Ogdens

Ogden is kind of a shithole.
Not the worst, not the best...just kind of.

Years ago a few of my coworkers and I were talking about our travels and I decided that there should be a unit that describes how shitty, or not shitty, a city or town is. That unit is the Ogden.

It's subjective, but it works. Ogden is 5 Ogdens. The nicest place you could live would be -10 Ogdens. The worst place: 10 Ogdens.

So: Detroit is like 9 Ogdens. Baghdad is 10 Ogdens. Compton is maybe 7 Ogdens.

Provo: -5 Ogdens.

Salt Lake: -2 Ogdens.


Anyway, I just thought I'd share. Once that caught on, it really made talking about places we'd been a lot easier. You know...it would be like "We were stuck in El Paso for a week getting that part for the helicopter, I'd say that place is about 5 or 6 Ogdens...maybe more at night"

:fmicon:

this forum has gone from -5 Ogdens to like 3 or 4 Ogdens in the last year.

there I said it.

So, you deem Provo 10 times nicer than Ogden? *vibes*

What about Oakland? Looking at possible work over there, wouldn't live there though.

I think it would work better if the scale was just 0-10 Ogdens. Anyway, I'd say Ogden is maybe more like zero Ogdens on your scale and it's actually looking better and better to me every year the LCC shitshow intesifies.

You still working on that degree? Thought I'd read you had derailed or something?

Oh, yeah, vibes on teh Provo thing.

weaksauce scale. you lose all credibility when you rank provo higher than both slc and ogden. but like you said its all subjective.....

shithole isnt necessarily a negative term you see....
I mean, Memphis is definitely like 7 Ogdens and Charlotte is like -4 but I would spend time in Memphis over Charlotte any day of the week and all day on a sunday

Wait, shouldn't Ogden be neutral Ogdens? Then the scale would go up and down from there. How can Ogden be 5 Ogdens? You're confusamacating me.

On the other hand I've never been to Ogden.

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Provo: -5 Ogdens.

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Depends whether this is an anti-depressant and ice cream abuse induced happiness ranking, or a freedom index. Kinda reminds me of that North Korean government happiness study that came out the other day.

i agree with iceman. if ogdens are the unit of measurement, than i believe ogden should be zero ogdens.

additionally, i find it confusing that negative ogdens equal a more positive place (oh, right. LESS of a shithole). so okay, that makes sense.

being highly subjective, i would still rate nowhere i've lived since High school worse than maybe -7 Ogdens. I'm highly location-centric

How does a person who has never been to Ogden use this scale?

Well...in terms of likelihood of being stabbed for meth money Ogden vs. Provo. Or, you know...the smell of dog food factory in the morning. :) I'm not saying I want to Live in Provo. I like living where the Ogdens are high enough so that I'm not everyone's worst problem.

I like Ogden. But I liked South Salt Lake too.

Degree: yes, still "on track" because I'm still trapped by way of not having a reasonable way out at this stage. I go to class, I go to the hospital. I do my best. I hate every minute of it. I give nursing 8 Ogdens.

I have a few more weeks to go and then a summer of working on the ferry dock for the boat between Port Angeles and Victoria BC. I am going to try to work something else out. No personal offense SF, but that whole nursing world of being in a huge rush of old ladies and chicken-scratch orders and not really being able to actually help anyone with anything seems like a rats nest to me at this stage. Oh hi! I'm here to quickly document your slow decline. Can I ask you embarrassing questions for my paperwork now? I pretty much hate it and I'm becoming depressed.


You know, this scale is pretty much not in use anymore so we could adjust it. But really 0 is the neutral between Nice and Shitty. 10 is full-on gang warfare shithole. -10 is Aspen or Malibu. See, you can have a place like Magna where it's shitty, but it's not as shitty as Ogden, so it's like 3 Ogdens. :)


Oakland: 7 Ogdens

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Originally Posted by The Suit

How does a person who has never been to Ogden use this scale?

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0 is Neutral, so not really a shithole at all but not really nice either. Like Green Bay. ;)

I thought I was offended by Provo, but Magna, shudder.

I'm not talking about the east bench.

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Originally Posted by YetiMan

I'm not talking about the east bench.

