Here I go again … I’ve just been laid off

I’ve always said that you know the situation is bad if you’re called into a meeting and both your supervisor and the head of HR are attending.

That was exactly the case today. I was just about to grab my things and head out to lunch and my boss came by to ask me if I could meet with him for a moment. My first thought was “Am I in trouble?” but couldn’t think of anything I’d done recently to piss anyone off. (actually I’ve been on my best behavior for the most part lately, trying to be a better role model employee and all that … pity)

I sat down at the table and could read the upside-down print on the paper being held by one of the HR people sitting across from me. I read the word “severance” and knew instantly that this wasn’t a good thing. Sure enough, the division has started another round of cutbacks and I’m one of them. I don’t remember much about what all was said to me, but I think I understood most of it.

I remember what irritated me the most: my name was misspelled on the documents. I commented that I knew I was low on the totem pole because half the division could never learn (or make the effort) to spell my name properly. I was assured that wasn’t the case, this was not a reflection of my work, et cetera, et cetera, …

It still stings though. And to be honest, when the state started cutting back last year and then the hiring freeze came, and then they said no raises or bonuses, et. al., I knew that a “low level” position like mine (as compared to the rest of my department) could possibly be cut.

So now here I am … again. Jobless. Feeling a little down, yes, but trying not to be.

I’m sitting here looking over my resume, but honestly I keep thinking about all the designs I did for them that will probably never be used — I really wish I had had the chance to back them up on disk first!

Oh well, at least ONE of my designs are on a public site, and I can put that on my resume.

So … anyone who had my work email address, please email my gmail or nickifaulk.com address from now on.

Oh … and I need a job.

Humpday Hilarities

This funny bit is courtesy of my mother:

A little boy wanted $100.00 very badly and prayed for weeks, but nothing happened. Then he decided to write God a letter requesting the $100.00. When the postal authorities received the letter to God, USA, they decided to send it to the President.

The president was so amused that he instructed his secretary to send the little boy a $5.00 bill. The president thought this would appear to be a lot of money to a little boy. The little boy was delighted with the $5.00 bill and sat down to write a thank-you note to God, which read:

Dear God: Thank you very much for sending the money. However, I noticed that for some reason you sent it through Washington D.C. and those assholes took $95.00 in taxes.

This one is courtesy of one of my co-workers:

Two Irishmen, Patrick Murphy and Shawn O’Brian grew up together and were lifelong friends. But alas, Patrick developed cancer, and was dying. While on his deathbed, Patrick called to his buddy, Shawn, “O’Brian, come ‘ere. I ‘ave a request for ye.” Shawn walked to his friend’s bedside and kneels.

“Shawny ole boy, we’ve been friends all our lives, and now I’m leaving ‘ere. I ‘ave one last request fir ye to do.”

O’Brian burst into tears, “Anything Patrick, anything ye wish. It’s done.”

“Well, under me bed is a box containing a bottle of the finest whiskey in all of Ireland. Bottled the year I was born it was. After I die, and they plant me in the ground, I want you to pour that fine whiskey over me grave so it might soak into me bones and I’ll be able to enjoy it for all eternity.”

O’Brian was overcome by the beauty and in the true Irish spirit of his friend’s request, he asked, “Aye, tis a fine thing you ask of me, and I will pour the whiskey. But, might I strain it through me kidneys first?”

And last but certainly not least, this one is courtesy of my Cotillion sister, Fausta:

The old priest lay dying in the hospital. For years he had faithfully served the people of the nation’s capital. He motioned for his nurse to come near.

“Yes, Father?” said the nurse.

“I would really like to see Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi before I die”, whispered the priest.

“I’ll see what I can do, Father” replied the nurse.

The nurse sent the request to them and waited for a response. Soon the word arrived. Harry and Nancy would be delighted to visit the priest.

As they went to the hospital, Harry commented to Nancy, “I don’t know why the old priest wants to see us, but it will certainly help our images.” Nancy couldn’t help but agree.

When they arrived at the priest’s room, the priest took Nancy’s hand in his right hand and Harry’s hand in his left. There was silence and a look of serenity on the old priest’s face.

Finally Nancy spoke. “Father, of all the people you could have chosen, why did you choose us to be with you as you near the end?”

