Kiite.: January 2005

2005-01-26

New and Improved

I've changed the name and the look of the blog. The former means "Listen!" in Japanese, the change of look is merely because I was bored.

2005-01-25

Mmmmm Clients!

Last Wednesday my work world exploded in a shit storm of client unhappiness and yelling. I was going to blog about it at length, a he-said, she-said kind of thing. But I'm so sick of the whole thing that I don't have the stomach to now. I'll just give the short version of it. There's a client that I got in conjunction with my web-designer friend for the creation of an ecommerce website. Things got off to a bit of a rocky start in that we blew a couple of deadlines. Well (if you want to get technical - and we do) we didn't so much blow them as they were blown by the way things went, and we didn't call attention to them as we zipped past, or as we (us and the client) said or did things that would cause the blowing of said deadlines. So really if you want to examine it, we blew the deadlines by blowing the communications with the client.

That said, our client is also bat-shit insane. The first piece of evidence is the very product that he wants to create (I really wish I could tell you what it is - but despite his behaviour and generally insanity, I will retain some ethics and stay mum. But imagine a product so dumb nobody would buy it, something that makes a pet-rock look like a good idea - that's about the size of it.) Further evidence that this client is a nut includes accusing me of editing his copy too much, then accusing me of not contributing enough to the editing of the copy.

Anyway week before last we had a meeting with him, a Come to Jesus Meeting. (I love hits expression and will expound on it later). My first clue that he was daft should have been when he was ANGRY about the edits to the copy. Now at the time I thought it was residual time-line related anger. But it wasn't. Now when you hire someone to do something for you, something as creative and essentially collaborative as writing, you have to realize (and I guess I should have made him realize) that we're not going to nail it first time out. The fact is you have to try, fail, understand why you failed, and then write a second draft. That is in fact why there are three full drafts included in the price of the copy.

That said, he was angry. Let's examine that. Now there is simply no good reason to be angry, disappointed, confused, unsure etc. absolutely. But if you're having an EMOTIONAL reaction to the work then something is wrong. Because really, what's to get emotional about? At most by the second or third draft you can see emotion creep in if things are no closer to resolution, but to be actually angry at this early stage is just nuts. (shoulda known).

Long story short (too late) things got worse from there. He called last Wednesday and freaked out. For twenty minutes he yelled at me on the phone. By this point there was simply nothing to be done about it. Because by this point everything became more evidence of shoddy work. Including a phone call in which we did exactly what I said we would do, but which he had decided without telling me, that I should do something else. So because I failed to do what he had decided, I once again was guilty of a late deadline, and shoddy work.

So after two days of dealing with this prick I have been fired from the job. Which believe me is a spectacular result. The idea of another 2 months dealing with this ass-huffer is just too much to bear. But still after that I have been feeling a bit bruised and sore.

I'm working now at BigCo as I mentioned before, and I show up here everyday to deal with pleasant people, and get an hourly wage, and I don't have to hunt for clients. It left me feeling that maybe running my own business is not for me. I don't know. right now I�m having a hard time remembering the good stuff about being self-employed. More on this later.

2005-01-21

Shag-Math

One thing I hate about the gay 'lifestyle' or rather the modern facts of gay life happened this week. Eric - my fella - got a cold. A pretty bad one as it happens - fever, chills, cough, sniffles, sneezes. The kind of cold that NyQuil claims to help mask the symptoms of. Anyway I never even thought of it, but Eric did. when he was sick - with a fever - he thought of Seroconversion Illness. For those not in the know there are those who posit that when one is exposed to HIV you get sick, right away, badly, like an awful flu. It's the first brave attempts of your immune system to deal with the invader. It doesn't work (if by work you mean kill the bug). eventually HIV does what it does, and settles in for a hopefully long residence.

Eric mentioned his fear, and immediately started doing 'shag-math' (see, you thought I'd never get around to making sense out of that title, didn't ya?). Shag-math is counting back to figure out if the illness onslaught lines up with a recent shag, and what you did at that playdate that may or may not have put you at risk. "hmmm well it was over a week ago, and I don't think it takes that long, and besides all we did was...." well you see where it goes.

