Recently in Work Category

Today at 4pm, I'm meeting an account manager from work and another coworker to travel to a customer's site. I will be gone until late Monday afternoon.

Because of the large number of spam comments I've been getting, I've decided to disable all comments while I'm gone so that I won't have a huge mess to clean up.

As an aside, I'm seriously thinking about accepting only authorized comments to prevent the spam. In order to leave an authorized comment, you would need to get a typekey account. (Those readers who blog from Typepad already have one.) Typekey accounts are free and don't require much user information, so my few dedicated commentors might want to check out getting one.

Have a good start to your weekend!

Saturday morning, I got up around eight in the morning and spent some time watching cartoons and relaxing until Belinda called at around 8:30. She and I were scheduled to work at Psychic's Thyme together that day, so she suggested we meet for breakfast before the shop opened. So I got my shower and did everything else I needed to before heading to Perkins, where we agreed to meet. Belinda got there about ten to fifteen minutes after me. We were quickly seated and our omelettes over light conversation.

Once breakfast was done, we ran over to Staples to get some audiocassettes, then headed on up to the shop. Our timing was perfect, because Char was just getting stuff out of the trunk of her car when we pulled in the parking lot.

Saturday was the first time that I worked at the shop as a reader -- or at least when I actually got readings. (Earlier this month, I worked a Saturday with Michele and was marked as available for readings, but I didn't get any.) I ended up doing three readings all day. They went pretty well, and I certainly feel better about the idea now that I've done it once.

I've been doing readings off and on for a few years, but this was the first time I've ever done them professionally. I've mostly done them for friends or random people with no money involved. It's a lot less stressful that way. Especially considering my general lack of confidence (which yesterday helped alleviate immensely). You see, I normally worry that I won't be able to read someone, that nothing will come. Now, if I'm doing the reading for free, the way I see it, that's fine. I'll just shrug and point out to the person that you get what you pay for. But when they're handing over money, there's an expectation, so the idea of not picking up anything becomes much more frightening.

I talked about it with Belinda at breakfast, and she pointed out that she's always nervous about that, too. But she pointed out it's okay. And she pointed out that in those instances (though she assures me they're fairly rare) that you can't read someone, you simply tell them as much and don't charge them. (Also, if there's someone else around that might be able to read them, you pass them off.) Fortunately, it didn't prove to be a problem Saturday, anyway. And as I said, it built confidence. And Belinda and I are hoping to work together like that again, soon. It was a fun day all around.

After the shop closed, Belinda and I headed to Red Robin for dinner. I haven't been there in a couple of months, and the hostess who seated us harassed me about that a bit. Belinda thought it was funny that she recognized me so quickly, actually.

This afternoon, I attended the first session of the five session "Signal Processing Fundamentals" class that my company is offering to all interested employees. I figured that since a few customers have inquired as to my knowledge of DSP's (which is nonexistant at the moment), I figured I best sign up. Granted, this class covers the theory of signal processing rather than implementation, but I figure I can learn the latter on my own as I come to understand the former.

Today's session consisted of a math review, going over the basic mathematical concepts (integration, differentiation, linear algebra, complex numbers, etc.) that are used in signal processing. Fortunately, it's all stuff I learned in school. I was even surprised how quickly most of it came back to me. Matrix multiplication took a few seconds, but it eventually clicked.

Of course, there are things that I only vaguely remember. For example, I don't remember all the methods for integrating and deriving more complex formulas. Fortunately, I was able to find a great website that helped with that.

I'm thinking that this weekend, however, I would be wise to try digging up a few of my old math books just for reference. Fortunately, I had the foresight to keep them. At least I hope I did. It's possible I tossed them during the move. But I'm hoping I had more sense than that.

This has been a pretty rough week at work for me. I've spent most of it trying to reproduce a bug so that I can analyze and fix it. Unfortunately, due to technical issues, I haven't been able to reproduce it. And of course, because this bug has been outstanding for quite a few weeks (I just recently inherited responsibility for it from another coworker, and have only been working on it for a week, personally), everyone's chomping at the bit to get it fixed already. And I've made absolutely no progress on it -- not for a lack of trying mind you.