The old priest slowly replied, “I have always tried to pattern my life after our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

The old priest continued…”He died between two lying thieves. I would like to do the same.”

Do you see what I am saying?

“And my shoes began to squeak…”

5 points to whomever gets that reference!

I’ve had a lot going on lately, but honestly hadn’t had the energy or desire to sit down and write — or type, as it were. For anyone who hasn’t been reading/following me for a while, the more crap I have going on the more I unplug.

Not fun, but some of the crap has been kind of funny. I think the best way to sum this up would be in a meme-like format, so here goes:

In the last 30 days …

1. I’ve been called a baby killer.

This one is actually pretty funny now, but at the time it was a bit unnerving. Long story short: a website one of the studies that my department maintains experienced some down time. Because of this, a certain doctor involved in the study completely flips his shit and tells me and everyone else that because the website wasn’t up, a certain drug (which had a 50% chance of being a placebo) they are studying couldn’t be administered to a dying baby. The next day, the baby died (from a cause unrelated to the drug OR the study!), and the doctor implies that because of our “inaction” that we’re at fault. There was much panic about lawsuits, audits, and whether or not some of us would have a job …

Anyways, our boss, his boss, his boss’ boss, and that boss’ boss are all furious and said doctor has had his hide handed to him. One of my coworkers joked, “I haven’t been called a ‘baby killer’ since ‘Nam!”

2. I realized that I had erroneously packed up all available liquor in the house.

Funny enough, while the above-mentioned debacle was going on, I came home one day and realized that I needed a drink in a bad way — and couldn’t find a single drop anywhere! For whatever reason, I must have thought it would be a good idea to pack up all the alcohol and keep it in storage.

Good Lord, what was I thinking?

3. I’ve been turned down for a house loan.

Yeah, we were turned down. We’re not completely out of options, but part of me really wishes we had started trying a year sooner. I’d seen places that were practically giving away loans to anyone and everyone who applied.

*sigh*

Oh well, we’ll keep on plugging and I’ve no doubt that it will all turn out in the end — but the keeping the faith part is always hard.

4. I have been asked by a friend to match him up with a mistress.

Uh … do what?

Definitely one for the “sharing too much” category. I was catching up via email with an old friend. He went into great detail about how unhappy he is in his marriage, about how he wished he had married someone else, and so on. I feel bad for the guy, I really do … but when he suggested that I try to set him up with one of my girlfriends so he could “be happy with an affair”, I (as politely and courteously as I could) declined.

And I haven’t heard from him since.

Yikes … so, um, yeah.

5. I have had a new term suggested for Jim’s ex.

A friend of mine was listening to me rant about the latest drama stirred up by Jim’s ex over Jessie (which of course quickly became over me), she exclaimed, “Of course, she’s your stepwife!”

According to Word Spy, a stepwife is (in my case) the ex-wife of my husband.

Funny, I have plenty of other names to call her … but this is probably the most kid-safe!

She has seemed to have been in an uproar about anything and everything lately though. I was talking to Jim about a rather nasty remark she made to me one night and he replied, “You will always be ‘the other woman’ in her eyes.”

Oh give me a break.

Never mind that they ultimately split because Jim caught her cheating on him — REPEATEDLY! That said, there is some truth in what he said. For whatever reason, she has always seen me as her competition. Even now, despite the fact that I have been in Jessie’s life since she was 4, and the woman has even admitted TO ME that she thinks I’m a good influence on Jessie, she still goes off on this “I’m her mother and I will never let you forget it!” bullshit trip every time she has one of these manic (maniac) moments.

But I digress …

So those are most of the reasons why I’ve been burying my nose in a few fave books, catching up on some DVD’d tv shows, and pretty much avoiding the ‘net in general.

How’re y’all?

Seriously. How’s your day/week/month been?

It’s bring a munchkin to work day

Humpday Hilarities

This one is from one of my co-workers:

What a loving husband

A man and his ever-nagging wife went on vacation to Jerusalem. While they were there, the wife passed away. The undertaker told the husband, “You can have her shipped home for $5,000, or you can bury her here, in the Holy Land, for $150.”

The man thought about it and told him he would just have her shipped home. The undertaker asked, “Why would you spend $5,000 to ship your wife home, when it would be wonderful to be buried here and you would spend only $150?”

The man replied, “Long time ago a man died here, was buried here, and three days later he rose from the dead. I just can’t take that chance!”

