Roy Scheider died yesterday. He was one of my father's favorite actors.

That really doesn't make it any easier to deal with the fact that my dad would have been 60 today.

-pb

So, I decided to actually put my MySpace account to some use, because I was trying to track someone down and figured they might be there. So, to catch people who might be looking for me on MySpace, it serves as a link to my LiveJournal so people can look me up if need be.

Then, I made the mistake of following some threads and tripping down memory lane. I looked over the digital echoes of people I've known but haven't seen or heard from in almost a decade, and it put me into a bit of a funk. I got this sense of loss, knowing that I had the means to contact these people sitting right at my fingertips, but knowing full well that I don't even have time for the people I'm friends with now, let alone people I've obviously grown apart from. Besides, I wouldn't even know what to say to these people anymore.

There's that hope that they will come looking for me, but then again, they're probably in the same state that I am: not knowing exactly how to communicate with someone you haven't seen hide nor hair of in ages.

It's funny, too, looking over some of the profiles I found. One person I considered to be not very mature has a blog that fairly well 'grown up,' while other people, most my age or older, have pages that look like a 15-year-old maintains them, what with sparkling shit and memes about what kind of gothic faerie they are. Does it make me curmudgeonly to expect that 30-somethings like myself (some with kids and careers and houses and whatnot) should be beyond these things? Does that make me old?

...

I gave up after about an hour. I never found the person I was looking for.

-pb

On Monday, I start a new job as a web developer for IQnection, a web development studio in Doylestown. I haven't made mention of it here, mainly because I feel the need to vent my spleen about why I have a new job, and I didn't want to do it here while I was still at the old job. Now that this is no longer an issue, here we go:

Round about the beginning of August, I was happy with my job. I'd been there just over a year (started as a temp on 7/31/06, hired on full time on 10/31/06). Going from temp to perm was a huge pay cut, but them's the shakes. It was still significantly more than I was making at Kinetic, and I was looking for a stable gig. I also liked the place.

Now, they're one of those companies that does year-end reviews, regardless of when you started. Since they hired me on at the end of October, they told me I'd get my first review at the end of '07, not at the end of '06 (which would have been two months later). I was fine with that, because it made sense. But, in essence, they were getting a year and five months out of me before a meaningful review and the commensurate raise. Whatever, I said. I'm here.

Now, I came into this position and shook it up something fierce. My two predecessors had been graphic designers with some small notion of web design. The position I was hired for is web developer. It's a different discipline, and one that the company obviously needed.

By the time they hired me on as permanent, I'd already upgraded one of their e-commerce sites, completely revolutionized their entire email marketing paradigm, and pitched a new layout and navigation structure for their website.

For the first six months or so, I did a lot of development work. Then slowly, it petered out. By the beginning of August, I was doind mainly design stuff. Not my cup of tea, but things were on the horizon.

I was told that they were splitting my position in two. One part would be the design work, and the other would get back to more development, for more than just my group. It'd basically be an asset that the whole company could use for various projects. It would also take over a proprietary system that they had to send me to Salt Lake City to learn, and that had taken me a long time to get up to speed on.

I was told that I was a shoe-in for the development side, and they'd just hire someone for the developer side. It was a step up in pay, too, and fairly significant at that.

So, back to the beginning of August. I'd just heard that they had approved the position. Awesome.

Then, I heard that the VP of my group didn't think I was qualified for it, even though I'd been doing it for over a year. She had come to the conclusion that this new development position needed someone who had both graphic design and web development skills. Not web design, graphic design. They are two different beasts. Now, she wanted this mythical two-headed creature to work for about half of what such a person would rightfully command.

So, the job posting went out to the masses. They started finding people with my qualifications. Interesting, I thought. So, I looked up the posting. "Senior web developer." Technically, my superior.

They basically took my resume, word-for-word, and said "we need someone who can do all this." Nothing on the job description even hinted that I'd be under-qualified for the position. In fact, the very mention of the need to learn an arcane proprietary system perfectly qualified me for the position.

I started looking for another job.

My boss told me he was confident that I'd be the best candidate for the job once they found nothing but people equal to me, and that I'd get it. Failing that, he was trying to get me a raise to equal the new position. Of course, he told me that I needed to show more design skills. Nevermind that I'd redesigned one site from the ground up, pitched a new web design for the main site (that they're going with), and designed a series of email templates to establish a brand identity for the email marketing. No, I needed to show print design skills. Which would be absolutely useless to either position.

