Niece

Anastasia Joy was born just before 4pm this afternoon. See my facebook for pics.

Mookie the Puppy

My roommate took the dog back. My guess is the barking all night because the little guy wasn't crate trained yet was a problem, but at the same time, the decision to get the pup and the decision to give him back were a bit rushed. When I have my own place, I'll be getting a dog. Just not sure if I can start out with a puppy, they do need a lot of time and attention till they grow up.

One Week Down, Lifetime to Go

I just said that last night to my roommate, but after it left my mouth, I was abruptly awakened to the fact that that is the most likely situation. Companies aren't taking care of former employees the way people used to be when they retired. You have to be high up on the corporate pedestal to get a decent retirement package at most places, and even then, they may fire you for no other reason than to not pay retirement (TN has some really messed up employment laws). I can't count on Social Security (come on, someone make a joke). I will more than likely shift jobs every 5 to 10 years in order to maintain relevance or recover from downsizing in the computer industry due to an unfortunate pattern I'm starting to notice.

But then, I am really tired so I might not have the best perspective. Jay had some guys over last night and a few drank a bit too much and got ill. The smoke floating back into the house that could be smelled from any room may have contributed. People never stop asking me why I don't drink. It's because I've seen enough people screw themselves up because of alcohol. I feel bad for the guys, but then, they did do it to themselves; I only had a little pity on them.

Work is good. My head is about to explode with all the info I'm cramming into it, but I have to finish learning this stuff in the next couple of days, so I have a lot of reading to go.

Working

I'm starting work tomorrow for VCCH. Thank you for everyone that has been praying for me to find something quickly. I'm still waiting to hear back on a few other opportunities, but am very happy with the opportunities that I have at this company to learn about Linux, Astrisk, and several other opensource projects as well as adding perl and ruby to the set of computer languages I speak.

Latest News

I'm jobless at the moment. A lot has happened since I last updated in December. CompUSA announced it's closing around one of my last posts then and I've been racing around like crazy since. I almost got fired for taking time off to spend with my sister, but the next day the manager got word that she had to cut payroll by a lot, so she gave me the time no problem. Dana and I went skiing in West Virginia before she flew back to Ukraine for the second half of this school year (and she has singed up for a fourth school year that will continue at the end of her third year this year - please pray for her as she raises the needed funds to continue in this volunteer position). The last of the tech staff at our local CompUSA got let go Friday (me and Kendrick lasted the longest, most everyone else already quit). I have a few weeks to think things over and develop myself professionally as I look for a stable, long term job.

I'm so used to looking at everything in the short term. I was home schooled, everything went a year at a time. Then there were summers. Enter high school and the year I was there before starting college at PBA for gen ed (and the student job I held there). Then I transfered to TNU and worked there as a student as well. Now I've been at CompUSA for almost a year and a half, and I'm looking for a new job as that has all ended. I am now very focussed on finding an well established organization in a market that is not fluctuating as rapidly as many that are out there are presently.

If anyone needs computer work done or anything like that, just let me know

Working (or Not) for Yourself

I lost a freelance job this morning because the client wasn't willing to pay my travel rate. I was going to have to travel 32 minutes each way, and wanted to cover time and gas, but I gave him the 30 minutes or less price for travel. The odd part was that he just blew up instead of asking if it was negotiable. Basically what he said rather angrily into the phone was [You're gonna charge me $xx.xx just to come out? I'll find someone else.] followed by a click. This from the guy I was trying to help out because the IT group he called told him he would have to buy a server and all this setup and config (and eventually support) service just to install a program that could be run on his existing desktop computer as a local server and be served to the other computer from there. I was probably only going to be there for an hour anyways and would have saved him about a thousand dollars at least.

I enjoy helping out small business owners that can't afford full time IT staff, but some times I feel like a cat scratching at anything within reach to land on the floor right-side-up after some of the things these people do.