The Project From Hell

THIS.... was the starting point. When I moved in with my wife, the wall was already this shade of pink. The desk, I'd acquired shortly afterward when we'd decided that we both needed new desks and wanted them to match. Over the course of a few years, this desk move twice. On the second move, one of the supporting vertical panels partially gave way. There was no way that this desk was going anywhere one piece. Now we have been trying to paint one room at a time whenever we have the time and manpower.... (ha ha ha... I said time.) We also have new windows that are scheduled to be put into place sometime in the next two weeks. We hope. So, in order to do these projects, both desks would have to be moved temporarily. My desk is the worst off as I said, but my wife's may not make it either.

So, since we are going to wait for the windows to get done before moving her desk, that made it a good time to tackle my side of the room..

So, the first step was to get all the shi'... err.. stuff off the desk. Then (as you can see to the right) it was demolition time. You can also see where the panel came loose a little better in this picture. It's to the top right of the drawer opening and about where my left leg would touch. Armed with trusty power tools and the 'Stanley' Hammer of Destruction, I began the only enjoyable part of the task. Me bash!!!




Ok, so I didn't make that big of a mess. I still got to use my hammer! Now that the main obstacle was demolished, it was time to get some cosmetic stuff done. Bring on the paint supplies!

You got me, it's not really that exciting, but hey I was trying to keep motivated at this point.

I'm not very experienced at painting as it is, but I'm really not experienced at the prep work. However, it was at this stage of the project that my wife could really help...

Scratch that. No sooner did I think that thought, and she came to me with a look on her face that meant bad news. The news was that she was feeling rather ill. So, if she were a star linebacker, the roster at this point would list her as questionable.
I was on my own for the prep. Out came
the spackle and the tape.

Since we were painting white over a color, it was time for the Killz primer. We had a can from earlier projects, thank goodness. Err... maybe not. When we opened the can, the stuff inside was hard as a rock on bottom and nothing but oil on top. Yay... a trip to the store to fetch a new pail of primer. (No, I didn't break my crown.) Ok, green flag restart. My wife had limited play time, but managed to do the edging.

Unfortunately, our camera ate a few pictures of the process here. So here we are with our beautiful new wall. At this stage I also have the thermostat re-installed, the doorbell re-attached, and the outlets back to normal. All that was left was to put the TV back, and I could start to build my lovely new desk!




Woah... .. there's 46 wooden parts and 17 pounds of friggen hardware here (shown to the left!)

There's 48 pages of instructions...

This could suck...






Silly manufacturer has you build the hutch part first. I would find out later why this is. Every single peg and screw had to be put in by hand, and the metal pegs were a pain in the anterior to get in straight! You're looking at a little over three hours work at this point in the assembly.



The kids mostly stayed upstairs to play (to my surprise and delight); but as I got the first pedestal built I had a little helper come down.

At this point, the project actually started to roll along quicker. The bottom half was a little easier to assemble.



Gee... only took a couple of hours to get the pieces together for the bottom half. Then I find out why the instructions had me build the hutch first. The hutch has to attach to the desktop before the desktop is attached to the bottom pedestals.

This is going to suck because the desktop is easily 65 pounds by itself, plus the hutch that is about 50 pounds of awkward.


The drawers and the cabinet were the final pieces, but I only got one of the drawers done before I had to get the computer hooked up. Three days without it and I was having withdrawals.

I tried hard to keep the spaghetti wiring to a minimum, but... well we'll just say that I have some more routing to do!


So, the desk is together.... but what ever am I to do with all the stuff that accumulated on the old desk?

Ugh.. it never ends. I have a lot of sorting to do...

But for now.... it's time to catch up on what's going on in the world!!

Between a Lake and a Sand Trap

Continuing on my theme here of bitching about my station in life; brings me to the subject of golf...

Tiger Woods celebrity profile

First let me say congratulations to Tiger Woods on win number 69. (What a great number!) His game is so up and down this year. Mine is too, (albeit about 30 stroke worse on average.)

I'm a bogey golfer. I've been a bogey golfer for years now. Part of my issue is lack of play time, much like my online gaming dilemma. The other limitation is money. I have the ability to hit great shots. I've had bad starts that I have pulled together and shot my average in the end. But just can't seem to reach that next skill level...


To test my theory, I spent more time at the indoor golf place this winter, and started hitting a lot of golf balls when the ranges opened outside. This put some stress on the home life, as I suspected. However, when I finally played a round it was like I hadn't taken nine months off. I played a couple strokes below my average. Great!

Then work and life stopped the trips to the range and extra rounds, and I've slipped a few strokes. I still hit the good shots, but I don't get on a roll like at the beginning of the season. Like many amateur golfers I can't seem to make the long game and short game both work on the same day. For non-golfers out there, that means that if I can hit the fairway on the drive I tend to have trouble getting on the green and in the hole from there. If I'm struggling off the tee, my short game tends to make a save or two in my favor. If those two elements would ever show up on the same day it would be epic!

