cipherMage meets Life, Tech, and Everything

Catch Up Time

2006-11-28T12:32:00.000-05:00

Long time no post...

It's been busy and I've given up a large portion of my net life. Why you may ask? Well, I have a fiance` and 3 kids that now make up my family. You read it right, my family.

Eva and her 3 boys have become my family, and I have slowly begun to take the father role. I do strugle often with being a father so quickly to 3 boys, but I'm getting the hang of it.

Eva and I have been engaged now for approximately 6 months (date vs days), and I have been living with her and the boys for 4 or so months. She is the wonder of my life and the source of my daily strength. I've had very few fits from my CFS under her watchful eye, and she's put a few pounds of great home cooking on me. I try to do everything possible to make her the happiest woman on the face of the earth, not that I succeed every day. At some point I am going to have to put a real ring on her finger, as I had put a temporary one there while I attempted to get my mothers from my sister. Since that isn't happening, its time to go get a bridal set of my own. I wish I could put a huge rock on her finger, but I'm just not able at this time. I'll be trying to find an elegant, yet simple set that come in two-tone if at all possible. Haven't quite got a clue where to find one that is affordable to my current living, but if I have to not eat for a couple months of lunch, I can survive. I would do anything for the one love of my life, and I am striving to do exactly that.

I'm making strides in my relationship with my father and all of my family, with the encouragement and support of my far better half. My family adores her and the boys. My parents can't wait to meet all of their grandchildren (its been rough getting there with all 3). While at the reunion, I was told under no uncertain terms was I to come back to the reunion without the kids by several memebrs of the extended family. Thats not a bad thing, just a 'we really want to see them' thing. "Behind every man is a -//- better woman" is too true. (I scratched out good)

I spent 5 months on unemployment, and while I am working full time, I continue to struggle with back bills from my ""state vacation"". It's good money and it will be even better when I get my first commission check. I work as an IT Specialist III @ UNETSCO, but I'm really a developer and network admin.

Bro is being trained in/out on potty, which is GREAT. No more temperment problems since that started.

So... I am fired.

2006-05-17T09:23:00.000-04:00

SO yesteraday morning I called in sick.

I was out cold by around 11:15am-ish, and work called around noon. I can't be woken up without physical contact if I am in REM, so I was unable to answer the call. I happened to sleep until 6:30p, and missed yet another call around 5:00pm.

When I woke up, not having a clue what time it was, I performed my normal out-sick-checks, where in I check my work email and maybe log in remotely to help out with any administrative tasks I can. First bad sign: I cannot log into my OWA that had been sitting open all the time I was sleeping. Second bad sign: I tried to log in as administrator since I could not get in as myself, maybe OWA was acting up. failed. Ok, maybe the email server is misbehaving, log in remotely. Connect, login with my normal user credentials: "Your account has been disabled. Please contact your system Administrator for more details." WTF. Try to login as administrator : "Please check your username and password".

Dread sets in. I mean wtf, I called in sick. I told them I wasn't going to be in today. WTF.

Check my voice mail that it says I have 7 of: 2 from work, one at noon, one at 5; 2 from Eva checking in to see how I was feeling; 1 from the phone company cause I was apparently behind on a bill (which is autopay); and one from a friend wanting to meet up sometime. The other one seems to have ben garbled along the way. Message 1 from work: "Jason its , I need you to call me at the office when you get the chance." Second message from work: "Jason its . I have tried to contact you throughout the day without result. You need to call me in the morning before you leave for the office." I'm thinking there is next to no doubt now, but I need to call 's cell phone to find out wtf is really going on, in the event that I am *not* fired. Nope, I'm fired. Apparently I'm viewed as unreliable because I was home sick in bed, asleep, and didn't hear the phone ring to answer it. Blah blah, in corporate poisition I need to be available even when I am not at work. Ok, now, what part of I didn't hear the damn phone... Whatever, they are lawyers, fighting it would be fruitless in the end.

SO, I am fired, have no idea how long the health insurance is going to last, nor what my next paycheck will look like.

The good news is that I contacted my previous boss, and he has informed me that he is getting in over his head with work. We parted on good terms and he is more than willing to meet me sometime in the near future to discuss contracted jobs and/or a salaried position. Also, there are many positions available in the area for network admins and high level techs. SO I may be out of a job, but I've got 1.6 years straight working, and have been at my last job for 6 momths, thus allowing me the possiblity of unemployment. And, the job market is looking up.

