john1082: yeah, that’d be amusing to see me as killer glennuine draft in the c&c — there’s only a handful of guys’ leagues starting up, so it could be that i’m the only brother currently doing roller derby!

i was thinking about watching “lost in translation” earlier today (one of my most favorite movies), and what do you know, it’s on encore!… too bad i missed out on one of the best parts of the film, though. 😛

anyway, i turn 25 in just over a month — i guess it’s about time to start my quarter-life crisis.

last night i went home for pizza with the family (as i’m wont to do on tuesdays) and while chit-chatting with mom i mentioned something about the iphone and how i’m considering getting it, even though it’d mean i’d have to switch from verizon wireless to cingular at&t. this surprised mom especially since, you know, i work for verizon wireless. why would i want to switch? i’ll leave that for a separate post.

anyway, mom asked me if i’d want to work for at&t instead and i said no, when i leave verizon wireless i’m leaving cellular. i then went on to say that i don’t really like my job (sure, it’s got good pay and benefits), but i don’t really feel appreciated. i stick with it because they pay for my tuition so i can finish my degree in information systems. this prompted a much more thoughtful discussion than the one from a week ago about how i should really stick to it and get my degree, which i’m trying to do.

the problem is that i don’t know what i want to do anymore. i look at job postings in information technology since that’s what my degree is going to be in, but everything i see seems to be programming-oriented, helpdesk-oriented and / or work crazy hours on-call. nope, not very interested in that. also, my current job isn’t really creative — i write the same emails over and over since that’s how email customer support goes. so, folks i know say i should get into photography since that’d be creative, but i don’t want that to turn into a chore.

(i guess part of the “wahhh i’m not appreciated” feeling comes from seeing some emails that other people in my team send out to customers. i mean, i know my grammar isn’t exactly perfect, but i’m mostly taking liberties on here since it’s my personal journal. no, i see emails that other people send out as responses to customers and it makes me want to do strangling motions in the thin air: “no! no! you’re representing the company when you send these emails out! bad!”… and the crazy thing is, we’ve got a quality team that’s supposed to audit our email replies, and it’s frustrating to see some of the stuff that people get away with.)

anyway, so we had this discussion about “well, get your degree, and then you can start looking for other stuff so take as many classes as you can as soon as possible” and i countered with “wahh i don’t know what ‘other stuff’ i want to do and i already tried that” and explained the saga of the attempted journalism minor.

(for those of you who are joining the saga of my schoolwork: i started classes back in 2000, went full-time for a year, took off a year to work and make tuition money, went back to school part-time for another year, tried taking classes full-time and working full-time and nearly self-destructed in the process, got a job with verizon wireless almost 4 years ago so they pay my tuition, and it’s been part-time classes ever since then. i was going to umbc from 2000 to spring 2006 before transferring to umuc from spring 2006 onwards. i still don’t know what classes transferred from umbc since umuc never said anything about the transcript i sent to them.

when i was registering for classes for this past spring, i knew i needed more upper-level classes. flipping through the course booklet, i found out it’s only 15 credits to get a minor in something — though there weren’t any fun photography classes in the art minor, they had a journalism minor with 4 prescribed classes and 1 class that you’d pick on your own… so, i signed up for the photojournalism class as my pick-your-own class and got on the wait list, and since the prerequisite for the photojournalism class was one of the entry-level journalism classes, i planned to use these courses to increase my upper-level credits and have some fun with photography at the same time. unfortunately, the “writing for the mass media” course and its professor kicked my ass, and my photojournalism instructor didn’t really mind if we had the prerequisite or not. i ended up withdrawing from the writing class and have to pay back my work for tuition for that class since i wasn’t going to pass it with a C or better.)

i wish it would have worked out, but oh well. it could be my imagination, but they seemed a little surprised at how much thought i put into trying to get classes and requirements taken care of, and why i’m not really able to take any summer courses (since i won’t be eligible for tuition reimbursement again until i at least start paying it back and have approximate dates for future payments scheduled).

that still doesn’t really help me in the “what in the world am i going to do now?” problem, though.

mom, dad and anne are going on a camping trip next week — leaving this saturday, and coming back the following sunday. i’m staying in this area because i wasn’t going to be allowed to take off from work that week, and also so someone can take care of the cats while the family’s away. i don’t know if it’s pity-money for not being able to go camping with the family, or this’ll-help-you-get-your-tuition-paid money, or if it’s thanks-for-scooping-cat-poop money, or what, but dad said he’d pay me $100 when they get back.

i did some work on my fitzpatrick photos page tonight, but i didn’t really accomplish much… if you go to the page, you can click the images (some of the ones on there, i haven’t fixed them all up yet) to go to a larger image to view. what i’d really like to do is have the links in the post titles go to those detail pages instead of the post page with comments. i’d also like it to keep the process as automated as possible — i’d like to be able to create the post, add any text to accompany the photo on the main page and include the addresses of the “thumbnail” image for the main page as well as an address of the “detail” image to be displayed on its own, and have wordpress generate the pages itself. unfortunately, i can’t figure out what to do or if it’s even possible… i just start seeing all sorts of php scripting and my brain shuts off. 😛 if you know how to get something like that working and/or coded up, let me know, please! i’ll look some more at the wordpress plugins to see if i can find something that’ll do what i want, too.

tomorrow is open skate — yay! …assuming that skateland doesn’t decide to close at random like putty hill decided on sunday. 😛