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There are other parts of O-town? ;)

My experience in the ogden motel 6 in a room next to a (prom night?) meth party was totes 8 ogdens.

Oakland only gets 2 ogdens, not that skuzzy... Run down in parts, nice in others, but less "trash" population.

Yeti, I just read ur desciption of nursing school out loud to my partner on post with me in the ambo, and we both lol'd

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Originally Posted by YetiMan

0 is Neutral, so not really a shithole at all but not really nice either. Like Green Bay. ;)

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Heaven is neutural?

A. It's in WI

B. It has the PACKERS!

Your scale is void.

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Originally Posted by BeanDip4All

My experience in the ogden motel 6 in a room next to a (prom night?) meth party was totes 8 ogdens.

Oakland only gets 2 ogdens, not that skuzzy... Run down in parts, nice in others, but less "trash" population.

Yeti, I just read ur desciption of nursing school out loud to my partner on post with me in the ambo, and we both lol'd

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You stayed in the Ogden Motel 6? On Washington? My god, if you payed me I would maybe stand in the corner all night and pray an STD didn't jump on me.

So, does this scale just completely ignore access to skiing? I mean, Ogden seems pretty nice to me. Nice cost of living, some vague semblance of a little downtown, and some pretty dope skiing and decent biking out your back door. Am I missing something?

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Originally Posted by zion zig zag

You stayed in the Ogden Motel 6? On Washington? My god, if you payed me I would maybe stand in the corner all night and pray an STD didn't jump on me.

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yep. it was soooo shady! we were traveling cross country and actually unpacked our entire car that night and put it in our hotel room because we were certain the car was going to get smashed into and stripped. total pain in the ass! we hung out with kokomas and a few other mags for bkfst (jared? i forget...) the following morning and were sooo fried because the rooms next to us were up using and screaming all night doing god knows what. in retrospect, we should have just gave up and joined their party.

we called the front desk and complained a bunch, and i think they called the cops on the people TWICE. the motel 6 actually comped our room and gave us a credit for another stay... not that i would ever use it again anyways!

The whole negative thing kills it.

Best place to live should be 0 Ogdens, worst place 10. Simplifies matters.

Sad that Ogden is so shitty. I didn't believe anywhere in UT could be so ghetto til I saw firsthand.

good beer available in Oakland now: http://thetrappist.com/ http://beer-revolution.com/ you may not consider that Oakland though

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Originally Posted by Sirshredalot

So, does this scale just completely ignore access to skiing? I mean, Ogden seems pretty nice to me. Nice cost of living, some vague semblance of a little downtown, and some pretty dope skiing and decent biking out your back door. Am I missing something?

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Yeah that's what I mean I don't think O town's that bad, and it's got nowhere to go but up. Also, have you seen home prices up there? Rediculously cheap.

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Originally Posted by Helldawg

The whole negative thing kills it.

Best place to live should be 0 Ogdens, worst place 10. Simplifies matters.

Sad that Ogden is so shitty. I didn't believe anywhere in UT could be so ghetto til I saw firsthand.

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Shit Helldawg agrees with me, gonna have to rething my whole life now.

Yeti I think Ogden's just your kind of "shithole" actually, maybe mine too. Too bad you're not liking the Nursing thing. Remember though there's alot of different fields within the field you could check out since you're already almost done.

Just for the record...again... I love Ogden.

That doesn't change the fact that the unit of city-nastiness is The Ogden.

Re: nursing. Since you asked: These last few years have been a huge eye opener for me. The difficult facts are that I've learned how much of a mess I am and all the ways in which the basic core of my personality doesn't mix well with the world at large. I'm awkward with people and intimidatingly large and I'm competitive and I have a weird accent that sounds stupid to people who aren't in the upper midwest.

I do good enough in my work, but I am fundamentally broken and insecure so it never really feels like it. There are people without my huge insecurities and ptsd and problems sleeping who have a strong sense of self who can just go in there and take their student nurse failings like it's no big deal..People who don't even notice bullshit in the workplace, ridiculous policies and stupid disorganized clusterfucks everywhere. It's like slow torture for me being in this pressure-cooker situation, learning on the job with people watching you look stupid. The whole educational model where instead of being taught to do something you're just chucked in there and criticized when you make inevitable mistakes. I hate it. I hate living in a small town where every week more people come to know me as some asshat who doesn't know how to do some thing that looks extremely simple to them but has some queer 17 step procedure I have to follow so I don't fail out of school. It's just a rotten situation and a bullshit job with a huge culture of unjustifiable administrative bullshit. I hate it.