So, it appears that I'm stuck between playing better (more enjoyable) golf and living in mediocrity on course in order to live in bliss at home. One day either my wife will tire of me (hasn't happened yet after nearly 7 years...knock on wood) and kick me out of the house to play, or the boys will be grown up and home responsibilities will be light enough to allow for more recreation time. Despite my bemoaning, I gladly accept what life has handed me and won't be giving it up any time soon.

Casual Gaming in Alaska

Anyone that knows me is well aware of my online gaming. Being a family man, I am forced to be a casual gamer at best. By no means is this a complaint about my status as a father. I love my family and would not trade them for the world. However, there is no doubt that there are things you just cannot do online when you have these responsibilities.

In the FPS games I play, it's not as critical. It means that I can't be an active member of a clan that does ladder tournaments. While I believe that would be fun, it's not really my play style anyway. Where I'm affected most in shooters is in skill. I get a few hours a night (shared between games) to play. There's no way I'm going to get as skilled (or learn all the exploits) that some punk kid that games 24/7 in his mom's basement obscured by the empty pizza boxes and energy drink cans. (In my day, it was Mountain Dew...)


Now when it comes to my other online vice, it gets more complicated. I love MMORPGs. I grew up playing AD&D, GURPS, and Earthdawn, and when my gaming group got too busy for the weekly game, they pitched in and got me EverQuest for my birthday. When EverQuest II came out, it was a natural move for me. I just got my Dwarf Templar to 80/80 before Fan Faire in June.

Challenge number one in my MMO adventures is time zone. The boys go to bed at 8pm my time, which is midnight EST. When I am logging on, many players are logging off. Raids are either over or full, and most groups already have a plate healer.

Challenge two is the amount of time I play. As a working man, I don't stay up till the wee hours like I did as a kid. This means that if I'm going to get in a raid (hard to do because of number one above) then it needs to be forming right when I'm getting on. Otherwise I either go past my allotted time, or log out and risk getting blacklisted.



All of this is very detrimental to getting my mythical epic. My options are to risk my marriage and kids' welfare, or make time to make raids during earlier hours. Not really an option. It would almost be like choosing to jump off a cliff rather than stand there and enjoy the view.

A little back story...

Greetings.

I've only just decided to start blogging. I resisted it for a long time. My wife has a blog, but I have always felt my time was better spent doing something more relaxing. I think the reason I'm starting now is because I feel like I have something to say on more than one subject. So, before I get into too much of the current events...

I'm looking for a new job. I'm going back to college in September. Why you may ask?

In September of 2007, I found myself in the job market. I got a job with a very large global company that had the contract for quite a few ranges here in Alaska. To avoid any possible legal issues, I will refer to them as "Company R." I started at about $24 per hour. Six weeks later, I moved to another range with a promotion and a new wage of $32 an hour. (Those numbers are base pay. Because the jobs are under the Service Contract Agreement Act, I got $3.16 more for every hour worked. That money was to go to health insurance.) Everything seemed to be going well. Until...

Fast forward to May 2008. The current contract that I was working under lapsed. A new one goes into effect. Under the new contract, my site has been sub-contracted to a native-owned corporation (Referred to here as "Company A.") The problem is that they changed the job allocations. No longer are there to be six technicians on the site. I am notified that I'm to fill the slot of Computer Operator for an insulting $17 an hour.

This is the first sign that this company is not one I'm going to be happy with. I have a background in electronics, audio/video, and computers. I have military experience, where I also did electronic work. Yet I was not awarded a job as an Electronic Technician. They will not give me an answer why. I'm pretty sure why, but to confirm my theory would mean I could site where they violate their own policy.

Unfortunately, this happened inn the mist of an economic downturn. I have applied for quite a few jobs, but to no avail. Most of them are GS grade federal jobs, that I got beat out on because a 10 point veterans preference candidate applied (I have 5 point veteran preference.) I have a resume in on three jobs now.

The reason this blog is called "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" is because in many facets of my life, I really am in a grey area between success and failure. Right now, we are getting by because of some assistance. The biggest help is a program called Denali Kid Care. Long story short, free health care for my children. If a get a twenty-something an hour job, we lose that but then have to pay for insurance on the boys. Doing the math on that means that I'd actually have less net pay! So, either I stay at the $17 per hour and get assistance, or I have to get a $30 per hour or better job to get us comfortable and all insured.

Here's the kicker... Company A has major issues in their HR department. The owe me a lot of money that is supposed to be in my 401k right now. They are in violation of labor laws. They lose official paperwork with my SSN on it. They take 4-6 weeks to process things that are supposed to happen by the next paycheck. They refuse to give me info that I request, like what deductions are pre-tax and which are post-tax... something else I suspect they are screwing up.

So, despite this long post, that is the very abbreviated version of my job situation. Stay tuned for background in other areas of my life, and hopefully some humorous anecdotes here and there!