Starting Over

There comes a time in every man's life...

2008-01-28T19:20:00.000-05:00

when he says "Fuck it!" and calls a plumber.

So here we are in the dying end of January, which means really, really slow season at work. I've worked for the same company for almost 12 years which means I get 4 weeks of vacation. I hate being at work when it's really slow, which means I have one day of vacation left for 2008. Whatcha gonna do?

During my vacation, I figured it would be a good idea to tackle some of the jobs around the house that I hadn't done (because I was working 60 hour weeks through to Christmas.). So I figured that my upstairs tenants would probably like functioning sinks and drains. Off I go to Canadian Tire the first time for supplies. Buy the supplies, start working-and off I go to Canadian Tire to get the other parts I need. So I start working again. And then I send my wife to CT for the third time, to get the part I need. Start again. Then I say fuck it and give up for the night. Get up the next day and go back to CT again. Finally complete that job, after much cursing and a previously unknown hatred of plumbing arises in my soul.

Switch over to the kitchen to replace the taps and clear the hellish clog they managed to cram down the drain. This is where I tell my dear tenants to not scrape food or dump bacon grease down the drain!!! So, I cut out a pipe. Take the snake to it-replace the pipe with new pipe, and wait for everything to dry, run the water and...nothing. Fuck! Still clogged. Trip to Home Depot for a 25 foot snake. Cut the pipe back further, and run the snake down there. I'm not even scraping the clog. I know that it's there; I can feel it. Unfortunately the snake that I have is nowhere near what I need to get rid of this friggin' clog.

I figured that I might as well replace the taps while I'm here. No go. What kind of twisted psychopath puts in plumbing with no shut-off valves?!? Dammit! *&%^$%$%$@@@**!!!! Asshole plumber! Have to shut off the water to the entire house to do this. Fuck it! I'm calling a plumber!

$511 later, all the plumbing that I couldn't do is done. We have shut off valves everywhere. We have new taps in both kitchens and the tenants bathroom. I should have realized the shut-off valve thing when I got my boiler replaced and the boiler guy had to install shut offs there, since there weren't any. Who puts in a boiler with no shut offs?!?

Probably the same asshole who installed the kitchens and bathrooms. Fucker.

What do you know?

2007-11-17T20:34:00.000-05:00

I can answer the musical question "Who let the dogs out?".

It was my cat.

I work the night shift so when I go to bed in the morning, the dogs come in and sleep with me. The dogs and the cat are still slowly working on relations; the cat hates them. A couple of days ago, I woke up and realized that something was wrong. I could move. Normally, I have 140 pounds of dogs sleeping on me somewhere.

Still groggy and looking around, I figure the dogs must be sleeping on the floor. I grabbed my housecoat (woke up 'cause I had to pee) and suddenly realized that the bedroom door was open. This is a bad thing-the dogs like to eat stuff. And they have Labrador stomachs. So off I go to the bathroom, expecting to find the house destroyed.

There, looking horribly dejected, are the dogs, out in the living room. The kitchen door only swings one way so after they pushed it open to go out, they couldn't get back in. Keep in mind that the dogs are usually woken up by my daughter when she takes them outside at 3. So, they're sort of trained that when the bedroom door opens, they run out to the living room.

Apparently, the cat figured this out, too. After my trip to the bathroom, I let the dogs back into the bedroom and went back to sleep with my usual 140 pounds of fur on me. The next day, I woke up at 10am. No dogs, door open, cat curled up beside me on the bed.

I'm pretty sure she was smiling.

I make great money for a babysitter

2007-11-17T09:02:00.000-05:00

I'm 37 years old, and I work with a crew of people who are younger than I am. The youngest is 20. Lately, the crew is acting like a bunch of petulant kids. It started like this we had a wicked busy night-we had to drop 900 skids, transport them and load them. They got dropped and they got transported. We knew they would not all get loaded, but the loaders were waiting for a truck to be chocked.

