What just happened? This is the neglected official blog of the Electronic Punk - http://www.electronicpunk.com - The as-of-yet-undecided-title-el-presidente of OSNN.net. He totally promises to blog more than twice a year.
Electronic life update
Posted July 27th, 2009 at 4:02am by Electronic Punk
So the longer term members will have noticed that over the last year or so and a gradual decline before that I hadn’t been playing a large part in the OSNN community and I just wanted to go over what I have been up to.
I guess part of it stemmed from the pressure to redesign the site which would have meant skinning and tweaking two separate systems. When I came home from work at night I really just wanted to chill out and enjoy myself. The Virtuanews system was an interest project, but hard work to skin with almost all page elements being spaced out in different yet similar templates. With the collapse of its own site and no real design community it got harder and harder to maintain it as vBulletin continued to change.
Regardless, I was looking for a new style but never really found anything. I met a girl and she became my everything, nothing else mattered. I wanted to be with her all the time and that was perhaps too much because a year and a half later our deteriorating relationship got to the point where she just wanted to be friends, which in reality actually meant complete ignore me.
Around this same time, I left my network engineer job at an MOD contractor as part of a mutual agreement in which they paid me to leave quietly. Basically I didn’t like a new manager in our department, I felt my work load decreasing dramatically and got unhappier as time went on. Then an issue that could have been handled within the department got blown out of proportion and I made the choice to leave. Not such a bad thing really, I had been there over four years and had learnt so much about working with Windows in a company, but they were falling so far behind the times, (I had almost got Windows Vista deployed but a legacy application prevented it).
These two events really knocked me down and I couldn’t focus, eat or sleep. I just didn’t want to do anything or get out of bed, visiting OSNN would mean work and I just couldn’t face it. I didn’t even want to see friends or family. I started playing World of Warcraft again in a very serious fashion planning shot rotations, gear upgrades, macro writing, researching game mechanics and doing everything I could to play the game to the maximum. I kept up to date with various aspect of technology but didn’t really want to be a part of it preferring my fake little world of pixelated orcs.
What changed? No idea, perhaps self-healing, boredom due to the extent I played the game, pressure from friends/family and the urge to get on and face up to my responsibilities.
Regardless, I am back and working hard to get my life back into order. I am actively seeking a new job with several possibilities (although only one I really really want) and feel like socialising a little more.
I am still playing Warcraft because frankly I do enjoy it, but not as much as I was, mostly for large group play in encounters called raids with my guild www.maligned-guild.com (website I also designed based off another template) and my former guild www.conviction-guild.org (also a site I designed from scratch, although their forums were again based off a template)
I have loved finally integrating my planned redesign of OSNN having finally found a theme to base it from, the developments in vBulletin have made my vision come to life and I beam with pride at what has been accomplished this week and once again love coming to visit the site.
Thanks to the team and everyone that has stuck around during these dark times and I hope you can see that I am working hard to throw my new found energy into every aspect of the site.
What of the future? It is all looking much better and I still have many things I want to integrate into the new OSNN system now that the major work is out of the way, having everything under the same vBulletin roof makes the work a lot easier and I will be covering some of the lesser known aspects of the new site in another blog soon.
I guess part of it stemmed from the pressure to redesign the site which would have meant skinning and tweaking two separate systems. When I came home from work at night I really just wanted to chill out and enjoy myself. The Virtuanews system was an interest project, but hard work to skin with almost all page elements being spaced out in different yet similar templates. With the collapse of its own site and no real design community it got harder and harder to maintain it as vBulletin continued to change.
Regardless, I was looking for a new style but never really found anything. I met a girl and she became my everything, nothing else mattered. I wanted to be with her all the time and that was perhaps too much because a year and a half later our deteriorating relationship got to the point where she just wanted to be friends, which in reality actually meant complete ignore me.
Around this same time, I left my network engineer job at an MOD contractor as part of a mutual agreement in which they paid me to leave quietly. Basically I didn’t like a new manager in our department, I felt my work load decreasing dramatically and got unhappier as time went on. Then an issue that could have been handled within the department got blown out of proportion and I made the choice to leave. Not such a bad thing really, I had been there over four years and had learnt so much about working with Windows in a company, but they were falling so far behind the times, (I had almost got Windows Vista deployed but a legacy application prevented it).