I am likely going to take this opportunity to take an extended vacation to visit my girlfriend Eva, and get some non-work related things sorted out/worked on while I relax there. I'll fill you all in later on the details of how all that is going, cause it is all minor stuff.

[btw]
For those of you who might not have known, I have a similiar condition, though not as severe as my sister (PoC). There are days I wake up and feel like I spent the entire night running a marathon or doing concrete work in 20 degree weather. Yesterday just happned to be one of those days. I just happened to have been fired because they refuse to accept the fact there are times when I can not operate on their schedule due to serious problems. Fine, fuck'em. They have no one in the office that can remotely do my job with the Summation DB, has no FUCKING clue what I have spent 4 months writing in perl so that will never be of use to them. Too bad to, because I had made contacts in the imaging world that *really* wanted that program. 4x1000 gone for them.

Been a while!

2006-05-09T17:14:00.000-04:00

SO, I know that I am gonna catch flak sooner or later for not posting in such periods, but hey, here you go!

It has been an interesting time over the last 3 weeks. I finally completed the purchase of www.warheads.net and all associated intellectual properties, got to deal with office politics on a grand scale, and found myself a wonderful new girlfriend.

The purchase of WarheadsSE has been in the process since November, but was delayed when a partner in the transaction up and disappeared (which we have recently discovered was because his cellphone/wallet/etc got jacked ... and all that that entails). The community surrounding the game seems to be happy with the change of hands, regardless of certain discrepancies in overall views (everyone has their detractors). I can't place the $$ amounts for legal reasons, but my wallet hurts having to cover 3/4 of the cost instead of 1/3. But, its finally in my hands, SO, on I go a programmin'.

Office politics? Yeah, MAJOR BITCH FEST, and I really don't care to get into it.

Girlfriend:
Well, who saw this one coming? Not I.
We met online through mutual friends and chatted up a storm (lol, private pun) before swapping phone numebrs and proceeding to spend *hours* of the evenings of a week talking. My rollover minutes took a hit even if I had 7pm nights.
So, after talking for a week straight on the phone for said ridiculous amounts, plus having been chatting such storms up, we lined up a date this past saturday, me meeting her near her home town for park, dinner, etc.

Eva lives near Scranton, about 2 hours north of me. So, on friday night, knowing it was an all-day date, I drove up arriving just before midnight. I manage to get a little bit of rest starting at 1:30a+. The jackass next door had given them the wrong room number the night before when he called down for a wakeup call. 6 freaking AM, in a hotel room, in a part of the state I've never been in. Needless to say at this point I am living on coffee while being nervous and catching the morning news then perusing the local paper that was slid under my door at 8am. When 9pm rolled around, I gave Eva's cell a buzz and left the message that I had come in over the night and some jackass had sent me a wakeup at 6am, and thus I was awake whenever she felt like swinging by.

10am I head over to the local Dunkin' Donuts to pick up 2 coffees (1 24 oz with cream no sugar and 1 12 oz with sugar no cream [if you know me you know which is mine]), a apple raspberry jelly donut and a boston creme (again you should know which is mine). Eva's back at the room at this point reading the newspaper I left on the desk.

When I get back we spend something like 2 hours sitting there just b.s.ing about stupid stuff, the news, me asking about the area, her GFs calling to see how its going (or if I had even shown my face [!?]), and the random call from someone in my area who didn't understand the meaning of "off limits this weekend".

So sometime between 12:30 and 1:00 we left for a park that was around a 10 minute drive out of town (although it took me like 15 cause I had no clue where I was going, nor the speed limit [didn't help we had a dude with a busted spedometer in front of us]). We arrived at some point after 1:00 and perused our way around the park, walking the littel path down by the local tributary passing all the little rustic benchs we never managed to stop and sit on. About a mile and 20 minutes later we ended up in the clearing that had a couple of trees (which I'm not keen enough to name the types of), pikced oune out and sat in its shade whilest petals of its buds occasionally flitted down in the wind.

More talking and chatting and yet more calls from Eva's GFs on how it is going (why can't they just wait for her to call them?), eventually ending up that cute couple that ladies out for a jog and the occasional old couple end up pointing and giggling at.

This post is getting way to long, so for those interested you can call me (that is if I have given you my cell phone #) and get more details :)

Ah-WEEEEE!

2006-04-24T10:51:00.000-04:00

Ok, I found this and had to shut my office door. I do suggest showing this to your geek/tech/blogger friends, but in enclosed and sound proof environments.

Title

2006-03-24T10:53:00.000-05:00

So, finally, after 4 months.

