Pure Frustration

Greeting loyal readers. Today’s blogcast is a return to normalcy. I’m going to lay something down right now, and it’s nothing but pure ranting. Today at work was a truly bad day. Now let’s face it… My job is cake. Nothing has ever been easier than this job. To be honest… a trained monkey could do my job. However, I feel that I make a strong effort to step out above and beyond the bare bones responsibilities of the job and try and be a valuable employee. I’ve made an effort to learn the job, beyond just the requirements. I have been told by numerous of the Team Leads that I am an asset to the company. However despite these facts… I’ve grown frustrated, and I’m going to explain why.



When I got hired at AMP, I made sure that the employer’s knew that my background, and indeed my strength and comfort zone was customer service. I was informed that if a customer service position opened up (customer service is a promotion from data entry) I would be getting an interview. Guaranteed. Today I learned that 5 data entry agents have recently been moved to Customer Service. Receiving a promotion and significantly more human hours. (Monday through Friday 9-5). Now… If I had been interviewed and they’d been hired over me, I can handle that. But the fact of the matter is, despite those promises… I DIDN’T GET A FRELLING INTERVIEW!



Now, I would be able to overlook this normally, however this is the third time this has happened since I started working at this company. I was APPROACHED about two other jobs in the company, and was told they’d contact me for interviews, and contact was never made. For either job.



This particular turn of events has left me feeling very defeated and unhappy. This job was originally a “seasonal” position, with some of the staff being retained for the off season. I felt confident due to my performance of being retained. However when I can’t even get interviewed for a friggin’ lateral move… I don’t see how that’s going to happen. I guess I had better start hunting much harder for jobs. I may be leaving my current one much earlier than I’d expected to.



That’s all for now, ranting isn’t decreasing my frustration, so I’m going to cut it short. As always loyal readers, this has been another blogcast of The Rogue Signal. Until next time… goodnight, and good luck.

The Adventures Continue

Hail and well met loyal readers! Today is going to be another step out of my usual ranting, and just going to be more of a journal. So... Indulge me.

Last night after work Alicia and I headed out to Men's Wearhouse, where a couple of week's ago we had gone in and gotten a "Tuxedo Consultation" with the "Tuxedo Specialist." Tuesday evening is our "pre-wedding" photo shoot and Alicia will be in her wedding dress. (Not going to lie, I'm excited!) Because Alicia is going to be spiffied up to her uptmost spiffiness I am going to be as well. I'm going to be in a tuxedo. That's right loyal readers, I... The Rogue Signal am going to be classing it up in a penguin suit. We picked it up yesterday, and it isn't perfect. My shoulders are a bit broad for the jacket, but the alterations would have put it past the date we need it, so we're going to just roll with it. Wearing this tux has definitely affirmed for me that I need to lose some weight. Alicia has stated that I'm quite handsome in my tuxedo (we did a trial run of it today, so she could see everything all put together, and so she could say "darling, that is definitely not how that works." I'm not super comfortable in it, but Alicia likes it so I'll go with it.

Following our trial run with the tuxedo Alicia and I sat down to bust out our invitations. We spent time organizing lists, making piles, adding stamps, printing labels, placing labels on envelopes. We spent quite a chunk of time doing this and we've only dented the list of invites that we need to send out. All in all it's been fun though. It's meant a lot of time side by side with my girl, and that makes me happier than anything in the world.

We've also been having discussions regarding wedding cakes. I'm not sure we're any closer to the decision. To put it mildly... neither of us really like cake all that much. The exception for me is german chocolate cake, but that's not a thing Alicia really likes. So we're continuing our discussions.

We're taking a brief break from invitation work, so I decided to blog about our current adventures. We're both excited for the upcoming week. It entails photo shoots, and my mom and brother will be here! Alicia gets to meet some of her future family-in-law for the first time in person. She says she's nervous, but I am hoping she is excited as well.

The time has come to get back to work. As always, dear readers, this has been a blogcast of The Rogue Signal. Until next time, goodnight, and good luck.

The Joy of Discovery

The Joys of Discovery

I will state first, before all the rest of this gets started, that moving to Provo was likely the best decision I’ve ever made. Not because it’s Provo, but rather because it places me five minutes away from my fiancé. It’s my feeling that my relationship with her has improved beyond anything I thought was possible.

