I am now employed again, with a company that in the long run will probably be a better fit for me than the one I was working for the last 8 years of my life. I got laid off on Aug 6th, and I will be flying out to Pasadena for training on Sept 6th, I believe.
My old company will be paying me the equivalent of 16 weeks of pay plus my 6 accrued weeks of vacation, plus fundings for any business deals that I had made prior to being laid off. The fact is, things in my business are so bad that I am making more money from them sitting at home doing nothing than I would be making had I been working my butt off and getting my teeth kicked in every day. I don't have to start making money until February, probably.
Within the next two months I need to determine whether or not I am going to make the kind of money I was making at the old job. It is important because I have a $650,000 mortgage. The payment wasn't a problem at my old income, but I honestly don't know how long it will take me to get ramped up at my new place. Even so...business is NOT what it was for the last several years. I don't know if any of you follow the financial news, but there is a huge crisis in the credit sector, and this was brought on by a sudden lack of liquidity in the bond market, specifically with mortgage-backed securities, and mortgages happens to be the business I am in. I am a salesman for a wholesale lender, meaning I solicit loans for my company from mortgage brokers.
If you ever wanted a loan on your house, you would never meet me. I don't talk to customers, and I don't make loan decisions. All I do is present my company's loan products to mortgage brokers. It is a fantastic job, it pays very well, and you really have no limitations on income. I don't even really work hard...sure, there is stress, but it is all in how you handle it. If you do the job well, the stress is manageable. If you are not equipped to deal with it, you will die of a heart attack at 32.
Strangely, I was over getting laid off about 30 minutes after I found out about it. I found out about it from someone working at another company. It's a small world in mortgages, you see...you know a lot of people and there are all kinds of dirty little secrets going around. I spent the last month doing just about nothing. I got some sun, played some video games, and argued with 13 year olds on the internet about what is better, the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, or wii. For the record, I despise Nintendo. The Xbox360 is a great system that has great games, but it is not put together well (30% documented failure rate). The Playstation 3 is the best of the three, but there is really no reason to buy it because it doesn't have any good games. The games that you can get both on the PS3 and the 360 run better on the 360. Go figure. So, the first really great game on the PS3 will be Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. I will be able to justify my $600 purchase with this game, but few other people will be able to say the same. Me, I have money to burn, because I am single. I don't go out drinking because I DESPISE clubs (I live in Miami mind you), and there really isn't much else to spend money on. I save a lot of money for retirement.
Arguing with 13 year olds is entertaining. This is all over the internet, so it's not like going down to the park and getting into a fight with some kid. It's on the SomethingAwful message boards, some of you are probably members. The thing about arguing with 13 year olds is that they can only come up with things that other people have said first. For instance, if you have ever played CounterStrike (I didn't play much because I couldn't stand it), you will be called a nigger, jew, or faggot. You have to understand that these are pejorative terms, but a 13 year old really doesn't have a frame of reference when he is calling you those things. I don't believe that racism really exists at that age. If it does, it can be corrected. Same thing with homophobia amd antisemitism. If a kid has it, they can unlearn it. Until the age of reason, the words nigger, jew, and faggot are just terms designed to get the maximum insult out of as little effort as possible. For instance:
"dude that move was weak"
"Oh yeah? Fuck you faggot!"
See, he's not really calling you a faggot. He's just trying to be a dick as efficiently as possible. Now, if it was an insult in-game, it would have looked like this:
buzzsaw71: lol you suxxorz
xXxSEPHIROTHoWNZxXx: fuk u fAGORT
Internet message boards are a bit more civilized, especially the ones you have to pay to be a member of. It weeds out the real idiots and allows in the people who actually will not be like Leonardo DiCaprio in What's Eating Gilbert Grape.
In any case...there is an internet saying (a meme if you are into that sort of thing...I am not, really): Arguing on the internet is like being in the special olympics: even if you win, you are still retarded.
The group that I consider myself belonging to takes this to heart. Yes, we bitch about video games. Yes, we compare sony, microsoft, and nintendo as if we have some vested interest in the companies and whoever "wins." At this point, it is pretty clear that all three systems...well, they suck. They all do. The great systems went in this order by age (not greatness):
1. Atari 2600
2. NES
3. SNES
4. Playstation
5. Playstation 2
and now we have a bunch of crap. The drama, the soap opera, and the way everybody puffs up like a little pufferfish with pride over who likes what and which is better than what is the best part about these 'next gen' consoles. That's it. The games have no innovation, the nintendo is a gimmick, the 360 plays a bunch of shit you can play on the PC, and the PS3 has no games.
Now, keep in mind...I am a 36 year old man. I could have better things to do. I could be out sleeping with girls. You know what? I am more caught up in the console war drama than I am about my employment situation. I actually tried to put off the start date at my new company because I was waiting for this great new game to come out.