The lady who does that stuff was busy as well. So the loaders and droppers start to talk, and the lady that does the paper work and stuff gets mad. 2 of the guys talking could have chocked the truck instead of waiting on her. So she gets a chance to chock it, comes back in and says you can start loading now. Loader guy says, "Oh, we're done for the day." This is at 10 to 6-work is over at 6:30. Lady gets mad and tells the manager. The next night, the manager gives the guys shit for standing around.

Now the guys get mad that we did that much work and she ratted us out for talking (yes, that is actually what these grown men said- she ratted us out. How very grade school!). "Well screw them! They're not getting more than 8hrs work from us." So than starts the crap fest; the droppers start doing a bad job which screws the transporters which means the loads get freight much slower. This goes on for 2 days.

Then the big boss comes in to our start up and says, in a nutshell, grow up or you're getting a TL. They continue acting like spoiled kids. Then I got mad because one of the droppers does a very good job for me because he knows I'm not the one they're mad at. Why does this make me mad? Because this guy used to hate me; so here is this guy that stopped hating me like 8 months ago (but probably still doesn't like me) working well for me. I got really pissed because the night before an old friend of mine did the crap drop for me.

As I have said, I have worked for this company for 11 years and I'm damn good at my job. I'm now pissing off the pissed off guys by getting the work done anyway (go me!). Their stupid plot is pointless and petty.

Yep, I make damn good money for a babysitter.

The Transporter's Prayer

The Company signs my paycheque; I shall not want.
It maketh me work with juvenile sucks. It leadth me into many clusterfucks.
It provideth me Health and Safety Training. It outlines policies and procedures in the Employee Handbook.

Yea, though I drive through the valley of childish bullshit, I will fear no crybaby,
For you pay me for this.

My center-rider and my driving skills comfort me.
Thou periodically has Employee Appreciation Barbeques with these juvenile cry-asses.
My machine is full of oil, my thermos runneth over.
Surely this childish bullshit shall follow me until I retire,
and I shall dwell in this damn warehouse until I'm 65.
Praise The Company!

Gay marriage? So?

2007-11-06T20:04:00.000-05:00

Since election time is rolling closer and closer in the States (sigh-I'll miss Dubbya. He's done great things for the Canadian dollar.) and most likely here in Canada as well, let's talk about something that's sure to be a hot election topic, shall we? Say it with me kids, gay marriage.

As a heterosexual male (*looks down pants* yep, male), and as a person who was brutalized by his mother (not all women are caring and nurturing), let me start by saying if 2 men or 2 women want to get married, by all means, go ahead. I have always held to the personal belief that the world is a hard enough place to be happy in to worry about what gender somebody is happy with. And so long as there is love in your hearts and you have kindness and compassion-adopt! Adopt as many kids as you can. Personally I would have much rather been raised by a gay couple that wanted me than a straight woman who didn't. So for all of those who believe that homosexuality is an affront to God-get bent!

Really. Gay marriage is not going to cause the collapse of Western Civilization. It is not going to destroy the institution of marriage. I'm fairly certain that there will be a far lower divorce rate among gay couples than straight ones.

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that most of the people who are really, really outspokenly against gay marriage tend to get outed a couple of months later? So, you know, if you're gay and you're looking, find yourself an outspoken opponent of gay marriage and you might get a date! Of course, they won't call you back and they'll denounce you as evil, but it could still be a good night. (kidding! relax folks!)

And for the overly religious zealot types, here's the thing: if God has a problem with gay marriage, let God stop it. Not by vote in congress or Parliament, but by showing up and saying "Knock this shit off!". Doesn't have to be in person-could be by flaming shrub or whatever. I'm pretty sure that he has the special effects budget to animate a statue of jeebus if he wanted to.

Hey, is it getting warm in here? Does anyone smell burning wood?

(If the Christians are right, I'm so going to Hell...)

Poopin' on overtime!

2007-11-04T19:09:00.000-05:00

Kind of a tribute to Blue Water, Baby by moooooog35, here goes a tale of a man and his toilet.

