Jen's News Letter

This Tuesday night, May 24th, I'll be kicking off the summer concert season at EB5, International Tea and Coffee House. EB5 is a wonderful new art gallery in Spring that not only serves tea and coffee, but fine wines, pastries, and sandwiches. www.eb5arts.com. The concert series, "An Intimate Evening With..." is in conjunction with the Spring Post. EB5 22557 Aldine Westfield Road Spring, TX 77373 7:30-9pm $6 So come out for a mellow and early evening at a new hip place. See you, Jen www.JenRathbun.com

Jen Rocks! Go.

Work
So, I have worked at the same company for about eight years now. It isn't quite true because I've worked for two different contract companies. I'm placed at the real company. The company that I do the work for makes it very clear that I am contract. It doesn't matter that I've worked here longer than most of the direct employees it seems. It is kind of a bum deal.
A couple of years ago I was given the opportunity to move from one contract company to another. I moved because the benefits from the second contract company were a slight bit better. Now, the main company wants to end the contract with the contract company I am with. That means, if I want to continue to work in the same place, I have to move to the original contract company. This is not only a pain, but they make it sound like there is no guarantee that I'll get my job back. I feel like I have to re-apply for the same position. I had damn well better get the same pay rate. I mean, they are already s me on the benefits just because of the nature of the contract company.

More Work
The water on this floor is gray. I can't believe this place won't do something about hate rancid drinking water. I feel like they just don't care. How the hell am I expected to get work done when I have to worry about the quality of the drinking water? The coffee tastes like crap. No wonder. It is being made with puddle water.

HomeSite
Argh! I can't stand using a code editor exclusively. I really need to have a GUI for typing and layout, and a good code editor for funky stuff. It is so much faster to drag and drop some things, cut and paste.  I've gone back to Mozilla's editor. It is a simple interface and the code is easy enough to mess with on the fly. Well, OK, I'm lazy. I don't want to write a program every time I go to jot down some notes for my blog.s

Adam & Laurie's Weekend

The poker party was very fun.  We played Texas Hold'em, tournament-style.  It was nice because even though Laurie and I both played, we only lost a collective $110 (which is good for us).  If you end up going to another game, I suggest trying it.  The difference is everyone puts in the same amount of $$$ (say $30) and then all the poker chips are divvied up equally among all players.  Then you start playing, and while betting, there is NO LIMIT to the amount you can bet.  Also, every 15-30min the blinds double (so for the first 30min the big blind is 3 chips, little is 1 chip, next 30min big is 6chips, little is 3 chips, et cetera).  Money is doled out by order of finishing.  The person that wins all chips gets %70, the person to come in second gets %20 and third gets %10.  Games typically take ~2-3hrs. I managed to play 3 games (Laurie, 2).  On the first hand of the second tournament game Woody, a guy named Nick and myself went "all in" where all three people's chips were in the pot opening hand.  Woody and I lost to Nick making us the biggest losers of the night.  (Technically Woody went "all in" first so I think he's the biggest loser, though he counters with the fact that his cards were better than mine, so I would have lost to him.) Sunday was very relaxing.  Laurie, Woody and I all played Everquest for 4 hours.  (I have attached a few screen shots of our exploits.)  We adventured into the Crypt of Varsoon, killing tons of Clay Gaurdians and fighting undead weavers and a hugely powerful animated book called the "Book of Life".  The Book of Life had 15 animated helper books that kicked our collective asses around town.  We then watched an excellent movie called "Spartan" with Val Kilmer and written by David Mamet (same guy who did "Glenngerry Glenn Ross").  It was an excellent political thriller.  Recommended.  Great dialog

Before the game, we went out to lunch. Man, his poker game sounds like allot more fun than the movie Nat and I stayed in to watch. The truth is, we had a good time. We didn't loose $110 or the like either. We watched "National Treasure", it was OK. Then we watched "Saw" which was kind of gory. I figured out what was going on too early the first time I watched it. I hate that. I am not the kind of guy who knows what is going to happen next in all the movies. Sometimes I can call it though. It is kind of random. I hate that. If I always guessed it, that would be cool. I could lay bets and impress some one.
I'm betting Adam sent this to me knowing full well I would put it on the blog. He blogs vicariously through me.