wonder boy

so yeah. this is the bat that paid the price of my emotional tsunami. damn i loved that bat. in fact, it has a little history behind it. The Hulkster (my bro) first used this stick in early 90's beer league softball matches. left behind at my folks house, i took her under my wing and started keeping it in the trunk of the Dodge Dynasty for protection in the mean street of the S-Gate! werd. escaping several intense, action-filled years in the burbs (without seeing any non-passtime action) it spent a few years in dry dock while i wasted my time and money at an institution of higher learning. (the effects of that last job interview are obviously still being felt) Anyway, now that i live near a batting-range, the old girl came off the bench and had a new found exposure, explaining how my recent roommate and exploding electronic music DJ, rob felt the serene pull of bashing helpless goods and found the black bat was the perfect tool for "playing out" shitty CDs. this particular happening became a popular and now folklore-ish event at one of the shows that would be a stepping stone to his now world-famous status, seen here.
Once rob had blown fully up, he was able to move on and leave the bat and I to our devices, which mostly consisted of devastating high speed, little yellow balls (20 pitches for $1.50, up a quarter from last year). That was, until furry and alcohol took my strength to a superhuman level, and the little bat that could, did no longer.

my failure is complete

as promised, i got the call today regarding the second interview at chrysler. i came in second. again. i didn't dare mention it at the time, but the guy i interviewed with made it seem like it was a sure thing that i would be hired. he joked about "can you start today?" and said the whole thing went really well. well, apparently some dude showed up who had already worked for chrysler in the past and then quit to go back to school. guess who got the gig. The interviewer said he would have preferred hire me for the long term, but this candidate was a better short term solution.

thanks. that makes me feel much better. makes me totally forget that in the end the whole thing was waste of my fucking time AGAIN, because no matter what i said or how well i hit it off, some fuck walks in with a brown tie and monosyllabic vocabulary, but he has experience at this company, so now this "entry level" position goes to him. what a joke. of course I'm left with the comfort of the bullshit fed to me for an hour about how "we have no problem hiring someone without automotive experience" and "this is the perfect entry level position for you."

fuck that.

the bullshit roller coster continues with the staffing agency now. "we haven't given up on you and we think you're a really great candidate." "I'm sure we'll get you something..." What comes next is either the best part or the worst part... which is more interviews, more time off work, more smiles and more bullshit small talk, which inevitably becomes more forced with each failure at bat. If i'm lucky.

today i drowned myself in booze, BBQ and the batting cages... which was either a really good idea or really bad idea as i shattered an aluminum bat with a well connected line drive.

if only i could smash myself into the job market with my bat. i need a god damned beer.

the reality

things that already exist. in my mind.

housemate and i are throwing ideas to compete in this.

it involves a lot of bicycles being sacrificed and the insertion multiple pulley systems and a honkin fly-wheel. (the last of which may or may not be jettisoned at some point during the ace with explosive bolts.

i need a welder.

okay

a less dramatic post.

the old familiar sting

*i hurt myself today*

got another interview tomorrow

*to see if i still feel*

same company as last time, different position

*i focus on the pain*

gonna have to call off work AGAIN

*the only thing that's real*

should i fail to achieve my goal, i move a step closer to inadvertently liberating myself from current source of income

gizmo understands me

full paralysis would almost be worth it.

almost.

(watch the movie)

fuck the fuckers

"it seems pretty strange to me that they'd act so positively about me on the day of the interview and then just break off all contact... "

"sometimes this happens; maybe he got too busy. Maybe they decided not to hire anyone. Then again, our computer still shows the position as open."

"this is ridiculous. He promised an answer that day. Then again on Monday."

"well, they are still our client so we don't want to bug them too much about it."

"so i guess i won't be holding my breath anymore waiting to hear an answer?"

"that's probably best."

data

well, time to prove to the world that i really should be an engineer.

In my quest to better understand these "humans," i've been collecting a well of data. first, i would like to show sophist blog attendance since i started crying like a 12 year old bitch with a skinned knee about my failures at life. with site hits blowing up in the past 4 days (and not even mentioning page hits) i can confidently say it's jumping off over here.