As I lack a friend to text me when the toilets at work have been cleaned, I had to find my own system. I've mentioned that I've been with the company for a long time. We have a separate company that comes in to do the cleaning of the bathrooms, cafeteria and so on. After they'd been there for about a week I learned their schedule. Now, anywhere in the warehouse, I can tell you where's there's a freshly cleaned toilet and at what time it was cleaned.

Since the last thing the janitorial staff do is mop the floors you can tell if someone has been in since they cleaned-there's boot prints on the floor. So, I guess my BWB is NBPB-No Boot Prints, Baby! But I digress.

One of the minor forms of revenge against my company that I enjoy the most is pooping on overtime. Seems a small thing, but consider it-they're paying me double time to poop. And on a freshly cleaned toilet. Trust me, it's the most satisfying shit you'll ever take in your life. If I'm really hacked off at the company and I know they're offering a double time shift, especially on a long weekend (that's triple time and a half), I will actually eat foods that will guarantee that I will poop more. My personal best is 5 visits in a 12 hour shift, and all on freshly cleaned toilets.

My revenge is stinky.

Saving money VS stupid

2007-11-03T08:14:00.000-04:00

Stuff like this is why the place I work for drives me nuts. The Q A night shift had one its guys take a day shift job (Why anyone works days is beyond me,sun light-it burns, it burns!). Now, in the interest of saving money, the company has decided that replacing the guy who left is not in the budget, taking the QA night shift from a 5 person crew that struggled to get the job done (it used to be a 7 person crew-gotta save that money) to a 4 person crew that has no fucking hope of getting the job done.

QA-the department that fixes all the mistakes, catches all the errors, that sort of thing-is now woefully understaffed. And in the corporation's extensive wisdom, all technical people like QA, Traffic, IT and loss prevention, now have to do 5 hours a week in operations. That means all the folks with the cushy office jobs now have to slug boxes. Great idea in theory, if your theory is to piss off as many people as possible with as little effort as you can put in! Why do they think these people took the cushy office jobs? Here's a hint-because they didn't want to slug boxes! If they wanted to be shippers or receivers, they would have signed up as shippers or receivers.

Great, so they've increased the inexperienced and pissed off people on the floor while decreasing the people that catch the mistakes. That will save money, I'm sure. I'm sure for the extra few boxes they'll get out the extra mistakes will totally be worth it. But what do I know? I've just worked on the floor for 11 years. Management makes me giggle. They could solve so many of these problems by walking up to one of the old guys like me and very quietly, so no one else can hear, asking me one simple question-"Is this stupid?".

"Why yes, Mr. Manager, sir, it certainly is!"

In my 11 years with the company, I have have 57 Team Leaders and probably 14 or 15 managers. I've seen 2 managers retire, I've seen 4 TLs become managers. Guess what happened to the rest of them? Fired or quit. A few were moved to other departments. I can't wait to see what the future has in store.

We have a new TL, young guy, I'm guessing late 20's at best. When talking to a team member (that's any of us uneducated folks on the floor, y'all) he tends to have a look on his face like he's staring at a particularly unpleasant pile of something. And he seems to have this idea that since he worked at a brake plant as a manager previously, he knows absolutely everything about warehousing. For example, the RSR night shift has a very important job and sometimes it's crazy busy. On those occasions, we need 3 droppers, 3 transporters (that's what I do) and 3 loaders. His last great idea was to take one of our best droppers and assign him as a transporter. Dumb. His really dumb idea before that; put a guy who had his reach licence for 2 days (that's what we drop with) on the drop, on an insanely busy night. Dumb. I can't help thinking when he looks at me with that "What did I just step in?" look-"Yeah, smart guy, next year while you're looking for another job, I'll still be here doing the job at 150% of target. Ya schmuck!"

Too bad I lack the mental acuity for management.

And then, there was hydraulic fluid everywhere!

2007-10-30T07:34:00.000-04:00

Went to work last night, the machine I normally drive was in Maintenance. So, I took 112, my back up machine. I know they're not really my machines, but we get possessive of our equipment.

So halfway through my shift, I pick up a couple of pallets to take to the guy loading the truck, press the button for the lift, and it won't stop raising. Not good. I shut off the machine. And it still won't stop raising. Even worse! I unplug the machine. It stops raising. Now, I'm in a dilemma. I have freight on my forks which I can't lower to get off my forks. This looks like a job for...Maintenance.

