Today is my last day working technical support for Photoshop and Premiere Pro (and the butt-ton of sub-products that go with them). It’s been an interesting year, that’s for sure.

Usually when I leave a job, it’s a little more bittersweet than this. There are certainly people I’m going to miss here…  Scott, Wesley, Dan, Brandi, Lara, Chris, Larry, Jason and so on and so forth.. but that’s all I’ll miss. Just my peeps. There’s a lot of things about working here that were really getting to me. Like.. have you even been somewhere where you keep wondering “WHY do I keep coming back?!” It was kind of like that. There are more places than this that I feel like that about, but we’ll skip that for now haha. I won’t get into it more though; that’s not the type of dirty laundry I like to air out on my blog. I love and will miss my coworkers though. They brought me cake! Everybody looks sad to see me go.

I am very excited for my new job though! I will be doing email and occasional phone support for Freeway, as well as various other tasks. It is an excellent opportunity and I am looking forward for Monday, when I get to start my new job.

I don’t even really like snow. I’ve just had a bad couple of days.

I had Friday off, which one would think would be a good day… not so much.

I started the day by having a dream that I was at my Grandma’s house and we were having the family Christmas party, and nobody showed up. My first thought upon waking up was “...well that sucks. My family is supposed to love me and want to see me damn it!” It only went downhill from there.

I went to Home Depot to pick up a light bulb for my light fixture (I have the Fuga light from IKEA) and the stupid things are $7 each. I bought two so I could replace the dead one and have a spare for next time one dies. After that I went back home to play with Xoie but she wasn’t interested in me and only wanted to chew on her bone. Whatever dog.

I worked a little bit on a project I’m doing, then decided that I needed some shots of Downtown.. so I took a shower, put my dog in her room, and walked to the MAX stop. It started raining 2 minutes after I left my house and was pouring by the time I got off the train in Portland. So I couldn’t pull my camera out.. walked down to Eat Pizza and had some food and killed some time because Pod wasn’t gonna be off work for a little bit. Hopped on the MAX and headed over there, then couldn’t remember what floor he worked on.

Tried calling but he didn’t answer so I started wandering around the building. It’s fairly small and has lots of locked doors, so I didn’t get lost per say… but I did manage to find the only door to the stairwell that opens on my first try, only to find that the doors from that side are locked. I started panicking and each door I tried that was locked made the stairwell feel smaller. It really, really sucked. Sent a text to Pod telling him I was gonna die in the staircase then finally located an unlocked exit. It was scary :(

So then when it was time for us to leave, we got on the MAX, and then there was an annoucement saying they were going to delay the train… and then security walked up to me and asked me to get off the train. My eyes got all big and round and Pod was like “uhhhmmm…” and the security guy was like, “are you with her?” “yeah” “okay why don’t you step off too…” and so we got rained on while they figured out that I was not whoever they were looking for, and they let us back on the train, and everybody was staring at us.

So then I was all cold and wet and cranky and my hot chocolate didn’t come with whipped cream. Bleah.

I guess yesterday was sort of mostly okay except I had to work and I got in a fight with Pod and then I had to work today.

But hey, it’s snowing. I threw a snowball at my friend Sam and haven’t fallen on my ass yet so I guess it’s okay.

I just finished Premiere training yesterday! Included in my Premiere training was Premiere Pro CS3 and CS4 (Mac and Windows), Premiere Elements 4 and 7 (Windows only), OnLocation CS3 (Windows) and CS4 (Mac and Windows), and Encore CS3 and CS4 (Mac/Windows).

So currently, I’ve gotten full on training in all of those, as well as Photoshop CS2, CS3, and CS4 (both platforms), Lightroom 1 and 2 (also both platforms), Photoshop Elements 4 (Windows/Mac), 5 (Windows), 6 (both) and 7 (windows), and installation of all products (CS2, CS3, CS4, both platforms).

How has my head not exploded? I don’t know. Hehe I don’t have to support allllll of those though.