These two events really knocked me down and I couldn’t focus, eat or sleep. I just didn’t want to do anything or get out of bed, visiting OSNN would mean work and I just couldn’t face it. I didn’t even want to see friends or family. I started playing World of Warcraft again in a very serious fashion planning shot rotations, gear upgrades, macro writing, researching game mechanics and doing everything I could to play the game to the maximum. I kept up to date with various aspect of technology but didn’t really want to be a part of it preferring my fake little world of pixelated orcs.
What changed? No idea, perhaps self-healing, boredom due to the extent I played the game, pressure from friends/family and the urge to get on and face up to my responsibilities.
Regardless, I am back and working hard to get my life back into order. I am actively seeking a new job with several possibilities (although only one I really really want) and feel like socialising a little more.
I am still playing Warcraft because frankly I do enjoy it, but not as much as I was, mostly for large group play in encounters called raids with my guild www.maligned-guild.com (website I also designed based off another template) and my former guild www.conviction-guild.org (also a site I designed from scratch, although their forums were again based off a template)
I have loved finally integrating my planned redesign of OSNN having finally found a theme to base it from, the developments in vBulletin have made my vision come to life and I beam with pride at what has been accomplished this week and once again love coming to visit the site.
Thanks to the team and everyone that has stuck around during these dark times and I hope you can see that I am working hard to throw my new found energy into every aspect of the site.
What of the future? It is all looking much better and I still have many things I want to integrate into the new OSNN system now that the major work is out of the way, having everything under the same vBulletin roof makes the work a lot easier and I will be covering some of the lesser known aspects of the new site in another blog soon.
Total Comments 7
Comments
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Well..... i will say, as one of the long time XP-erience.com/NTFS.org/OSNN.net members.... it's good to see you back around, EP.Posted July 27th, 2009 at 9:33pm by ElementalDragon
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Hey EP, I am glad to see you found your way back. I myself have been down a similar path...well a few times actually...we all just do what we have to do. No blood, no harm, no foul.Posted July 28th, 2009 at 1:06am by Maveric169
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Wicked stuff getting back on da horse.
Nice to see ya more often now
Posted July 28th, 2009 at 3:14am by Bman
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Life and love suck and it all goes on, right? Glad you're healing and happy to see you back, the boys just didn't want to take my advice or direction while you were gone
Posted July 28th, 2009 at 10:26pm by Jewelzz
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since when have men asked for directions??Posted July 31st, 2009 at 3:59am by LordOfLA
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There are in life two things that can unseat you quicker than anything else that doesn’t depend on age or sex, these are… in no special order, money or the lack of it, and being lonely, or on your own (not necessarily the same thing), even if you have a life-long relationship with your partner, these can bite you unexpectedly at any time, sending you into a cascading spiral of depression.
Life is a perception… the same circumstances bringing different moods as the needs change as viewed by the individual. What was acceptable five years ago can be totally unacceptable now.
Never put too much storage in your job, a small change of management can destroy you totally; especially if you are commitment or belief led… they will see you as a threat, not an asset.
IT workers in general are usually what I would call “single skilled” having not much “nouce” and even less people skills but because they hold strong views are held by some to be to risky and “chance takers” and therefore its easy for some managers to make a case against them, in order to implement their own agendas, usually based on service pack two, of whatever product.
I spent the first ten years of my working life in the MOD based in London; I know how they think, which seems not to have changed that much, thirty years later.
Maybe your feathers were to bright… but I will tell you this: - you contacted me asking for me to return to OSNM after what now amounts to a few years of absence, would the MOD do the same for you? You loved them to much and so paid the price.
Never love anything “to much”; the resulting loss could be too great to bear.Posted August 16th, 2009 at 1:45am by dave holbon
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Yeah, I am generally far too passionate about the work I do and take it all a bit personally.Posted August 20th, 2009 at 4:19am by Electronic Punk
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