I plug the machine back in, drive it to the truck, the loader and I move the freight to other pallets, all to the gentle sounds of my machine grinding away, still trying to lift. Off I go to Maintenance, with the machine still trying to lift the whole way there. The good little machine actually made it to the front door of the Maintenance Dept. where it promptly emptied itself of every fluid it had.

There was smoke, and hydraulic fluid, as my machine gently lowered itself to the ground, nothing left to hold the forks up. With one final grind and a puff of smoke, I'm pretty sure it died.

RIP, 112.

They've finally done it

2007-10-29T08:48:00.000-04:00

The company that I work for has finally done something so stupid, it's made even me go "What? What the fuck? Are you fucking kidding me? This is a joke, right?"

Ok. I've worked for the same company for 11 years. I have seen them do some truly stupid things. Before I go on with this, let me first point out I have no problem with women in management. I've had many female bosses who were quite intelligent, very skilled and good at the job. However, my company has just promoted to Assistant Area Manager someone who thought Nova Scotia was a suburb of Toronto, and that you could drive to England from Canada. Thanks, i guess, to those really well spaced out oil platforms.

I'm questioning, did nobody else want the job? Wasn't there any other choice? Someone with an IQ, a brain cell-anything? Someone who's recently suffered head trauma? Road kill? A lawn gnome? A plastic flamingo? Anything?

I'm fairly certain that if this woman got into a debate with toast, toast would win. You know how liquid nitrogen is the coldest substance on the planet? Well, she's liquid dumb.

I feel better now. The company is still stupid, but I feel better now. Stupid useless gits.

My wife makes me do things

2007-10-29T08:17:00.000-04:00

My wife tagged me for this thing, so here it is.

8 Things I'm Passionate About
My Wife
My Kid
Loyalty
RPGs
Music
Reading
Cooking
Baking (yes, they're different, dammit!)

8 Things I Want To Do Before I Die
Win the lottery
Smack someone who's being really stupid, just because they're being stupid
Trip a kid that's running around screaming in the supermarket
Smack the parent of the kid that's running around screaming in the supermarket
Go to Thailand
Write a novel
Get my kid to actually do what I tell her to
and marry my wife.

8 Things I Say Often
Oh, look, it's the Cluster-Fuck Fairy!
The Cluster-Fuck Fairy showed up riding in the pocket of the Cluster-fuck Ogre riding the Cluster-Fuck Dragon (can you tell I love my job?)
They're what?!? Are they really that stupid?
Stupid. (when my wife asks me how work was)
I'll get right on that.
Don't hurt yourself, Princess! (not you, Prin!)
Why are you talking to me like I should care?

8 Books I've recently read
Harry Potter books 1-6
Hannibal by Thomas Harris
It by Stephen King

8 Songs That I could listen to over and over
Look Back In Anger by David Bowie
Andy Warhol by David Bowie
anything from Kiss' first four albums
Chemical Warfare by The Dead Kennedys
Monkey Suit by The Plasmatics
Aenima by Tool
Stereo by The Watchmen
I Lost My Job To Guy Named Gino by My Dog Popper

8 Things That Attract Me To My Friends
sense of humour
loyalty
common interests
intelligence
debates
lack of prejudice
compassion
sarcasm

8 Things I Have Learned In This Past Year
starting a new business is hard
dwelling on the past can really fuck with your head
trying to figure out why your old friends will no longer talk to you will really fuck with your head
forgetting how important you are to your family is bad. Bad, bad, bad.
Apparently, I'm more important than money.
my kid is now officially a teenager.
I make really fucking good cheesecake!
My blood is the consistency of pudding (and it's a good thing, too!).

8 People who should do this meme
I don't know 8 bloggers who haven't already been tagged.

So there you have it.

Cyber-clan

2007-10-27T23:42:00.000-04:00

This is a very odd concept for me. I've made a bunch of friends that I will likely never, ever meet and who I wouldn't know if I saw them in person. I kinda hang out on a website called Nutrinopets. And I've met some pretty cool people there. My little sisters in particular.