I have a title.

Database Engineer / Systems Engineer.

DBE/SE

Not bad.

And to think they wanted to label me DBA.. pfft, right.

2006-03-14T05:45:00.000-05:00

79 + 5 (that night) + 20 (previous week before arriving) + 14 (sunday) + >15 = ?

133 at.least

*gawd*

AND I HAVE 2 DAYS LEFT! (well, It got extended another 2 days.)

Time.

2006-03-11T22:48:00.000-05:00

Hours worked since 9:30 AM on 3/6/06:

79

Expected remaining hours until next *scheduled* arrival in phila:

29

Now do you understand S.C.?

OMFG I'm Tired

2006-03-09T05:12:00.000-05:00

Its 3:38AM PST.

I am in the SD office, still, since 8:45am.

Sitting here loading the 209,000 pages of documents for the project...

Go... Faster... Stupid.. Piece... Of... Shit... Program...

Live San Diego Pt1

2006-03-07T21:37:00.000-05:00

Monday:

So, I stroll into the the office spot on for my morning work session.

At about 11am, I find out my flight might get bumped to today.

Noon I find out it HAS been moved to today.

1:00 I run screaming out the door to make it home to pack and back to the train station to catch the train to the airport.

I made it. I'm here in Sand Diego after a 6 hour flight and a total of almost 9.5 hours of travel time (including sitting on my ass at the airport for 2 hours 'cause it only took me 5 minutes to get through security).

The hotel bumped my room for free. Up from a 2 Queen, to a single King "Traveler" (meaning plush for the traveling businessmen). It's nice. 24inch LCD tv, to which a pc with a poorly scrabbled together shell wrapper limits me to 1 IE instance in an AX control to some doofy program. I can't open in a new window, it doesnt support javascript enough to allow me to use google maps (GAWD YOU BASTARDS) ... I had to fidget to get Flash8 on, and QT BLOWS. But it is free.

Tuesday:

Roll over when clock goes off at 7am, realizing no one will be into the SD office until 8:30 plus, I smack the button marked "Snooze". Apparently "Snooze" means OFF in CA? And the skylight I thought would be nice enough to let light into wake me up.. is aparently covered and thus a complete farce.

I make it to the office at 9:15am PST, meaning 12:15pm EST and already have missed calls from the home office. Seriously people... jet lag + not knowing where I am going because I can't use google maps? And besides, its not even my normal showup time at the main office (9:30am, lucky me).

Server put together. .. where is my #2 Gbps PCI-X 100Mhz NIC? ... Where is my license for Win2k3 Std... and why the hell isn't it R2 std? That IS what I paid for isnt it????

Server setup and installed with valid eOpen license from other recently purchased server, using 2k3 not R2 cause they shipped the wrong Fing disks and I dont have time to deal with it. I'll get my disks, and my license, oh you wait.

Listen to that bad boy humm....Dual Xeon 3.4Ghz DP's @800Mhz FSB and 4GB of ram on a 1TB raid 5.... phew, thats a lot of heat.. room goes up 2 degrees in about 5 minutes. 5 by the hour. Still, its not bad really at 75F.

Go to install legal-shmeagal app... WTF? why wont you install? "Not accessible"? gawd, I have to hook the stupid box up to a switch to nowhere for it to access its own shares? WTF. WE! App installed. Why is it always giving me that "Always Ask" popup when i click the networked app's shortcut? WHY IS THE SHORTCUT USING IE? *makes new shortcut* That was easy, stupid app.

Server up. Software installed.

Install TS.
Install TSL.
Setup user accounts for me an fellow techs, including remote access.

Call it a day.

9.5 hours of estimated 40 hours complete.

BEER.

Plan to hit the shleven on the walk back to the hotel (about 3/4 mi, ill get my excercise). Decide I didnt want to wait, and strolled into Rite Aid since it looked like they had a decent selection.

WTF? YOU PEOPLE DONT SELL YUENLING? Bah, I'll just take Sam's Boston.

not bad. 6 for 7.50. Bit steep for what I expected, but relaitvely right for the beer.

S.C. Claims "No Excuse"

2006-03-01T13:22:00.000-05:00

Ok, so i've been slack lately because I've just not had the energy to walk over to my PC at home and fix it, tghus allowing me to get online without the annoying dleays caused by the machine thinking its 2GHz slower than it is. Not this isn't enitrely my fault, I've got one roomy whos a porn addy, and a nother whos MMORPer. Yeah, whoever dares tell me that combination doesn't mean that my attempts to reach google aren't lagged (and you know its bad when its Google that is lagging on load) will promplty be shot with my nice new rifle i bought two weeks ago, and scoped in this past weekend.

