I confessed to my friend Jason yesterday about an incident earlier in the day on Monday. Cosmically, it clued me in more than anything else that my time at that job was coming to an end.
Several months ago, I researched completing my master's degree in an attempt to be more marketable. I accidentally gave out my real cel phone number, too.
So. About 9am on Monday I got a call from a strange area code and answered it thinking it might be someone from far away wanting to hire me away from all this.
It wasn't. It was a guy from one of those online universities.
By the time we had established that, I had already made it outside for a private discussion.
"Our records show that you have a career in IT. You can get your Master's in Information Technology in about two years," he started.
"I can't commit to that, or anything at this time."
"Don't you think a Master's degree would be good for your career?" he persisted.
"I don't know what would be good for my career right now."
Slight pause.
"What do you mean?" he asked the question he never should have asked.
I unloaded. To paraphrase:
"Yeah only I'm really really questioning whether helping my career in IT is really something I want. Between you and me, I hate this crap. Whenever someone asks me what my career goals are all I can come up with is 'I'd like to continue living in a house and feeding my family'. If there were anything else I felt at all qualified to do I'd be doing that right now because between off-shoring and automation, the jobs seem to be getting crappier and crappier and the compensation gets worse and worse and there is no shortage of systems that get broken needlessly because of off-shoring and automation. Why would I want to do this better? This sucks, my friend. Being more qualified to do something I hate does not seem like the path to happiness, to me."
My breakdown was followed by another slight pause.
"How about an MBA? Every career benefits from an MBA."
A little embarrassed for having sobbed on a telemarketer, I asked to be placed on a list to be called back in a few months.

Yesterday was kind of fun in a lot of ways.
I filled out my employee satisfaction survey, but it was pretty unsatisfying.
First, there were questions like "Do you feel that management values your opinions?" and "Do you get clear direction from your supervisors?"
There were no questions like "Do you feel that your manager is an asshat?" and "When you snap, how many co-workers do you plan on taking with you? 1-10? 11-20? 21-50? Tri-state killing spree?"
Anyway, the form was back-ended on a database on our network. Needless to say, when the results are tallied at the end of the week, somehow 321% of employees would rate their overall experience as "Extremely Poor".
Also, there is a LOT of cursing in the comments section.
Either way it's over for me.
Ten minutes before I was supposed to leave I got my "even-though-you-had-the-vacation-time-we-are-firing-you-for-attending-your-wife's-uncle's-funeral" paperwork and was escorted from the building.
I don't think I've ever been escorted from the building.
When my contract ended at Reliant (along with all the other contracts of people not living in India) I locked the doors behind myself and turned off the lights.
So this morning I slept in.
Plans for today include a mid-day screening of Charlotte's Web and some tennis. Maybe a trip to the pool.
I should also scrape the job boards to see what flakes off.

We made some stops on the way back.
After listening to me complain the whole way up about never getting to go to a cave, Shana veered off the road and entered a state park. By some strange coincidence, this is the very same state park her family camped at every summer while she was growing up. Needless to say, she knew where the caves were.
After daring each other to hike the mile and a half into the mountains, we jumped out at the same time. Gwynyth was pretty horrified but ended up hiking the whole thing in her pajamas.
Here I am with some mountains and caves in the background:

You can probably tell I'm stunned.
I saw some caves. The official Devil's Den cave was cool, but the "Devil's Ice Box" cave actually blows cold air through some natural process I don't understand. I thought it was awesome, even having hiked there in backless shoes.
In another unplanned stop yesterday, we stumbled across the Russell Stover chocolate factory and the associated factory outlet.
We have enjoyed the sugar-free stuff they produce for years and this was a great chance to pick up pounds of it for next to nothing.
Of course, some of it is nearly expired probably, and the labels are written in Spanish sometimes.
I don't know what this means . . .
"Este producto puede causar diarreas pasajeras y flatulencia."
. . . But it sounds delicious, doesn't it?

Ok. I've got about a hundred emails with little red exclamation points next to them. Before I get to those, I need to fill out my "Employee Satisfaction Survey". Anyone who has read along this far will know how that might look when I'm finished. Hey, it is computer based. I'll have some fun with that.