But anyway I am now pretty well versed in the ways of video editing, capturing video, and DVD authoring. It’s pretty fun.

I don’t know how soon I’ll be getting my ACE’s for these products though. I’m not feeling nearly as cocky or even confidant in these programs as I did straight out of training for the other ones.

Soooo some of you may remember my failed attempt at a 365 days project some time last year.. well, I’m trying again :p
There’s a missing week.. it’s a sore subject, don’t ask! Srsly.
But anyway I’m doing it again and you should go see it :p

Year 23

In other news I am now a certified expert in Photoshop CS3, and I do email support at work, and oh, my hair is green.

Long weekends are the best invention ever, mmmmhmmm!

After I got off work on Thursday (at 6 fricken 30 I might add, grumble) I did a mad dash over to my D&D game. I’m a dwarf cleric in that game and pretty much rock, for the record :D We played that for a couple hours and had dinner and it was fun. Then… we busted out ROCK BAND! Wooooo! That game is ridiculously fun, OMG. I started off playing guitar, and we had to keep switching roles after a few songs cause everybody we had singing kept failing. So then they took my guitar and handed me the mic, and apparently I’m really good at being the singer, so now… I sing! We made a band called Whiteboard Hoppopotamus (default names FTW!) and rocked out until like, 3 in the morning when we got too tired to keep our eyes open.

Friday I hung out with Xoie for the morning then went to a BBQ thing and ate lots of yummy food and drank way more mojitos than I probably needed and as such, was unable to make it to my Friday night D&D game (I’m a tiefling rogue in that one, and I think I’m awesome but haven’t gotten much chance to find out just yet). But, I got to blow things up and that was fun, too.

Saturday I cleaned like crazy. My bedroom is about 96% organized! My closet it spotless! I still need to do the bathroom and bring the rest of my stuff up from the garage, but I think I’m almost done. Exciting! Wooo! Then I went to a half-birthday party which was also way fun.

I got a nasty charlie horse in my right calf in the middle of the night. It was terrible! Nothing quite like waking up with your leg muscle clenched, causing some major ouch-ness. Stretching it out HURT. My leg has been sore since then. Walking hurts and I practically fell over getting up out of bed this morning. I can’t wait for this to go away.

Sunday I played more D&D with my cleric-group, then we rigged the backyard so that it was puppy proof and I went and picked Xoie up.. we played with her for a bit then gave her reign of the backyard and played way more Rock Band. Love that game haha! Then we went out to dinner, and played even more Rock Band and goofed off until it was time to go home.

Cause you know, pesky work thing and all.

Being sick is lame. I think I am dying. My snot is yellow. My head is so stuffy that my EARS hurt. My face is leaky. I have a fever. My head hurts. My body hurts. I can’t breathe. I am sad.

This thing is going around the whole call center. We all sound terrible. We are miserable. Poor us.

Isn’t it summer?! Isn’t there some law against being sick in June?! If there’s not, there should be.

How is everybody else feeling?

BEAVERTON, Ore. - Hundreds of restaurant workers started looking for new jobs Tuesday after national restaurant chain “Chili’s” closed several of its Portland-area restaurants.

At the Beaverton location, the parking lot sat empty Tuesday except for former employees showing up for work and discovering they were out of a job.

A sign on the front door said the restaurant was “closed for repairs,” but that is not true, according to managers and the corporate office.

The Hillsboro location also closed; The Lake Oswego and Wilsonville restaurants may be shut down after Tuesday night.

Workers were stunned.

“I was on the schedule for this morning, and I walked up and (the manager) was here and said, ‘Nope, they’re closed,’ ” said Jimbo Purcell, a cook.

The Clackamas and Eugene locations will stay open and be run by the corporate office.

A manager predicted the closings will cost 300 Oregonians their jobs.

source

I was a big fan of the enchilada soup and the boneless buffalo chicken salad. The Beaverton location

is

was in the same parking lot as where I used to work, pretty much up the street from my house.  But man, what a terrible way to find out that you’re out of a job… that’s very sad. Terrible business practice.