On to yesterday.

I get this IM from Autumn over at PoC, telling me "I'm supposed to tell you that you need to post". I poke and find out it was coming from S.C. so i manage to find 1 freakin minute in the middle of finding out that I have to set up one hella remote acess collaboration system in say, 5 days including delivery of hardware, setup of software, and appropriate level of ISP service with SLA 99.5%+, oh and of course the loading and pre-verifying of roughly 350GB of data into a database. NO it hasn't been pre-verified by anyone else.

Hence yesterday it was "TOO BAD IM BUSY AS HELL".

I was, I am, and likely will be for the next week. So forgive my sparsness in the mean time, and if you can't, then simply accept a rather polite shove it.

Back to busting my ass at work again, lunch break of 10 minutes is over. More phone calls and manufacturers and retailers to call to get all this up and going by next week.

Ciao

So I'm Supposed to post.

2006-02-28T17:06:00.000-05:00

TOO BAD IM BUSY AS HELL

Hilarious EULA Entry

2006-02-10T13:41:00.000-05:00

http://putfile.com/pic.php?pic=2/3821470860.gif&s=x7

Ping

2006-02-09T13:30:00.000-05:00

Ping..

How I missed all of Super Bowl XL

2006-02-06T13:48:00.000-05:00

So i get this call at 10 pm saturday night.

Its from Glenn. Why is he calling me at 10pm on a saturday night?

Roughly ~ I've this guy that wants this program, and I figure you can help. Oh, and can we manage to get a complete Dog'n'Pony by dinner time tomorrow?

Ok, so I manage to get it all up with the help of a cohort, and get it tweaked (running in Access atm, for speedy development).

6:30 pm, I am with Glenn and my cohort, JE, at said 'guy's house. We stroll out at 10:45pm. Dude loves it. Why so long? lots of little demos, quick report creation, and lots of fake data entry. Oh, and all the clauses on IP, and possible expansion...

Glenn owes me dinner...Find the only open restaraunt on Sunday, after the Super Bowl. Not so easy.

Eventually I get headed hom around 2:30 AM. Get home at 4AM, pass out around 5AM.
...

Yeah so i was about an hour late fr work this morning, but none have said a word about it...tgam.

All that worth blowing Saturday night, missing Super Bowl XL, and geting next to no sleep, and getting to work late?

Let us do some math...

24 hours.
1 product, demo state only.
1 customer.
2 coders.

result:

2 guys made $2500 in 24 hours.
More to come upon completion of the product, even more to come if it is determined to be commercially viable to the industry market.

yeah.. id say 24x1=2500/2=1250 was worth 36 hours of hell.

Its... not... Saturday?

2006-01-19T14:58:00.000-05:00

As soon as I can stop hitting myself for this, I'll expand the post...

*ok*

Well...
6:00am-
So Thursday morning I am awoken around 6am by my cat Bro pawing at my face. Apparently he wanted some attention, or the ability to lay on my ass (I don't know why but he likes to sleep there when I'm sleeping on my stomach). This pawing happens to bring me out of a rather vivid dream wherein it was Friday night. Happening Friday night. SO, when Bro wakes me, I am thoroughly convinced that it is Saturday and promptly turn my alarm of so it doesn't wake me up in an hour.

11:45am-
My cell phone rings. It's almost noon, I might as well get up.
The number is from work. Odd, rarely a call at noon on a Saturday...
Odd, my office manager NEVER works Saturdays...
*Groggily* "Hey, what's up? You aren't normally in the office on Saturdays."
*Stern Voice* "Jason, its [boss]. Its Thursday and 10 til 12."
"Oh... Shit..."
"This cannot happen again. Consider this your warning."
"I can be in by.. 1?"
"I'll see you when you get here. And if this happens again, your fired."

1:10pm-
Run to office. Avoid boss all day. Want to shoot self for being idiot.

I not only could have but would have SWORN it was Saturday.

OY.

Long Time No See...

2006-01-16T13:02:00.000-05:00

It's a new year.

It's going to involve new things.

It's no going to mean leaving old friends behind.

I know I've said it before, but I mean it this year. I will get out there and visit my old friends.

On the topic of resolutions:
I quit smoking.

That is a past tense.

Days of Holidays

2005-12-28T11:44:00.000-05:00

Yule, Christmas, Chanukah (sp?), New Years ....

