House of Ainsley: Out-of-Character Discussion

I hear that. I take it that your workplace has had some very recent developments of that sort. Really, do people honestly think that someone will pay them to take naps and slack off? Not in this world.

I still have a rough draft of my Gustov update saved to Notepad and in-progress in its own IV tab. Here's hoping that I get to finish it up shortly. In the meantime, I'm about to head out for a quick breakfast before my next shift. Hang in there.

The House of Ainsley wrote:

I still have a rough draft of my Gustov update saved to Notepad and in-progress in its own IV tab.  Here's hoping that I get to finish it up shortly.

I have an idea.  Since you are very busy send me a copy of the rough draft.  I will help you make any needed changes or correct those things that affect Gustov in a bad way.  After the changes have been made I will post it for you in IV.  Isn't that what friends are for, helping other out when they need it?

Hey, my friends. Sorry if I haven't been around lately, but it's the job. It's still an hour's commute each way, and since I'm one of the workers being transferred to the new Sears Parts Direct store at the Town East Mall in Mesquite, I've been assigned to helping out with setting up the new store (shelves, inventory, decor, et al), which means that I've been working a lot of hours; 50- or 60-hour workweeks are routine now.

It's a tight spot. I'm unhappy with this job and I want to go job-hunting and find a new job, but how am I supposed to do that when I have very little free time in which to do that? I had a very close shave the last time I quit a job without having a new job lined up, so I'm hesitant to do that again.

Maybe I can just send a corporate request to be transferred to the Sears out in Tyler; it's half the distance, and it's an already established store, so I doubt that there would be any shortage of workers. I might at least try doing that on my next day off.

But I'd really like to get back into the swing of things here. Wish me luck on all counts; I'll probably need it.

Good luck on all counts.

In the meantime, I am happily employed myself for the nest week and a half. Busy busy and then I am off for two weeks on a family vacation.

So you finally found someone who would willingly and knowingly hire you, huh?

I kid. So what kind of job is it?

I did indeed...me!

Got tired of sitting around waiting for a bag of cash to fall at my feet, so a friend and I went into business for ourselves. Nothing too spectacular, we built our own fireworks stand and are selling this year. With any luck, we'll turn a tidy profit.

JAM Fireworks. we're on Facebook if anyone cares to look us up.

If you're in business in time for Independence Day, I'm sure you'll turn a profit (unless there are fifty-billion other fireworks stands in town, perhaps).  

I figured that "JAM" might be an acronym for you and the other guy, so I went and Googled this up.  And dadgummit, you one-upped my silent TV news appearance back in Canton's 2010 tornado clean-up, you magnificent bastard....  

(And alas, my big news video no longer exists, probably because it was five years back and because Canton gets a lot of tornadoes.  It's amazing that my house has never been hit by one, unless the tornado which tore off our house's aerial antenna back when I was a weeyin counts.)

But it's cool that you're supporting Angels in Camo this way.  So how's the business shaping up so far?

Also, as for the campaign itself, I've been waiting for the City of Heroes Guru forums to come back online so that I can finish salvaging all the old material that I'd unfortunately been forgetting or neglecting to salvage, most notably the rest of the backstory posts for this thread, which would help give an idea about why the Powers That Be would bring the hammer down on House Ainsley in the first place.  But it looks like the CoHGuru forums are indeed dead and buried now, so I may have to recreate those posts from what I can remember of them.  I've been wanting to add some new material to that thread as well, because even outsiders like Karnoz and Sylvea stand to get tied into that whole horrific mess somehow.

Stay tuned.  

Woohoo! Canton's Advance Auto Parts just emailed me to mention that they have two openings for delivery drivers, and I just applied to both of them! Here's hoping that I get a bite. Wish me luck!

Hey, look who just wandered on back!  Hi, Jaz!  

I suppose I should take a break from my incessant job-hunting (which is stressing me out anyway) and post something as soon as I can, seeing as I have three players waiting on me.  Come to think of it, has anyone heard from Wraith lately?