And then, I've had other technical problems with my other tasks too. For those familiar with Murphy's Law, I've officially joined the ranks of those who insist Murphy was an optimist. Let's just say that enough things went wrong and my frustration levels got high enough that I very seriously considered leaving work this afternoon and calling in sick tomorrow. When I told Michele that, she blinked and said that was totally unlike me. Well, that's how stressful things got.

Fortunately, after talking to my boss and then spending an hour or so with Michele and Belinda after work, my stress levels came right down. So with any luck, I'll have a much better day tomorrow. Or at least I should be able to manage it better. Or so I'm hoping.

I'm sure I commented earlier on the youth of some of the people working for my current customer. I think I've even mentioned that I think they have a lot of co-ops from RIT working for them. Well, today, I think I met the youngest one of them all. Well, it'd be more accurate to say I saw him, as he was sitting in a meeting and I was passing by the conference room. I'm pretty sure he's a co-op. But now, I find myself wondering if they take co-ops that are still in high school. He looked that young.

He had to be a college kid, and at least a junior at that. But man, he didn't look it. That or everyone's starting to look that young to me because I'm getting so old. I really may need that cane after all.

I just finished and posted the latest chapter of Harald's Story. Once again, it took me almost a month since I submitted the previous chapter. I'm not entirely thrilled about this, as I originally had hoped to post a minimum of one chapter per week. After all, I want to keep the momentum going with the story. Most importantly, I don't want it to get away from me like Keylar's story did. (I'm still rather upset with myself that I allowed myself to stop writing long enough that I can no longer pick up the trail of that one.)

Of course, in my defense, it's not exactly like my pen (or keyboard, as may be more accurate) has been idle during all this time. I've been spending a good portion of my time this week working on my "coming out" story. In fact, I've posted at least one new section every day since 11 March (though I doubt I'll keep that rate up indefinitely). In many ways, it's just that this project is a bit more pressing in my mind than the adventures of Harald, no matter how worthy his story is to be told. So my sense of priorities have dictated that my time go to one while letting the other rest for a little bit. Add to that the fact that I've been sorting out some personal things as well, and you have even less time for Harald, though I'm hoping that will change soon.

Of course, working on multiple writing projects makes me realize one thing. I wish I didn't have to keep my job to pay my bills. I'd much rather take that time and devote it all to my writing proects. But short of winning the lottery or marrying a billionaire, that doesn't look likely.

I suppose I could try to find a way to make a living off of the writing projects. In some ways, that's very tempting. But then, I look at the writing I do and I ask myself whether I really want to do it for money. After all, doing that sort of thing for money can complicate things in ways I'm not sure I'd like. (After all, working as a software enginee has certainly affected my passion for computers.)

And even if I did decide to go that route someday, it would have to be something I'd build up to. I couldn't just hand in a resignation now and have the money I need tomorrow. I'd have to start building up a reputation to generate the funds from my work. So it'd still be some time before I could give up my current source of income.

So for now at least (and possibly forever), I'll just have to accept that my writing projects will have to be done with the free time my day job allows me to have, just like every other aspect of my life.

I had a rather long day at work. I ended up working a ten hour shift, which is an hour longer than the shift I worked on Tuesday. But I needed to work that many hours to get my time in on a particular project. I believe I mentioned earlier that I was working on-site for Customer A and at my own company's office for Customer B. Well, in theory, I'm now assigned to Customer A full time.

However, Customer B still needs some of my time. That project took longer than expected, and we're still doing testing. As the only software engineer on the project, they need my support. So in addition to working a full week at Customer A's site, I'm trying to come in to our office for a few hours a week to support the work on Customer B's stuff. I put in two and a half hours total over Tuesday and Wednesday morning. As I had things to do that evening, I didn't put in a full eight hours at Customer A's site those days. So today was the day to make up the difference.

As a reward to myself for working so hard this week, I decided to come directly over here to Equal Grounds again after work. I decided to give their black bean wrap a try for dinner. It's actually pretty good. So here I sit, munching on a wrap and nachos and washing it all down with an iced tea. It's practically a perfect evening, especially when you consider that an episode of Law & Order is on the television, which is about fifteen feet or so directly ahead of me. So while I'm doing my writing, I also get treated to a great show. Of course, I've already seen this episode, but there aren't many I haven't seen already. I used to be a Law & Order fanatic.

