Case in point: my career. As most of you know I’ve been into computers since I was old enough to bang on the keys, and using all the knowledge I’ve acquired over the past (almost-)25 years, I’ve been able to float along just peachy. My problem is that over the past 8 or so years, I’ve been stuck doing technical work due in large part to me blowing off school. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the need for technically-minded people — hell, I wouldn’t be where I am today without said need — but after 8 years of doing more or less the same thing, I look back and wonder why I’ve accomplished basically nothing. Sure, I’ve been given many incredible opportunities, including one to live on a sub-tropical island during a Canadian winter, but simply in terms of career level, I haven’t moved. That’s why I’ve decided that rather than sit back and just wait for something great to happen to me, I’m going to make something happen to me.

As I’ve become more and more distraught with my current situation in life, I’ve been speaking to the big bossman at work. I’ve expressed my concerns about how my heart just isn’t in the tech work like it used to and how I’d like to take on more of a non-technical role. To be honest, I wasn’t really expecting much at first; I’d been promised similar things at previous jobs but obviously nothing ever materialized. Maybe I had just gone about things the wrong way, but David has not only been very receptive to my ideas, but he’s actually put some of them into motion.

Before we get all happy and bouncy, I haven’t been completely absolved of my technical responsibilities – far from it. I was hired as a technical person, and I will continue to perform those duties for quite some time to come. However, in the past couple months, I’ve not only been put into a project management role for a major (6 month+) project at one of our clients but I’ve also informally taken the role of Director of Field Operations at Versalt itself.

Truth be told, I’m a little nervous. I’ve never had a position that has been so non-technical so I’m a little worried that I might be over my head, but as the saying goes: “Nothing worth having ever came easy.” I’ve spent my entire life taking what’s come easy and what I have to show for myself reflects exactly that.

In completely unrelated news, I’ve somehow managed to convince some totally naive girl named Tonya to date me. She has no idea what she’s in for so you might want to warn her if you have the chance.

Speaking of girlfriends, Dave’s woman (Ange) finally moved up here just before New Years. She is from Colombia, South America, and after having a good month or so to get to know her, all I can say is that her and Dave are just as disgustingly cute in person as they were when they were separated by 6,000 miles. In case I didn’t tell you about them previously, before she moved to Canada, the two of them would download the same movie, call each other on the phone, and talk to each other as if they were sitting right next to each other. Like I said: cute enough to make you puke. Oh well, Dave deserves to be happy, and the two of them are perfect for each other.

Finally, I will be updating this blog more frequently. I’ve quite literally felt like a part of me has been missing since I stopped writing, and even just writing this little update has made my night.

Stay tuned for more tales of “Justin’s Sad Life™.”

INT. BLACK

PICTURES OF A BEATEN NEXXAI ARE THROWN ON TO A TABLE ONE AT A TIME

CREDITS SLOWLY FADE IN AS NARRATOR BEGINS

We last left our hero as he had successfully navigated his first day as a Versalt employee. At the cost of great personal injury, both to himself and others, he managed to finish the day still breathing and lived to fight another day.

Truth be told, that day was pretty much a one-off. I’ve yet to hurt myself in any real way, other than a few paper cuts (which, for the record, hurt like a bitch) and a few fingers slammed between reinforced steel objects like drawers and server racks. Considering how lucky I was to get out of my first day alive, I’d say that I’m doing rather well.

Those of you who I’ve spoken with using mediums other than this website since the last update (e.g. phone or smoke signals) know that my job is going great.

And now those of you who haven’t spoken with me since the last update know it too.

Anyways, the people I work with are amazing. Not that I haven’t wanted to kick every single one of them in the teeth (David: if you’re reading this, just for the record, that was sarcasm) but on the whole, they’re damn good guys. Being that they’re a fairly small company, they really don’t know anything so I pretty much spend 90% of my day showing them how to turn computers off, on, and sideways (again: sarcasm), but when its necessary, they pull through and leave me on the opposite end of the city, on a Friday afternoon, half an hour after I’m supposed to have left for the day, going the wrong way in traffic. A loving bunch, really. (Ugh, if you can’t tell this is sarcasm, I quit.)

To take the sarcastic shoes off for 10 seconds here, they really are good people. They seem to have their priorities straight, and they are understanding, which is more than I can say for some previous companies I’ve worked at (*cough*Assistus*cough*). I’m sure there have been disagreements between us on certain issues, but my boss is pretty open to letting the techs do their jobs, rather than micro-manage every aspect of his employees (*cough*Assistus*cough* – and to think I’m coughing this much and I quit smoking) which is awesome, because it gives me the latitude to offer my own opinions not just to him, but directly to clients, which is awesome – seeing the first hand results of my suggestions being put into motion.

OK, OK, enough talk about work. It’s a Sunday and the last thing I want to be thinking about on a Sunday is work. I spend 5 days a week thinking about how I’m going to enjoy my Sundays to the fullest – thinking about work doesn’t place to high on that list.

So my car sucks. Shitty segue I know, but it’s ten to 11AM on a Sunday, and my brain is still telling me how much it hates me for last night. Anyways, car. It sucks. In fact, let me rephrase – all cars suck. And everyone who is involved in the car business suck. No, they don’t suck, they suck a lot. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they suck so bad that they are the reason black holes are created, sucking everything (even light) into them, never to escape.

“Well Justin, you can’t just go making accusatory statements like that and not back them up. That is considered slander.” First of all: fuck you. This isn’t the New York Times, or the Washington Post, or MAD Magazine. If I want to tell you that all women are about as smart as the empty beer can sitting outside my window and not provide any evidence, I will, goddammit. But since you asked, let me explain why I’d rather every car salesman — I’m sorry, car sales-person — be anally impaled on a pitchfork while being thrown down Mount Everest.

