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So, the contract that I thought was in the bag may or may not have hit a snag. Both a legal and ethical snag. I'm fairly sure that the legal one can be overcome, but the ethical one, not so much, but it is something I can justify to myself because my financial situation is so dire.

That sounds really bad - I'm not a complete mercenary. Some background info: The contract chain goes like this A (me) - B (agency) - C (client) - D (supplier) - E (main). The contract I signed is between A, B and C to supply services to D who in turn supplies to E. D & E are not mentioned in my contract, only A, B and C.

C is a company I contracted through a month or two ago to provide services to a supplier (D) (and C have been promising me work for 8 weeks now) have been sideswiped by the main client and cut out of the loop. Current chain is now A - F (new agency) - D - E.

Now, none of the names that appear on the contract are involved in this new one - but the main client is still the same. So, legally OK, ethically, not so. The company I used to contract through are pissed off ©, but at the same time have been unable to supply me with any work. So financies dwindle (nearly at 0 now), while I twiddle my thumbs. The main client (E) phoned me up the other day, asked for my CV, and within a week I've had an interview (with D), offered a job, and the contract arrived.

Who wouldn't take that?

Bit more background: In the last 12 months I've worked for just over 2. So since march last year I have lived on savings (apart from 2 fat months this jan), including a pre-booked trip to Canada that I wasn't going to skimp on cost wise. My savings have been totally wiped out.

So why is this company I used to contract through so annoyed? And do they have a right to be? Well, I suppose they do a little, but I have every right to be annoyed at them I feel. There are also political implications with the company I used to contract though and the main client - in that they were trying to supplant a team already in place at the main client, and I think they ruffled some feathers.

If none of this makes any sense, I apologise, bit of a brain dump really. But I am fucking sick of it tbh.

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Do NOT feel bad about this at all. It's just sour grapes on their part, don't let them guilt trip you. I would bet my house that they would have sold you down the river for a few bucks if they could have.

I say well done and a win for the individual! Let the cashflow commence :tup::tup::tup:

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Yeah, don't feel bad about it. It's business, and they failed to get you work for a long time, so I don't think you should feel like you owe them.

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You're right of course. Although the Agency (B) have run it past their lawyer, and reckon I'm ok, I think I'm going to have to take independant advice. Just to make sure.

Company C have also come back to say that they wouldn't put any more work my way. Not that I got that much anyway. 2 months out of a possible 6 that they were talking to me about!

Fuck 'em.

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From what I was able to understand out of all those companies with one-letter names, C doesn't seem to be doing anything except whining, which could possibly be why they got cut out of the loop in the first place. So I concur, fuck 'em :tdown:

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Yeh, I agree. I think they were trying to edge company E's Red Team out of the picture...the Red Team in question that has just recruited me :)

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Yeah, Scrobbs, you shouldn't feel bad about that at all.

Miffy, congrats and I'd also like to read it!

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Argh, there's this artist guy I work with who was hired about 6 months ago after my company split and he pisses me off so much. I just handed off a 3D model to him for this papercraft stuff my boss wants to get into for our website and sure enough, the bastard is dissecting the 3D model I made a messing up all of the textures when all he was supposed to do was just figure it out in the papercraft program since I didn't have time and he sort of sits around like a bump on a log doing nothing since his only skills are 3D skills.

I have no doubt in my mind he's going to fuck it up completely because he's a terrible artist who can't draw, can't form ideas correctly, and has this weird attachment to doing everything in 3D first. He can't draw anything or create vector graphics without making a bland 3D model first. He needs this as reference for everything, so everything takes him forever to do.

A few months back I had to talk to my boss about him because we all had to tackle this shitty flash game about huffing paint, where I ended up doing about 75% of the art and animation, ridiculous needs of our client aside. So I hardly have to work with him anymore and I made it clear to my boss that never again am I just going to go along with taking on the full workload like that. I try to never talk to him, but I hate even interacting with him on little things like this. He's almost double my age so he feels like he has to inform me how to do everything in any art program when he knows very little and is absolutely slow at finishing anything that is asked of him. I think this is how I end up with 3 or 4 projects to go between while the other dude gets like one thing for his peanut brain to concentrate on for a while.

What I don't understand is how no one notices this except me (there was a programmer who said something, but no one notices a programmer on the art side I guess). I've repeatedly told my bosses he doesn't really do his work and they say he's still new give him time, etc. Nothing but excuses for the guy.

So anyway, I bet he'll be spending about 3 weeks redoing my simple 3D model and messing up the texture map I already made while I'll be juggling 3 other projects in the meantime. Then we can all sit at the meeting then and he can spin it how I did everything wrong in his passive aggressive manner.

I shouldn't even care about this shit since I'm so late on getting all my new personal work in a revamped portfolio/website since I've been planning to leave this company to somewhere in Austin for over a year. I can't help but fret over it when I should really be practicing distancing myself from all this crap. Arghgghhfdhg.

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This thread moves too fast for me to keep up with. But congrats Miffy, and anyone else I missed that deserves congratulating!

Good news on my end: got my summer internship to count for school credit, so I will end up graduating on time (Spring 2011). Originally I didn't think they'd let this one count since it is only vaguely related to my major, Information Systems, but I convinced them that it was the field I thought I'd end up in and they OK'd it. The internship is in online marketing and web programming. If they hadn't let this one count, I would have had to find one next summer in a more IT related field, which I'm only somewhat interested in.