Oh, back on the work topic (sort of), let me just say that I'm amazed by the incredible number of good looking guys that work for Customer A. Of course, most of them also seem to be incredibly young. I'm beginning to wonder if they hire 85% or better of their employees directly out of RIT. And actually, I know that at least two of the guys working on my team are co-ops from there. It's just crazy.

Not that I'd chase any of them. That would be a nightmare waiting to happen. Besides, I've decided I'd rather be the one being chased. ;)

The past week or so, I've been focused on work too much to put much thought into blogging. I'm still trying to work out a satisfactory schedule that works with my current work situation.

You see, I'm currently working on two different projects (I'll call them Project A and Project B) at the moment, focusing on each one for twenty hours of my work week. This is not unusual when you work in the contracting/design services industry. This is especially true when your involvement in Project A is winding down and the customer for Project B wants you get as early a start as possible.

Of course, this particular situation is further complicated by the fact that for the time being, Project B requires me to work on the customer's site. So that means that when I'm working on Project B, I'm driving to the customer's office, and when I'm working on Project A, I'm coming to my own company's office. For four days of the week, that's no big deal. During those days, I'm only working on one project, and simply show up at the correct location for the day and stay there until it's time to come home.

However, the fifth day of the week (and which day that actually falls on varies from week to week), I work for hours on one project and four hours on the other. This means that for that day, I go to one site in the morning, drive to the other site halfway through the day, and then return home from the second site when its quitting time. Thank goodness both sites are relatively close to each other! Add to this the fact that I have two weeknights (and some weekends) that I spend doing business for Paths of the Old Ways, and I have a pretty busy schedule.

Oh, did I also mention that while my hours are extremely flexible at my company's office, work on Project B is requiring me to standardize my workday a bit more? Also, getting up earlier than I like has become a necessity. So I've been spending most of my free time trying to get rested up and recovering from the schedule change.

Hopefully, I'll have more time to seek out inspiration. I had a pretty good blogging pace going at the end of January, and I'd like to recover it in the near future.

Today, I started working on a new project. As part of this new project, I will spend a considerable amount of time working at the customer's site. This means that I spent most of today getting set up onsite and going through some training about their processes.

As a part of project kickoff, the customer took the three of us who are coming on board from our company out to lunch. This is a rather common practice in my line of work. But this was a remarkable unusual lunch. (And let's just say that singling out any particular lunch that is attended by a bunch of engineers as unusual is saying a lot!)

Our waiter, for reasons that totally escaped us, decided not to write our orders down. Instead, he decided to keep all eight lunch orders in his head. We found it a strange thing to do and even joked that maybe he had a lapel microphone and was recording our orders as we said them. Naturally, this proved to not be the case, though our waiter thought it was a great idea.

Well, after he left our table, he came back and asked Brian which side he had asked for. Someone else jokingly commented that he hoped this meant that the young man had remembered all of the rest of our sides (and main orders, for that matter) correctly. Those hopes were proven unfounded when he came back again, and asked the four of us on my end of the tabe to repeat what sides we wanted. (Oddly, he didn't write them down this time either.)

Well, when the food came, all four of us on my end of the table indeed got the wrong side. We ended up having to swap sides. By this time, the whole thing had reached the point of farce, and we just got a couple plates, dumped the sides (two orders of steak fries and two orders of sweet potato frieds) into a couple of bowls and just shared them communal-style. Strangely, they got Brian's sandwich order wrong too, so the poor guy had to wait for them to make the right sandwich.

I've never laughed so much at a luncheon (except maybe for the WOTL luncheon). The food was great, but I hope the service doesn't always get confused so easily. And hopefully, someone learns to use that pad he was carrying around.

The last couple of weeks have been more or less uneventful. Well, as long as you disregard the funeral I attended for a cousin. His battle with Parkinson's finally took a turn for the worse. It was a pretty good service and well attended. I particularly appreciated the number of firemen who came to the event. Not that this is entirely surprising. The fire department was a big part of Tim's life. Even after he was diagnosed with Parkinson's, he spent as much time as he could at the fire house, doing whatever jobs he could manage. The head of the department commented at the funeral that he was going to have to find four new volunteers to replace Tim.

