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Well well well... where to start? I guess, for starters, you should read this here press release.

Go on. You can come back when you're done. The rest of this won't make a whole lot of sense without that bit of background information.

So, up until this weekend, I was an employee of 3-G International, Inc. And now I'm not.

I'm still trying to decide how to feel about all this. The products people, who are going to go form the "new" 3GI, have a chance at absolutely staggering success. On the other hand, being a part of this larger company means that the layoffs that happened in November aren't likely to be repeated, at least not without some sort of advance warning.

The deal is quite good for me. It's not necessary to go into details, but it's a good time to be a programmer.

This is rather disjointed, isn't it? It's remarkably indicative of how I've been feeling lately. All over everywhere.

When I first heard about this, it was summarized to me as "We're going to sell you off to another company, and we'll take the 3GI name and Passage and go form our own company." My mental image at the time (which I've repeated to as many people as will listen) was that of the old Saturn rockets that were used in the Apollo program. The rockets that, when they had completely burned through the fuel in a stage, discarded it, and let it fall back to earth. I felt like I was strapped on to that discarded stage (there are no-hire clauses between the two companies -- unless both companies agree to it, no one can leave one of the companies and go to work for the other for like four years or something). In some ways, I still do, a bit.

Of course, the president of 3GI is going to become president of the new 3GI, that means the new company is going to have all of the top level management flaws the old company had, because it's the same top level management. I really feel better about working for the two guys now in charge of the office, because I like their vision and such for how things should be run much better. I just hope they actually run things like they intend to run them, and don't get snookered into some other way of running things.

I hope I can just destress. For the past week, things have just been getting on my nerves in the worst way. They'd have been quite bothersome even without worrying about how my job was going to change, but stacked on top of that, they've been markedly worse. Since I'm in a rambly sort of mood at the moment, I'll divulge.

The Heroes Game: Specifically, the game this Saturday. I learned an important lesson from a creative writing class I took in college: "In a group, if you're the one who's the most serious about the current activity, you're bound to be disappointed" In the class, I wrote a (with hindsight, rather predictable, melodramatic) short story about a vampire. Most of the class was more interested in writing stories about people who cut themselves with straight razors while fucking. My story got thrashed. I didn't like it. KT was in the same class, and when they story that she had written and was attached to came up for review, she was so upset by the commentary that she left class at the break we took between reviews and didn't come back that night.

In the Heroes game, Liz is playing a prototypically square-jawed, cleft-chinned, bulging muscles superdude who speaks in four-colorese "Stop there, malcontent, or taste my righteous knuckles!" (okay, so that's not a quote, but it's the right flavor), Greg is a green-skinned Muslim woman (naivete personified), Mike is apparently playing a psychotic bionic man ("STOP LOOKING AT ME!"), and Kevin is playing... um, I haven't gotten a grip on Kevin's character's personality yet. His character has a gun that isn't special and psionic powers that are. I took it a little too seriously and made a character whose family history I know for a couple generations back, I know what his goals are, what his suspicions are, what could cause him to turn against the team, etc. KT has been coming up with a rather detailed adventure for us to get into, and I was really looking forward to it.

Oops.

Mike showed up at about 5PM or so to make his character. He was still working on it when we arrived sometime around 5:30PM-6PM. He was over on the long couch, and KT was over on the loveseat. Palladium has the advantage that it looks like D&D, and the disadvantage that while it looks like D&D, it's bolted-on skill system turns things upside down, sideways, and then inside out. No one had really explained it to Mike. It was Kevin's birthday, so he got presents. He played with the presents (cool Star Wars stuff). KT played with the presents. Mike tried to figure out the rules. We went to dinner around 7:30. We came back around 9. Mike still had to work on his character. We started around 9:45, with Mike still working on his character. Around 10:30, my nose started running, my eyes started watering, and I began sneezing regularly. End of game for the night. Fuck.

Oh, well. I'm hoping that next session will be a little smoother, and we'll all get into it a little more. Although we do have to get Greg's character down to the Sealab, and hope that he makes his Insanity save against the High Pressure Nervous Syndrome thingee. Joy.

The refrigerator: I hate it when things break. Entropy and I do not get along. I especially hate it when things break with no good reason. For example, if my van suddenly had, say, the exhaust system fall out on me, I could understand it. It's an older van, and so I could understand how driving through 12+ years of puddles and whatnot while only using the cheap gas could eventually wear something like that out.

The refrigerator, however, is less than a year old, and the stupid icemaker has stopped making ice. At first, I thought I had solved the problem, because I found that the little arm was down, which is the unlabeled (except in the manual) "OFF" position. I moved it up, to the unlabeled (except in the manual) "ON" position and walked away, confident that it would begin making ice again.

I returned several hours later, to find no ice. I had turned the temperature in the freezer down a ways a couple weeks ago, because it didn't seem to be staying as cold as it used to (the popsicles were getting slightly running and mushy), so I halved the difference, just in case the water was freezing before it could get to the icemaker and make the ice.

No dice.

So, now I've got to call GE, or whoever made the fridge, and try to argue with them about how to fix my nearly new fridge.

The Mac: I use my Mac for two things: 1) Internet Access when Liz is using the Windows computer (usually for the Hall, and 2) Word processing that I don't have to do on the Windows computer. A couple months ago, however, my word processor began to lock up the computer. This was irritating, but since I hadn't been working on the documents a lot lately, I decided it could wait until I got the new computer. Besides, the Internet connection still worked, and that was what was the most important to me, anyway.

Last night the Internet connection died. The week before, Apple Remote Access (ARA) had cut out on me twice. This was frustrating, but twice in about 3 hours isn't crippling. Last night I don't think I was on longer than 15 minutes at a stretch. And when it did cut out, I'd have to start up a new connection, disconnect, and then reconnect, since the first connection would always not work. So, next week for the Hall, I'm going to have to drive in to work so I can HM and not be knocked offline constantly.

What I'd really like to do is to get a new computer, which would probably solve all these problems (I don't think they're line or ISP related, since Liz didn't have any connection problems all night). However, I can't get a new computer yet, because I've got...

Student loans: I keep a running tally of how much I've paid in student loans. After this month's payments, I'll have paid back $20,000. I still have over $10,000 left to go. I try not to think about what I could have done with that $20,000. I console myself with the thought that the fact that I have a degree is the reason why I've been able to get the jobs I've gotten, and be able to pay back what I have. Still, though. $20,000. Makes me think.

So, to wrap this ridiculously long and incoherent entry up, my work email will be changing. Quite a bit probably will be changing. Wish me luck.