It definitely seems like you should take a break and post.    It will be more fun anyway. lol

The House of Ainsley wrote:

Hey, look who just wandered on back!  Hi, Jaz!  

I suppose I should take a break from my incessant job-hunting (which is stressing me out anyway) and post something as soon as I can, seeing as I have three players waiting on me.

Yea you should post something.  Gustov has been sitting on his horse waiting for the battle to begin so long that I think his legs have fallen asleep.
If you can't do full post could you at least answer the questions that have been asked so that I can complete the posts that have already been made.

Wowo!

Been a while and I came back to an awesome post for Sylvea!!! Thanks Ainsley! It was really cool to discover that I'd saved her somehow lol. If only Draven could have been saved. Oh well, I know I won't get another chance to have a minion unless I find the right stone again... (hint, hint).

Hahahah!!

How's everyone been?

Also, computer went stupid, I now have a toddler, full time Head Chef position, and plain was too tired to bother. Those are my excuses for the last two years.

Also, I am now moving interstate. So yay! More *stuff* to deal with haha!!

Myself and my family, otherwise, are doing well Hope everyone else can say the same.

(wow... my fingers are so clumsy now. I'm almost embarrassed)

...and y'all didn't check to see if I was still alive.  For shame, people!

But a few months ago (shortly after my last post on IV), I finally got fed up with with the new Sears Parts Direct outlet and, in particular, the new 20-something Branch Manager's abuse.  William was perfectly cool with me when he was training under me, and we got to yammering on about our mutual Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire fascinations several times, and he was still cool with all the new Sales Associates who came in after me.  But the moment he finished his training and got promoted over me, he suddenly turned into a massive prick and a tinpot tyrant hellbent on belittling me and putting me in my place at every turn.  And since the District Manager and the Regional Manager thought that this new guy was made of pure gold, they wouldn't hear a word of my complaints.  So back on September 16th, the store was having a huge inventory overhaul and a whole mess of people from Middle and Upper Management were going to be there that morning -- including some guy who was a rung or two over the Regional Manager -- and it was just myself and Jayson (another Sales Associate) handling the heavy lifting.  I while our third SA, Chris, was closing up shop the night before, I sneaked into William's office while Chris was off making the End of Day deposit, dropped my name tag -- along with my Sears discount card and my professionally yet very strongly worded "I quit, here's every reason why I'm quitting, and I never want to hear one word from you ever again" letter right on William's keyboard (where he and/or the managers from the upper crust were bound to notice it), and I sneaked back out.  And I haven't gone back or called back since...kind of a shame that I haven't, really; I'd really like to hear if William had to fend off any uncomfortable questions about that letter and why 50% of his hired help suddenly wasn't coming in for the Big, Huge Inventory Day.  I never received any phone calls or letters from the District or Regional Managers, so I can safely assume that I wasn't missed much.

And people wonder why Sears has such a ghastly high turnover.  If I ran a corporation and I treated my workers like I treat the mud on my boots, I expect that I'd have a huge turnover too.  But that's the problem with big corporations: People are very disposable to them, and "worker retention" is a four-letter word.  Why pay a long-term employee raises and increasing benefits when you can toss that worker aside and immediately hire on another trained monkey to do the same job at entry-rate wages?

So after I quit Sears, I had a most unpleasant reckoning with myself.  Here I am, 43 years young-ish, and I'm still just scraping by on entry-level jobs to pay the bills.  Each of us only gets one shot at life, and I've completely booched mine.  Where's my house on the hill?  Where's my six-figure annual income?  Where did I go so terribly wrong?