So, concerning the raise, I didn't care. They'd already made the decision to screw me over, so the precedent was set. They did it once, they'd likely do it again. I was out the door.

The day before I got the new job, I was informed that the budget had been slashed (despite being told every six months that the company was basically printing its own money), and the Senior Web Developer was off the table. I took that to mean that my raise was, as well. Considering everything I'd already done, I felt I was deserving of a large upgrade. Since I wasn't getting that, there was zero motivation to stay. Couple that with my boss making some inane crack about me being a vegetarian every day, or the fact that the entire group forgot my birthday (even though it's printed on the phone list that everyone has), or that IT started blocking every site I visit (including LJ), and you've got a perfect storm designed to sweep me out the door.

And out the door I am. So, on Monday, I'm back to the world of development, doing what I like to do, working for a company small enough to be very concerned with treating its employees like valued members of the team, instead of numbers that can be easily replaced.

Incidentally, the old company is already having trouble replacing me. And even when they do, it'll be a good six months before my replacement really knows how to do the job. But, I didn't make that bed, so I don't have to sleep in it.

And that's why I have a new job.

-pb

Worse than not getting the job was having to turn it down.

-pb

In the course of my life, I have encountered people who, in their time, became very important in my life in one regard or another. Friends, roommates, and/or lovers, there are more than a few that wounded me greatly. Sometimes, the pain was sharp, like a paper cut that doesn't even bleed. Sometimes, it was like a deep knife wound with plenty of blood and pain. These are the people who, in conversations with them in my head, I address starting with

"Of all the people I hope I never see again, you're the one..."

One, in particular, has been on my mind recently, and I don't exactly know why. His wound was different. Instead of a paper cut or a knife wound, his wound was that strange wound where you realize you're bleeding, and it takes you ten minutes to figure out from where.

So, Chuck, of all the people I hope I never see again, you're the one I miss the most.

I haven't seen him in almost seven years. Chuck is an extraordinary guy. He had this amazing capacity to laugh and get others to laugh with him. He's the kind of guy who'll gladly sit up until all hours of the morning listening to your latest existential or love crisis, and then openly fantasize to you about fornicating with your grandmother. Chuck's a merciless kidder. He'll use any subject matter, no matter how vulgar, crass, or beyond good taste, to roast you. But there's no malevolence in it, he's just a sickly funny guy. He'd give you the shirt off his back, and then gleefully run around naked. Sometimes his humor ranged into the frightfully annoying, but damned if I don't laugh sometimes when I hear "doughnuts!"

For all his pros, Chuck had a lot of cons. The first being his perpetual employment (or lack thereof). Chuck lived with me in Perkasie, and in those two or so months, had something like three jobs. I moved to Lansdale, and the next thing I know, Chuck's right there. I think I kicked him out of my apartment twice - he just kept coming back, and I'm the kind of sucker who won't put someone out, especially if they come with a pot of some of the best chili known to man (Chuck's an excellent cook).

I met Chuck in 1997 and last saw him in 2000. Two paragraphs don't even begin to do justice to the (simultaneously) great and horrible person that I knew him to be.

That three-year span was probably the most self-destructive part of my life. I was on a straight shot to nowhere, and having a whole host of people around that were on the same path didn't help me much. Despite that, I was the responsible adult. How that happened, I don't know. I was the one who worried about paying the rent, and I was the one eventually stuck with the bill when it didn't get paid. Chuck, in his place in the mythology that my mind has created for itself, is the embodiment of that self-destruction. The part of me that wanted to sit around and wait for the world to deliver, the part of me that wanted to just exist, that's the part of me that Chuck represents.

So, Chuck's been on my mind lately. I heard a piece on NPR about a guy who was offered the job of "head dishwasher" in a restaurant in New Orleans. I can't accurately explain the context of that, but Chuck used the term "head dishwasher" to roast one of the other roommates (who really deserved it). Chuck, last I heard, lives in New Orleans. I just got back into collecting Magic: The Gathering, something that Chuck and I blew hours playing. Other than that, I can't really explain it. I don't know why he's on my mind.

Chuck is one of the few people who were important enough to get on list of people I hope I never see again. But, there's a big part of me that wants to take him off that list. I'd love to see him again. I'd love to hang out with him.

I just don't want to find him living on my couch.

-pb