Training Continued! Leon Ho!

After being in training for J. Lodge for quite a while now, I can officially say I truly am happy to be there. True, I'll be earning about a dollar less per hour (at least initially) than I did at Alpine Access (but with opportunities for raises a year from now, or sooner if I move to full-time before then, but I doubt I will). However, you have to weigh the slightly lower pay against the greatly reduced stress and opportunity for greater productivity and possible promotion in the future.

Anyway, today was the first day my co-workers (some of them, anyway) and I were able to access the database of calls we work from and practice navigating the system. Seems loads easier than Alpine. 'Course, that's not to say J. Lodge will be a walk in the park--far from it actually--but I have an overwhelming feeling of "I can do this" that just wasn't there a few months back. The people who couldn't access the call system happened to be running Windows Vista, which someone in J. Lodge's IT department called "one giant firewall." I told the team I would talk to my friend Scott, who until recently worked for Microsoft but just got a job at a small game company in Minnesota. Anyway, Scott couldn't offer any suggestions once I explained the problem. It was a longshot, but I'm sure J. Lodge's IT people will be able to figure it out. In any case, I'm glad I've got XP (and Mac OS X, of course, but that's another story).

My parents recently suggested that I start to look into government housing assistance programs for low-income people. I don't think this is really a subliminal message aimed at kicking me out, especially since the little research I've done so far seems to indicate that people can spend as long as 5 years on a waiting list for that kind of assistance. I still have some places to call to find out more, because the research I've done up to now has been on my own I'll be sure to keep everyone posted.

We got a new dog last weekend, mainly as a companion for our current dog, Owen. His name is Leon (recently changed from "Noah," a name he only had for the past 6 weeks, after he was found as a stray in Abeline. Like Owen, he's a Corgi, but he's a Pembroke, whereas Owen is a Cardigan. Until Monday, we were unsure we were going to keep him because we discovered he might have hip dysplasia, essentially an arthritic condition in the hind legs caused by malformed hip joints. My mom took him to our vet on Monday, and he said he couldn't be certain whether Leon has it or not. He put him on an anti-inflammatory drug, which will hopefully help. I'll try to remember to include a shot of the dogs with my next post.

As far as the video goes, I just stumbled on it randomly; I don't even think I opened the page I found it on myself, but I watched it anyway. Given my forward-thinking, tolerant attitude to religion (few can deny that I like to make fun of religious beliefs sometimes, as long as it's in good taste) and the fact that Al Emmo And the Lost Dutchman's Mine features a wombat, I thought it'd be worth posting. I know it's a bit of a stretch, but stretches can be fun.

Rick and I haven't been able to get together yet, and we haven't seen each other since sometime in January, but we hope to see each other again either this weekend or next. Whenever it happens, we'll have a lot to work on and discuss; the story for "Project WAMM" is finally starting to come together in my head. It took coming up with a pivotal event in the middle of the game, and there are still a lot of gaps. Even so, it's much more cohesive and complete than it was even several days ago. I finally feel it's going somewhere. My entire life is going somewhere, it seems.