Myself, I partake of Yule and Christmas. New Years too, of course :)

Christmas is more a celebration of family for me than a religious day, due to the nautre of its approach being so horrendously tainted by the commercial aspects of the season.

Yule is me and my dearest time. Sure, I give presents. Singular, meaningful, useful, lasting presents.

New Years, this year, is a celebration of the achievements of this past year and the promise of the year ahead.

This is a short entry. As a supplment: read this

Days go by...

2005-12-15T16:43:00.000-05:00

Days go by where:

I wonder who the hell really ran the network here before I did... (OY!)

I miss my family horribly because it's finally been a really good day... (grrr)

I'm lokoing forward to next week for reasons outside myself... (thankfully)

I wonder how work can be mad I came in late when I called in an hour early...(seriously?)

I hate my life... (don't we all sometimes)

I step back and realize that I'm really proud of myself for the progress I've made in the last 1.5 years... (if you only knew)

I realize that although I miss being in a relationship, I've got some wonderful female friends...

Family isn't blood... (true dat)

I just wish I was in bed... (ice sucks)

I'm grateful for the not so gentle reminders I'm alive...(CFIDs, sucky days, shockers)

I post about completely random and non-continuous things.

Backup? What backup?

2005-12-14T13:26:00.000-05:00

We apparently didn't need no stinkin' backup! (of roughly 300GB of data that was cruicial to the organization, on a Snap server that crapped out entirely)

[SNIP: Will edit this more later, back to the recovery]

Well, we've managed to locate a fairly comprehensive copy of the files, not a backup. It's also outdated. We're still missing a HUGE chunk of data though...

[SNIP: More later, back to work]

Long time, and HOLY SHIT....

2005-12-02T16:09:00.000-05:00

One, I apologize for my absence, I've been quite busy running around in circles with the new job and sorting this-that-the-other-thing out.

Thanksgiving was great, even took some of the spare from my 1st paycheck here for a spin in buying a refurb Xbox and Halo2 (cmon, Xbox and no Halo2? SACRILEGE)

So, I'm still in over my head with this company, and doing my damndest to catch up. It is no that I don't know the technical part, its catching up with the content of all their data and reports. I've never worked in this field as such and am definately baffled by all the legal jargon.

SO, I overheard that one of my coworkers may be leaving due to EOY rope jumping by the establishment. What does this mean? My workload = 2x easy. If I am unlucky, 3x. GAWD, there will be a Speakin' To if that happens, as I won't be settling for my current salary at that rate.

Needless to say that even before this it is made clear to me that the nice 40 hour weeks I've put in so far are shortly going to become much longer as say, 150M documents come in and we are forced to integrate all of that into the summarys and litigation tracking system. Here is a hint. They are shipping the HDDs (just the HDDs) on a PALETTE!

*WAH*

Delay

2005-11-07T10:48:00.000-05:00

My apologies, I will post soon.

'Tis Tuesday

2005-11-01T12:04:00.000-05:00

Well the weekend back with the fam/friends was indeed a blast, if horrendously tiring in the end (though I generally didn't feel it til Monday morning).

Friday:
Got out of work around 5:30ish and was on my way out to Lanc by 6:30ish, putting me at Doc's where we were all gonna meet up around 8:00pm. We're there long enough for me to take a piss before heading off to Underground to get some grub and drink up.

Why I let M.Butch talk me into the Surfer on Acid (contains Jager, my stomach no like Jager) I dont know...BUt I made it through another Kamikaze and 2 Lemon Drops before my stomach decided everything plus the plate of "nah, they're not hot, get the spicy ones" wings wasn't gonna stick. The good part was it left me sober by the end of the night to drive home :p

Saturday:
Woke up around 10am, nah, roll over. 11am, nah, roll over. Noon, ok, I'll find something to watch on tv since I HAVE to get up to get something liquid in my stomach.

I actually get up and get a shower round abouts 2pm so that I can go out and by the slacks I needed for the dinner w/parents to come later in the afternoon. After all, I didn't get the message I'd need to be dressed in other than jeans until around 7:15, and if you've been reading, I was on the road by then.

Left for dinner just after 4pm, to arrive at about 5. Way out of the way place called Seven Stars Inn. Drool... my prime rib was around 38oz... and after 10 hours of cooking... drool... Outside was a tad dry for my taste but the inside... drool...

After dinner was the dressing for the bar and halloween, picking up Steve and heading for M&As to car pool out.

