Is it too early for summer vacation?

03.29.2015

The past month has seen little activity here on the old 'Mania. I've got plenty of stuff going on, just nothing really noteworthy enough to plop down words to. I guess that means it's time to take another little blog break. Of course last time that happened I think I made 3 posts in the following week.

Maybe that'll happen again?

Permalink random

Jobz

03.10.2015

My good close personal friend Chas G. "Sugar" Pop-lin II is now in search of a job.

His job search comes on the heels of the conclusion of my job search, and such is the way of our intertwined lives. We can trace our history to September of 1984 and how our lives have been impacted by a fateful morning before 10th grade Health class. But this isn't about Jer. He has his own internet to spout forth what a wonderful employee he is and a boon to any employer. No, this is about random trivia that goes through my head.

Jerry has had 4 full-time jobs since I've known him. Maybe add in 2 more if you count summer jobs before he became a computer professional. After my birthday last week, it hit me that I got my first job at 16, which means I've been working now for 30 years. 30 years. That's a lot of working, but I've worked at a lot of places.

1. My first job, the one when I was 16, was in the pharmacy at Humana Hospital.
2. Next I went to work at the Brimingham-Southern Library as a work-study job, but I still maxed out the hours they would let me work. After 1 year at school, I returned to Humana for a year or two (it's funny but I can't really remember how long I was there).
3. I next entered the realm of retail by working at Disc Connections, Alabama's first all-compact disc store.
4. Wanting a change, I went to work for Coca-Cola. For 12 hours. Then I went back to selling cds.
5. Eventually I made my way back to school, and was temporarily laid of from the cd store while something was going on with the lease. In the interim, I started working at All Star Movies (not Alabama's first all-videotape store), and didn't go back to the cd store. I managed to pick up a work study job at school to keep me busy between classes.
6. Trying to get a little more money, I left the video store and went to BookStar where I shelved books. For a month. Then I was offered a raise to come back to the video store. So I did.
7. With a year of school left, I got my first professional job at Sirsi.
8. The job at Sirsi was pretty much "get a little experience and then go get a better job", and a little after a year and right before graduation I left to go to Sword Microsystems, which started my path of Web Development.
9. I'm not really sure why, but I left Sirsi to go to ITC Deltacom and do ASP.net.
10. I was ready to leave after a year and was trying to line up another job. I was posting my resume to jobs and hearing back from recruiters. One of those recruiters managed to get me a job at NetMechanic.
11. After 3 days at NetMechanic I knew I was in over my head with their style of perl/cgi programming. I had been interviewing where Jerry worked, at Research Genetics, and finally got a call from them. Due to however the recruiter had set things p at NetMechanic, I had to finish out the week there before going to Research Genetics.
12. Eventually Research Genetics is closed down and I get laid off. I get lucky and go work for my old boss at Open Biosystems as a contractor.
13. 8 months into contracting it becomes evident I need a real job, with benefits! Jerry steps up again and finds a way to bring me over to Spiritus.
14. Thanks to funding cuts, I get laid of from Spiritus. I interview anywhere for anything. Again a recruiter finds me a job, this time for a pharmaceutical/hardware company in Decatur. A week into the job I find out this one is way over my head after talking to the guy that had originally been hired to write the code. Do you see a pattern with me and recruiters?
15. After the week in Decatur (I honestly can't remember the name of the company, the recruiter, anyone there....) I get a call from Corr Wireless. I was vastly overqualified for the position they were looking to fill, but at least it was a job I knew I could do.
16. 3 months into the Corr Wireless job I get a call from Keith that there's an opening at Westar that I would be a good fit for. Turnover at Corr was horrible - the day after I turned in my notice they offered me the IT Director (my boss) job as the IT Director also turned in his notice. I turn them down and go to Westar. I stay at Westar until I get a call from Jim saying my old job at Spiritus is again available. I return to Spiritus while staying on part-time at Westar (for about 2 years).
17. Once again the victim of funding cuts, I get laid off from Spiritus. The job search takes longer this time. Close to the 4-month mark I'm offered a job at Davidson Technologies. I take the job even though I'm not really sure what the job is for, and the few details I've heard I'm not sure I can do them.
18. After a week at Davidson I finally hear back from Dealnews. I end up spending 2 weeks at Davidson (still not sure what I was supposed to be doing, something about mobile app and test plans) before going to Dealnews - where I know both what I'm supposed ot be doing and how to do it.