That's what I call them 'cause that's how I think of them. Lilybri and mocha. I talk to them a lot. It's weird-for people that I've never met, I think about them a lot. I like to keep apprised of the things that are happening in their lives. And I actually worry about them. I find it very odd that people I've never met can be that important. Thus-cyber-clan!

She likes me, she really, really likes me!

2007-10-27T23:37:00.001-04:00

This one is totally about my wonderful, wonderful wife. Or un-wife. Whatever. It's taken her awhile but she's finally managed to remove my head from my butt. I think I'm actually starting to believe this the only thing that matters is me thing. It's not about money or stuff or whatever. It's about us.

And my kid. In spite of being a pain in the ass who doesn't do what I tell her to, she's still a good kid. She doesn't make the same stupid decisions that a lot of other kids in her school currently do. And she only rolls her eyes at me about three times a day, so I suppose it's not that bad. I did raise her to be a punk, after all.

Realilty versus fuck you guys!

2007-10-27T23:30:00.000-04:00

So after much internal debate, I have decided that I am, in fact, very real, in spite of lack of perception. So it boils down to this: I made my promises, I will keep them forever. If you need me, call me but fuck you guys.

Thanks for all the support. Thanks for being there when I had my stroke. Thanks for being there when my Dad died. Thanks for being there when my Mom died. Thanks for keeping me apprised of all the important events in your lives. I stopped calling you because no one returned my calls. Marriages, births, deaths ect. went by and not so much as a quick message on the machine. I find it ridiculous and depressing that friendship has been reduce to a couple of quick lines on facebook.

Apathy versus Existence

2007-10-22T20:22:00.000-04:00

OK, bear with me. This is really out there.

So, I've had a very interesting existence so far. Back in the drug days I was infamous as a bad guy. When I cleaned myself up, I was known as a "good friend". I always had every body's back, regardless of which phase I was in. Loyalty has always been very important to me. Something I noticed was sorely lacking in my family.

Here's where my existential crisis comes in (seriously, this is really fucking out there). Perception is reality. As pretty much all of my friends no longer perceive me, I find that my reality is greatly diminished. I am becoming less real every day. The question is, am I no longer perceived by them or do they just not care? If they just don't care, I'm still real. If they no longer perceive me, then I no longer exist to them. Thus, I'm no longer real to them.

This diminishes my personal reality. I'm becoming less real. As an example of this theory, take a look at the Old Gods-Zeus, Odin, Ogham, the list goes on and on. When they had many followers who truly believed in them, they existed. Now, with the advent of Christianity and other religions, and their war on the Old Gods, they are little more than folk tales now. They are powerless and no longer exist in the minds of most of the world (excluding pagan folk like myself, even though we don't perceive them in the same way as in their hey-day). Now, I'm not claiming to be godlike by any stretch of the imagination. I'm just an old punk who's tired. And I feel like I'm becoming less real with each passing day.

What the hell happened? Where did the apathy to my existence come from?

Like I said, it's really fucking out there. It's been a tough year.

Introduction

2007-10-22T20:08:00.000-04:00

Well, I guess I'm a 37 year old father of a 15 year old girl, who fortunately has my musical tastes. I discovered the secret to invisibility-move more than an hour away from your friends. I have been very happily unmarried for over 10 years (thank you, Gene Simmons!) to, to be perfectly honest, the best woman I have ever met in my life. Some of you may know her as skryker. She makes me laugh. For reasons I will never really understand, she loves me. She just is.

OK-the early days. My mother beat me and my sister like animals, everyday until I was 15. She only stopped when I threatened to kill her. 12-16 I sort of remember thanks to drug addiction; gee, I wonder how that happened. "Smoke this, you'll feel better!" And 16-now, I've been trying to be the best man that I can. Though many days, IMO, I fail at it miserably.

I chose the name punkdad because, well, I am. Hard to fight authority when you ARE the authority, though. But at least I'm cool authority.