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You know I haven’t written about work in a long, long time.  So, let’s do a little update on things.

First off, I’m still a loader.  No promotions yet.  Although I’m working on that!

I was given a raise in August.  Well, everyone was because it was time for yearly raises.  I got another dollar an hour so that means I’m now making $10.00/hour.  Not bad pay but it could be better.  When you only get 20 hours a week even 10/hour doesn’t mean that much pay.  Take home has been about $170.00 a week, give or take.

I’m still in PD-6 which is nice.  It’s a pretty tough area to work but I like it.  We’ve cycled through a bunch of people this year.  Only a core group of us are still around.  We are the real hard workers that bust our humps day in and day out.

Lets see, new news…

I’m very hopeful at getting to be the Area Safety Rep comes this Thursday.  The current guy doesn’t want to do it anymore so he’s offering it to me or another guy.  I have more seniority than that guy (well I’m pretty sure I do) so I’m going to pull rank and just take it.  I’ve been in the area since I started working there in October.  This guy showed up in like March.  I think he switched shifts so he might actually have been working at UPS longer than me but I’d say the fact that I’ve worked in the area longer is what counts.  Anyhoo, we’ll just see…

I’ve also have to get off my rear end and get around to writing a letter of intent for promotion.  See at UPS they do not promote people.  You can run around and be the best darn loader there is but they won’t do anything.  You have to write a letter of intent which states that you want them to look at you for a promotion.

Basically, there are two jobs you can usually get promoted to.  An Area Supervisor, which is the guy that runs each of the PDs or a Training Supervisor, that does the actual training of new hires.

I’m sort of leaning toward the Trainer right now.  Running an area is a lot of work.  It’s easy I guess but just a lot of annoyances.  Dealing with employees not showing up for work, keeping boxes flow, calling trucks, all the freaking paperwork they have to do, etc.  I mean I wouldn’t mind doing it some day.  Right now however I think I’d have more fun training new hires.  I like to try to help new guys out when they show up.  Give them the 411 on how things actually work, give them positive support after managers yell at them for missloads, etc.  I really think I’d be good at working with the new hires and getting them off on the right foot.  I’ve managed to stay here this long when so many others have come and gone, so I think i must know something about how to be a quality worker for UPS.  I’m sure I could have some of that rub off on the new hires.  He he he…

I guess that’s it.  I think I get another raise come October so we’ll see if that does happen and how much I get.  I have my fingers crossed for another dollar/hour!

Well crap!  I just read that Nintendo is pushing back the release of the new LoZ game.  :(  OK, I know it’s old news now but I’m a little behind on the gaming front.

They’re talking sometime mid 2006 now.  Assuming the Revolution doesn’t get pushed back they could be releasing at the same time.  The obvious thing is many think maybe the big N might dump the cube and use Twilight Princess as a launch title for the Rev.  Nintendo denies it and says they’ll still ship it as a cube game.  I think that’s a good thing.  Call it the last great release for the cube as sort of a farewell gesture to the little box. 

The Rev is going to backwards compatible so you could say in a round about way that the game would be a sort of launch title.  If it gets huge press and positive reviews and the Rev gets releases around the same time it might be enough to get some to buy the Rev and the LoZ game to play.

Well it took a while to get around to it but I finally upgraded the site to ExpressionEngine 1.3.1.  It’s been out for a while now but I’ve just been kinda busy in real life.

I’m not fully finished with the upgrade though.  Currently, this is a stopgap while I do some major overhauling.  I’m going to move the install around so that I can use EE to run all my different sites that I have.  I want to create a central location where I can manage all my sites from one single location.  It’ll take some time to get this job finished but when it is it will be well worth the effort I’m sure.

Anyhoo, this new version has many new features and bug fixes from the old 1.2.1 version I have been running since like January of this year.

Blessed John XXIII Parish is a newly created Parish for the northwestern area of Wood County, Ohio.  Earlier this year the Toledo Catholic Diocese spent a great deal of time reorganizing the area.  Unfortunately, many parishes were closed or were setup to share a pastor between two parishes.  For all the downsizing there was good news in the creation of several new parishes.  Blessed John XXII (that’s 23 in roman numerals) Parish was one of those created to better serve the Perrysburg, Ohio area.

Technically, I don’t live within the parish’s area and my area already has a long standing parish.  However, I’ve never really felt a part of that parish.  It was the Church I went to but it wasn’t like it was “my” Church.

Blessed John XXIII being brand new and just starting really draws my interest and perhaps might be the parish for me to feel home at.

The thing I find funny is how I was drawn to this place.  I’ve been rather lacking in the religion department for some time.  It’s probably a mix of growing up and not finding religion to be important in a modern busy life and that I was rather burned out by the sexual abuse scandals.  I still believed in God and was spiritual but just couldn’t stand the idea of organized religion for a while.

Maybe it’s me maturing or maybe it’s God working in mysterious ways but these last few weeks I’ve had a bit of a reawaking of sorts.  I’ve been thinking a bit and actually talked with my Girlfriend about the need for religion.  I hadn’t been keeping track of the going-ons of The Church but I just happen to read the newspaper Friday and in the religion section I saw the article about the first mass being held for the new Blessed John XXIII Parish.

So today was the first Mass they held.  Mass will be held is the Perrysburg High School commons area at 9:30am every Sunday.  This will be the scheduled location through May of 2006.  They still need to find a location to build the new Church.  Of course before you can do that you have to build the community and that’s what’s going on right now.

The opportunity to not only go to mass but get active in the community excites me.  I’m hoping that perhaps I can offer my services in the technical areas.  Perhaps help build a website for the parish, setup computers to manage office needs, etc.  Since everything is new and need of people to help I know I can be of service in some small way.

All I have to say is “Go Bucks!”

You might be from Ohio (pronounced O-hi-o in the north, O-hi-uh in the south), if:

You think all Pro football teams are supposed to wear orange.

You know all the 4 seasons:  winter, still winter, almost winter and construction.

You live less than 30 miles from some college or university.

You know what a buckeye really is, and have a recipe for candied ones.

“Toward the lake” means “north” and “toward the river” means “south.”

You know if other Ohioans are from southern or northern Ohio as soon as they open their mouths.

You can spell words like Cuyahoga, Olentangy, Bellefontaine, Tuscarawas, Wapakoneta and you know which letter is doubled in Cincinnati.

“Vacation! ” means spending a day at Cedar Point in the summer and deer hunting in the fall.

You measure distance in minutes.

Your school classes were canceled because of cold.

Your school classes were canceled because of heat.

You’ve had to switch from “heat” to “A/C” in the same day.

You know what should be knee-high by the Fourth of July.

You end your sentences with an unnecessary preposition.  For example: “Where’s my coat at?”

You install security lights on your house and garage and leave both unlocked.

You think of the major four food groups as corn, pork, beer and Jell-O salad with marshmallows.

You carry jumper cables in your car.

You know what ‘pop’ is.

You design your kid’s Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.

Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow.

You think sexy lingerie is tube socks and a flannel nightgown.

The local paper covers national and international headlines on one page but requires an entire 12 page section for sports.