Plaidophile

Basically, I'm having flashbacks to the late 90s.

Essentially, he hasn't been paying the staffing agency for my services for most of the time I've been working here, and so he's something like $6000 past-due with his bills for them.

Right now he's at a funding meeting, which he thinks is going to go well. Maybe he'll be able to give them enough bullshit about how this VoIP service is going to be something revolutionary and new (it's neither) and how we're doing something which has never been done before (we're not). And if he gets the funding then he'll be able to pay the staffing agency for the past work and the rest of the contract duration. But if not he'll "be up shit creek," but said he was willing to pay me directly while the agency had me on hold. (As if that's an improvement? At least this way I know whether I'm getting paid!)

In the meantime, he's managing to piss quite a few people off. For example, he still hasn't given me a key and security code for the alarm (for reasons which he hasn't been able to elaborate on), which means that every morning I've had to go over to the building owner and have him let me in, which doesn't make him terribly happy. (And it doesn't make me happy either, since I'm pretty much at the mercy of his whims as to whether I can work or not. I haven't gotten 40 hours in a long time.)

This morning the owner wasn't in, so even though I arrived at 9:15, I couldn't get in until he sauntered in at 9:45 (actually, he was standing outside the building at 9:30 but talking on the phone). It's been particularly bad ever since he fired forced the resignation of lost Jennifer.

Oh yeah, I never mentioned that. Basically, a month ago, Jennifer said offhandedly that she thought she was moving to Seattle with her boyfriend on May 21. One week later they broke up, and so she said she wasn't moving to Seattle. Two weeks after that (one week before the 21st), John decided that her original statement could be taken as her notice of resignation, and tried to force her to write a retroactive letter. She refused to. So he fired her last Friday, but called it a resignation. She could sue and collect unemployment, except that John hasn't been paying his unemployment insurance.

Or his taxes, apparently, since Christina (the accountant) tells me he still hasn't filed his taxes for fiscal year 2001. (Then there's all sorts of other tax-evasion crap which he's actually rather proud of, like he uses his business account for personal expenses and doesn't pay himself a salary so he can avoid a payroll tax, among other things.)

The really aggravating thing is that I'm actually getting kind of excited about the service launch, because of all of the work I've put into it!

We're supposed to be launching in two weeks or so. There's still a bit which needs to be coded, though, mostly the billing system and the long distance rate engine, but I don't have enough time to finish either up today (since John's kicking me out closing up for the weekend in about 15 minutes) and it sounds like I might not be coming in next week either. (Update: It's been 45 minutes since I wrote that and he hasn't come back yet. I wonder if he's totally screwing the pooch with the investors right now.)

So, all of the things Jennifer handled — shipping, receiving, garbage, office organization, etc. — has stopped, and in just one week the office has turned from a fairly well-organized, clean environment to a messy pigsty with overflowing trash cans and discarded pizza boxes mixed among unshipped products and RMA returns. (My work area is actually pretty tidy, though, aside from the overflowing trash can.)

On the other hand, he was really nice to me yesterday. (Unlike Wednesday, when my meter was reading about 800μCecils, and I was seriously hoping that he'd have an accident while whitewater rafting and become even more braindamaged than he already is. I was also fantasizing about ways of making this happen. Ugh.)

So, I've been desparately sending résumés out again, but haven't gotten any nibbles. Right now I'm focusing on Portland, Seattle, and Austin, but I'm really open to going pretty much anywhere at this point. So, if anyone in any of those areas has any leads for an experienced C/C++/OpenGL/PHP/Perl/SQL/[X]HTML/Cubase/Final Cut Pro/MacOS/UNIX/distributed programming/scientific visualization/technical writing/graphic design person, please let me know!