Got to the bar around 9:45.. waited for Em til about 10:30+, plz note it was a bit on the nipply side..and I wasn't about to take my nice leather coat in there, check or not.

Blast was had, lots of just BSing with friends there (like 8 of us) and boozing. Managed to not get drunk, though How I don't know... The costume contest was a JOKE. Pre-made gag costume won.. I mean wtf.

Afterwards Steve and M.Butch joined me for a munchy at Jenny's (24h Diner of choice for cheap, decent, massive proportion greasy spoon) Grubbed and M.Butch Sobered, we took him back and I headed off to drop Steve back off.

I think I got home around 5am, BEFORE the time shift.

Sunday:
Wake up at 8, feel like crapola for about an hour, watch TV until around noon.

Then, helped Dad and bro run a pair of Cat5s up to bro's room for phone and ether with which to play Xbox Live on... (I'll have my hands on a new one soon, I swear!)

Dinner came round fast, which was a pot pie, vvg btw, and M&A joined us. Cake was had for the both of myself and Mandy, as we'd all been out of town on our birthday weekends.

Shortly after cake M&A cleared out, then myself as well seeing as I had a haul to make into Phila.

When I arrive home I was greeted by a new roommate who had not only signed but moved in over the weekend. Um, Hi.

Monday:
Groggy....
I wake up sometime (*ducks boss*...back) around 9:30 (which i know now, but was FLIPPING out about when I hadn't realized I forgot to fix my clock) and made my way into work at 10. Now, I'd love to have know that the mornign was working on PCs and paper work whilest the afternoon was all wiring.. I was wearing slacks and a white dress shirt....

Ah well, gave me a valid trip home for lunch and change of clothes into my beatass jeans (I love those jeans, what guy doesn't love his beatass jeans), and to visit Bro for a quick sec.

Note: this is the time when I find out that not only do I have the new roommate whos is now fully moved in, I have another roommate (girl, whom I havent met yet, but am looking forward hoping shes cute) that will be moving in tonight/tomorrow.

Wiring, which was NOT the concrete hell I was working with before M&A wedding, thank god. In, zip a few pre-drills, drill one hole, mount a few rings, mount a couple ziptie hangers, pull wire. Boom, in out in about 2.5-3 hours.

Get home, new roomy is not there. Soon to be new roomy is not there... ? Ah well.

Bewildered for the rest of the night. I don't know why.

Tuesday:
And here we are, I'm posting at my office, after coming in around 11:30 as I will be wiring from 4-8 (punchs and mountings for all the cable I ran yesterday).

I think I'll fix that laser printer over there..

Firday!

2005-10-28T15:43:00.000-04:00

Whoohoo.. finally end of week.

only 2 moree weeks of this job to go.

Plans:
Home tonight for bar trip with friends.

Chill with fam/friends tomorrow.

Dinner with parents.

Bar trip for bday/halloween.

Sunday: recover and return.

Super-Duper Stupor

2005-10-27T15:18:00.000-04:00

Well the good news today is that I feel much better. The bad you ask? I don't have a clue in the world WTF is going on around me. I thought I was headed for the office this morning when I get a call, "Why arent you [there] yet?". WTF, ok, go home and change clothes.

Get here, and I do mean HERE (check the time stamp) for a simple diddle of a script and a template alteration. Well, that 3 hours is like 5 now... And I'm waiting on stupid email recovery for a client who magically lost 50% of her inbox and subfolders... This is a PST, not exchange, so no easy task..

What do I have left to do today? This client's home pcs, 4 to be exact. It's not the first tiem I've been to his house late. BUT GAWD! I am so hating this start at 9, work til whenever the fuck you are finished with everything I can think of...

--
Geek note: managed to dig up my virtual cds of Diablo2/D2:LoD and burn real copies that are PLAYABLE. Also: found Half-Life, Quake 2, and Unreal Tournament GotY. Hehe.
Check out OmegaDrivers.net if you have a radeon/GeForce, they have replacement drivers that run fully compatible and at a performance gain! (my ATI Radeon 9200 went up 8 fps in UT, and I've got a crap processor..)
--

Well... I need to Look like I'm working..

Blah

2005-10-26T17:44:00.000-04:00

Well the good news is that my body doesn't feel like crap anymore, and I can actually get more than one sentence out at once now. My head is another matter. While I'm not all groggy and stupified like i was most of the day, I still can't seem to get a purpose to the day into my head and keep it running.

