Tag Archives: work

Project Nerd Prints

I have attended a lot of conventions.  One of the things I love to check out is the Artist Alley.  This is where the various comic/fantasy/painter artists hang out and have tables and do sketches.  You can walk by and visit with them, browse their artwork and even have them do a sketch for you.

From an photography artist, this made me a little jealous.  I love the idea of sitting in a booth or table and doing on the spot artwork for people, or having elaborate mat-boards for people to browse through.  But as we all have learned, I am still in the early stages of drawing, and I don’t really have some printed artwork that I can display…….

or do I?

Castle in a Panic (P365-173)I went through some of my older photos and noticed a theme.  I have a lot of nerdy prints that I have taken over the years.  Some of these would look cool hung up in a study or in your geeky nerd cave.  So I have decided to compile them all into one place, and then offer them up “Project Nerd Prints”.

If I am at a convention I will try and have some of these printed out and available, as well as having the ability to do on the spot portraits.  This is coupled with my working on sketching.

If you think of something that would be a good Nerd Print, please pass the suggestion on and I will see what I can do.  Please feel free to browse the full gallery over at Flickr and some of the selected works below.

The hits keep on hitting (The recap post)

Objects in Mirror (P365-163)I would really like to start this post with something like “The nightmare is over” based on my last post, but I don’t think it would work out that well.  You see, we managed to escape Kuwait!  Yeah, I know, that part sounds great, but the circumstances in which we left make for a much worse story.  Sure there is the usual parts about my passport being stolen and going through all hell to get a new one re-issued.  The problem, of course, is that the process for getting my work visa so that I can continue to do my job there was already started using my old passport.  If I have a new passport number, that process had to start over again.  This meant that it would be that much harder for me to get on base to do my job.  This is just how Kuwait works.  It’s stupid and corrupt and they seriously need an overhaul of their government processes.  (I can say that now that I am safely in the U.S.)

The other problem we experienced was with our team.  Sarah and I were both working on this project, her as a tech writer and me as an engineer.  With all of my issues with getting on Base, Sarah was tasked with driving some of the folks who were in the middle of the visa process and couldn’t drive (yet another f’d up thing).  This meant that most of her day was spent on base working in the data center with a bunch of guys.  Now, we all know how guys usually talk, and for the most part it’s not too bad or usually very tolerable.  Sarah is also pretty thick skinned and can dish it out as much as the next guy.  But there happened to be one individual who took Misogyny to the next level.  Lots of comments about women in the workplace, can’t trust something that bleeds, etc..  This got to be a bit much and it was VERY obvious that Sarah was uncomfortable around him.

We mentioned it to a few folks in an effort to have someone maybe mention to him to stop being a douche.  No one did.  Finally, after some more comments, I urged her to send an e-mail to our boss back in the states and put it in writing.  The response that we got back was about on par, mentioning that an e-mail would go out and they would ask people to behave themselves.

What happened was completely different.

The e-mail went out all right, saying that someone from the company would be coming out to do a sensitivity training and that folks would be coming in on their day off, charging a code to the company, to attend.

The team started freaking out.  They instantly jumped on the defensive.  Some of them remembered that we mentioned the one individual so they knew what was going on and who was involved.  The next morning, what we thought was going to be the typical morning meeting was dead silence and awkwardness.  When the meeting was over, I went upstairs and Sarah went to drive folks in.  Only they had gathered up in a group and were discussing something in private.  When Sarah asked if they were leaving the comment “We need to prove this isn’t a hostile environment” was made and the group, sans the accused, went to a different car and drove off.  This left Sarah to drive in the guy she accused……alone.

Trapped in a car for an hour, he spurted out a half-hearted apology that was more of a “I’m sorry that you got mad” as opposed to the “I’m sorry for what I did” and then tossed it back in her face saying she should have said something to him and that it was her fault.

Upon arriving at the base, feeling sick and stressed, Sarah came back to the apartment and we made the decision to head home.  I was only a few days away from getting my Passport back and she needed hers back from our sponsor.  The next few days were pretty rough.  We had told the bosses what happened and they seemed ok with us heading out.  The team, seeing me as an extension of this “issue” shut me out.  I could hardly talk to any of them and had to funnel everything through our team lead, who actually was the nicest of the bunch and helped us out.  It was very clear that we were being shunned.

Here is where things get (more) wacky.  We spoke to our bosses back in the states.  We knew that contract work can be tough and that the company can only put so many people on any given contract.  They mentioned that there may not be something for us, but there was some things in the hopper that could become available.  Even better, as we got closer to returning, we were told that there was another Data center move down in NC that we would be working on.

Things looked ok, we were leaving the hostile environment, we still had work, and we felt much better.

Then we got home.

Surprise! (P365-125)Turns out the NC move got delayed and we went into a meeting with one of the company bosses.  They were giving us a 30 day employment window but they had no work for us.  While there were two contracts that could be won soon, they didn’t have any guarantee, so our expected termination date was July 12th.  Originally, they explained that they really expected to win these contracts within the next two weeks and that we should “Keep checking our e-mail” to hear word, but that we didn’t need to come into the office and we may want to start looking.

I took it as it was presented and was hopeful for upcoming work.  Then I got home to find that my work e-mail had been disabled.  The next morning, the termination letter was in my g-mail inbox (still reading July 12th).  This sounded a lot less like “Wait and see” and a whole lot like “You need to leave”.