30 years. 18 employers. Four of them even hired me twice. There are places I can't remember the name of, and places I can't remember anyone that I worked with. I don't know if that's due to the number of places I've worked or the 30 year time span.

Jerry has a lot more job hopping if he wants to catch up with me. I hope he doesn't try. I'd like to not switch jobs again for a long, long time. Maybe ever.

Permalink random

Workshop Games Begone

02.10.2015

For some reason it's hard to let old websites die. Once you go through the impossible task of finding a domain name that isn't taken, but still close to a combination of words you want, there's a certain pride in ownership of that name. Plus, if I thought of a name it's only a matter of time before someone else thinks of it, and I hate being the person that thinks of a name after it's been taken.

I registered russellmania.com in August of 1999. Most of the search engine hits are looking for

• Russell Wilson - since winning the Super Bowl in 2014.
• Russell Crowe - I guess it'd make a perfect fan site.
• Jack Russell Terriers - at one time they had russellmania.org.
• A 2001 episode of NYPD Blue.

When I've had a domain for 15+ years, the odds are good I'm going to hold on to it until I will it on to WWE Jason. Honestly, he asked for it.

In Feb 2013 I started another website on a lark. I had been working on my Zombie Mall boardgame and wondering where to host the files. Over on Board Game Geek a flame war (of sorts) had started thanks to Games Workshop trying to enforce their copyright of the term "Space Marine" against an author who was using the term in a way which had nothing to do with the Games Workshop universe. Games Workshop is universally hated among the hardcore board gaming sect that doesn't play Games Workshop games because they're quick to jump on anyone close to threatening, abusing, or using their intellectual property. Intellectual property is how they make money, so you can't really blame them - Steve Jackson does it all the time.

The smart ass in me was poking around and noticed the hyphen in the http://www.games-workshop.com/ domain. I wondered if "workshop-games" was taken. It wasn't! $15 later I had a new domain name with which to host my Zombie Mall files. I made sure that the website in no way resembled the Games Workshop site, not did it even mention them. Now I could wave my finger in the face of he British gaming jugernaut when they claimed I was infringing on their name.

They never showed their face. Poopheads.

In the interim I played around with some more up-to-date design methods than I had been using at work (or even on this site). I added a download tracker so I could see what files were be downloaded, and to what countries!

Over time, the site became more of a chore and infringed on the fun I was having putting together my boardgame rules and pieces. After enough time, I got to the point where I didn't really want to make more game rules. It was becoming a chore I didn't even want to do.

When the domain came up for renewal in 2015 I decided to let it lapse. I moved the files to Dropbox where anyone interested could still download the files, the files I hand't touched in almost a year. I updated links on Board Game Geek to point to the new locations. And now I've no longer got a domain to worry about keeping up to date or hogging up loads of bandwidth.

But it's not easy to just let it go. Even though I've left it alone for a year. Maybe this is what it's like when the kids move out?

Permalink programming/interweb

Salma + Underwear + Guns

02.04.2015

Last month I saw a trailer for a new Salma Hayek movie coming out in February entitled Everly. From the trailer, it looked like "Salma in underwear with guns." I can support that. Salma's 49. I don't care. Sure, this wasn't going to be an action packed blockbuster like Desperado, but any trailer that has:

... is going to grab my attention and I'll give it a chance. From there, I was looking forward to the release date of Feb 23.

