I recently stepped back and looked at my life and took account of what it was…I found it a very strange combination of things.
For starters, here’s what I do in any given day when I’m not at work (or rather, at work as well, between troubleshooting people’s cable television) or spending time with my family:
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Draw comic book concepts (even drew a full issue for a publisher once, and then quit; after I quit I was still on contract to be paid for my work that I wasn’t doing anymore…royalties…what a laughable concept. Anyways, I learned that I didn’t like making comics; it ruined the enjoyment of the creation; know, I just sit back and enjoy conceptualizing…it’s a form of day dreaming.)
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Design board games, such as 360 degree’s Chess or Diplomacy lite.
Write and draw world building concepts (fictional world creation) -
Design written languages and once a decade attempt to design phonetic attachments
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Design Role Playing Game mechanics, most currently re-designing Shadowrun 3rd Edition mechanics for a Revised addition with a group of designer-minded fans.
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Theorize Futurist concepts of MMORPG design systems (this became a facination of mine after free-lance contracting for an independent MMORPG design company named Celestial Gaming [ I know…it’s a HORRIBLE name; we told the President several times ] as the Head of Design [above me was the Lead Designer and the President, below me was every department of designing the game…dude…I’m not bragging about having the position…I’m bragging that this…this was fucking nuts. I don’t give a shit who the hell you are, having the life experience of making independent media presentations is just frickin insane. Something about life is greatly learned there…but I stagger…] )
Back to the list
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Moderate the forums of ILP.
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I Engage in some of the most radical conversations of thought regarding Religion and Man; Mysticism and Delusion; Perspective and Blindness.
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I translate Matthew from Greek to American English word at a time.
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I write digital composition music (I say that because I use digital equipment to write my music instead of paper, and use digital tonalities instead of analog and natural sounds, but they are running the same formats of compositions with twists of other styles peppered through them).
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I play guitar.
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I make avatar’s and signatures for people at ILP.
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I wrote and continue to develop the Guitar Rhythm Shorthand writing system.
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I write poetry and the rare short story.
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I run a game of Shadowrun with about 6 players that are all as geeky as I am (some quite possibly more geeky…
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As mentioned above, I troubleshoot cable television for people like you and I; which is interesting by the way…let me tell you something. Cable companies, as far as the Cable Company that YOU talk to (not the one that you never see or talk to; the engineering level…not that one, the side of it that you pay money to, fill out surveys for and call for help when things don’t work…and everyone that runs them…right, that one), they have no idea what the hell is going on or how anything really works.
Seriously…I started working at my company three years ago right after getting out the military doing telecommunications support and found that my starting experience at my new company was to listen to a guy show me slide shows of things that he openly said that he had no idea how they worked because there were too many of them and he didn’t work with all of these technologies every day. His role was to collect all of the information that was officially on paper that was handed to the department and to show us where it was located on the companies technical related intranet community portal. So whatever the company writes a paper for regarding product coverage when that product is newly introduced to the companie’s product profile, that paper is then given to this guy and he adds that information to his lessons and to the information on the intranet site. Never again is that technology expanded on. All other information about that technology is learned on the floor.
I’m still shocked beyond imagination that this is what is passed for as training…
Anyways, I came onto the floor, more or less absolutely clueless as to what the heck to do. I knew how to access accounts and that was it.
No one explained how the technology the customer had in their house actually works.
I asked…no one else knew either. Everyone had their mythical versions of what they “knew” was going on, but no one could tell you how these things actually worked. So I spent a year and a half just reading everything I could on line on cable television boxes (I didn’t waist time learning cable internet modems…those are as simple as lightbulbs…no; I mean that literally; they have lights on them that tell you what’s going on and once you know what those light combinations mean…you know what’s wrong every time…no one gives you the fricken manual; there’s nothing technical involved. Welcome to your 21st century lightbulb.
Anyways, so I was reading all about cable boxes, and then I also had 20 to 30 people every single day to test theories on.
I learned how to read all of the diagnostic menu systems on the box that you can get (and by the way…they aren’t that technical, many people on the internet read these things like car parts), and then kept track of what worked and didn’t work.
I then opened up the cable boxes and learned what was inside of them, and after that tested further by thinking about how the box was thinking based on the type of computer equipment that was in the box and the radio frequency theories that apply to cable television.
I wrote it all down into simple military standard flow chart manuals and made them into clickable internet pages.
And then forced the trainer, through manipulating the manager, to put them onto the training intranet for cable.
Now…everyone has all the information they need to be proficient at effectively helping their customers and feeling like they did the best that could have been done; that there was less of a chance that something more couldn’t have been done if they knew more (very common feeling among the technical support demographic actually…big part of their self worth; their ability to solve any problem and help someone).
I know work there as the resident cable television, and I shit you not…this is my title at work…even by the Manager; “Cable Jesus”.
Apparently this hasn’t made it back to HR yet.
I did not make that up by the way.
They actually just started calling me that because I live in a valley away from the town and don’t come into town that often where the 90% of the staff works, and yet everyone talks to me on instant message at work every single day because I have the most access to our cable software programs and programming out of the entire department and everyone follows my flowcharts.
They actually joke that the flowcharts are the bible of the cable.
Good lord…someone’s going to hell for that joke but I have no idea who; it might be the only escapable blasphemous joke I’ve ever experienced.
Good lord I’m mumbling…Faust, you said something earlier regarding botany.
I agree.
Right…night
I bet it is… 