My sister and her kids are in the area. She decided to make the drive up from Mississippi for the funeral. Her husband told her she had to stay for at least a week, though. So she's here until Monday. I plan on running down to my parents' house tomorrow and spending the day with her and the kids. It should be fun.

I think the lack of employment is starting to get to me on some level. So next week, I'll have to start getting more serious about the search for a job. I had really hoped one of the opportunities Rick and Kevin had found would pan out, but that doesn't appear to be the case. So it's time for me to get off my duff and take matters into my own hands again. The only down side to that is that I probably won't find something temporary. I really wanted that because I wanted to eventually go back to the company that moved me into this area.

I've started walking again. I haven't decided if I'm doing it to "lose weight' (probably not), exercise (again, not necessarily), or just for the fun of it (I'm leaning towards this answer). It's gotten me out of the house a bit more and that's been well worth it. I'm rediscovering that I really do like doing things like that.

I've also gone on a couple outtings with Becky, which is always nice. A couple Thursdays ago, we went to a local coffee shop. I had a delicious drink consisting of hot apple cider, caramel, and whipped cream. Then we just sat and talked. It was pleasant. And I got to check out a couple cute guys, which is always a plus.

I realize it's been a while since I posted anything. To be honest, life has been a bit crazy, recently. My project at work has hit a critical point, and I've been putting a lot of time and energy into sorting through some difficulties we're having. In fact, in about half an hour, I need to leave to spend a few hours at work this morning. Yes, I have to go into work on a Saturday. But I refuse to pity myself over this.

Needless to say, by the time I get home, I just don't have the mental capacity or motivation to sit down and write. I certainly don't have the capacity to write something interesting or witty, which is something I still feel I need to work towards whenever I write. I hate to feel like I'm writing something that no one -- not even me -- will ever want to read.

However, my life hasn't been devoid of all things non-work. I did manage to get a few odds and ends done around here. This past Wednesday, I took a two hour class in bead-making. The class used Italian glass and a propane-oxygen torch. Amazingly, I made it through both hours without burning myself a single time. Being the clumsy person I am, that's saying something. It was an interesting experience, and I think I kind of like bead-making. The instructor was quite pleased with many of us. She said that some of us (including me, apparently) were already showing a certain level of control in the process (learning where to hold the bead in relation to the flame so that the glass is malleable but not flowing uncontrollably is a bit of a trick) that usually takes several hours of practice to develop. This afternoon, I'm going back to the studio to pick up my beads. I'm anxious to see how they turned out. Maybe I'll even post pictures.

I enjoyed the experience enough that I'm seriously considering signing up for the next class and participating in a few of the "Open Torch" classes. Open torch is actually more of a lab where you get three hours with a torch to work on your own at your own pace. These sessions are good for experimenting more and improving technique. Also, my mother's interesting in giving it a try, so I'll probably end up taking the intro course with her again in a couple months.

I also had a bit of a personal conquest here on my MT blog. I have MT configured on this site so that I can set up blogs on multiple subdomains. This means that the CGI scripts are set up in the main domain. Well, due to Internet Explorer's attempts at security, the Typekey comment validation system wasn't quite work right. Basically, people could sign in with their Typekey account, but the comment page would never show them as logged in. All SixApart offers as a solution for this problem is instructions on how to set up IE to get around the problem.

Now, I'm a stickler about certain things. I'm strongly opposed to the idea of asking readers to adjust their web browser's settings -- especially their security settings -- to make my web page work correctly. So I did a bit of research, studied the MT code, and found a workable hack to fix the problem on my end. So now, if you're using IE and choose to use Typekey to comment, everything works beautifully.

As an aside, I highly recommend using typekey. For starters, it's free. Also, by using it, I can make you a "known good commenter," which means that your comments will never end up in the junk comment bin by mistake. (So far, I've never had that problem, but I've heard of other MT users finding "real" comments in the junk filter enough to be concerned about it.) Plus there's also the handy fact that if you use Typekey, I can actually view all of your comments on a single page. I like that kind of functionality.

