Now if you’re more to the Left or more to the Right doesn’t really matter here. No matter what your beliefs in how government works are, they clearly don’t line up with what reality is. Even if you’re not very political and have no interest in politics, what happens in our government DOES affect you.

I’d really like to see some real change happen. Some of the ideas like elections funded from public small amounts only or the ways to reform our government.

Give yourself an hour and a half and watch this.

I love the sunrises

Carnes has built a rock making machine, as well as a pretty sweet wheat garden, all on top of an elevated fortress surrounded by lava moats.

Our first tree fort

I’ve been mainly running around exploring the world and caverns. Those caverns can get dark, expansive, and SCARY!

Another project we’ve been working on is getting a rail system going, because walking across the world can take a long time!

I started this post quite a while ago, and since then have taken quite a big break from the game. But recently I’ve gotten back into it, and even have  a few friends on the server regularly. There are also some mods installed on the server which allow us to specify certain areas as safe from monster spawns, set up our own shops to sell things, and even have a dynamically updated map that shows the live goings on of the server!

kinda had an accident with some flint and steel

Carnes’ current project is to construct a quest for us to run at one point. He’s off somewhere on the map sculpting land and building stuff so we can all go and run the quest together! I can’t wait!

My house!

If you want to check out what our world looks like, click here. This may not be the most up-to-date render, but it does have the most detail. If you’d like to check out our realtime map, check it out here!

Server Details:
For game connection — krandor.dyndns.org
For high quality map render — krandor.dyndns.org/mc/maps/map.html
For live dynamic map render — krandor.dyndns.org:8123

I loath creepers…

Having an employer that follows through with what they promise typically has happier employees who would do more for the company than one where the employer constantly breaks promises.

Employees who work for a company who doesn’t value them, or treat them with respect and dignity also won’t recommend the company to others. If everyone knows that a certain business has shady practices and often abuses it’s privileges, soon that company won’t have any customers or referrals from employees.

It just makes sense to me if management makes promises to an employee, such as a raise. They should keep that promise, especially if that employee has taken on the extra responsibilities for which the raise was promised.

Lying to employees only breeds disgruntled employees. And we all know that’s not a healthy work environment.

As a note for anyone concerned, this has nothing to do with my current employer. Where I work people are treated with respect and decency. I wish every place could be this awesome.

I’ll start with a quick recap of my previous post. Zach and I have been job hunting for the last few months, since the end of September/beginning of October. We’d even enlisted the service of some recruiting firms — TEK Systems being one of them. We had some meeting with our recruiting representative — or whatever they’re officially called — and talked about why we wanted to leave our current job, what we’re looking for in other places of employment, what kind of qualifications we have, etc, etc. Along with that we’d also put our resume’s up on job searching sites like Monster and Dice, and we even applied at some local positions online. That choice bared fruit in what happened next. iPay Technologies got in contact with both of us, as we’d both applied for some of the positions they had posted. We had our phone screenings, we even got interviews! Meanwhile back at work, nothing seemed to change. We’d told our management months before that we were job hunting, and now we’d told them we were interviewing with a company. They still didn’t seem to be doing anything — like collecting resumes or putting feelers out.

About a week later, Zach and I had another phone interview with someone else from iPay, and the next day there was an offer letter in our inbox. At first we thought the amount they were offering was a monthly salary until Zach noticed it was bi-weekly! So needless to say, we told our boss that we’d both found a new job, and we’d be starting there at the beginning of January. We then accepted the offer letters. Now is when things start getting interesting.  We told our bosses that we’d go through all our projects and document everything and write up abstracts on the projects themselves — we did this not because we were told to, but because it was the right thing to do — and we’d even screen any people they found as possible candidates. All these actions were done out of kindness and professionalism.

One Friday Zach calls me to tell me what he’s just overheard, management talking about how horrible we were, how none of our projects ever worked how they wanted, how all the reports were always wrong, how apparently we were just big pieces of shit! Even though it was Zach telling me this, I could feel that flame of anger building inside of me. We were going to help these people out, find them replacements for our positions, and they’re going to stab us in the back? In the big picture i shouldn’t really care, as i have a new job already lined up, and they’re expecting me after the new year. But just to hear what people really think of us after working with them for almost three years.. it just hurts. I thought some of those people were good colleagues if not friends. So in response to that action, i moved my final day of work up to yesterday. I still did everything else I’d promised, documenting code, writing overviews of our projects, going over submitted resumes. But i wasn’t going to work there for another few weeks in that kind of environment. I also wanted to cash out all my vacation time in one paycheck, heh. That’s almost 2 1/2 weeks of pay on top of my week of pay this week. Should be a nice paycheck indeed.

Now i can’t wait until my first day at my new job. I’m kind of anxious and nervous, but i think it will be a big step in the right direction for my career.

If they were really wanting to use the radioactive material for nuclear power, more power to them. But weapons? Don’t we have enough on this planet already? ..stupid humans.

I’ve also been looking at getting new wheels for my car. Currently i have some crappy snow tires on, which were put on to try and protect my current wheels from the dangers of Kentucky roads during the winter. But lately i’ve been thinking of just plain replacing my rims with something new and not as worn and damaged; the rims that came on the car aren’t bad but do have some damage and the chrome is missing in some spots.

The new wheels i’m looking at are black 18″x8.5″ in the front and 18″x9.5″ in the rear.
You can see them here. I’m going to save up a few more paychecks before i get them, since I have to make sure that I can still pay the rent, car payment, cell phone, interwebs, etc etc. For just the wheels with no tires it’s going to run me about 1000 dollars. I think it’ll be worth it though, Silver car with black rims and dark tint.. *drooool*

*a wee edit*
I’m bored again at work. I figured I’d talk about some of the stuff i bought this weekend. I got 3 albums.
The lastest Cut Copy.
The new Pierce The Veil.
And the latest Digitalism.

I’m really digging Cut Copy. It’s got a bit of an 80′s feel to it, like a mix of the Cure and electro. Pierce The Veil isn’t bad, a bit on the cookie cutter side of things. I’ve been trying to find their cover of MJ’s Beat It, but it’s turning into a difficult find. Digitalism is pretty good, a bit lacking in vocals, so it’s not as good as, say The Presets.

And now back to work