As it turns out, the game sucks and I'd rather be at work.
My old company will be paying me the equivalent of 16 weeks of pay plus my 6 accrued weeks of vacation, plus fundings for any business deals that I had made prior to being laid off. The fact is, things in my business are so bad that I am making more money from them sitting at home doing nothing than I would be making had I been working my butt off and getting my teeth kicked in every day. I don't have to start making money until February, probably.
Within the next two months I need to determine whether or not I am going to make the kind of money I was making at the old job. It is important because I have a $650,000 mortgage. The payment wasn't a problem at my old income, but I honestly don't know how long it will take me to get ramped up at my new place. Even so...business is NOT what it was for the last several years. I don't know if any of you follow the financial news, but there is a huge crisis in the credit sector, and this was brought on by a sudden lack of liquidity in the bond market, specifically with mortgage-backed securities, and mortgages happens to be the business I am in. I am a salesman for a wholesale lender, meaning I solicit loans for my company from mortgage brokers.
If you ever wanted a loan on your house, you would never meet me. I don't talk to customers, and I don't make loan decisions. All I do is present my company's loan products to mortgage brokers. It is a fantastic job, it pays very well, and you really have no limitations on income. I don't even really work hard...sure, there is stress, but it is all in how you handle it. If you do the job well, the stress is manageable. If you are not equipped to deal with it, you will die of a heart attack at 32.
Strangely, I was over getting laid off about 30 minutes after I found out about it. I found out about it from someone working at another company. It's a small world in mortgages, you see...you know a lot of people and there are all kinds of dirty little secrets going around. I spent the last month doing just about nothing. I got some sun, played some video games, and argued with 13 year olds on the internet about what is better, the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, or wii. For the record, I despise Nintendo. The Xbox360 is a great system that has great games, but it is not put together well (30% documented failure rate). The Playstation 3 is the best of the three, but there is really no reason to buy it because it doesn't have any good games. The games that you can get both on the PS3 and the 360 run better on the 360. Go figure. So, the first really great game on the PS3 will be Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. I will be able to justify my $600 purchase with this game, but few other people will be able to say the same. Me, I have money to burn, because I am single. I don't go out drinking because I DESPISE clubs (I live in Miami mind you), and there really isn't much else to spend money on. I save a lot of money for retirement.
Arguing with 13 year olds is entertaining. This is all over the internet, so it's not like going down to the park and getting into a fight with some kid. It's on the SomethingAwful message boards, some of you are probably members. The thing about arguing with 13 year olds is that they can only come up with things that other people have said first. For instance, if you have ever played CounterStrike (I didn't play much because I couldn't stand it), you will be called a nigger, jew, or faggot. You have to understand that these are pejorative terms, but a 13 year old really doesn't have a frame of reference when he is calling you those things. I don't believe that racism really exists at that age. If it does, it can be corrected. Same thing with homophobia amd antisemitism. If a kid has it, they can unlearn it. Until the age of reason, the words nigger, jew, and faggot are just terms designed to get the maximum insult out of as little effort as possible. For instance:
"dude that move was weak"
"Oh yeah? Fuck you faggot!"
See, he's not really calling you a faggot. He's just trying to be a dick as efficiently as possible. Now, if it was an insult in-game, it would have looked like this:
buzzsaw71: lol you suxxorz
xXxSEPHIROTHoWNZxXx: fuk u fAGORT
Internet message boards are a bit more civilized, especially the ones you have to pay to be a member of. It weeds out the real idiots and allows in the people who actually will not be like Leonardo DiCaprio in What's Eating Gilbert Grape.
In any case...there is an internet saying (a meme if you are into that sort of thing...I am not, really): Arguing on the internet is like being in the special olympics: even if you win, you are still retarded.
The group that I consider myself belonging to takes this to heart. Yes, we bitch about video games. Yes, we compare sony, microsoft, and nintendo as if we have some vested interest in the companies and whoever "wins." At this point, it is pretty clear that all three systems...well, they suck. They all do. The great systems went in this order by age (not greatness):
1. Atari 2600
2. NES
3. SNES
4. Playstation
5. Playstation 2
and now we have a bunch of crap. The drama, the soap opera, and the way everybody puffs up like a little pufferfish with pride over who likes what and which is better than what is the best part about these 'next gen' consoles. That's it. The games have no innovation, the nintendo is a gimmick, the 360 plays a bunch of shit you can play on the PC, and the PS3 has no games.
Now, keep in mind...I am a 36 year old man. I could have better things to do. I could be out sleeping with girls. You know what? I am more caught up in the console war drama than I am about my employment situation. I actually tried to put off the start date at my new company because I was waiting for this great new game to come out.
As it turns out, the game sucks and I'd rather be at work.
Thank you for the comment you left on my geekbraggingpost. You makes meh smile.