagues yesterday. I went in at 10:00 and was there until 12:30. It was mr X.. who from now on shall be called Rick, two of his people from his west palm office, and three of the other big cheeses from various florida satellite offices. Apparently even though this firm is quite large (2000 employees), they are mostly made up of smaller offices that have been bought by the main company up in canada. This is very cool because the offices have that ‘small firm’ feel and there aren’t many people in any one place. The Maitland office where I would be working if they should offer this job to me is a very small operation.. right up my alley.

So anyways, we sat down and right off the bat I felt at home.. these guys were the cool, casual type of guys I’d always been comfortable around.. they all were vert affable, smiling and joking. There was a delightful absence of any HR vampire. These were the decision makers… the guys who run the offices.. sweet. No one asked me what I knew about their firm, or any of the typical bullshit questions I’d gotten used to hearing in the interviews I’ve given at my old firm with the ever present HR people sucking the life out of everything. It was refreshing to actually meet with the people I’d be working with, and even though the whole thing has to be approved by the corporate office still, they were very excited about the opportunity to work together. They essentially are small companies come together under a single umbrella, so they aren’t used to having large-firm graphics support like we had at back at my old place. This is cool because it gives me an opportunity to go back in time essentially to the days when I was happiest… when we were creating a standard.. building a style.. and even though I’ve done all this before, I think I could definitely still have a great time doing it again.

After about 30 minutes of chit chat about my time at my old firm, and the inevitable industry questions about what happened over there, why are they laying off, etc.. I plugged my power book into their projector and spent about an hour going through all my portfolio graphics.. they were very excited, it was nice to meet people that haven’t been so jaded by super-graphics that they still got excited about the prospect of having them for their projects. Then we spent some time talking about Rick’s plan, and how and if I thought it would work for them. Of course it would.. quite easily. This little gfx group would be me, Rick, and two other people and we’d service the Florida offices for proposals, and occasional project graphics.. the corporate headquarters has a very capable graphics staff, but they don’t service the remote offices, so we’d pretty much be left alone.

So all in all it couldn’t have gone better I don’t think. They are taking this to the corporate folks to get it approved, and if that happens, I’m guessing that I’m in! WOO HOO! I’m actually quite excited about the idea of starting from scratch with a graphics department, and building it up the way it should be done, instead of working with the ever-present baggage of the other artists I’d worked with in the past, and the endless political bullshit that came down from all of the project managers and partners who were pissing in their corners all the time.