Honestly, I'm just smart enough to really understand the bind I'm in, with never being able to find a job I like...with just being a complete misfit with anything I try to do... but not smart enough to figure out how to get into a job I like. I just can't seem to figure out a good life after all these years of trying. This is that part in the movie where Dexter is going to move back to Michigan and work at the Ford factory because he's lost at the game of Aspen. I've lost at that dream of being a skier forever. It was a stupid dream to begin with, I thought skiing made me happy, and it did, but it was that I had friends in skiing and I had some status in skiing. It was just that I got to have this one thing that I was really good at and I needed that because I am so deeply insecure. I was good at it right away from the beginning at age 11 and it came at a time when I was good at nothing else and life was a nightmare. My dad had murdered my step mother and brother and killed himself, it was all over the news. I had people all over me in school every day, I had to fight in the halls and outside of school. I had not one friend for years growing up. Everyone I was friends with in my neighborhood just stopped talking to me after 5th grade. I was a dorky, nerdy, mess of a kid with terrible shit with my schizophrenic murderous dad and I needed to be good at something so I just grabbed onto that one thing I was best at and made it who I was for 20+ years. Really though, what I've learned these past few years: family and friends, being stable and healthy and prosperous; being connected to a community, doing some meaningful service you care about...that's a good adult life. Not some never-ending childhood repeating this one thing that I'm good at, trying to hang onto some retarded sense of ego attached to skiing. Not just finding ways to stroke your ego. I just never developed into that strong kind of confident person. So getting into nursing was still that way to, like, chase after more skiing. I figured it would be a skier's job, like wildland fire was a skier's job.

This is the first place I've lived since 1996 that isn't a ski town, and I'm seeing how normal people live: people with lifelong friends and family they've lived with, right across town their whole lives. They have whole networks of friends and family nearby and their lives are built around human connections. They're raising kids and having Sunday dinner with their parents. Here I am, after all this moving around... my body and mind are shot, all my family relations and friendships broken by these jobs and travel and moving and always prioritizing skiing first. I just realize that every direction I ever took was a mistake. It took these few years of study and reflection to understand that, but I don't know how to fix it. There really isn't a fix to 2/3's of your life being dominated by something stupid.
The rest of my life is probably going to involve a lot of work, because I'm 34 with no savings, no assets, and now I have some student loan debt to pay off. I would like for it to be work I like, not shit I just have to bear down and get through each day so I can go skiing later...

I don't know. I thought nursing would be a good call with all the practicality of it, and really, I get the theory really well and I do pretty well at it...but I just absolutely hate doing it. I hate the hierarchy, I hate the bitchy culture, I hate the doctors breezing in from their BMW making two pen strokes and leaving me with all the shit piss and blood, I hate the fact that I'm supposed to play some character with a fake smile and never speak honestly with anyone, I hate having to fake these exchanges and steer conversations to extract information from people. I just hate it all. I really would like to just do some simple work where I can be myself and the people I work with are nice regular people. This is far from that, this is a hurried, sketchy mess of bullshit. I have to adopt a weird bullshit persona just to do the job and that alone makes it suck.

Of course, the longer I go and the more I see, the less I believe that there is such a job for me. That's a job for somebody with a family business, that's owning a farm or running the family gravel business with your brothers. One way or another I'm probably always going to have a boss and have to pretend like I'm a friendly eunuch for 60 hours a week in order to pay my bills.
I was really optimistic after last years non-nursing-specific schooling, because I really did enjoy math and microbiology, and I excelled at schoolwork...but that's because schoolwork isn't a workplace with pantsuit-wearing professional-administrators setting the rules of conduct. It's a situation of thinking: thinking and reason is not my problem. It's having to be somebody's bitch at every job I can get that's the problem. And from what I can see, nursing is all about being somebody's bitch, you're the doctor's bitch, the charge nurse's bitch, the patient's bitch, the hospital administrator's bitch. Nowhere in that situation is being an adult man with a lifetime of experience, knowledge, and judgment even a factor...because as much as they talk and talk and talk about critical thinking and judgment, the critical thinking and judgment they want is just figuring out which part of somebody else's thinking to apply to a given situation, not any sort of creativity or independent problem-solving thought or analysis.