So, Apple put out the 10.5.3 update for OS X yesterday. I’m a little apprehensive about installing it. Why? Well, because I seem to be Katie, The Mac Killer, that’s why.

Let me tell you about my Mac’s. I only use them here at work, cause nobody has bought me a macbook yet.

So on my first day, in my defense, the first one I had just never turned on. I don’t think I can be held responsible for that one haha. So then they gave me a new one. That one worked fine and dandy for a couple of weeks until I realized it didn’t have the .2 update. So, I installed it and restarted the computer like a normal person would do, and when it came up… it flashed the Finder icon with a question mark on it for 20 minutes until my IT guy came. Then he looked at it and was like, “WTF did you do to this thing!?” as he carted it off and brought me a new one. That one lasted for a few weeks… then it started powering off for no good reason. Like.. I’d be using it and it would just pfffffft die. That got really annoying, really fast. So Larry brought me a spare that had a dying fan and promised to replace it. Well, after about a week and a half of listening to this stupid fan, I was going crazy. Then! One of the guys in my cubicle quit and left his shiny G5 behind (because, you know, it wasn’t really his). So, I smiled very sweetly and was like, “.... Larry can I have the G5?” (and it was totally a joke cause I didn’t think it would actually work!) and Larry was like “Yeah sure, why not!” “.....really? Sweet!”

So I’m on what is technically my 5th Mac in under 3 months.

We’re taking on office pool on whether or not I kill the G5 installing this latest update. I think I’ll wait until the end of the day to do it.

Isn’t that just the luck.

I finish moving my home over the weekend, and when I get to work they’re all like..
“So uh, Katie, we’re gonna go ahead move your desk now”

LMAO.

Happy Tax Day people. Mwahaha. I hope you all got your stuff done I finally sent in my Oregon taxes yesterday (they wanted money from me so I put it off for a while haha). Anyway yeah taxes suck.

So last night we had alcoholic Orange Julius’s. Have you ever bought a bottle of rum, and then gone to the house that you’re all hanging out at, only to realize that nobody remembered to bring the Coke? Yeah, that was totally us last night. So the only thing in the fridge at my friends house were a couple cans of this sparkling orange flavored… stuff? Damned if I know what it was but it was a pretty good mixer. Our drinks were rum filled melted orange julius’s. Good times! :D

Hrm. What else to blog about… well, I’m moving this weekend. Puppy is a spaz. Work is fun, but people are stupid. That’s about it.

Oh, I also made like, an invite only blog on Blogger for posting about things that are fun but that I don’t need the whole wide internet to know about. If you want access (and think that it’s possible that I’d let you read it LOL [if I talk to you I’ll probably let you in]) leave a comment here saying that you want access and I’ll hook you up with an invite email *nods* Gmail acct if possible, I think it works better that way. I’m way too lazy to go track down all your email addresses. I plan on posting about last weekends shenanigans (those of you that follow my Twitter might be curious) some time soon! Yay!

That is all. I will try not to be so sparse and update more often but I make no promises.

SQUEEEEEEE!!!!! We graduated today! I got the highest score in the class on the test. Well.. 6 of us tied LOL and then I lost the raffle for the G5 cause I have bad luck. Oh well. We had carrot cake! And got name badges for our cubes! And a certificate that we completed training! Fun!!

Then we moved to our cubes. There’s a picture of my setup on KSF To-Go. We’ll only be here for two weeks though. We’re in a controlled environment with smaller call volume and we have people easily available to help us. I took a call! All by myself! It was fantastic!!!!! The only problem I had was that I had no scrollbars in my tracking system hahahaha. So in the middle of my call while I was walking the guy through how to fix his problem, I was crawling under my desk switching to a mouse with a scroll wheel so that I could actually log my case. It rocked. But I fixed his problem! I should get a good CSAT on that call, wheeee!