But wait! In todays modern age, some movies are released on the line before they are released theatrically. It turns out this was one such movie. Even better, it was available through Amazon's streaming service. Even better than that, thanks to deferring rush shipping on a whole bunch of orders placed with my Amazon Prime account, I had enough screaming video credit built up that buying the movie, regularly $14.99, would cost me nothing through the use of those credits. Free Salma in underwear with guns. Sign me up!

I invited my good close personal friend Charles Jr over for the inaugural viewing. Expectations were set appropriately low (did you watch the trailer?) and away we went. 2 minutes in we were greeted with:

... which gave me high hopes. I'm not a butt man, but Salma has a nice butt.

Unfortunately everything fell apart from there. It seems the plot was not Salma runs around in underwear with guns. The plot had something to do with bad Japanese acting and a director with a horror movie background that had watched Bound too many times and tried to mix it with the action of Shoot 'Em Up.

I watch a lot of movies, and I'll pretty much watch anything. While this isn't the worse movie I've seen (Ghost Rider 2 is the most recent bad movie I rememebr since it took weeks between starting and finishing due to the breaks I had to take) I doubt I'll ever watch it again. For me, that makes it an average movie, but on the low side of average.

Permalink movies/tv/dvd

January Update Time

01.29.2015

The past few weeks have been scarce of any type of update, which may be the norm for a while. I've been staying just busy enough to forget anything interesting enough to post here on a regular basis. Give me time and I can save up, though!

One of my Christmas projects was to stick my house number on the front door so that maybe the @%@#$% FedEx guy can find my house. I wanted something a little classier than the stick-n-peel numbers you usually see on the mailbox, so I got metal stick-n-peel numbers from Amazon. The front door is metal so I couldn't screw anything into the door. I stuck them on when it was in the 20's outside, and so far they've remained stuck!

Speaking of 20's, it was cold one morning when I arrived at work. I tend to just get up and go to work when I wake up in the morning if the alarm hasn't gone off yet (which is set for 6:00). This particular morning I woke way too early and pulled into the parking lot at 6:00. I thought 6° at 6:00 had a nice sound to it. Almost as good as the time I heard a weatherman say it was "2 below in Tupelo".

Speaking of work, I'm loving working at the Dealnews thus far. I managed to finish Phase 1 of my office setup this week. Besides my work-centered Mac, I've got my old Vista powered laptop from home set up as my DVD ripper. All of those TV shows I've got and never get around to watching... well now I can have them sitting around on hard drives not being watched.

My main need for having a work office is game storage. I'm trying to keep games that have a higher probability of being played by the DN crew close at hand in the office. X-Wing is a pretty easy game to bring out. It's pretty and moves fairly fast once you get your forces picked and configured.

Formula D, from the top shelf, made it to the table for play last Friday. We had a 4-player, 1 lap race. It's the first time I've ever seen anyone start in last place yet end up winning. Even better, I was the person that started in last place. After the race, I looked up the rules we played wrong (set up cars with 30 points instead of 20, braking damage wasn't distributed amongst as many components as it should have been), but we were all playing by the same rules so it shouldn't have made too much of a difference. It was a fun game nonetheless. Hopefully we'll get to playing with some season rules so that finishing in something other than first place makes a difference.

My walking has slacked off thanks to working and the weather. It's harder to factor in a good walking time when working 8 hours and the sun going down around 5:00. This past week I've started to get back on a 3-day walking schedule. Now I have to keep it up - at least for another week!!!

For Jerry & Keith's gaming Christmas presents this year, I went the cheap(er) & hobby route. For our Frag game I decided to get some non-Frag figures, in this instance some Infinity figures. I painted them and mounted on some 3rd party bases, giving each a different color around the base edge in case it would make a difference. Jerry got the orange & green alien (possibly a chick) on the upper left, with Keith getting the goateed swordsman in the middle. I got myself the last one, which reminds me of Beachhead from the GI Joe comics.

Those are your 2015 Russellmania highlights thus far.

Permalink boardgames gaming miniatures random