I mentioned to them that it was kind of fishy that we were asked to leave so soon after filing a complaint against someone.  The response was that we were warned that there may not be work, and that we came back voluntarily.  I hardly call escaping such a hostile environment as a volunteer move.

So here we are now.  I am looking for new work, as it seems that even if the company does win something, I doubt my phone will ring.  We managed to stock a lot away in savings so we are fine until something comes along, which hopefully will be soon.

I have had a lot of people tell me that I need to “Lawyer up” and get all I can out of this.  To be honest.  I just want to move on.  We both do.  We are home and safe, no one was hurt (much), and we just want to move on with our lives.  The folks that work in the company aren’t bad people, they are just doing what makes the most business sense.  The folks on the team have to live with the type of people they are.  It’s not worth to effort to cause trouble and burn bridges.

So, anyone know of a place that’s hiring?

World Traveler

Huge sorry for the lack of content for the last few weeks. Things have been a tad bit hectic as of late. You see, I have been traveling around for work and working very long days, so I haven’t had a lot of time to write. After the London trip I went back out to North Carolina for a week, and then off to Arizona for a month or so. The downside was a serious lack of time, but the plus side is I got to see some cool stuff and even take some great pictures.

I was down in Sierra Vista AZ and the landscape looks amazing. Armed with my trusty camera travel kit (aka, “My Bag” stuff to the right —> ) I set out to capture some great sunsets. Below are the results:

Sunset at Sierra Vista
Looking towards the mountains in Sierra vista lends to a great sunset shot.

Tombstone Cemetary
In Tombstone AZ, just about a 30 min drive from Sierra Vista, there are two cemeteries. The one most people know is Boot Hill, which is where the victims of the OK Corral are buried, and then the main cemetery, where everyone else goes. The real one is MUCH better looking (Boot hill looks like someones Halloween decorations).Cross at Sunset

The graves there date back to the foundation of the town.

For comparison, here are the Boot Hill graves:

Seems Safe
While venturing out (by myself) I ran across this sign and thought it might not be a good idea to be out, at night, so late, alone.

Shot for a shot
Back in Tombstone, at Big Nose Kates Saloon, I had a great shot of this whiskey. When the Barkeep asked if I wanted a picture of the bottle, he whipped out all the props for it!

After one of the trips to Arizona, I took a side trip to Parris Island South Carolina to watch my Son (who, you may remember, went off to the Marines) graduate Basic Training (aka, boot camp (aka, 3 months of hell)). Proud Father is Proud.

And lastly, not that I am back, I am trying to get back to normal. This means attending events like the local DC Metro MINI’s annual picnic! Where we got together and took this great shot:

Click to Super Embiggen

So, yeah. It’s been a bit busy. I will try and keep things updated more now that I am home (for now)

Busy weekend

This weekend was pretty damn packed!  Spent some time with Louis and Jen helping them move.  It was practically just across the street but still managed to smash my face on a box, rack my knee on the concrete and jam my thumb to the point where it flipped the nail up.  Came home and finished up adding the divider to Sarah’s planter so she could finish up her herb garden.  We also had a small visitor emerge from his cocoon.  The butterfly from the previous post got some garden time before taking off (or being eaten by a bird, we aren’t too sure about what happened with him, but we will hope for the best.)

Battered and accomplished I set in for some Portal 2 time.  I will do my best to get a full review of it up sometime after I finish the single player and start in on Co-Op (and whenever I can stop laughing!).

Sunday I managed to replace the kitchen sink disposal too!  Thankfully Lowes was open and had a great plumbing expert on hand!  Install of the new one was done in about an hour and they were an awesome help, despite the kludge that is my kitchen sink plumbing.

All in all, a very fulfilling weekend!

One month later…

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Yeah, it’s been about a month since my last post and the reason that it’s been forever since a post is because I had some major changes in my life.  Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad.  I found my self looking for some new experiences on the job front and a few friends of mine that work downtown had the best opportunity for me.  As of the end of September I am now a Senior Functional Analyst working for, yet another, agency in lovely downtown DC. I am in charge of designing, building, and maintaining a lab environment for a number of different applications.  It’s a huge responsibility and a big advancement for my career.  It’s also an ass load of more work and because of it my free time has started to dwindle.  I am really hoping to continue posting, but it may not be once a week like I had been trying to do before.

So to catch you up on some of the various gadgets and games in the life of Steve, a number of games have hit my shelves in the last month. Shortly after DragonCon an eagerly anticipated game was released.  Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions!  I am a huge Spidey fan so this was a must for me.  I hope to write up a full review on it soon (even though I know it’s kind of late for it).  I also picked up Halo Reach.  Believe it or not, I have not yet finished the campaign!  I have been playing co-op with my friend Lee and haven’t wanted to spoil it.  Lastly, just today I downloaded Comic Jumper from the XBLA.

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For gadgets I have only one real big toy purchase but it’s something that has been a long time coming.  I picked up a Nikon D3000 DSLR camera.  Many many years ago I used to be rally into photography.  I was the primary photographer for my school newspaper and yearbook, and that was back before digital!  I have always loved photography and have been yearning to get a decent SLR.  The D3000 is purely an entry level DSLR camera and that works fine for me.  Since it’s been a good 20 years since I did any work with F-stops and aperture I am just fine with having the camera hold my hand a little.  I am very very pleased with it and have been having a blast taking pictures of damn near everything.  It even got me to update my gallery linked here on the site (over there in the right hand side of the screen).

So until next time….