I'm thinking of finally dropping my amateur status and going pro. I suppose the alternative is you sick fuckers just really like to see me squirm and can't get enough of the human drama that is the Dudley St...

here's the fun numbers: My housemate Jon and I (Jon's idea) decided to measure the muzzle velocity of the $4 and $8 dollar air soft guns we bought at the dirt mall. (we needed to explain, scientifically, why the $8 versions were leaving holes in the blinds and dents in the walls) Using a measured distance down the main hall of the house, we set up a microphone and recorded the pop of the gun firing and also the sound of the BB ricocheting off our front door. Disregarding the time it took for the sound to travel back from the door (at just under 200 inches and 70 degrees, it was a mere 0.00203 seconds or something between 0.5% and 1% of the total BB travel time) we used the PC to measure the time the BB took to travel and merely divided it by the distance traveled. There's no pretty graphs here, but for extra credit you can produce the graphs yourself and turn them in. Here's the numbers:


Analysis: The colts (Chest and Notorious' pieces, as well) cost an amazingly low dirt mall price of $4 and produced a fairly decent shot. However, for a few more bucks, you can wreck some shit... or in Becca's case, get an obviously sub-standard mechanism. Also note, that Jon's Glock failed early in it's life, losing a few (what we thought were) useless pieces. Turns out those cracks were very detrimental to it's performance compared to a fully operational version.

Conclusion: if you piss me off, i will pummel you with 80 mph plastic death. Also, watch out for the little woman with the big gun.

if the world had an enema, this is where they'd put the tube

staffing company called. seems the dude i interviewed with at DC (diamler-chrysler) has fallen off the earth without letting anyone know who he picked for the job.

they claim, "you are still (i was before?) the leading candidate."

i swear if i get this job i'm taking everyone to the bar.

speaker for the dead

can't sleep. too much anxiety over tomorrow's decision about the job. though, i suspect the decision is already made, and i await only it's announcement.

too easy to wonder what mental state is most likely to please the gods and grant me my wish. a pendular sine wave of hopefulness and doubt play itself out in an overly analytical mind. i don't dare fantasize about how the events of life would unfold should i become an engineer for Chrysler... but sometimes in moments of weakness, i find myself imagining how i might go about giving resignation to a job i despise or what i could accomplish when finally awarded a chance to flex my engineering muscles. that has been my moment as a whiney bitch for the day.

all this lack of sleep has allowed me to chew up the first real book i've read in about 6 months: Ender's Game. Highly recommend. damn those buggers.

FYI: housemate snoring quite loud and odd sounding. will not investigate further.

status report from the western front

While I patiently await a decision by chrysler, I should update the situation with punks in the neighbor hood; But first, PREVIOUSLY ON THE DUDLEY: The house across the street seems to be the source of greatest strife and i understand there are three brothers and a mother that live there. The eldest brother, who is approximately my age was a pretty alright guy who we on the dudley used to hang with quite a bit at the local drinkery. Unfortunately, he moved away, leaving the remaining brother to play hell with the neighborhood; one in high school and one in middle school. Now, we also have a kid that lives next door to us that is approximately the same age as the youngest brother across the street. They're not exactly friends, but the kid next door does seem to enjoy putting himself in a position where the other kid can deliver a severe beating in front of the rest of the neighborhood. The kid next door, however, is a good source for info on the goings on of the other houses.

a few nights ago around midnight, the Dudley St. blew up when Jon Law and his friends Mr. Fire Rescue and Mr. Ambulance rolled on the house across the street from us. It was pretty hard to tell what exactly was going on, (damn i wish i had some kind of device that could magnify from a distance...) but there was a lot of PO-lice and a lot of Ballahs and least one dude took a trip downtown. The folks on the block, tho as biased as us against the local teenagers, don't ever really know what the score is in their own hood and couldn't tell us what went down that night. Luckily, we at the Struggle know two key people; a teacher at the high school AND the 911 dispatch operator for our city. The teacher claims there was a kid in this area bragging about how many local homes he had broken into and suspected that maybe he Finley got taken down. The 911 operator was going to look into the incident and that report is pending.

so yeah... time to get heated up.

so thirsty...

a man and a job. it's an arrangement of tremendous insignificance in the great cluster-fuck that is the universe. who cares if Applicant-Unit A is hired or if Applicant-Unit B is hired? the position will be filled either way, and the cogs of the machine will continue turning. then again, if you're Applicant-Unit B, and that fucker Unit A gets the gig, you've lost face once again before Unit B family and friends. Desperate and without hope, Unit B takes to a life of booze and floozies, never realizing his full potential as a widget validation engineer. Meanwhile, that son of a bitch Applicant-Unit A is warm, happy and well insured for full medical, dental and vision. He loses touch with his roots and forgets the common place turmoil of just a few years ago. That's why he's never even suspects that the knife-wielding Applicant-Unit B is sneaking up behind him.