I don't trust anything any nurse ever says to me about nursing. I had people tell me it was a great job, not an ok job, but a great job that they love doing. I wonder about anyone who loves going to go help 90 year old women take a shit. Honestly. My own mother tells me it's a great job, still, after discussing all this. So, people lie, they lie to themselves. I very rarely see a happy person working in that hospital (except doctors, the doctors usually look like they're doing great) and I did not see one happy person within the doors of any of the LTC's I was in. I am sort of convinced that I live in a world full of people who repeat a lie over and over again until it's true. I had a guy tell me nursing school was the best time of his life. Ok dude. I don't know, people come here from Africa and the grocery store is the most amazing thing they've ever seen in their life...maybe I'm just extremely spoiled. I don't know. Having to hurry around with my fake smile being treated like an idiot servant who can't do anything right for many hours, then staying up until midnight writing weird reports about it, which will then be nit-picked by middle-aged women with the goal of turning me into a nitpicky middle-aged woman in a man's body, is not my idea of a good life. Maybe if your baseline is rotten or your expectations are extremely low things would be different. I don't know, but that's not me.
You seemed to want to know, so that's that. I'm so far beyond being ashamed of myself or afraid to just tell people what's on my mind anymore. I don't care, nothing is private. I mean, what have I got to lose. Who am I going to impress. Is downbound train going to call me a loser. LOL. I've been on "one more day" suicide-prevention-mode for years now...because I met my lifetime goal, all I ever wanted out of life was to be a great skier and to go skiing every day. I did it, I realize it was hollow and retarded. I don't know what to do with my life now, it's not like I can just all of a sudden snap my fingers and undo my 20 year mistake. In a good economy I think there would be some directions I could take, but this is not that. Any of you who have read my posts for 7 years on here...I mean, can you imagine me trying to manage in the $8/hr jobs I qualify for here with my high school diploma and 2 years of community college. Everything has just, you know.... gone very very wrong.

Anyway, none of that has nothing to do with Ogdens. I just happened to think of the Ogden the other day and I didn't want to let it die. It is a good unit of description, and it needs to live on.

You seem like you need a hug...

and you WILL get good at it.. I don't have any experience with nursing or nursing school, but from people I have talked to, nursing school sucks bad, but actually being a nurse, not so much.. There are tons of different options once you get some experience...

Keep you chin up... and Port Angeles is a really good place, with some really good people, go for a hike or something!

Sweet Blog. *yawn*

Yeah sometimes I accidentally forget that this is now a political trolling forum for people who will never meet one another and it has nothing to do with staying in touch with actual ski friends anymore.

Back to your regular back and forth red/blue bickering over whatever's on CNN today.

your post was pretty enlightening about balancing the ski chase with a normal life. it's definitely not an easy task if you want the best of both worlds. most people have to sacrifice and pick one that shapes their lives, and constantly deal with the 'grass is greener' effect. and most pick job security and starting a family over chasing snow, so you are not alone in wanting more out of your life.

without getting overly analytical, it sounds to me like you could use a female friend. besides the obvious benefits, the ones worth keeping will force you to stay somewhat grounded, and help you be more content with who you are instead of worrying about what is missing in your life.

so where would Park City fall on the Ogden scale??

I don't know...like -9 probably?

It would be -10 if you didn't have to worry about your toddlers getting run over by Jeremy Nobis.

Ogden can't be like 0 ogdens. It's got to be 1 ogden or nothing.

You kind of have a point. But if Ogden is 1 ogden then you get into all these 1/8th of an Ogden kinds of things.

