sudo apt-get install blogentry

First things first. I've been busy installing the new version of Ubuntu (Jaundiced Jackalope) and getting it to run juuuuust the way I like. For the most part, I've found it ridiculously simple. The things I was most afraid of not working properly was wireless internet and, more importantly, my EVDO (mobile broadband) card. Interestingly enough, both of them worked flawlessly. There's always the difficulties with odd things that not everyone uses, but I now have my Truecrypt volume running and a decent password manager. The strangest thing is that I had issues getting VLC to play DVDs properly. This is odd because VLC will play most anything. It turns out I just needed to do a restart. I got Miro for my video podcasts and Hulu, and am only missing iTunes because while it's possible (albeit difficult) to use something else with an iPod, you sort of need it for an iPhone. Maybe I'll eventually need to learn how to use WINE. GRRR.

Despite the difficulties, I've totally been geeking out with it and loving every minute of it. The only thing I'm missing is my old Muncie Star Press money bag from when I was a paperboy. I use that as my dice bag. Yeah, I've been craving pen and paper gaming as of late, mostly because of WOTC's recent D&D podcast featuring a 4E campaign with Gabe & Tycho of Penny Arcade, Scott Kurtz of PVP Online, and TV's Wil Wheaton. I miss that kind of comaraderie in a gaming session. It's a damn shame that I've never had a gaming group last more than a couple months. :( Stupid real world concerns.

Now the joyousness. I've discovered that for the second year in a row, I and two others got screwed out of a merit raise this year. My promotion last year was their reason for denying me a raise last year, and that very same promotion is the very same reason they're using to justify. No. Not justify. There's nothing just about it. It's the very same excuse they're using to deny me yet another merit raise. The plant jackass that backstabs and lies and got caught screwing up? His measly 1% merit raise compared to my 0% merit raise indicates to me that even though the management (and everyone else) can't stand him, he is a better employee than I and more meritorious than I am.

Okay, so denying me a raise last year isn't entirely accurate. What they did was that they pushed the raises from January to April. I got my promotion at the end of March, so I had half a paycheck of that raise until my promotion put me at the bottom rate at a higher pay grade. So, basically, what happened is that I got a promotion raise, but I've been denied a merit raise two years in a row. This from the same bureaucracy that took nearly two years to get me uniforms. Maybe they're telling me something.

Blogged with the Flock Browser