I want to be at home, eating a piece of the cake my roommates got me yesterday (which I didn't touch because I was feeling so crappy). Fact is I'm sitting in the office waiting on a 20GB+ backup to resotre files from a dead HDD I replaced for a client (snore at hour 2...Why is it taking this long?!?!).

I want to be getting up bright and early, going to my new job. But I'm not. Im getting up groggily at 8:30/9 and waltzing into the office for a load of server reconfigs and stupid machine maintenance for the rest of this week and god knows what for the other 2 I have remaining here.

I know there was something I was supposed to do today, but I can't recall what it was.

Maybe I'll boot up my laptop and play Diablo2 or something while I sit here bored off my ass.

BBC Brain Sex Detemination Tests

2005-10-26T12:44:00.000-04:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/

Interesting, didnt tell me much that I didn't already know, but entertaining to take.

Wheee...

2005-10-26T12:10:00.000-04:00

1) Hey, I'm 23 as of yesterday

2) It's really unfortunate I couldn't do any celebrating last night for the shit I feel like even now.
Yes, this really sucks. I was looking forward to hanging out with rommmates and friends. Ah well, for the weekend I guess :p

3) 2.5 weeks until new job starts (uhg, that long?)

4) Weekend plans:
Friday, head home, don't know what I'm gonan do, but it will be something.
Saturday, chill, dinner with parents, bar with fam/friends.
Sunday, probably recover :p

Current Mood: uhg
Current Music: you think I'm listenting to anything feeling like this?!

Some Self-indulgent Weekend Times

2005-10-22T23:17:00.000-04:00

Dinner:
Last night I took my roommates out for dinner in celebration of the new job. Applebees for some grub and a beer. It was a good bonding experience, especially for the new guy Andrew.

Katamari Damashi:
When we got home we all goofed around playing Katamari Damashi, 1. Everyone else headed for bed around 12:30, but I decided to let the wiles of KD get the best of me and started a new game for myself. Around 3am I was around half way through, though I didn't know it. At 3:30am I figured I would just finish this ONE level... Yeah.. I played 'til I beat it at 7am. Please note: this WAS my first time actually playing KD. I still have yet to go back and get all the presents, and I could definately do better in Taurus and Ursa. So I'm not COMPLETELY finished yet.

Sleeping WAY in:
So I actually went to sleep around 8:30ish. AM mind you. I know I got a phone call around 1:30pm because I remember waking up to it, just to ignore it. The house phone rang sometime after that, and I can distinctly recall hearing Holly calling me over the answering machine. I got up, but the answering machine hung up. Ah well. Anyways, I got up around 6:30 pm.

Currently:
Currently I have had myself some grub, fed Bro and the dogs, and checked the weather. I checked my email, read some news and blogs. I'm now watching Toonami and Adult Swim and making this post.

It's nice to for once be able to sit back and let everything really just flow without so many worries.

--
OH.. And I've gotten my first cross-linked comment from Autumn

Its Official!

2005-10-20T16:46:00.000-04:00

As of November 14th, 2005, Jason will be employed by Barrack, Rodos & Bacine, at a yearly salary of $50,000, in the position of Senior Perl Programmer.

WOO-HOOO! I'm now going to be making 2x as much per month! YES! Freaking YES!

*goes off to enjoy some well deserved beer*

Playing with Leaked Flock

2005-10-19T23:24:00.000-04:00

I am posting this from a leaked copy of Flock (http://www.flock.com) that is still in beta.

Aside from being a basic ripoff of FF, I suppose this (Tools- Editor) could be handy, in my opinion. Its pretty much a Blog specialized version of Firefox for reading/posting/commenting.

It supports various online services including blogger and wordpress, others I've not fiddled with yet.

Future and playing will tell. As this is a leaked copy, I dont have access to the community :p

The Lay of the Land

2005-10-19T20:50:00.000-04:00

Well, I figure I'll give an overview of the month ahead.

My boss knows about my interview on Monday with Barrack, Rodos and Whats His Name, and has requested that if I get the job, I stick around until either the end of next month, or until I have had a chance to train a replacement, whichever comes first. If I do stick around that long, I'm likely to request a fee, as it will be costing me some $1-2K for not taking the job right away.

I really want that job. REALLY WANT IT.

I have a meeting with the Senior Partner, Mr. Barrack, tomorrow morning at 11 am, supposedly the last step in the process, where I should receive an offer or a dismissal, though I hope it will not be and doubt it will be a dismissal. My thoughts it is more a 'get The Man's approval' and a determination of my worth to the company than it is a final yea or nea.