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One description I liked, was that the brain does not make choices; it makes judgements. You just weigh up which option is the best, then you take it.

Just to complicate matters further, some have suggested that much of the cognitive process we perceive as decision-making actually takes place after the decision has been made, and is more decision-justifying or decision-explaining than anything else. I don't know how much truth there is to this, but it seems to describe some situations accurately enough. Not sure what the evolutionary purpose would be, but I guess you could say that of a lot of mental activity.

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I just bought a PS3 earlier for a nice £180 and I couldn't be happier. I traded in 7 360 games for a whopping £91 and bought 7 PS3 games.

I'm very excited!

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Contract arrived this morning, start next tuesday. All the legal issues have been cleared up (to my satisfaction), so job is a good one. After spending the last 12 months living on savings (I think I've survived on around 10 grand), let the bounty flow. :tup:

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My Australian internet is reaching it's 50GB cap for the month and i've still got a week to go.

For this week I have (At the time of writing) about 5GB remaining, le sigh. :violin:

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My Australian internet is reaching it's 50GB cap for the month and i've still got a week to go.

For this week I have (At the time of writing) about 5GB remaining, le sigh. :violin:

Wow! 5 gig how are you ever going to cope?

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You can't possibly expect a teenager to go without fresh porn for a week.

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Contract arrived this morning, start next tuesday. All the legal issues have been cleared up (to my satisfaction), so job is a good one. After spending the last 12 months living on savings (I think I've survived on around 10 grand), let the bounty flow. :tup:

Grats man! Go celebrate in some way that borders on responsible, but would not likely be considered entirely so!

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I returned my final candidate's thesis earlier this week. I know, and my instructor has told me, that it is good, so all I have to do now is to hold a presentation about it in a candidate's seminar and pass a couple of exams (which should be relatively easy) and I can call myself a bachelor of science. Not sure if that degree is actually worth anything here but at least I'm going somewhere.

Also today is my birthday and tomorrow is May 1, the one day Finns might actually be cheery in public, so everything is pretty fine, I guess. :tup:

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Man, well done! Due to the way that my school works, I appear to be about a week ahead of you in the same process, yet with a much less useful degree. Congratulations to you, then! Let us revel in our mutual completion of way too much stuff! If we lived anywhere near each other, imagine me buying you a beer right now.

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Thanks! And late congrats to you too!

I don't know how the system works in Canada but I still have (ideally) two more years for my masters degree. So my studies won't end here and, in fact, nothing will change radically after this.

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Ah, fair enough. I intend to go back for a Master's, which would be two years here as well, but I am torn between doing what I originally went into school to do and continuing with Philosophy and seeing if I can make a career in academia out of it. As such, I'm taking a year off before applying to grad school for next year. During this year, I will continue to work my current very nice job and also get some volunteer work done. While doing this, I hope that my competing ambitions will go into a full-on battle and will apply for whichever kind of Master's degree the surviving one recommends.

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I think my head is about to fucking explode. I need to rant/work something out and go a head and ignore it if your not interested.

Around last july I was in a pretty shitty situation with work, I was literally mashed after 6-7 days a week every week since january. So, because so many other people were leaving I'd figure I would do the same.

I got a job offer from a company in montreal saying they needed me in two weeks; which ment zero down time for me between my shitty situation and my new hope for employment. I wasnt thinking rationally, but whatever it took to get out of that situation I was going to do it. So two weeks later I'm living in montreal, with a huge pay descrease working a pretty decent job. Its a company about 4 x the size of my last one and my tasks were actually pretty mundane but I made the most of it and was more or less pretty happy at it while it lasted.

Anyway the project ended around December and I was awaiting orders. In the mean time I figured I'd look around and got some amazing offers, like I'd kill my grandmother for kind of offers (she lived a good life and would only want me happy if it came to it)... but visa issues once again and I couldn't get it/take it and get down there fast enough(may have mentioned this here before) So whatever.

So I wait and wait and wait. Literally 2+ months pass until I get stuck on something with a few buddies from the last project and it should be something I'm interested in, but it was clear it was way too early to have people working on it.. So we move to the new space and we wait, and wait. About two weeks later they finally got around and say hi to us, told us we won't be given training and just to figure something out. Eventually work started to trickle in, but it was really only support for what ever pre-production thingy they were noodling on.

That goes on for a couple months and then we're told they went over budget on the project and the last people to arrive are to be taken off. Not laid off mind you, they have a deal with the government to not do that or something.

So we get taken off and I'm now two weeks into waiting when they offer something I have like ZERO interest in. It's a complete step back from my career and was actually something the recruiter told me they wouldn't insult me with by asking me to do it while I was here.

Well they did it anyway, and I said no. Then I had to have a meeting where I was told I didn't really have a choice. So I asked to see someone about my contract because I'd like to end it. They started to back pedal. Anyway I don't know where things are at other then I don't want to quit(I can't afford it right now) and they don't want to push any further(I think?) so I guess I'll see what happens tomorrow or the next week.

On top of this, due to my general discontentment I decided I wanted to go back to school this year, so I applied and won't hear back about being accepted until middle of may. Which at that point I don't mind quiting because I know what I'll be doing afterwards, but I don't want to quit when I can't afford it(I can sort of swing it after may) but I also don't want to degrade myself and jump through hoops for a month.

*Oh and because of my start date I cant take vacation until june, so I've had zero downtown from last year except the waiting around for a project and christmas, so I'm a bit mashed still which might be making this all seem worse then it is.

(sorry for the length)

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