Saturday 28 February, 2004 at 9:32PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (5)

Last Tuesday at around 11am I was busy working when suddenly the phones all went dead, followed moments later by the computers. It didn't take long for me and those around me to guess what was going on. A big group of management and security people gathered by the exit and formed a kind of corridor from there to a conference/training room. In groups of about twenty, staff members disappeared into that room for about 10 minutes at a time and then emerged and were directed down the 'corridor' and out the door. Eventually my turn came.

Inside was VP Chris (I'm not going to mention last names or the name of the company itself since it could mean risking some sort of litigation, especially with this particular company). To cut a long story short, we were all being laid off due to 'restructuring', which to the best of my knowledge usually means they're trying to save their collective asses from going under, especially when it's 500 staff being relieved of duty at the corp HQ where I was based.

Unfortunately they don't believe in redundancy payments or anything like that in New Jersey - you can get rid of employees without reason if you wish (which is probably why they had their offices in New Jersey instead of New York), so there's no X amount of weeks of pay given or anything like that, it's just "game over dude, thanks for playing!" ..at least I won't be traveling 4+ hours a day just to get to and from work.

The VP said he was only informed late the previous evening of what was happening, and I believe him. He looked pretty upset and his eyes were red like he was about to burst into tears. Can't be easy telling 500+ people that they're out of work effective immediately. At least he still has a job though (for now anyway).

There's quite a few people who worked there with families to support etc who are going to be up shit creek without a paddle, they must be freaking out big time with the way things are at the moment here job-wise. There were quite a few people working there that I worked with previously as an 'executive producer' at a UK-based television company last year (which subsequently went belly-up in the US). Many of the others in my area were stock brokers. Now we're all unemployed.

There's a large furniture company that have huge showrooms near where we live and also in Manhattan. It's a family business that's been running for many years, generations even. Earlier this evening they had an ad on tv - they're having a 'going out of business' sale. They aren't selling the business (I guess in the current economy they can't find a buyer) so they're just shutting it down. Not good, but typical of how things are at the moment. Now I have to go through all the apply apply apply & interview thing again. Not exactly confidence building stuff. Such is life in New York City in the double-oh's, baby.

no worms

      Wednesday 25 February, 2004 at 11:25PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (3)

I fell into this website quite by accident when I left out part of the URL of where I was intending to go.. interesting place, cracked me up. All it has is the one page of text repeating the same thing, titled "NO WoRMS!!":

CraZY?
I wAS CrAZY OneCE!
THeY pUT ME IN a RubbER Room aNED LefT ME 2 DiE!
DIE! I DON'T WANTT TO DIE!!!!
ThE WORMS wouLD GET mE!
WOREMS! I HATE WORMS!
TEYH MAKYE ME CRAYZ!

yeah ok.. pretty normal.

sick

      Monday 16 February, 2004 at 10:49AM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (1)

Yup I have a dose of the flu. Ice is also unwell with some sort of stomach bug. Actually the flu doesn't bother me so much, it's the intense headache I've had all weekend that's knocking me around. I'm off to visit the doctor in about half an hour to get a medical certificate for work since I'm supposed to be working.

Today is actually Presidents Day which is a national holiday, however my workplace is open and it's work as usual. I'm trying to figure the logic in that since my job involves dealing with businesses all day, and as nearly all businesses are closed being a national holiday, there would be little for me to achieve. Guess I picked the right day to be sick.

I've just been contacted by email about another job which sounds very similar to what I'm doing, but it's located in lower Manhattan which would be a lot easier for me in travel time (did I mention my current job is in New Jersey and travel time is 2 hours each way?). Apparently the government has offered tax breaks to companies that employ new personnel, which means the job market should improve considerably (hopefully) which is probably why I've been contacted about this new job - it's not something I applied for. The base salary is slightly less, but it's the commission side I'm waiting to hear about, so I'll be watching my email with interest.

Not much else to tell at the moment. The weather started to warm up a little here over the last few days (when I say warm up, I mean it stayed above 0°C on most days) but it looks like winter's not done with us yet. The next day or two is predicted to bring some light snow again and sub-zero temperatures. Still, I think I prefer that to day after day of 40+°C with 100% humidity. Hmm. ok have a groovy day.

today sucked

      Wednesday 11 February, 2004 at 10:19PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (9)

We both had a bad day today. Mine relates to work. I won't go into details right now because I'm just too pissed. Suffice to say if someone tried to mug me right now I would friggin kill them. But I'd make them suffer first. Badly. Grrr.

some additions to the site

      Saturday 7 February, 2004 at 12:00PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (3)

I added a random password generator to the site for no particular reason other than I just felt like it. Hey, someone might find it useful.

Initially I had it set up so you could make it generate passwords of any length (from 1 character to whatever amount of characters you wanted), and also generate a multiple amount of passwords to choose from (again from 1 to whatever). I quickly realized this was just asking for trouble so I limited it to only the options provided. I just know it would only be a matter of time before some limpdick came along to jam up my host's CPU usage by asking it to generate 1 billion passwords each being 1 million characters long etc. - there's just so many asshats out there..

happy birthday icequeen

      Tuesday 3 February, 2004 at 10:23AM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (3)

*kisses n stuff*

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