And of course, once you start thinking like that, acute depression isn't very far behind.  Before you know it, you're at that point where you're lying in bed for ten or twelve hours a day, grieving over your losses, letting the world pass you by and not doing a thing to improve your state.  You still apply for jobs that come up, but not as much, as many or as often as you could be, not when you're getting increasingly discouraged with rejection letter after rejection letter and you're still grappling with all those doubts about yourself, or teetering between "still barely fighting" and "giving up".  And even though you know damned well that it's not right to be thinking such poisonous things and that you're the only one who can help yourself set things right, you still can't find it in yourself to get out of bed because there's just too much of that badness sitting heavily on your chest.  "I'm already defeated, I'm miserable, I'm never going to be happy or successful or even content with my lot in life, I've built no legacy and probably never will build one...so what's the point of it all?"

Fortunately, some of us also go beyond that point and reach the point where we're sick and tired of being sick and tired.  So it so happens that I settled for applying at the local Walmart (because "Any port in a storm"), where one of the two Human Resources managers happens to be the daughter of the couple who co-owned Chick's Chevron, where I used to work as a full-time Third Shift Cashier for three or four years before a tornado wrecked the place and put me out of a job.  So she heard from her parents all during my time at Chick's Chevron how immensely impressed they were with my courtesy, my work ethic, my initiative, my thorough job of cleaning the gas station and stocking the cooler, the shelves and the cola fountain, and all the other desirable traits which I sometimes forget that I possess.  So the HR managers hired me on without even running a background check on me, simply because Miss Jessica has it on very good authority that I'm an excellent worker.  So alas, it's yet another entry level job for yet another big corporation, stocking the dairy cooler at Walmart.  But it's better than nothing, and with Walmart's minimum wage going up from $9 an hour to $10 an hour next February, that should help me pay off the $2,500 or so from two months of credit card debt.

I just thought I'd drop in and say this much before getting my clothes and my documentation ready for my orientation at Walmart tomorrow morning.  Here's hoping that I can start catching up with IV whenever I come home from that.  Be excellent to each other, peeps.  

Hey Ainsley,

Just as a side thought, are the gametable nights adventures dead and over with?

Well, that's a good question. I suspect that the reason why our Gametable clients couldn't link up the last time we tried was because of Windows 8. Windows 8 messes up all kinds of executables, including Fraps and WS_FTP (which I was using to upload pictures to my website before my new computer and its pre-installed copy of Windows 8 forced me to switch to Filezilla), so it's probably jinking up Gametable as well.

But now Microsoft's cramming this free Windows 10 upgrade down our throats, and I'm tempted to try it. Perhaps it'll fix Windows 8's numerous oopsies and let Gametable clients link again, perhaps it won't. Have any of you guys done this upgrade yet, and how well does it work?

Well, like you said, Drak, sometimes the best way to push through a funk and get over writer's block is to just dive in and do it.

We'll see what I type up next.  


Speaking of which, I have this Friday off. Who feels like helping me try to link up our Gametable clients then?

*raises an eyebrow* Jaz and i would be interested, although we cannot make it a late night.

I'm in. I have Saturday off now because of the snow storm expected in my area this weekend. I'll have to blow the dust off my dice since they haven't seen the light of day in years.

Okay, give me an hour or so to get food and set things up. Then I'll post again to let everyone know what my IP is, and we'll see if we can get this to work.

Okay, I had a few hiccups to work out, but my Gametable client is now hosting on IP# 173.219.17.209. Join in if you can.

I'll peek in on Gametable now and then while I'm going over everyone's prologue chapters. I hope to see you soon!

Since this is my first time at game table how do I get there?

Do you have the Gametable client installed yet? If not, you can download it here:

http://gametableproj.sourceforge.net/

Just download it from the Download tab in the Toolbar on that page, and execute it from there. After that, go to the Gametable directory and run gametable.bat to start it up. And after that, click on Network, click on Join, enter my IP and go.

Let me know how (or if) it works!

Nope. Getting a lot of nothing...

Well, unfortunately Tiger and I had the same problem too. So I've done a reinstall with both the 2.0 version and the 3.0 Night Build version (which is still in development, apparently). If any of you are around tomorrow, I'd like to try hosting with both of these new installations and seeing if we can actually get Gametable -- some version or another -- to link up again. Today was a bust, but tomorrow's another story. Who's game?