Whilest I am about tomorrow (which I have off for all of this) I have to go to my insurance agent and have them sort out the BS that is going on with that and my car. The insurance company figured it would jack my rates. This cause my bank to deny it. Cost me $33 for that shit. I'm getting a discount. On top of this, they never contacted my financier, so they think I have no insurance, which is a serious violation of the contract... What fun.

Oy.

Well, it's a night of relaxed doing nothing for me tonight, or else I'd let it all get to me and I'd be a wreck.

I've officially been spammed.

2005-10-18T10:16:00.000-04:00

Well, I made it almost a week without getting spam in my comments.

In the previous post, have yourself a look at the first two comments, which I will leave intact for the time being as a landmark of sorts :p

Interview Results: Center City

2005-10-17T19:32:00.000-04:00

Well, well, well.

Nice. There wasn't a question I couldn't answer, nor a a probe I couldn't deflect. Even managed to give their IT a few pointers while I had some spare time before the interview. Sure, they flinched at hearing my demand for $60,000 after their asking how much I currently make (roughly $25,000 at the moment). However, everyone aparently liked me because I've been invited to meet the the Senior Partner in the lawfirm this Thursday, only 2 hours after the interview was completed.

For giggles Ariel (my contact there) decided to give me a 'test script' to write. I suppose it was more for example to the others that I was indeed capable as he has witnessed. The task was simple, parse all the subdirectories in a folder, renaming all the image files that had magically been mis-named by their document managment system. Roughly 10-15 minutes of writing the code, and 1 test run and it works. Made it reusable to boot.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to meeting the Senior Partner, a Mr Steven Barrack (http://www.barrack.com). That is the last step in taking the job, and getting the salary I requested :D.

Only downturn, I have to wear shirt/slacks/tie all the time. Humm... I think I can sacrifice that for the possible $20,000 more a year, averaging $800 more per month than my other job offer (which is already concrete if this one doesn't work out the way I want it to).

Saturdays

2005-10-15T16:10:00.000-04:00

Well, It looks like this will be one of my last frequent Saturdays working, asa I will be changing jobs.

In the mean time I am sitting here performing updates, defraging the system, and fiddling with programs that have complained over the past week. You know, general maintenance BS. Due to the fact that this business operates 6 days a week 9-9 mwf and 9-5 saturday, its BUTTLOADS of fun doing their updates during regular hours, so here I sit.

I get to fiddle with Business Contact Manager in shared mode with an Exchange server... YES, its doable. NO, its far from easy.

--

Last night was fun. Me and a bud headed out to see Wallace & Gromet, as we've both seen every other W&G, it was a must-see. Movie is as expected, great, with little chunks thrown in for the adults that the kids just didn't get (and rightly so).

Afterwards it was off to the bar for a couple of drinks and some wings. Blast was had as we discused classic IT geeek stuff, women, cars, bikes, and the future of our jobs. Even bumped into a pizza shop owner taht was having a discussion with us about the state of the american stupidity, laziness, and outright over-indulgence.

Yup, we all agree americans are often too blind to their own country's greatest gift, living in it. America is one of the very few countries in the world where you can get whatever you want, if only you are willing to put the effort in. If you put the effort in and you aren't getting it, there is one of two reasons: 1) you aren't actually trying hard enough; 2) Some fool who has what you want won't give it to you for some reason. If the cause is the latter, then go try another area! It's not like we're Luxemburg or anything. I mean Come On!

I'd say I finally got a perk out of that because I can fainlly say that, whilest I may not be the single hardest working, most devoted to my goals person in this country, I have earned my place. one way or another, degree or not!

I'm debating when to tell my boss that I've got atleast 1 job offer I'll be taking. Suppose I'll do it Tuesday, after my interview in center city on Monday.

Jobs Update

2005-10-14T17:02:00.000-04:00

Update to IT Manager in Manayunk, PA:
Now stated at 40K/yr plus benefits, 40/60 split tech/code. Flexible hours.

Update to Senior Perl Programmer in Center City, Philademphia, PA:
Resume Submitted.
Interview Scheduled for Monday the 17th at 1PM.
Estimated salary 50-60K/yr plus benefits.
Wheee..

Either way Ill be happy to be making more than 10K/yr more by this tiem next month :)

Post 1.0-rc1

2005-10-14T12:50:00.000-04:00

Well.

Seems people are aggravated by the fact that Xanga requires registration for comments... SO, elsewhere I look.

THis may indeed be my final home, Or, I may get around to custom coding my blog as I have time. We'll see.