*sneak, sneak, sneak"... STAB!
(that visual stolen from here.)

coming off yesterday's high, induced from what i must admit was a pretty decent interview for me, i've entered the "this is what i should have done better and not doing so is why i will not get the job" phase of the waiting process.

additionally, i'm a little hung over.

housemate jon lent me Ender's Game to read. It shall help as the dehydration and desperation pass.

it takes my pain away

First, there's been an explosion of activity on my street lately. it all started when I woke up one morning and the side mirror of my work van had been quite efficiently smashed off. Though easily repaired, I was concerned for the possibility of future events and started poking my nose around the hood. Turns out the pickup down the street ALSO lost a mirror, and a ford focus one street down was rear ended one evening a few nights later, and the assailant drove off. More data collection revealed that our next door neighbor has some expensive gear ripped off from his garage a few months back.

Now, info up to now has been factual... essentially; here comes the biased stuff: We live one block from a local high school (with a fine reputation for producing losers) and there's some punk-ass teenagers that live across the street with what would seem to be an absence of supervision. (Do I sound old yet?) Combined, the neighbor kids and the local high schoolers are always wandering around our house, since the kids across the street seem to attract the best of the local element. These kids are "teenage punks" in the purest sense; they walk by our house in groups of 4 or more, 37 times per trip around the earth's axis and spend the remaining 14 hours of the day on the porch directly across from us, sitting in darkness and talking trash. They (now we're talking the neighbor's AND the other local roustabouts) are always rolling deep and frontin' hard, with their stupid hooded shirts and what not. And then there's the trash talk; i thought only in movies did people walk down a street and yell sexual innuendoes, physical appearance assessments and invitations to fornicate at passer-byes. I was wrong.

Once an obvious enemy had been established (the punks) and a perimeter defined (our property) we had the workings of a battle plan. So last week we drew it up.




It's pretty straight forward; your red indicates your threats and their potential movements into our positions. The work van represents our already weakened forward defensive positions, while our allies and potential allies are outlined along with whatever data we had or happen to drunkly think we had.

we've already had updates with this situation, so watch for those later. The reason i had time to type all this crap up today is because i called off work and took a sick day. I did this, not because i was sick (unless you're reading this and you're a coworker, in which case everything that follows now is the OPPOSITE of the truth) but because i had a job interview with Chrysler's Truck Engineering facility in Detroit. I tend not to discuss the workings of things like this until a clear conclusion has been established, but this particular job is pretty noteworthy. It's not that I'm superstitious, but i do believe firmly that should the powers of the universe happen to look up and realize I'm excited about something (especially a prospective job) those powers will snatch it away faster than you can say "what a fucking waste of four and a half years and $50,000." But fuck it, most everyone knows about this one anyway. The deal was this; the guy was interviewing two candidates today and had already interviewed two others. A staffing co. set this up, so those lucky bastards have multiple candidates for the same position. Think about this; they're standing there wishing me luck and shaking my hand and filling me with their BS, while they're ALSO the bastards supplying my competition. Fuckers. Anyway, the interviewer is leaving for Mexico Monday and had to make a decision TODAY. "Awesome," i say, "an interview with clear and prompt resolution." Now, most of you can probably figure out that i've been trying to break into the auto industry for about, oh, three years now unsuccessfully... This is the perfect job; open to those with no experience with the auto companies, dealing with prototype cars and trouble shooting the issues there in and very closely related to exactly what i do now (i.e. have experience with). I'm so into this job i could puke. More so than any before it. The rub is, instead of getting an answer today, the interviewer decided to postpone his decision until monday, and indicated only that i was one of three candidates still in the running. So now i'm screwed... the powers know full well that i would kill somebody in front of they own momma for this position and it's inevitable that they snatch it away. I'm not going to sugar coat it... I hate my job, and the idea of going back to it monday after having spent the morning at Chrysler and seeing the "green pastures" of the promise land is unbearable. Here's to irony, chance, karma, luck, retribution and coincidence.