Before I left for Portland about 3.5 years ago, I went to visit my mom in Jackson, MS. While I was going through my old stuff I came across my old pay stubs, which I used to save. I found my very first one from my first job and snapped a picture of it.
A few weeks back I was going through pictures on my phone and noticed the date. I made a note to say something about it on this day. 20 years, y’all!
It’s been a fairly uneventful month for me. I did start a new podcast – What We Make: A Terminator Podcast. It was originally going to be an introcast on The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Since we were planning on discussing pretty much the entire Terminator universe, we decided to make it a general Terminator podcast.
I’m a lot less optimistic about work improving than I was before. I spoke to someone in the same position as me earlier, so I’m not the only one who feels the way I do.
Fitness is going well. I got my measurements today and I’m down to 11% body fat. My trainer told me it would be really hard to get lower than that, but I’m going to try. I got a Fitbit Charge HR yesterday and it’s pretty cool to monitor my heart rate. I don’t like wearing anything around my wrist, but this device hasn’t been a problem for me.
I’m so busy I haven’t had much time for video games, TV, or movies. That should change this coming week. I’m looking forward to going to Raleigh in April and Mississippi in June.
Until next time.
I haven’t really done much since I got back from Hawaii. It’s been nice to be live a lazy and boring life.
A couple of weeks after I got back from Hawaii, I came home to find that Reese wasn’t his normal energetic self. After a couple of trips to the emergency vet and a visit to the doctor that performed his surgery back in March (she works at a different place now), we figured that it was a return of his back problems, which will be a lifelong problem. Although I was prepared to take him in for surgery again, it looks like bed rest has help greatly. I started taking him on increasingly longer walks each week as the doctor instructed, but this week he started limping a little bit. I started shortening his walks and he’s doing better. He seems like his normal self most of the time.
I entered a weight loss competition at my gym and it started right before I left for Hawaii. I used my 4 complimentary personal training sessions to learn a new workout routine. Even though I had been working out, I was still very much out of shape. My old workout wasn’t cutting it. My new workout was a “basic” workout, but it was very tough. My trainer is honest and told me beforehand it wouldn’t be easy. Over the next 4-5 weeks, I saw made some good progress, but it was getting too easy and I wasn’t loosing weight anymore. I paid for 8 more sessions and I’m learning a more long-term workout routine. It’s much much harder than what I was doing before. Also, I’ve been eating better. I’ve done pretty well with sticking to my food plan over the past couple of weeks. So far, I’ve lost about 17 lbs. I’m in 8th place in the weight loss competition. At this point, I don’t really care about the competition anymore. I just want to be healthier.
I’ve been trying to play video games as much as possible. There are way too many games and not enough time to play them. I’ve also been catching up on a lot of movies that missed. Everyone should go see Birdman.
I went to “An Evening with Patrick Rothfuss” here in Portland about a month ago. The Doubleclicks opened for him. Most of it was a repeat of what I saw at P.A.X., but it was still fun. I got an autographed copy of his new book. I was too tired to stand in a long line to get a personalized autograph. Maybe next time.
Work is the main thing that’s bothering me these days. I’m just very bored and frustrated. I’ve talked to the people that I need to talk to, but no one seems to want to change anything except me. Hopefully, things will turn around soon.
That’s it for now. I have to get a few things ready for Thanksgiving tomorrow.
This past Sunday I had a lot of fun playing in a charity kickball tournament to benefit homeless youth. My company had a team in the tournament and we were called the One Kick Wonders.
The day started off with a round robin tournament. We played terribly in our first couple of games and were obliterated by both teams. I don’t think we ever got anybody on base.We had never practiced together. Many of us had never met each other before. We were playing agaist people who play in kickball leagues. After our 2nd game, we had a bit of a break and we spent that time practicing and strategizing. We were much better after that. We lost the next game by only one run and that was mostly because the umpire didn’t do a good job of keeping track of outs. The captain of the other team even told us that we got screwed. After that we were in kind of a loser’s bracket. We won every game we had after that. We ended up in 3rd place overall out of 15 teams. Who says nerds can’t do sports?
It’s was fun being athletic again even though I’m sore as hell 2 days later. This was the first time I’ve been in any kind of athletic competition since I was in junior high. I’m not counting bowling because bowling isn’t really a sport. Kickball is more of a sport than bowling :). Anyway, now I want to join a league around here. I think I would enjoy kickball, volleyball, or softball. It was cool that we turned things around as a team and came in 3rd place. And it was all for a great cause. I hope we do this again next year.
I’ve noticed behaviors and opinions in other programmers that I’ve gone to school with, worked it, or come across in other various ways. These behaviors make me feel like I’m a shitty programmer. I’ve listed a few.
I know I’m not a shitty programmer. I always get great employee evaluations and I’ve been employed for all except 6 weeks since I got my first real job after grad school 8 years ago. I know that many in my profession and other professions feel like others know way more than them. Sometimes I wonder if people think less of me because of the reasons I listed above. It’s probably all in my head.
Earlier in the month, we had about 4 days of snow. It was the most snow I’ve seen since I moved to Portland. This coincided with my assignment ended at work. I ended up getting a week off from work unexpectedly and started a new assignment the following week. The new assignment is going well so far. I really like the team.
Podcasting has been going well. It’s taking up a lot of my time, but it’s a lot of fun
I didn’t get a chance to take the swimming class I was supposed to start in January that I had signed up for because I was working late. I signed up for another class that started in Feb. I’m enjoying it. I might not be good at all the kicks and whatnot, but at least I’m comfortable in the water. I need to work on floating on and swimming on my back.
