Tag Archives: Employment

The Grand Finale – Blaugust day 24

Posted on by
Reply

The grand finale. It’s been a race, it’s been a marathon, but the last day of August (and thus Blaugust) is here.
It has been a hell of a crazy month for me. I landed my first real fulltime job (that will probably end this friday), I’ve had a really busy social life and I’ve had to re-evaluate myself and some of the goals I set while under pressure of time.

I have realized that my heart still belongs to World of Warcraft, even though I might critique and say goodbye to the game every now and then. I have started a crazy Heroes of the Storm project, that I do want to see through! I’ve gotten better at Hearthstone and have enjoyed playing some Super Mario Bros. on my 3DS again. I have evolved from a hardcore “I want to do it all” player to a more casual one with gaming taking up a much smaller role in my life for the time being. And surprisingly enough I’m more than fine with that.
Looking back to the start of the month, I might have set a bit too ambitious gaming goals for myself. I’ve barely been able to keep up with most of them and I’ve really only done the WoW and Hearthstone ones and I’m cool with that. I will re-evaluate my goals for September in my next post, probably being a lot less ambitious, and strive to complete as much as those as I can. Some will be a repeat performance (like getting rank 20 on Hearthstone), others will be new… But I won’t spoil just yet.

Next to my own gaming and blog adventures I have discovered a lot of new blogs and new people. It’s been a blast reading all of you. Even if I couldn’t actually read ALL of you. You are all amazing people and keep on doing what you’re doing!

I am a bit sad that I didn’t make blogging all 31 days of August. I missed out on exactly seven days. However the reasons that I have been unable to blog all bring smiles to my face and thus it was worth it. Daily blogging might not really be my thing, but I have enjoyed blogging regularly and, by some of the really kind and positive comments I have gotten throughout the month, I think you readers have enjoyed my blog aswell.
I like to keep going strong and blog regularly after the Blaugust madness is over. I really don’t want to fall back to only one or two posts a month, I have way too much to say for that.
For now though. Goodbye Blaugust!

Hearthstone Arena Run – Blaugust day 21

Posted on by
1

Today after a very long time I did an Arena run on Hearthstone again. I picked up a Paladin deck and, with the help of Heartharena.com, managed to put together a fairly decent aggro deck.
I haven’t dabbled in Arena for a very long time. I’m still struggling to learn all the classes in Hearthstone (Paladin being one of few decks I have no experience with) and I’m still not very good at knowing what to do on what turn and when. I have a tendency to either go face too much or clear minions too much leaving me usually with an empty hand or an empty board. This results into many losses on my side.
It’s one of the reasons I choose to focus on Priest and Druid since those are the two decks I’ve been playing the most and feel the most comfortable on. I really wouldn’t know what a good draft is for any other deck, but this week I had no choice since all three champions were ones I wasn’t comfortable on. So I consulted a friend, picked Paladin and went through a pretty long draft phase while tabbing back and forth to Heartharena to see which cards I should pick up. I did that all on Wednesday evening after the raid so I could focus on actually playing the Arena tonight.

The same friend who helped me discover Heartharena has also guided me through this particular Arena run. He is a good player, albeit a little inexperienced with Paladin, and he has been helping me out here and there. With his guidance (and me making misplays here and there) I managed to get this deck to a 4-3 arena run, which is about a 200% improvement over anything I ever did on my own. I got a nice TGT card pack and 75 gold as rewards and overall I feel a bit more confident in playing Arena as a whole.
With my friend guiding me I’ve gained a bit more knowledge on when to trade, when to play certain cards, when to go for face and that brainfarts are seriously bad.
All in all I’m pretty happy with the result though and I think I might want to try my next Arena run on my own. With enough practice I should be able to get a good result eventually right?

Ongoing game issues
Being almost fulltime (and fullitme next week) at work has shown me how utter impossible it is to keep up with two MMO’s and a bunch of other games without some planning. Monday and Wednesday are my WoW nights since I raid then. Tuesday and Thursday should be my FF nights since I plan to coil then. This leaves me with only Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the rest of my games. Which is actually really sucky. It feels like my days and evenings fly by and I can’t get enough time into games for it to be really satisfying. It doesn’t really help that I go to bed at 23.00 every night, but I really can’t stay up longer or I’ll be a zombie at work.
It’s messing with me and making me slightly cranky. I used to have all the time and freedom in the world to do what I wanted and that is gone now. I guess I really need to start planning my nights better or give up on raiding in one of my MMO’s. And I really don’t want to do the second…

In Which I Rage – Blaugust day 13

Posted on by
5

Today I need to vent some issues about my new job. I’ve only been working for three days, but there’s already some irritations that can turn into big issues in the long run if they don’t get nipped in the butt.

My job is a temp one. It’s basically based on a company needing people to complete a project before a deadline. In this case it’s adding data to a google spreadsheet for articles from a big supermarket chain in my country. We work with a certain set of rules. What things need to be mentioned and where and we have a minimum target of articles to handle every day. We work most of the day on entering data into the spreadsheet, either adding data from scratch based on having the physical product or a picture of it. Or we correct data that has been entered by the producers of said products. The last 2-3 hours of the day are spent on cross checking all the articles we added for the day and erase mistakes that might have slipped in here and there.
What’s really important to note is that we won’t get to leave for the day untill all articles have been checked. We aim to be done at 17.00, but the first day we didn’t finish till 17.30 and I’ve heard stories from people who worked on similar projects that it sometimes can get much later.

Our group of colleague’s exist of 7 temp workers, of which I’m one, and a few people from within the company. On average we have 9-10 people working on the project every day. Some people are fast, some people are slow and some people only help out for an afternoon or a morning so they don’t really count.