And what pisses me off is that this isn't something that 'the man' makes you do. It's not like all the other crap that being gay makes you deal with in the world (can't give blood for ex.) where someone else is telling you you're (potentially) poxy. It's your own damn mind. Kinda sucks really.

p.s. Eric's fine.

2005-01-14

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2005-01-08

"he asked for a 13 and they drew a 31"

For 15 years or more now I've been thinking of getting a tattoo. The history is like this. I progressed from thinking I'd like one, to thinking I'll get one, to thinking what would it be? to finally settling on a celtic design of some sort. Finally i figured I'd get a celtic cross. It has a bunch of meanings and well it's not like I'm going to stop being Irish, so the meanings would remain true for me for as long as I have the thing (i.e. forever). So then I started actually looking for a design. (We're at about 6 years ago now). In the summer of 2003 I was in Newfoundland with my friends and I went to mass (weird, i know, but we were staying with my friend Paul, who's a priest, and figured it'd be polite to actually go to see him 'on the job') and there in the church, on the podium/lecturn and elsewhere in the church was a really beautiful design of a celtic cross. Different from normal because it was an equal cross (not the kind where the vertical is longer than the horizontal).

After I came home I asked Paul to take a pic and send it to me. So for more than a year I've had the design and have been finding excuses not to get it done. As my 35th birthday approached this fall, I figured it was time to 'piss or get off the pot' as my sainted Mother would say. But the money wasn't there (my usual excuse). And then, speaking of my mommy, she (and dad) gave me some dough for Christmas that handily covered the price of a tattoo. When they discover that not only have I gotten one, but that they paid for it, they will truly freak out. THAT'S a conversation I promise to blog about when it happens.

So on Tuesday this week I went and did the deed. Finding a tattooer (she never referred to herself as a tattoo artist - I guess it seems a bit pretentious) was easy, I asked my buddy Alexis where I should go. She suggested Amanda, a great artists and the wife of Alexis's ex boyfriend. (And if you can't trust the wife of the ex-boyfriend of a good friend of yours the WHO can you trust I say!).

I had brought her the design a week before and she had made a couple of variations for me to choose. I picked one, it was great/perfect, and we began. FOr those who don't know the process is like this. she applies a stencil to your body part. it's a weird purply thing. Like the color of ink from a ditto machine if you're old enough to remember those. why that ink doesn't end up under your skin when you tattoo over it I don't know. Then she gets to work. To start with she outlines it in black ink. You can see from the pic that the cross and the circles are outlined in black. then she drew the rest, and filled it all in.

In all it took about 2 hours.

Now, I know your next question: "Did it hurt?" Well yes. Of course it did. But it didnt' hurt anywhere near as much as you'd think. It stung. like getting a needle (not the deep muscle pain of getting a needle, but the pin-prick part). Only it hurt like that for two hours. So it's not the volume of pain, but the duration that's a bit weird. I have heard that 3 hours is the max that anyone can take at a time (with some masochistic exceptions I'm sure). Because at some point your body just gets annoyed with you and starts to do weird things like go into shock. You can only override your basic desire to flinch and pull away for so long before your body wants to protect itself.

Anwyay it was great. Yah it hurt, but it felt wonderful to be finally doing something I'd thought about for a long time. And really, it's a mild form of body modification (gawd isn't that THE most pretentious fucking way of describing it?) going these days.

I doubt very much if I'll become one of these tattoo addicts. You never know, I make no promises, but I doubt I'll be getting Geiger pictures on my back anytime soon or hyacinthes on my ass (Amanda told a story about her time tattooing in Miami, apparently a lot of cougars get hyacinthes on their asses at 4am). I mean I managed to get only two earrings and one nipple ring during my 'peircing' phase :)

The after effects are fine too. the skin's a bit rough, but i'm moisturizing as per her instructions. Everyone asks if it's scabbed over yet. But when I asked Amanda about that she said "I'm no butcher!" So I dont' think it will (and now three days later it is showing no signs of it).

Every once in a while, getting out of the shower or something, I catch sight of it and marvel at the fact that I do have a tattoo. It's kinda cool.

Kiite.