Wah!

Alright. It's a proven part of blogging. This is where every disaffected person comes to whine. Well, far be it from me to defy convention.

I think rules about child negligence and punishment should be repealed. I don't REALLY think this, but it's fun to say and eye-grabbing (there's almost nothing worse than child abuse - somebody quote me here). The worst thing about kids is the same thing that's awful about cats. It's the little things they do that make them seem smart of cute that pay the way to them still being kitties. However, at some point, they do something completely dumb and you go "yeah... they're just cats."

The kid is growing into the point of her life where she wants to play emotional reaction, and if I didn't have this firmly in mind, she'd be a lot worse off. I'm not in a position to punish the child, so her litany of sins can be passed without much in the way of retribution.

Let this be a declaration of statement. No more shall I just suffer. I believe her world will be a better place in the future if I apply some balanced justice to her life at this juncture. I'm not gonna pretend I'm smart or brilliant here, but I also recognize that if I do nothing, it only makes me a doormat for worse to happen.

So hurrah for me, folks!

Oh! And aside from this, life is dances and rainbows. More about that soon.

Movie Review: Stranger Than Fiction

You know I go to the movies. I don't have to explain this. You know I...

RANT AT THE SCREEN

Today's movie is "Stranger Than Fiction", the amazing story of a story which affects a man's life. Very literally. The very act of the book being written is affecting him directly, and unfortunately, will probably kill him.

Farell? In a SERIOUS role? What the hell? Erm... fairly serious, anyway. Will plays bumbling with a cleaner, less sarcastic face than Ben Stiller ever has. He's absolutely awesome as Walter Crick, the star of his own tragedy. Our author's quiet, sickly narration helps establish the movie in the place where it wants to be: a movie that SOUNDS just like a book. The tropes of literature are hung all over this place, and the movie mimics a book as much as it can throughout, which helps the 'plausability' of the stories immensely. Also awesome is Dustin Hoffman, Walter's advisor on his perdicament.

In the end, the movie is artful, like some literature can be, and a wonderful examination of how we treat fictional characters (and especially the duties of the author to tell the story). Funny, mesmerizing in place, and it really stuck with me, and held me at rapt attention through to the very end. Perhaps, this is a testament to the power of narration. At no point was I particularly lost. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's now Farell's standard fare. This is grand.

I give it five out of five malfunctioning watches.

Well... I misread that one. Nevermind. I'm still employed, and may well be for a good long time. Good advice and a level head got me through this one.

My boss thought I was going to or wanted to quit. I assured him today that wasn't the case. So we're all good now!

That's freakin' awesome.

ARGH!

I need to catch you folks up on the last week. It's been "a treat". And those of you familiar with sarcasm could probably smell it on that one.

Last week, I got my first major write up at work, and a significant chewing out. I've been late a lot recently, and I really did deserve to get written up. No problems there, actually. Unfortunately, my boss also decided to do a little resetting as far as my user rights and priviledges were concerned, essentially hog-tying me into doing one job at a time, under his strict supervision. Essentially, I'm being micromanaged.

I can work like this. It's not effective for the company, but I can work like this. The problem is, 9/10ths of what I do is now more time consuming, and I don't have the proper access rights to do a lot of it. Many things have become flat-out impossible. For the position of my boss, I can understand: He's limiting the negative impact I could have on the network if I got upset. He's scared in a way, I suppose.

Honestly, I'd never do anything to hurt this place. I had too many good times here. It's been an awesome job. But I don't know how long I can stay here, being stopped from doing a job effectively. It's as terrible a punishment as you could devise: being forced to do what you once did with ease ineffectively.

I hate this, and it's getting exaserbated all the time. Today. TODAY! My boss is on vacation, and didn't tell me. I have to get permission to do almost anything directly from him. And, apparantly, over the weekend, we had e-mail issues, and now we've got a major problem I can't investigate except in the most basic ways.

I couldn't get restricted at a worse time. And everyone is looking to me to provide help, and I can't. It's stupid. And I'm sure, eventually, I'm going to lose my job over it.

Sorry, SBN. It was a good run.

...Anybody need a good web designer/tech support...?