Something we’ve dedicated ourselves to doing since I moved down to Provo, is finding activities we can do together. Alicia and I have started playing Halo: Reach over XBOX Live with my little brothers. This has been one of our greatest adventures. Strictly speaking… we’re… well we aren’t good. My brothers on the other hand, are good. So we usually end up playing team games, where my little brothers are all on 1 man teams, and then Alicia and I are a twosome. The thing about this is… we still lose. Badly. We’re talking like abysmal style losses. This is in no way Alicia’s fault! We just… are bad at the game. It’s not a style of game play that either of us excel at, however it’s the experience of playing with our family members that makes it fun. We don’t mind dying, we don’t mind losing. Because we sit and laugh at the whole event. It’s a lot of fun and I’m really happy that Alicia has chosen to participate in it with me.

One of the things that we are trying to get better at, is using our Kinect. We have one for our XBOX and it has Kinect Adventures and EA Sports Active 2 on it. I think part of our issue has to do with timing. Because of our weird work schedules it’s tough to find a time that working out together works. When I get off work at night it’s usually time to make dinner and then we just want to relax. I am willing to take the blame fully on this one. We continue to look for ways to make “Kinecting” (clever that one) a feasible option. It may come down to pure motivation. Actually, let’s be honest, that’s exactly what it comes down to, is just making the time.

We’ve also been exploring television programs we can watch together. Something we learned a long time ago is that our movie taste is very different. So we have made great efforts to find middle ground when it comes to television shows. One of our big discoveries has been The Voice. We have had a lot of fun watching this show, though I think we have been less than impressed with the Battle Rounds. We did however really enjoy the blind auditions, it’s so much better than American Idol’s ridiculousness. Luckily we’ve found some serious common ground on Food Network. Alicia states that she loves Chopped, and she will watch Iron Chef America with me. We’ve really had fun watching Best in Smoke together, and we’re excited for June when Next Food Network Star premieres. I think this summer we’re going to have Netflix send us the disks for Castle, and see if we both can get into that show. And I have promised that I will give Bones a try.

Something that we’ve been spending a lot of time doing lately, which is honestly a huge surprise to me, is playing World of Warcraft. I sent Alicia a ten day free trial, and she had a great time. We got Christian, my younger brother, to come and play with us and we’ve had a lot of fun leveling toons (that’s game speak for characters) together. Alicia really likes her mage… and has created quite a few of them to try the different races. She seems to have decided she’s a big fan of her Dranei. She really likes how pretty the starting area was, and I think she likes being a tall blue woman who can hurl icy death from her hands. At least that’s my suspicion. She seems to really be enjoying it, and a lot of nights it’s either Alicia or Christian saying “are we playing tonight?” We’re going to get Alicia to try some Player vs Player combat, because that is Christian and I’s favorite haunt. We’ll see if she likes it.

We’ve been exploring various foods as well. We’ve kept our eyes out for things on sale at Sam’s Club, and in the past while Alicia has tried leg of lamb, and corned beef. She didn’t particular like either of them. At all. But she was brave enough to try.

That really sums up the majority of our explorations recently. The rest of our time is consumed with working, and with wedding plans. Tonight after work I have to go over and have adjustments made to my tux. Next Tuesday is our pre-wedding photos, and we’re praying the weather will be better than this rain it’s been lately. I’m excited to see Alicia in her wedding get-up, I’ve even been practicing pulling my jaw up off the floor. I know she’s going to be beautiful.

For now, that’s my life. I am enjoying it, and look forward to the next several weeks. As always, loyal readers, this has been another blogcast of The Rogue Signal. Until next time, goodnight, and good luck.

The Most Devastating Weapon of All

The past several weeks have been eventful to say the very least. Following a long discussion with Alicia, it was determined that we'd most likely end up living in Utah Valley following our wedding. specifically in and around Provo itself. Something that I've noticed with several of my friends is that they spend a great deal of time right before their wedding searching for a place to live, and it adds a great deal of undue stress into their lives. I resolved to prevent that from happening, and began to look for employment and living quarters in the Provo region.

