Actually, there are a bunch of reasons.
The company I work for has been bought out by a rival, predator company who has been bringing in its own managing staff (in abundance) but imposed an absolute hiring freeze on new staff in the company I work for.
Long story made short: two people have found other jobs, one is on short-term disability recovering from chemo for liver cancer (he actually beat the cancer, but the chemo also beat the crap out of him!) and right now we have TWO people supporting 3,000 users but are prevented from hiring a third person or even bringing on a temporary employee to help us.
By the way: did I mention I HATE the company who bought us?
A co-worker (in a different department within IT) had learned on a Monday that his 16 year-old daughter has a glioma (a fatal type of brain cancer) and that his brother's house had burned to the ground. He went to his manager to request time off to be with his daughter while she went through the process of dying, was met my Human Resources at his manager's office, and his manager informed him that his position had been "eliminated" and his last day would be that Friday. The co-worker himself is in cancer remission and also has lupus; his brother and his family are staying with him (for obvious reasons) and his SOB manager (who had been told of the terminal illness of the co-worker's daughter) eliminated his job.
The actions of his boss, and HR, is a working definition of "evil" — and I pretty much imploded after that. I've been trying to find grant funding sources for the co-worker to at least pay his COBRA premiums for the next two years (MUCH harder than this would seem!) and any loyalty I ever had toward my company is GONE.
By the way: did I mention I HATE the company who bought us?
Regarding CF: I was reaching the point where some of the stuff on CF was seriously damaging even my desire to believe. I never stopped believing in God, or Jesus, or the Real Presence in the Eucharist — and seriously, I doubt if I could stop believing even if I wanted to; but in reading a lot of the responses on CP&E/Debates on Homosexuality (hereafter referred to as "D'oh!") I was reaching the point of thinking of God as a Cosmic SOB who goes around creating gays and lesbians for His Own Good Pleasure so that the fundagelical Elect will have someone to condemn so they can feel good about themselves. God's perfectly free to do that if God wants to do that, but that also doesn't mean that I'm going to be a willing participant in that kind of horse merde.
When I reached the point where I really didn't CARE if I participated in the Eucharist on Sunday, and my playing at church had become indifferent — I thought it's time to take a hiatus from the stuff which is irritating me day in/day out and establish some equilibrium.
I didn't do much for Lent except work on slowly detoxing from CP&E/D'oh!. I have gotten very involved in this year's Presidential campaign here in Austin — I know that must come to a shock to everyone here!
— and oddly have ended up in a position trying to get the Hillary folks and the Obama folks to speak and dialogue with one another! I've been politically active since I was 14 and I've NEVER seen this much outright hostility between two sides in the same party!
When I haven't been doing that, I've been working on my online mathematics and meteorology courses. It's been an interesting spring: we've just concluded our third major tornado outbreak in central Texas within two weeks, and this time we ended up with a tornado in Cedar Park (suburb of Austin) and quite possibly a tornado in Austin, proper!
You know — mathematics, physics and meteorology can be so calming, especially when it seems like the world is going to hell around us! I can always see the hand of God working, and God even being a bit charming in mathematics, physics and meteorology — as though God is saying, "Look: over here! Here I am! Look at this: here I am!"
I've also been participating in a question/answer board, where people ask questions and other people answer those questions - no controversy, just question and answer. That's helped me reconnect with things I like about Christianity — helping other people because helping other people is inherently a good thing to do (when those other people really need the help and we're not enabling them). You know: that Matthew 25:31-46 stuff...
After Dad's ISP messed up his computer to the point where he couldn't make an internet connection AT ALL — then charged him $99 for doing Windows troubleshooting on a Mac, clearing off his Dock and telling him there was "nothing they could do" — I flew out to Florida and fixed his computer problem, re-populated the Dock, configured his network settings and got rid of Internet Explorer (which has not been compatible with Mac OS X.4 for some time and is no longer supported by Microsoft), and set him up on Safari and Firefox — and he's got email and can surf the web, launch Microsoft Office and write a letter or create a spreadsheet — and after 45 years, I definitely earned his approval!
(I also collected about 100 pounds of oranges from his badly overloaded orange tree, shipped them back to Austin, and had fresh-squeezed Florida orange juice for two weeks!).
So now, God and I are on speaking terms again, and I feel OK about participating in the Eucharist, and my music has regained a sense of enthusiasm when I play, and God gave me a whole bunch of tornadoes to play with and I didn't even have to travel far to enjoy them!
And I feel like I'm coming back "up" again — so here I am...