Let’s start at the beginning. I bought my car about 6 months before I moved to Calgary the last time. My fiancee at the time (and her mother) both worked at the dealership I went to. I was under the impression that they’d help me get a good deal, or at least watch over the whole deal to make sure I wasn’t being bent over the desk of the 98 year old salesmen and being fucked with a broom closet.

I guess this is partly why she is no longer my fiancee.

What I was expecting (or at least hoping for) was something along the lines of: “OK Justin, are you sure that you want to finance a 3 year old sports car over 5 years? By the end of the 5 years, you’re going to be 25 and probably want some other car,” or even just “Justin, a 5 year loan is a long time. Think about it.” What I received (metaphorically speaking, that is) was: “Justin, we’d like you to come with us into the back room and meet our friends Hans and Frans. They are in town for the BDSM convention this weekend, and before they demo their toys on stage, they’d like to test them on you. Hans… Frans… Your test subject has arrived. HAVE FUN KIDS!”

Before you start crying so hard your tear ducts dry up, let me say for the moment that I realize that they were under no obligation to help me, and in fact would be putting their job in jeopardy if they went against the company they worked for. I get it. All I wanted was a little bit of hand-holding since I’d never spent twenty-fucking-thousand dollars before.

So here I am at year three of my five year loan, lonely and helpless. A tie rod needs to be replaced, and the fan belt is rubbing so hard, you’d think it had a porno mag under there. Now using the few times that I’ve had to take my car in for service as a gauge, I know that the $45 tie rod, and $60 belt, is probably going to cost me in the neighbourhood of around $1000 to have installed. So being the smart person that I am, I start looking at just purchasing a new car.

It’s at this point that the streamers and marching band appear because this is the ceremonial one millionth mistake I’ve made in my life. I mean, seriously, can’t someone just fucking euthanize me and put me out of my goddamned misery?

The first car that comes to mind is a Mitsubishi Lancer GTS. I was actually looking at Lancers when I bought my current car, but decided against it for certain reasons (mainly that I was broke at the time.) I thought that it would be kind of nice to be able to go back and buy the car that I longed for, but could never have.

I’m going to take this opportunity to quickly explain the different Lancer models. It’s by no means complete, but you’ll get the idea.

• DE – This is the “I live in a cardboard box but still want to buy a new car” model. The only option it has is for a hole in the floor so you can Flintstone it if the engine dies.
• ES – The “I am 40, have a family but am desperate to get a stranglehold on anything that might make me feel young again.” Options like cruise control (handy for when you’ve had a long day of sitting on the couch and your legs hurt) and heated seats are available
• GTS – Sport-tuned suspension, sport-tuned transmission, sport-tuned engine, sport-tuned cupholders. The fast one.

I forget for the moment that I’m an idiot and could never actually have something good happen to me, I stop at the Mitsubishi dealership on the way home from work on Monday. I walk into the showroom where (I swear to God this happened) the receptionist is telling someone on the other end of the line to “FUCK OFF AND DIE.” Perhaps she was speaking Vietnamese and was actually saying “Phuc hop and hi!” I don’t know, but it should have been the first sign to get the fuck out of Dodge. Or Mitsubishi.

A salesman by the name of Greg greets me with his 6 teeth, and asks me what he can do for me. Fighting back the urge to tell him “Find a salesperson with more teeth than a newborn,” I tell him that I’m in the market for a new car. A Lancer GTS, to be exact. “Well Justin,” he says, “if you give me your driver’s license, I will go make a copy and steal your identity, and then we’ll take an ES out for a test drive, since we don’t actually have any GTSs in stock.” I was a little shocked, because that’s kind of like saying “I’m going to let you base a $30,000 decision on similarities rather than the real deal,” but since they are the same engine, I figured that they’d be at least relatively similar.

While test driving, he asks me things like “What do you do?” (I mind my own goddamned business) and “How soon would you be looking to purchase a vehicle?” (Today? Tomorrow? Leave me alone for 10 seconds so I can try and enjoy the fucking ride of the car.) We come back. We speak for 45 minutes to an hour about every option I’d like, from paint color to interior color, from stereo options to transmission options. Then he drops this wonderful bomb on me: “So, I should tell you now that that huge earthquake in Japan last month actually destroyed the factories that manufacture the body kits and transmissions for the GTS and we won’t actually be getting any in until after Christmas.

On a movie trailer, this is where you’d hear the record scratch.

What the goddamned fuck? You’ve been sitting here smiling at me with your wasteland of a mouth, and wasted my entire evening (OK, “entire evening” is a bit of an exaggeration, but I get 6 hours of me time a night, and wasting two of them is a pretty big fucking deal to me.)? It’s at this point that I accidentally tell him (in no uncertain terms) that he must have misunderstood me when I said I wanted a car this week and that (in no uncertain terms) he’s an idiot.

I leave.

Dejected from the experience, I write it off as a one-time thing – a guy who wasn’t paying attention. I start thinking about other options like a Mazda 3 or Toyota Prius. Then I remember a guy I worked with a long time ago who drove a Nissan Sentra SE-R Spec V. He said he absolutely loved it and so I figured it might be prudent to look into one.

I did my research and found that for the price, they had the most horsepower and torque, not to mention they look pretty fucking hot too. After a few days of humming and hawing, I decided that I’d go take one for a test drive.

*DING* 1,000,001

To be continued…