As it turns out, I got an interview for a job two days after I began this search. The interview was on a Monday, I started work on a Wednesday, and I'd signed the papers for an apartment, and moved into it on Saturday. In my mind that's a clear sign that I was where I was supposed to be.

These last weeks have been filled with adjusting to my new living situation. I'm currently living in a fairly large apartment by myself, Alicia will of course not be moving in till after our wedding in June. However the apartment is unfurnished, so my sweetie and I have been slowly acquiring furniture. We now have a couch, a tv, and an entertainment center! I'm currently sleeping on an air mattress on the floor, but that's likely to be remedied soon. Alicia's parents are giving her the bed she used when she was in high school, so at least we will have one. It will be small, but it's better than an air mattress!

I'm going to return, dear readers, to my usual style of writing. Which is to say, I'm asking that you brace yourself for a controlled rant of my emotions. Situations lately have truly had me frustrated, and I have tried my best to just brush them aside or keep them bottled up. I've determined, however, that this particular group of actions is one I'm bad at. I don't bottle up very well. I don't do a very good job of keeping things buried. The fact of the matter is, while some can bottle it up, and then healthily dispose of it, I seem to be incapable of doing that. As you read through the rest of this little tirade, I'm sure you'll be able to understand why it is that I feel this way

So my friends, I'm going to discuss the prospect of war. Now when I'm speaking of war I'm not discussing one in Iraq, I'm not discussing the fabled battles of Humans and Orcs in numerous fantasy genres. Hell, this isn't even a discussion regarding The Galactic Empire and the friggin' Rebel Alliance. I'm speaking of a war that strikes much closer to home. I've seen this war tear apart friendships, tear apart families, and decimate friendships. I'm discussing an interpersonal war.

It's a widely accepted fact that every person in the world is in some sort of conflict with another person. This isn't to say that everyone hates someone, but there are people that we disagree with, don't get along with, etc. For one reason or another, the human race is incapable of just simply getting along. Most of us can't even truly agree to disagree. How many times has someone said that to you, or have you said that to someone? How many of those times have you walked away muttering under your breath, or feeling in your heart that you're absolutely right? How often are you belittling the intelligence of the other person in your brain, even after having just offered the diplomatic solution?

This war is waged on so many different levels, and with a variety of weapons. A friend of mine described her favorite weapon as the "french pout." The French pout is a classic French facial gesture which expresses discontent, disdain or disgust. Others, such as myself, usually choose all out confrontation. Then there are those that choose to utilize a weapon that is the equivalent of using biological warfare. They deploy this underhanded technique and lay waste to those with whom they are quarreling. This all too common weapon is used to breed complacency in the target, and then when the quarry least expects it, the party who is wielding this tool will suddenly NINJA SLASH THEIR HEART, BRAIN, AND SOUL!

As you can see, I have very strong feelings on this, and perhaps that's why I choose to write about it. The weapon I speak of, that weapon which is all to frequently utilized in interpersonal relationships, is passive agression. Wikipedia defines this as follows:

[b]Passive–aggressive behavior, a personality trait, is passive, sometimes obstructionist resistance to following through with expectations in interpersonal or occupational situations. It is a personality trait marked by a pervasive pattern of negative attitudes and passive, usually disavowed resistance in interpersonal or occupational situations.[/b]

Disavowed! That is one of the key words of this damnable behavior! People choose to simply deny that they are still feeling upset or negative about a situation. The person they are quarreling with will accept this at face value. This regularly happens because the conflicted parties often care deeply about each other, which in my mind makes this crime all the more heinous. The damage that passive aggressive behavior can wreak [b]cannot[/b] be understated. Passive aggressive behavior can cause a butterfly effect within a relationship that may not be felt for days, weeks, or even years.

I choose not to point fingers, or make examples in this particular blog. This isn't intended to put anyone on blast. Perhaps this makes me passive aggressive as well, or at least so many of you may think. However, the difference is I intend to talk to these people about the issue, but I needed a cooler head before I did it. Taking the time to put these words into the nether space that is the internet has provided me with a bit of perspective. I've made my opinions broadly known, and soon the specifics will be discussed with those whom I've deemed as in violation of the code of relationship behavior.

I apologize for this unfocused and angry rant, thanks for reading. As always, dear readers, this has been a blogcast of The Rogue Signal. Until next time, goodnight, and good luck.