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Saturday, November 14, 2009

post://1716793609455492187/

I woke early this morning, a cold rainy November day. It wasn't out of preference, there's a big change to the phone system at work today. It was still very dark, cold, and I could hear the rain pouring down outside. I didn't have to go into the office, which is great, a much better way to do work on the Saturday. Besides, making important business decisions in pajamas and disheveled hair always makes me feel good.

I'm scheduled to stop by Bryans to assist with the brew today and hoping we can resolve this issue in enough time to get there somewhat early. I often miss the first stages and really want to practice so I can do it on my own. Nicole always enjoys the social time and I'm pretty sure the guys like her around as well, so Nicole and the baby are coming along as well. They're actually still in the process of getting up but based on how things are going so far, I don't expect we'll be leaving on time.

I realized the other day I hadn't written anything much about the baby. It's a completely new experience and I'm probobly set to forget the idiosyncracies soon enough, and certainly before he gets around to asking me what it was like when he was a baby. I'd like to be able to tell him, and even later on, have him see for himself. I started this blog long ago for the purpose of being able to review my own life, and remember things previously forgot, but it has evolved into stories and their lessons learned. One is much more apt to learn from example then by simple advice. I am planning on trusting my child to make the right decisions on his own, and providing him sufficient information to make an educated choice is my goal. There's quite a few things that could be misconstrued until he's old enough, it probobly won't be for a long time. Time to backup the site, now that I think of it ;)

It's been interesting, and I don't think I could do it alone. Nicole's home right now, at least until January, and I've been working regularly and even longer lately. Things should level off once the year end projects are wrapped up, it will take some time for things to ramp up for next year. That means I often get home late and exhausted. It's still great to see him smiling, he just recently started doing that at things he sees. It's a great feeling to see him excited to see me.

We haven't been doing too much out on our own but that's more of a consideration for money rather then baby. We've gone out to dinner a few times in fact and he's been great. He is normally asleep from the ride over so he just sleeps all snug in his bucket. We said we wouldn't be bucket parents, but the alternative is a screamy baby in public, and in almost all cases we take him out and bundle him in the wrap if we're going into a store. So it's taken some getting used to, but it comes naturally. You get the jiggle, you understand the coos, and if all else fails: change, feed, or burp :)

Lately at work I've been working on phone skilling, routing, and strategy inbetween day to day operations in preparation for today and among all the other things that needed to be done by today, I've been very very busy.

It's not the best time for it, but I took on some extra computer work on top of everything. At the time I set it up I had this on the horizon but was pretty sure we had a good head start on everything. I hadn't anticipated changing everything at the last minute and spending hours in meetings for managers to mull over simple changes and attempting to make them as complex as possible. All in all the complex changes were too complex to do last minute so they weren't entered afterall. It may do well to run on a simplified design first "due to technical limitations". I'm hoping they'll find it's actually much simpler then they made it out to be and will work quite well how it was originally designed.

So back to the computer work. There is a guy at work who started his own business a while back. He's got a generic "computer fixing company" website, ticketing system, and a surprising volume of business. I never went the professional route with my website, pushing traffic, embedding items to maximize my search potential. I had see site, call me. I don't think I've ever gotten a lead off it, but don't really need it, it was more of a reference for someone who met me in person. There's so much overhead in dealing with customers - questions, time, coordinating, pick up, drop off. It's hard to charge for questions, and if they're a customer I have no problem answering questions to maintain loyalty and knowing they'll go with me, but it always eventually ends up where they go to me for my knowledge and pay someone new to do their computer work. I don't do a bad job, I'm actually very thorough, which can delay a machine from being returned. I'm not going to replace a blown cpu fan without regreasing it and burning it in with a heavy 3D test for at least 24 hours.

That's what makes this situation so great - he deals with all the customers, face to face or on the phone. I may update a ticket with a necessary part number here and there but otherwise I'm just receiving, fixing, and returning. None of the headaches that he has to endure. It also helps supplement the income until Nicole heads back to work.