So that's my life in a nutshell. Maybe I'll have more to write later this weekend. After all, I am going to a psychic faire this afternoon (weather permitting).

I haven't put an update in here lately. I thought I'd go ahead and give the basic rundown of my life in a nutshell.

We'll start with the major life change. I am now single. After four years, I have ended my relationship with Mike. It wasn't an easy decision to make and it hurts like hell. But despite my best faith efforts to change things, it became perfectly clear where the relationship was heading. As painful as walking away is, I also know that continuing down that road would be even more painful.

I am leaving a number of message boards. I'm starting to discover that they're little more than "distractions" to me. I really don't get much out of staying there, other than the occasional bout of frustration. And at the moment, I just don't have much to offer there, either. So it's time to "cut bait," so to speak.

In more pleasant news, my old college roommate has now been a Daddy for about two days. His wife gave birth to a healthy baby boy this past Saturday. I just found out this morning from an email. I sent my congratulations to the proud parents and look forward to meeting the little guy. Hopefully, that won't be too far in the future.

I'm thinking over a couple of projects I'm considering working on. I don't want to say too much about them now, but I just thought it'd be good to indicate that I'm looking to make life more productive.

I have officially decided to take a month or two off after my current job finishes. Given all the changes going on right now, I decided I could use some time to just relax and possibly do some intensive personal exploration. I'm not sure what this will really amount to, but time will tell.

Today was a pretty good day. I didn't get a lot of work done, but I did enough to keep myself from getting overwhelmed with guilt. Primarily, I rewrote all of my PCI-X code for the new processor. That was quite an adventure, as I had to handle three different PCI-X cores on the same processor. I hope that all works when I get a chance to finally test it. Of course, that won't be until the middle of next month, by the look of it.

I spent more of they day putzing around online. Particularly, I spent a good deal of time getting highly annoyed at the one topic on one of the religious forums I visit. Someone started a thread called "Ask a Pagan," for people to ask all kinds of questions about Paganism. Unfortunately, while a few people have asked some interesting and probing questions, most have taken the opportunity to ask pointed questions to prove why Paganism is "wrong."

That just annoys me. Why is it that some people have to be such jerks? Why is it that any opportunity to learn about another religion has to be used as a way to "trap" that religion in some way to disprove it? Why can't more people be like Stace, who sincerely asks questions to better understand others and their viewpoints? But I guess that takes maturity. And my experience, maturity is something that's severely lacking in our society today. Instead, everything has to be turned into a penis-measuring contest of one sort or another.

Of course, I have to admit that I found a lot of the Pagans' answers trite, boring, and annoying, too. For starters, they let themselves get dragged into the whole "how can all paths be valid" argument, though "abyss that pretends to be an argument" might be more accurate. Truthfully, I'm not sure I care for the whole "all paths are valid" model anyway. I think there has to be a decent middle ground between saying "I have a monopoly on truth" and sayng "well, everything anyone wants to believe is true." Of course, this gets into bigger questions as to what constitutes "valid" and whatnot. And while I could probably go on a lengthy ramble abou that, I'm not sure I care to at this time. Let me just say that I think it's time to say, "Truth is a very complex thing and I think that people can have equally accurate and yet distinct perceptions of truth, but it is not my concern to determine or comment on the 'validity' of any particular claims of truth." But that probably only makes sense to me, and that's subject to change.

I haven't been online for a couple days, so I have a handful of events to talk about in this entry. We'll start out with the fun news from Dr. Lee. He had someone in his office call my house yesterday. He's instructed me to discontinue my glyburide over the weekend on an experimental basis. I am supposed to take my blood glucose readings as normal and then send them to him Monday mornng. He'll check them and determine from that whether to make it permanent. Last night, my blood glucose was roughly 110 and this morning, it was 89. So by the looks of it, I may officially be done with one of my medications! How awesome.