From day one I have been having “issues” with one of the people who comes from the company itself. She was more or less selected to do this work, whether she liked it or not, and seems to not enjoy herself at all. She complains about a lot of things. How no one is talkative, how much she still has to do, that she wants to go home at five. You name it, she complains about it. Not to mention that I personally believe that her tone towards our supervisors is disrespectful, but that is just a matter of opinion I guess. Up untill this afternoon she referred to me as “person sitting across from me” while she’s heard my name often enough the past three days to know what I’m called. It just pisses me off and if I didn’t know she would more or less be out next week I probably would have complained about her at some point. Because her negativity and work attitude is bringing everyone who sits at her table down aswell. It’s distracting, it’s annoying and I can’t really shut her out. This makes me enjoy my work less and be less motivated to do stuff aswell.

Next to this the job is really “mistake” prone. Things have to be added in certain fields and the restrictions are very precise. Seeing as I don’t want to be correcting mistakes untill the end of time I just ask my supervisors everytime something is unclear or if I don’t understand something. Problem is, I’m the only one who does. Which leads to the fact that people either keep on making mistakes because they just guess and fill in or people asking a question that I actually can answer (because I know, because you know… I asked) to which I get the “how do you know?” reply. It makes me feel like some sort of goodie two shoes because I’m not afraid to just ask stuff. It’s earned me some side-eyes already and it’s making me uncomfortable.
It’s also making me feel like I’m compensating for people. I’m already one of the people with the highest “performance” every day, but now I also have to be the one who knows everything? It’s a bit too much and I notice it when I’m home. I’m so tired I can’t even enjoy a game anymore. All I want is to eat dinner and head to bed.

Thing is, I really want to show off my best side on this job. I’m hoping this might lead to either a job at the company or a good referral that will lead to other jobs. So it pisses me off that I’m made to feel bad about something that isn’t. About something they all should be doing, so that we don’t have to correct all the damn mistakes that are being made now.
From all the people with an university degree I certainly expect better. But then again, people are stupid. And working a job only proves that more.

Fun in the Sun – Blaugust day 8

Posted on by
Reply

It’s a bit of a slow day today for me. I went out to visit a friend and we went shopping. Or well I went shopping and dragged him along haha. Gaming wise I didn’t do much today. I took my 3DS with me, since I had to be underway for about an hour, and played through the first world of Super Mario Bros!
Another thing on my gaming to do list to scratch off. The problem I have with the Mario Bros game is that you don’t really complete it by just finishing the game. You see every level has three big star coins hidden throughout the level that you need in order to unlock secret bonus levels. I have not been collecting all of them, I’ve been more focused on just playing through the game, but I intend to go back and grab all of them and “finish” the game that way aswell. Some are really impressively hidden so I’m sure it will take me some time to actually find all of them.
And then there are hidden worlds you need to unlock via special cannons… I’ll probably read up on that after I played through the main storyline. Because unlockable content is cool!

Mostly though I’ve enjoyed being outside today, let my skin soak up some vitamin D (ofcourse with sunscreen on) had some nice munchies and generally relaxed before work starts on Tuesday. I have gotten my roster and boy am I in for a treat! I’m starting earlier than expected so I guess I’ll have to get used to getting up at 7, instead of 9.30-10.00 that I’m getting up now. Atleast I’m rostered for 32 hours a week so the pay should be nice. I don’t think I will get much done in the way of gaming though. I expect to be seriously tired and will probably go to bed around 22.00 the first week because I will lack sleep otherwise.

To end the evening, and before heading to bed and completely passing out, I’ve played through some Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris with a few buddies. It’s a 1-4 player game and it was free through Playstation Plus this month. We quite enjoyed ourselves. I might write about it in a bit more detail today. For now I’m heading to bed.

I know I’m about an hour too late with posting this officially for Blaugust. But it’s still considered to be my post for the 8th!

See you guys tomorrow!

Blaugust: Day 1!

Posted on by
3

We are finally starting! Today is officially the first day of Blaugust. I’m seriously wondering what I have gotten myself into, but hey, I signed up so let’s make the best of it! Since the list of participating bloggers is huge (and I’m really unsure how to reflect this properly in my blogroll) here’s a link to the nook on Anook.com: http://www.anook.com/blog/blaugust
If you are interested in reading other people’s blogs during Blaugust go here!

The Job: Part 2
So I had my job interview yesterday and I actually  managed to get the job! It’s a very simple job for only three-four weeks that mostly revolves around data entry but I’m superhappy I got it. I’ve been sitting at home for far too long and the chance to get out of the house and earn some decent money on top of that has lifted my spirits a lot. I will probably be very tired (I will be working a 32 hour week minimum) but it will be totally worth it. I will finally have some money to my name again and it’s a bit of work experience I can add to my resumé. Anyway I hope this reignites my gaming fire a bit. I will have less time so I will have to make better choices what to do with that time.

Guild Wars 2
I finished off levelling through Caledon Forest a few days ago and am very pleased with how the levelling in this game has turned out. Compared to how it was at launch everything is much more smoothed out and easier to get into. I had to get used to the new specializations layout but in it’s current form it’s much better than it was.

I’m still amazed by some of the gorgeous environments in this game. A few of the vista’s show hidden waterfalls like the one below. And I found a underwater organ you can actually play!

Gear progression is still a bit weird for me. I’m not a fan of the looks of the low level gearsets for this game. I guess I’m too used to either the clown combinations of WoW or the spectacular gear that FFXIV offers to people levelling up. All the gear you get here is brown and bland (luckily there’s the option to dye it) and it all looks the same. It’s a good thing the cultural gear for Sylvari looks absolutely amazing and I will certainly buy it once I have the level and the money for it. For now I’m rocking the awesome facemask look…
And here’s to hoping that Kessex Hills offers a bit more gear variety!