The company I work for has been bought out by a rival, predator company who has been bringing in its own managing staff (in abundance) but imposed an absolute hiring freeze on new staff in the company I work for.
Long story made short: two people have found other jobs, one is on short-term disability recovering from chemo for liver cancer (he actually beat the cancer, but the chemo also beat the crap out of him!) and right now we have TWO people supporting 3,000 users but are prevented from hiring a third person or even bringing on a temporary employee to help us.
By the way: did I mention I HATE the company who bought us?
A co-worker (in a different department within IT) had learned on a Monday that his 16 year-old daughter has a glioma (a fatal type of brain cancer) and that his brother's house had burned to the ground. He went to his manager to request time off to be with his daughter while she went through the process of dying, was met my Human Resources at his manager's office, and his manager informed him that his position had been "eliminated" and his last day would be that Friday. The co-worker himself is in cancer remission and also has lupus; his brother and his family are staying with him (for obvious reasons) and his SOB manager (who had been told of the terminal illness of the co-worker's daughter) eliminated his job.
The actions of his boss, and HR, is a working definition of "evil" — and I pretty much imploded after that. I've been trying to find grant funding sources for the co-worker to at least pay his COBRA premiums for the next two years (MUCH harder than this would seem!) and any loyalty I ever had toward my company is GONE.
By the way: did I mention I HATE the company who bought us?
Regarding CF: I was reaching the point where some of the stuff on CF was seriously damaging even my desire to believe. I never stopped believing in God, or Jesus, or the Real Presence in the Eucharist — and seriously, I doubt if I could stop believing even if I wanted to; but in reading a lot of the responses on CP&E/Debates on Homosexuality (hereafter referred to as "D'oh!") I was reaching the point of thinking of God as a Cosmic SOB who goes around creating gays and lesbians for His Own Good Pleasure so that the fundagelical Elect will have someone to condemn so they can feel good about themselves. God's perfectly free to do that if God wants to do that, but that also doesn't mean that I'm going to be a willing participant in that kind of horse merde.
When I reached the point where I really didn't CARE if I participated in the Eucharist on Sunday, and my playing at church had become indifferent — I thought it's time to take a hiatus from the stuff which is irritating me day in/day out and establish some equilibrium.
I didn't do much for Lent except work on slowly detoxing from CP&E/D'oh!. I have gotten very involved in this year's Presidential campaign here in Austin — I know that must come to a shock to everyone here!
— and oddly have ended up in a position trying to get the Hillary folks and the Obama folks to speak and dialogue with one another! I've been politically active since I was 14 and I've NEVER seen this much outright hostility between two sides in the same party!When I haven't been doing that, I've been working on my online mathematics and meteorology courses. It's been an interesting spring: we've just concluded our third major tornado outbreak in central Texas within two weeks, and this time we ended up with a tornado in Cedar Park (suburb of Austin) and quite possibly a tornado in Austin, proper!
You know — mathematics, physics and meteorology can be so calming, especially when it seems like the world is going to hell around us! I can always see the hand of God working, and God even being a bit charming in mathematics, physics and meteorology — as though God is saying, "Look: over here! Here I am! Look at this: here I am!"
I've also been participating in a question/answer board, where people ask questions and other people answer those questions - no controversy, just question and answer. That's helped me reconnect with things I like about Christianity — helping other people because helping other people is inherently a good thing to do (when those other people really need the help and we're not enabling them). You know: that Matthew 25:31-46 stuff...
After Dad's ISP messed up his computer to the point where he couldn't make an internet connection AT ALL — then charged him $99 for doing Windows troubleshooting on a Mac, clearing off his Dock and telling him there was "nothing they could do" — I flew out to Florida and fixed his computer problem, re-populated the Dock, configured his network settings and got rid of Internet Explorer (which has not been compatible with Mac OS X.4 for some time and is no longer supported by Microsoft), and set him up on Safari and Firefox — and he's got email and can surf the web, launch Microsoft Office and write a letter or create a spreadsheet — and after 45 years, I definitely earned his approval!
(I also collected about 100 pounds of oranges from his badly overloaded orange tree, shipped them back to Austin, and had fresh-squeezed Florida orange juice for two weeks!). So now, God and I are on speaking terms again, and I feel OK about participating in the Eucharist, and my music has regained a sense of enthusiasm when I play, and God gave me a whole bunch of tornadoes to play with and I didn't even have to travel far to enjoy them!
And I feel like I'm coming back "up" again — so here I am...