I'm also down another pound or so, too. According to the scale at work, I'm somewhere between 275 and 276 pounds. Considering I started this trek at 311 last November, I think that's fantastic. My coworker, Mike W., saw me at the job fair (I'll have to write about that too). I was wearing a pair of black pants, a red dress shirt, and a burgandy sweater over top it. He said that with the wait loss, I looked absolutely incredible. I thought I looked darn good in it too, but it was nice to hear someone else say it. I was going to post a picture of it, but Mom didn't get home until an hour after I did on Thursday, and by then, I was ready to change into something different. The sweater was just a tad bit too warm in the house.

Yeah, I went to a "job fair" (and I use the term loosely) for Lockheed Martin. They were mainly holding it for their Owego facility (though they did have their Syracuse facility represented too), since they're looking to fill over 700 new positions. I'm not sure I want to work for Lockheed Martin (and after yesterday, I'm even less sure), but I figured I'd check it out. I learned exactly one thing while I was there. I was way underprepared. I might have gotten more out of it if I had spent a few days scouring their website and printing out and reading specific job listings they have posted. That way, I could have asked questions about specific jobs I was looking at. As it was, I had about four or five general questions to ask. They didn't even have project descriptions or anything there. I was expecting it to be much more informational on their part, and it was quite obvious that they were expecting to collect hundreds of resume and spend between thirty seconds and two minutes chit-chatting with each person. I tend to agree with Mom when she heard about it and commented it didn't sound like much of a "job fair" to her.

Of course, the thing that really got me was the one manager from the software engineering department I spoke to. He asked me what my GPA was. Now, I will be the first to admit that I haven't done a lot of inteviews in the last seven years. But the few interviews I did five years ago when looking for my current job, I didn't have one single person ask about my GPA. By that time, most of them were interested in the three years of in-field experience I've had since school. I would've expected that eight years later, any potential employers would be even more interested in my experience. So to even be asked about my GPA seemed weird.

And then when I told him that I got a 3.06 GPA, he commented that "made the cut, but just barely." And then he told me that I'd have a lot of competition. If I would've been thinking more clearly at the time (I was a bit shocked by this time), I probably would've told him to fuck off at that point. That probably would've been a bad idea, so it's just as well I was too shocked at the time. But it sure makes me want to go with my first instinct to find a job that isn't with Lockheed Martin.

My company dropped the big bombshell on everybody today. At 11:00am this morning, everyone in the office was gathered up for a meeting, where the big wigs from the main office announced that our office in Ithaca would be closing before the end of the year. I was one of the 50% of the office's staff that was not offered an opportunity to relocate to one of the offices that will remain open. That means that as of July 1, I will need an alternate source of employment. I wasn't really planning on moving anyway, but the fact that it's not an option came as a bit of a shock.

To be honest, I'm not totally surprised by this. I've suspected since ADIC bought out Pathlight that they would eventually decide to close the Ithaca office, forcing all of us to either relocate or find other jobs. I've expected it at every "office-wide" meeting we've had in the past four years. But for some reason, expecting it didn't really prepare me for it. I'm still finding mysef shocked. I'm still feeling a bit overwhelmed by it. Granted, I'm not the emotional wreck some of the others were (it helps that I didn't just buy a new house like some of them), but I'm still in a bit of a state of emotional disarray.

I suppose in the great scheme of things, I can just take this in stride. After all, for the past year, I've been thinking about getting a different job, one that's closer to Mike so that I can eventually move there too. This incident just provides me with a strong motivation to do more than just think about it, I suppose. And I can be thankful that if I want it, I still have a guaranteed job until July 1. That's almost a full six months where I can look for a job without having to worry about how to pay bills in the meantime.

Part of me wants to run right out to the job sites. Part of me wants to fire up Word and start my resume right now (I don't think I have an old copy of it anymore). And I'm proud of that part of me. I'm glad that I have that "never say die" spirit somewhere in me and that I'm willing to keep going. But on the same hand, I don't think I'm going to do it quite yet. Taking the bull by the horns is good, but reacting is bad. And I think that if I started these things now, I'd be doing it reactively. And that could lead to mistakes. For now, I think I'm going to instead make a decision to give myself time -- at least until the end of the week -- and let the emotional impact and reactions of the announcement to work their way through my system. Then I can channel my desire to act more wisely.