This is fun. *waits for the next call*

Gosh, sorry it’s been so quiet around here lately. I’ve been trying my hand at this “social life” thing, and apparently I am better at it than I thought

So work has been going well. Tomorrow we take our final and “graduate” out of training. Yippee! I’m pretty excited. Today, I was out on the floor and took some real calls… I simply couldn’t bear another day of sitting and watching the trainwreck.. (there are some people in my class that are totally going to crash and burn, sad times). So yeah, my first 3 calls were mega easy (one was a dead line, one girls problem fixed itself because she had rebooted, and the other call wasn’t supposed to be on my line, so I transfered it). Then I took a break… then it was CALL after CALL after CALL of like, really bizarre issues. I had this very “deer in the headlights” look on my face when most of them were telling me what the problem was haha, as my mouth is saying “YEAH, I can fix that for you, no problem!” and my brain is thinking “... I have no idea what the hell you are talking about”. It didn’t help any that most of them were people with Mac’s, and I basically know squat about OS X. It was good times!

But yeah, I am looking forward to the chaos that will come when I don’t have somebody listening to the call and writing notes to me about what to do LOL

Soo… tomorrow is my last day at my current work. I gotta say, I really am excited about it. I really hated the work I was doing. I’m just not an admin, and spending all day filing and answering phones was really starting to get to me. But, I am very thankful for having that job. It got me here to Portland, and helped me while I got settled in. I will miss my coworkers. I won’t miss the job though.

I start a new job on Monday. I’m rather looking forward to it! I’m going to be doing tech support for Adobe products. Well, I have training first, but you know. I think it will be fun! I will get to meet a lot of new people and hopefully make some good friends. It will also be good experience to put on my resume. I admit, it’s a very basic, entry level posistion, and I could do a lot harder work… but nobody wants to hire me based off of personal experience hah. So, I’m gonna do my time, and see where it goes from there.

It’s a little scary though, leaving a “good job” for such a “low level” job. But, if it’s a step in the right direction, to doing something I will enjoy, then I think it’s worth it

In other news, I am headed up to Seattle this weekend, so it will probably be quiet around here for a little longer.

Hmm. I seem to have not updated in a while. No good!!

So what have I been up to? Well, I’ve been kind of dragging my feet through the last couple weeks here at work. I’m just antsy to start my new job and haven’t been able to focus. I’ve also been trying to finish up this stupid filing project so the new girl isn’t stuck with it. I must be nuts… who files at a place they’re leaving?! Hah.

What else… meh. I’ve been mostly trying to stay busy and keep my mind of of stuff, like Tom. Sitting around at home mostly alone is just making me sad. I stick around for a bit so that Xoie can run around but yeah. I’ve been out with the few friends that I have, or out driving, and what not. I’ve watched a LOT of movies in the past week but none of them really stick out in my head. I’m alright, I’m just kind of stuck in a rut right now.

But, I did get to go out to dinner last week with an old friend, and Yoshi was here for a book-signing and we hung out and it was fun (you can read all about it in his blog post titled My day in Beaverton), and what else…. oh, on Friday I went out with a bunch of people that work where I will be working next week (one of my friends invited me out with them) so that was fun. We drank way too much and they probably won’t remember me next week LOL but it will be nice to at least vaguely recognize a few faces I almost lost my phone and that would have sucked, but I found it in my truck, whew! And I played Guitar Hero for the first time on Saturday and it was fun, and we made sundaes. I’ve been shopping a couple times and things like that… busy busy. I am rather exhausted though. This “being out a lot” thing is kind of new to me. I’m having fun, but still in my rut.

I am starting to feel better though. We’re getting along better. I’m moving in a month and a half or so which will definitely help, so that my brain doesn’t start going off and thinking things about where Tom is and what he might be doing, because that just doesn’t do me any good. I’m starting my new job next week which I am excited for… I’m going up to Seattle this weekend… yeah, things will look up. I just need some more time I think.

And then I can stop with the depressing posts haha