(Sorry for the posting another blog on the same day. This one didn't take as much time to write as I thought. Enjoy.)

I hate reality! Maybe that's why I like Star Wars so much. It allows me an escape from the busyness and stress of life. Whether it's watching one of the movies or Clone Wars cartoon, or sitting down to read the next Star Wars novel, there is that small amount of time where I can forget about the worries and just relax.

The last 6 weeks have been insane. Since I returned from Celebration IV, I've gone through a number of changes at work, which have caused me to have to change certain aspects of my life. I've mentioned in previous blogs and to people at CIV that I work for a slot machine manufacturer here in Reno. Just before I left for LA, one of the two technicians I work with on Swing shift was promoted to Supervisor. Although I was happy for his success, it meant that there were now only two technicians to work on 4 lines. You would think that two techs could handle the problems, except the testers don't like to do any work so they make us work. In addition to that, the machines we build are becoming more complicated and advanced so a problem can take longer to fix then before. So we are usually busy the whole shift and don't have too much time to relax.

That situation lasted until about 4 weeks ago. The company entered their usual "slow period" and closed a couple of the production lines that were working on my shift. So instead of being extremely busy, we were now really slow. We decided that the slow period would be a good time to hire and train a new technician before it gets too busy. The odd thing was that we hired the technician to work from 12:30 pm to 9 pm so he could work both shifts. My partner and I decided it would be better if one of us trained the new tech instead of having on of the day shift technicians train him. I decided that I would change my shift to work the same time the trainee so that I could train him. The problem with that shift was that I couldn't do anything outside of work. After a couple of weeks, the trainee switched his shift to a full swing, which worked from 4pm to 12:30 am. I was able to talk my boss into letting me start my shift earlier.

So my shift changed again. I now start at 10 am and get off work at 6:30 pm. This shift is PERFECT. I can still sleep in a little bit and I get off early enough to still do things after work. That means I can start having a life again The major disadvantage to this shift is that I don't spend as much time on the blogs as I did when I worked nights. I'm usually pretty tired when I get home so I end up crashing on the couch and I don't feel like working on my computer. Another disadvantage is that I do a lot more work with what amounts to a slight cut in pay, mainly due to loosing the 5 percent shift differential. But I can make that up if I just work a couple of hours of overtime during the pay period. The other cool thing is that I don't have to do much technician work unless the techs get really behind in the issues. I've been able to spend more time working on special projects, like dealing with vendors and training the techs on some of the tools and utility programs that we use. One of the other things that my job consists of is working on new products that will hit the production floor in the future. The past week would be a good example. I've had to learn how to set up a new multi-level progressive system that we will start testing. It was interesting and actually a lot of fun, until something didn't work and it was up to me to figure out what was wrong. The only problem with that was I had a bunch of the company big wigs breathing down my neck. But at least I'm getting noticed. Hopefully this will lead to different positions within the company.

Now that I'm finally getting used to the shift, I can start spending more time online and hanging out with both my real life friends and my online friends, depending on what's going on.

I would like to say a couple of things to some people before I sign off. Ami, thanks for the text the other day. It was a lot of fun talking back and forth and it brightened up my day. We'll have to do that more. Second, Deej your online party last night was awesome. It was so much fun to talk to everyone and listen to some awesome music. It was too bad that I had to leave due to internet problems. That problem has been rectified.

Thanks for taking the time to read my rant and I hope I didn't bore you too much. Now I can get back to watching the original Star Wars, just in time for the Death Star battle.

May the Force be With you.