Hey everybody,

I'm back in town from the giant Fayetteville/Bentonville/Rogers adventure of '06.
I'm also mostly broken from thousands and thousands of hours in the car. I can only imagine how tired I would be if I had been driving!

I'll be back at work tomorrow. Although my paperwork was completed according to process, I got a text message on Friday asking where I was. I hadn't been at my desk since Tuesday.

OMG,

G

The road is harsh, people. Seriously, seriously harsh.
We decided to stop for the night in Paris. While quick to surrender, the natives smell strongly of ash tray and stale vomit.
We took a moment to see the sights worth seeing.

Eiffel tower:




They take safely SRSLY SRSLY:



The dumpster behind Stubby's:



Look! Wild life! Actual nature!



The glory of nature is best experienced first hand.
We were scheduled to stop in Moscow, but it looked completely scary.
We had lunch in beautiful Lufkin, Texas. Aside from finding the ONLY Starbucks on our extremely long trip, we came face to face with the dangers the locals stare down every day.



We had dinner at a quaint little Scottish cafe. Oddly, the "Quarter Pounder with Cheese" appears on the menu here in Paris as "The Royale with Cheese". I'd never get used to the customs in this strange and wonderful place. I feel fortunate we are leaving first thing Thursday morning.

I survived the meeting yesterday through strategic application of honesty.
What was supposed to have been a lunch meeting turned out to be a crowded-around-my-desk meeting. The people not in the meeting fled to lunch and no one else could leave the NOCC.
Hungry, bitter, and used up, I went over the outline for the meeting.
Hey! It actually looked like I did stuff! And since I was busy all morning fixing broken crap I actually felt like I did stuff.
When we went over my task list I said I was developing a set of scripts to automate everything I'm currently doing. While "developing" is a stretch, I am stealing the scripts off the internet.
The weird convoluted undocumented processes passed on through oral tradition should be scripted. The results should be verified, once per day, by a living person. Preferably not a person living off-shore.
At any rate, I'm attempting for the first time to automate myself out of a job. It goes against my core beliefs as a tech worker, but at this point it is me against the machine so the machine can do the boring part as far as I'm concerned.
What do I do once the scripts are finished? I don't script well. This is taking forever. I'll be ready for retirement long before I can turn these over for use in production. And if, by some miracle, I do get them working, my hard drive will probably get some kind of spike through it accidentally or something. No stress.
Today I'm not at work. We are headed out of town for the rest of the week to attend a funeral.
I'll have my laptop, but updates may be sporadic.

Through the awesomeness that is Coke Reward Points, I upgraded my trial EverQuest account to the full-on whole deal.
You may remember my nostalgic run through the Kobold mines?
Anyway, I'm still fighting with customer service in an attempt to gain access to my old character from back in the day. I left him sitting on the banks of the Lake of Ill Omen. The least I can do is walk him back home.
So I started over with a new account and a new character, still in the Kobold mines, and ran around smashing cave rats, bats and spiders, slowly gaining levels and skills and abilities and gear.
Run up, target the monster, hit "1" for Auto Attack, get a cola, loot the corpse, repeat.
What is the appeal?
I finally figured it out last night. I get no sense of accomplishment at work at all. I have no idea why I still show up. I feel totally superfluous and physically nauseous as soon as I show up in the morning.
Smashing virtual vermin is honest work. I clear the tunnels for my co-workers and protect the weaker players while sharpening my skills, progressing in power and wealth and gaining better equipment.
I get everything I need from a job except the ability to pay my real-life mortgage which is, in turn, the only reason I continue to drive in everyday.
Now that I have this new found awareness, the first order of business is to suppress it during my "Work Week Prioritization" lunch meeting with management.

"You know, members of the sales team are starting to look like Kobolds to me," makes no sense out of context and just makes me long for a "Rusty Steel Sword" and "Splintered Wooden Shield" to protect the noobs.
Poor noobs. They'll have to protect themselves for a bit.