Psychotomy

forgot to add on yesterday’s post

at the weekly meeting  yesterday, they always ask for ideas.  i didn’t have anything (again; i don’t generally look for earth science things; i watch for computer and server things, since it’s kindof myy job)

at some point i made a comment about how to fix some problem, and rob says “hey!  that’s your idea!  one idea in three years!” “uh?” “you’ve been here three years and finally had an idea!” “i’ve been here four and a half years, rob” “really?”

sadly, 3 years has been the upper end of how long people think i’ve been here.

at least i’m respected and people think about what i do and that it’s done.  yeah, right.

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my office mate is a slackass. he was in today, and he’s not coming back in this week :o what a slackass. so we said goodbye (he’s one of the people i actually like). made threats to keep in touch and he swore he wouldn’t badger me with things for the office (he probably won’t, to be fair)

the sysadmin i’m good friends with is out of town at his in-laws this week, so we made vague motions and such last week. we’ve been threatening to call each other and get together outside of work, with our families and such, for years now. yeah, like we’re actually gonna ge around to that :o

i’ve been having splitting headaches for the last few days. figure it’s stress/worry over leaving this week and starting next week. and worrying about finances, even though we should be better off even having to pay like 4x for our health insurance on COBRA for the first 3 months.

packing up the office, have most of my stuff out now. the documentation i’m typing up is 17 pages now, although it’s a little haphazard and 5 pages are me describing the new database structures i specd for the redesign. i’m sure my replacement will want to dot hings their own way (i prefer doing things my way, too), but figured i’d at least provide it.

ok, by “describing” i mean “pasting in the sql table creates and putting a few lines of meaningless and blatantly obvious eplanation for every 30-50 lines of sql” but the tables are self-explanatory and self-evident. c’mon :o

they’re taking me to lunch thursday. frankly, i’d be inclined to skip it :o i don’t want to hang out with most of these people. we’ve never had much to talk about when i was here and i wasn’t usually included in lunch, but now we all wanan be pals? yeah, wtfever :p

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today was the pseudo-annual “dog and pony show” as my boss calls it. it’s where he goes and talks about how great the site is and stuff and tries to con people into giving us money for another year :o

amusing thing — i’m way more acknowledged, respected and skilled now that i’m leaving … normally i’m a blip on the radar, today i was mentioned numerous times, including a comment on the fact that i was leaving and they’re going to be hard put to replace me. OK, so that part is a sop to the guy leaving, right?

except they’re breaking my job in twain. sysadmin and programming. sysadmin they’re trying to pass off to the unix support team (which is gonna cost them a nice sum of money; 50k/yr at the rack rates, but there’ll be some fudging of numbers b/c not all of the machines are network-facing, and their manager is our manager, yadda yadda). programming, he’s talking to the science support team at HQ and looking into passing off some of hte work to them, since they want to leverage some of our content.

which means they’re looking to hire someone to do like 25-50% of what i do now. they’re callign my job 3 people. AND I’VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR FOUR AND A HALF YEARS?? and getting nothing but crap b/c everything takes so damned long?

eesh

strangely, i’m feeling remorse about leaving. not b/c i liked the job at this point, but b/c i’ve been there 4.5 years. and i’ve got my workstation all nicely set up and everything happy like that. and i’ve got some friends. but, yaknow, for the grief i’ve gotten and the pay i’m going to get … i’ll just take an extra happy pill each morning for a week or something and get over it :)

–

also got a note from the new job, i get training for like half of monday. the first half will probably be trying to figure out how to get in to the damned building without my badge so i can get my badge, then finding my office, and an hour or so looking for the bathrooms and soda machines :)

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so, the dryer’s been running real freakin’ slow. as in, a load (and not one of hte huge full loads or a load full of sweaters and sweatshirts and other sponge-mimicking materials; regular t-shirts and underwear loads here) were taking 1.5-2 hours to dry. it used to take the same 30-45 minutes as the washing machine, which was downright handy.

been measuring the tube, but i had to do it by running the tape around and then dividing by 3.14125something … in my head (yeah, so i divided by 3 and then fudged a bit :p) came out to 4.5″ pipe. great. i can take that, and unless they have like 4, 4.25, 4.5, 4.75 or something, i can get the one that looks closest to what i wanted. and i DID! 4″. of course, having pulled out the dryer so i could unhook the old hose, i found that it said on the back “use 4″ exhaust” .. convenient that :o

clambered around, vacuumed out the hookups on both sides (well, vacuumed some, but mostly just pulled stuff out). there was an inch to inch-and-a-half thick layer. all around the tube. meaning a 4″ exhaust was flowing through ~1″ of space … no wonder it took fucking forever :o

while we were out we picked up a new air filter and i swapped it out. got primer for redoing the border region in the nursery (the squares i did were all screwed up and all over the place and looked like crap) and ran it over the drywall patch in the bedroom, so we can paint that eventually

then put out the “caulk-b-gone” around the tub. no clue on that, waiting for it to finish.

and k wants a second walk it seems :/ but i’m *TIRED* dammit!