If you think about it, Ogden isn't really a benchmark here, it could change. It could get a tram from weber state right to sb and homeland security could round up the mexicans and the dogfood factory could close...I mean that could all happen. Ogden could swing hard around right into the negative ogdens.

if you are south this year you've beers/new board on me y-man

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I don't know. I thought nursing would be a good call with all the practicality of it, and really, I get the theory really well and I do pretty well at it...but I just absolutely hate doing it. I hate the hierarchy, I hate the bitchy culture, I hate the doctors breezing in from their BMW making two pen strokes and leaving me with all the shit piss and blood, I hate the fact that I'm supposed to play some character with a fake smile and never speak honestly with anyone, I hate having to fake these exchanges and steer conversations to extract information from people. I just hate it all. I really would like to just do some simple work where I can be myself and the people I work with are nice regular people. This is far from that, this is a hurried, sketchy mess of bullshit. I have to adopt a weird bullshit persona just to do the job and that alone makes it suck.

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I didn't read your whole novel, but this part caught my eye. I have lots of friends who are nurses (including my wife, in fact), and they ALL bitch about some aspect of it, but they ALL love it too. Get a specialty (my wife is WOCN, some friends are nurse anesthitists, another friend manages OR nurses somewhere in LA) and not only will you double your money, but the work conditions are better too. Good job - suck it up.

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Originally Posted by grrrr

Ogden can't be like 0 ogdens. It's got to be 1 ogden or nothing.

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ya know, I was actually thinking about that. I think it has be neither 1 Ogden or 0 Ogdens, it is simply Ogden. Any place that is Ogden, is Ogden. As far as I know there is only one Ogden, but some other city could also be Ogden, as long as it is also Ogden or at least changes its name to Ogden. If it doesn't change its name but is otherwise equal to Ogden, then it is 1 Ogden. What -1 Ogden would be then is a bit of a puzzler. My initial analysis is that -1 Ogden would have to be a place called Ogden, which is totally different than Ogden. Like if you changed Monaco's name to Ogden, it would be -1 Ogden. I know there's a flaw in this, in that the -1 is supposed to signify the phrase "is 1 times better than" not "is 100% different than", but otherwise "1" and "-1" are not diametrically opposite. I dunno, it's complicated.

Yeti, I sorta can't see you as a nurse. It just doesn't seem to fit your temperament and you seem very aware of this. I can definitely see you as an EMT, though, I think you'd be great at it. Can't you transfer the credits or whatever you get?

It's as if I'm not in the hospital with actual nurses constantly.

I'm not speaking from some lack of exposure or misunderstanding. I'm right there in it. It clearly sucks. Like I said, I wouldn't trust anything any nurse says about nursing. It's completely taboo to admit what a rotten job it is. I guess if you want to get your doctorate over a 10 year process and go for CRNA then that's great...but by then you might as well have just gone to medical school. I'm pretty sure residents don't start off measuring buckets of diarrhea.

Much the same way it's taboo for people from Ogden to admit that Ogden is ghetto.

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Originally Posted by Hugh Conway

if you are south this year you've beers/new board on me y-man

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After reading Y-man's rant on the previous page I've been trying to think of something helpful to write, but HC pretty much nailed it. Me too, J.

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Originally Posted by YetiMan

[blog]........ I've been on "one more day" suicide-prevention-mode for years now...because I met my lifetime goal, all I ever wanted out of life was to be a great skier and to go skiing every day. I did it, I realize it was hollow and retarded. I don't know what to do with my life now, it's not like I can just all of a sudden snap my fingers and undo my 20 year mistake. Everything has just, you know.... gone very very wrong. ...... [/blog]

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Havin been afforded the op to share turns and watch you ski I have a hard time believing that didn't bring you pleasure and there are a hell of a lot worse mistakes you could make. Hope it all works out for ya and hope to share pow turns or a zipper line w/ you again someday.
I'm still confused though as to rate this thread -2 or +2 Icemans:wink:

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Originally Posted by zion zig zag

I thought I was offended by Provo, but Magna, shudder.

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Quoted for truth and hilarity...

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Originally Posted by iceman

Wait, shouldn't Ogden be neutral Ogdens? Then the scale would go up and down from there. How can Ogden be 5 Ogdens? You're confusamacating me.

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Inflation.

Ogden jumped up a couple Ogdens when Soul and Bones was forced out of their lease to make room for a night club. Man I hope they find a new place soon. When there are only 5 or so good restaurants in town, losing one of the best of them really hurts.

I've been here for ~ 6 years now, its a pretty rad place to live if your into skiing and biking.