Labels: 2009, baby, update, work

posted @ 07:36

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Thursday, June 05, 2008

post://6948603993605328803/

I just paid $4.19 for Super using CASH. I could have paid $4.39 if I used credit. Separate cash and credit prices?? Way to go back to <1984. I was amazed, I guess they just started this tdoay and it's just weird. I understand saving $2 for 10 gallons (in my particular case) but that could ammount to 5 to 10 dollars for SUV owners, and even more for truckers.

I listen to Bubba the Love Sponge (Sirius: Howard 101) now, a lot more for the past year or so and he's just as good as Howard in many a case. They're always advocating for the truckers so I'm a bit more understanding. I just can't conceive how someone who is an owner operator could possibly be making a living - let it be known, you've at least got a break if you're paying cash for gas in Holyoke, MA... go to the Shell station by the mall.

Out of principal I paid cash. I took it out of the business. I know a lot of people are running on credit card leins right now and it's kind of scary. I am doing ok, we're cutting down on groceries, and bought our big ticket items prior to this whole crunch, so all in all we're doing ok.

I got gas at this hour because I'm headed in to work early tomorrow for a big release party - hardly what it sounds like, we're switching our phone operations so I'm going to be there bright and early in case anyone has any issues. I've been working all this week to make sure we're ok a this point and it looks like we will be but I'll be there at 5, which means waking up at 4... and I'm not really down with that, and certainly not expecting any gas stations within my 30 miles to empty radius to be open. Considering I'm still up at 10:14PM EST --- I'm probalby going to be feeling it. My plan is redbull. Claratin D and redbull.

Labels: lament, materialism, politics, work

posted @ 22:01

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Saturday, October 27, 2007

post://1127939970114621448/

Hey look at me, I'm updating!

They cut off access to Blogger at work, so there hasn't been much as far as spur of the moment updates. I've been doing the (scrolly) links, but not even much time for that anymore. I've been getting in like 7:30-8, working through lunch, and staying till at least 5 in most cases. It's getting to be a grind as of late, especially because I'm not getting the rest I ought to be getting.

I'm just not all that quick about getting to bed because I've been enjoying the time not working. Computer business is slow too - due to my complete lack of patience when I get home. I completely dropped the printing place - I gave him 2 bills for an emergency issue that came up, reminded him twice and I haven't called him and he hasn't called me. I wouldn't mind a little bit more then the current cash flow (zip, zilch, nada) but it's nice not to have the calls at weird hours when I'm already tired.

I bet if I was better about getting rest I might not be staring at Access for hours on end not getting anywhere. I've currently got at least 3 tasks that involve going through endless sets of queries since the person who created them moved to another area. He's supposed to be around for questions - but since he never returns my calls. It's a series of about 7 different processes, each with about 12 supporting queries and tables generated from other queries - it's a massive fistfuck of logic. It's not even really something I can take the source table and work off that either as there are updates all down the line that create stats that everyone expects to see in the reports -- like anyone really reads them anyway.

OK enough complaining about work -- house stuff is on a positive.
I've got almost all the house stuff taken care of. The list was small when we bought the house: new chimney, patch up the basement walls, new dishwasher, new sliding glass door, gutters, and the driveway.

Technically the driveway could stay as is - I don't care, though it may cause issues with a snow blower. Only things left to do are the sliding glass door, driveway, wire up the gararge (they disconnected it when they removed the knob & tube wiring from the house) and maybe a new coat of paint for the house (and maybe gararge too). However, since it's been the same coat of paint since the siding went on in the 50s, I think it ought to last another couple years. Aspestos cement shingles -- durable if nothing else!

All in all things are well - everyone says we're still newlyweds because it still feels like it did before we got married. Truth be told, I'm a little afraid of what'll happen when there aren't any more projects for the house - will I start making up weird shit to do? Will we go do big elaborate trips and such?

Who knows, I think I like it that way.

Labels: house, lament, work

posted @ 22:15

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