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contractors got here ~8:15 or so. got started pretty fast, things looked good.

stopped for lunch after testing the new fixtures int eh shower and making sure it all worked, figured they’d come back and finish the drain/spout and a few things, and cover back the holes.

thats when things started going bad :/ the fixtures sprung some kind drip, so they pulled the connection and redid it. leak. did it again, fixed it this time. then they realized they’d done a step out of order, so they needed to take a washer off something so they could put on the faceplate. they’d put it on real good, though. finally got it off, put on the plate, and spent half an hour trying to get the piece back on. or the new piece they pulled out instead.

then while they were drywalling and picking things up, i asked about the toilet. the toilet that’s been lifted ~1″ off the ground for the last umpteen months (since fall or so i think, maybe?) they went to go find the contract to look at it b/c they didn’t remember the problem (eh, i only remembered b/c it’s my toilet) decided it wouldn’t take long to fix it.

then they took off the toilet and realized just how wrong that might have been. after much figuring, they managed to screw through the steel plate, and started grinding out the sticky-out bits that were on the flange-ring i put in, which were what was keeping the toilet up. once they were off, they put it back together and all looks good with the world.

they tought to be done by noon. it’s gonna be 4:30, or even 5, before they get out :/ i feel bad for them, this relatively simple task turned into a total cluster.

but that’s why i’m paying them instead of screwing it all up myself ;)

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so, finally got the official letter ~1:30 this afternoon, so i printed up my letter (well, after the guy with the 100pg followed by a 250 pg print job finished) and went over to turn it in.

the manager was a bit freaked out. but i’d done the letter with a format that effectively pre-rejected counteroffers, so she couldn’t throw out something to keep me. she kept dangling hoping i’d bite, but since i’m not interested in staying, i didn’t.

as of 2oct, i’ll start at my new job :o kinda scary, honestly.

had NO idea how to go in with “i quit” and break it softly. so i kinda went in, gave her the letter and told her another offer had come up and i was pursuing that direction.

she didn’ take it well :o now i’m gonna spend my two weeks documenting everything i can, and giving them as much detail on the 3FTE they need to replace me :o

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mominlaw was here this weekend. so she bougt kiir maternity clothes. she bought blob a buttload of clothes. we shopped at cribs and gliders an’ schtuff.

but we stopped at haggar’s at the outlet mall. and we bought me slacks. polos. button-downs. belts. and today kiir and i finally found a good trenchcoat. bought a “casual sports coat” (pick up soccer ?) its apparently a suit jacket that’s not dressy enough to wear as a suit jacket.

figure i can leave it in my office and just put it on when it’s chilly, instead of always running my trench everywhere.

hopefully gonna lose weight with the walk, too. so we only bought four pairs of slacks at 40′s. hopefully i’ll drop to 38 or 36 again in a few months. figure i may actually take a different metro stop and walk a few extra blocks each day. get some workout.

but first i need an offer letter so i can resign :o

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today i was requested to re-present my “site profiling” presentation (from the webmasters group two weeks ago) to the company’s senior staff. i think i’d scared someone :o

i know that by the time i finished i had scared a few people :) i think they’ve started to note the knowledge of security i bring to the table. maybe they’ll actually do something about it now.

of cousre … see other post :o

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so, ~20 hours after i left his office …

i got a call from the contracting/staffing company. i’m the first choice. :o

they wanted me to commit immediately, so i talked to kiir. thought about it a bit. she hit up her mom for some feedback. we looked up what we could find on medical/etc (may have to pay for chiro out of pocket; but as she points out, it’s only like 70$ a visit, and if i’m walking/gym/krav, i don’t need to go more than every few months when i done gone and done something stupid)

so i called back. and said, barring any unforseen snags in the written offer, i would accept.

as of oct 2, apparently, i start a new job :o

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had the interview yesterday with lockheed (the dba position through the recruiter. that contacted me in the beginning of august :o)

didn’t really ask me all that many questions. liked my resume, asked (somewhat perfunctorily i think) about what i was doing now, looked suitably interested/impressed when i told him.

told me how the team works. told me that everyone on the team is the best at what they do but the rest of the company isn’t willing to admit that to themselves yet :) i could work with this group. told me they were redoing a bunch of “crap code” that they’d gotten from the last umpteen years as the team goes through changes. crap code … i can live with a manager who understands wtf he’s talking about :)

team’s 25-35, relatively laid back. he’s a reasonably hands-off kinda manager (yay) but understands enough that he can ask useful questions (never had that before :o)

didn’t even blink at the salary i quoted when asked. of course, lockheed is freakin’ HUGE, so they probably aren’t as worried :o felt like a “i want to meet you and talk to you before hiring you” kindof meeting. and i think it went well, although i was my usual interviewing taciturn self :/ don’t want to come off babbling, so i end up saying too little. tried to interact some though, so hopefully i came off OK (only 20% face time, rather than the team average of 50%, so my skills may carry me past my interpersonal skills)

said he plans to make his choice by monday, so here’s hoping! … then i just have to figure out how to make the 1.5hr commute NOT SUCK …

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