And this one was posted to Facebook by Chase:

New WordPress Theme: Black Hat

My newest theme for WordPress 2.7. I think this one has been my biggest challenge due to all the features I had wanted to incorporate. As I had previously highlighted in my post the other day, this theme includes a detailed “read me” file covering its various features and a couple of FAQs/frequently requested modifications:

• Theme option for changing sidebar location
• Sitemap template
• Printer-friendly stylesheet
• Favicon
• Additional feeds
• Additional/SEO meta tags — including Google’s new canonical tag for paginated post pages. (Rumor has it this tag will be added to the core code in a future WordPress release. Nice!)

While I don’t think it’s my best work visually-speaking, I think its functionality and user-oriented details make it one of my better themes overall.

As time permits, I will be updating previous releases to meet the standard that I’ve set for myself with this release.

Details

Black Hat is a dark minimalist theme based on Adrian Diaconescu‘s Corporate Sandbox. It is has been built specifically with WordPress 2.7 in mind, but is backwards compatible down to version 2.5. Stickers icons courtesy of DryIcons. Favicon by Brian Brasher.

Availability

Demo | Download

The perfect chimichanga

Seriously miffed at WP.org

The release of my newest theme has been delayed. I had submitted it to WordPress.org yesterday for inclusion in the Theme Directory, as I have done my other themes. This morning I received a very vague rejection email and initiated a discussion as to why.

The long and short of it, I’ve posted to the WordPress.org forums, but to be honest I don’t expect anything to come of it. I would however like to hear your thoughts on the matter.

My post to the forums:

I submitted a new theme yesterday. Because I have several other themes listed here, I am already pretty familiar with the requirements, but always give them a quick once over to make sure that I haven’t forgotten anything.

I was a bit dismayed today to get the following in an email: “Thank you for submitting the Black Hat theme, however it has not been selected to be part of the theme directory.”

That’s it. Nothing else explaining why my theme was rejected. That in itself is disconcerting, so I requested more information. I’m then told “Themes from sites (or links to sites) that support non-GPL WordPress themes are not included in the theme directory.”

My theme’s style.css clearly states that the theme is released under the GPL license; this is also stated very clearly on the theme’s URI on my website.

I explained this and was then told: “Go back and look at your credit links, both in theme description and the footer of the theme. Specifically http://www.rubiqube.com/corporate-sandbox/ which has at least 3 ads for sites that support non-GPL themes.”

My theme is based on the Corporate Sandbox framework. I linked to the site crediting its author — not required, but morally the right thing to do IMO.

So my question is this: Has the theme directory submission been changed? If so, this is not listed anywhere on the requirements page. And when did credit links fall under this kind of scrutiny?

I understand that there needs to be some serious cleanup for some of the themes listed here, but this is taking it a bit far, don’t you think?

The man I credited has ads on his site. How many others here to submit themes have similar ads? Or use a premium theme with a link back to its creator?

I understand that if that’s the way the rules are now, that’s that … but for Pete’s sake, list them in detail where theme designers can see it!!!

Humpday Hilarities

This morning’s edition is courtesy of my mother-in-law

What is Generation Y?

Hmm, I’ve always wondered this myself. Now I know.

• The Silent generation — people born before 1946.
• The Baby Boomers — people born between 1946 and 1959.
• Generation X — people born between 1960 and 1979.
• Generation Y — people born between 1980 and 1995.

Why do we call the last one generation Y? I did not know, but a cartoonist explains it eloquently below. Learned something new today!

Pretty accurate, don’tcha think?

Theme improvements

I’ve been working on a new theme for the past 3 months and hope to have the kinks worked out soon so I can release it. In doing so, I’ve taken the time to assess what this new theme will have that my current releases do not.

And it’s quite a long list, lemme tell ya!

One of the items on my laundry list of “to do’s” is to include an informational “read me” file, featuring various features of the theme and answer a few frequently asked questions that I’ve come across from user feedback.

In fact, the majority of the “to do” items are from questions and/or requests that I’ve received.

Here’s a sample readme:

Hopefully this will be a little more helpful to users than the few notes I normally add in the theme description in the style.css file. I plan on updating all of my current themes to include these features.

Comments?

Feedback is gold, so hit the form below and let me know what’s on your mind.

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