I’m glad work isn’t as crazy as it was in January. Things almost feel normal again around here.
With 2012 being such a spectacular and life-changing year, there was no way that 2013 could be just as good, right? While that turned out to be true, 2013 was still a fantastic year.
I lost my job, which caused me to lose the house I was a few days away from closing on. However, I landed a new job about 6 weeks later. I still haven’t had any desire to start looking for another house again. One of these days…
I think I did more traveling this year than any previous year. I went to Las Vegas, Canada, Reno, Tahoe, San Francisco, Seattle, and New Orleans. I had a great time on each trip.
I got to spend time with old friends this year and make new ones. The 2-week visit from my good friend John and our trip to Canada was one of the highlights of the year. I’ve become involved in some local groups, so I’m even more socially active.
I’m looking forward to 2014. I think it’ll be even better than this year. I have some things in the works and I hope there will be some good surprises.
I started my new job last week. It wasn’t the best start I’ve had, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I had first week difficulties.
I had to go to one of the client’s campuses on Monday to pick up my badge and then I had to report to work at another campus in a different part of town. It turns out the address I was given to both places took me to the wrong buildings on those campuses. I reported to work almost 30 minutes late. When I got to the front door, my badge didn’t work. By the time security got there and I found the desk of my manager, I was 45 minutes late. He was in a meeting though. Someone on my team told me they would let him know when he got there. When I finally got to meet him, he didn’t care that I was late and showed me a place where I could get settled in. Since I am a contingent worker for the client, I had an appointment set up to get a laptop to use. My appointment wasn’t until Wednesday morning, so my manager told me to come back then. Basically, I had another 2 days off.
On Wednesday, I got my laptop. I went to my desk and tried to log in, but my password wouldn’t work. I called in to have it reset, but they had to send it to my manager since I haven’t logged in yet. My manager was nowhere to be found. After lunch I found out that he was in meetings all day. I decided to go home and read since I wasn’t sure I would get to speak to him that day.
On Thursday, I saw my manager early, but he had lost my password. I had my password reset again and was finally able to get on the network. My manager told me a few subjects that I needed to get ramped up on. I spent time getting my development environment set up and did some studying. Apparently, there were a lot of meetings that week. I hardly saw my teammates. On Friday I did more studying. I went to lunch at 11:45 and missed a message from someone who wanted to speak to me about what I would be working on. He was away from his desk the rest of the day. Things are looking up though. I still don’t have access to everything, which a normal first day/week problem I expect. At least I have an idea of where I’m going.
I’m glad to be back at work even though I didn’t get to do much. At least I wasn’t forced to sit around when I couldn’t do anything. Hopefully, next week will be smoother and I can get some real work done.
I have a new job! I’ll be working for Allion USA Engineering Services. They are a validation and software development company. The software development part is a lot like what I came from at Tactel, so I was very interested in working for them.
I first went in to speak to them in their office a month or so ago. They were interested, but had to find a place to put me with a client. While I was there I told them about my friend and former co-worker Alston, a QA engineer who was laid off from Tactel at the same time as me. They hired him a couple of weeks later.
For the past couple of weeks, I had a feeling they would find something for me soon. I felt good about some of the client interviews and was waiting to hear back. I felt a little nervous about going on my trip to Reno, but I figured I could handle any requests from there. On Wednesday, I got an email asking if I could interview a few hours later. I did the interview late that afternoon while I was a hotel room in Reno waiting for John to get back. I was pretty sure I nailed it because the interviewer seemed very pleased with everything I was saying. On late Friday afternoon, I received an offer from Allion.
Although technically today was my start date, all I did was fill out paperwork and watch a training video. I won’t start for real until Monday. I’m very excited to be getting back to work. Now I just have to get back into a normal sleep schedule.
At the end of the week before last, my friend John texted me to say that he was going to be in Reno, NV for 2 weeks and it would be cool if I could come down for a few days. I went to Expedia and saw that it would cost only $196 for round trip tickets. I usually don’t go on trips on such short notice (4 days), but I didn’t have a job and it wasn’t expensive, so I figured I would go. My former co-worker and Alston and I had said that we wanted take a quick trip just to take a break from job hunting, but we never got around to planning anything. He was hired by a company that I referred him to and I had a feeling that something would be happening for me any day, so there didn’t seem like a need for a trip anymore. I figured that if I had any requests for phone interviews while I was gone, I could do them in the hotel room.
John was busy during the day, even on Saturday, so we could only hang out at nights. That gave me a chance to shop and explore.
Tuesday – I arrived in Reno around midnight via San Francisco. I went straight to bed.
Wednesday – I did some shopping during the say. I think all I bought was a card game and some books. I got a request for a phone interview on very short notice. I nailed it. I decided that instead of leaving Friday as originally planned, I would leave Sunday so that John and I could drive to San Francisco Saturday. That night we went to a casino and ate dinner there. Afterward, we gambled some we went home.
Thursday – I think I did more driving around and shopping during the day. I bought a hoodie because I left my jacket in Portland and I knew we would be outside that night. That night we drove to Lake Tahoe, ate dinner, and took in some of the scenery. John wanted to get some pictures of the sunset.
Friday – I went out, bought another book, and bought an auxiliary cable for the rental car we’d been using (actually, it was a minivan because they didn’t have anything else when I arrived Tuesday night). A little after 4 I got word that I had gotten the job that I interviewed for on Wednesday. I was hoping I would find out something before 5, so I wouldn’t spend all weekend wondering about it. We celebrated with drinks that night.
Saturday – I bought some presents for other people this time. John and I drove to San Francisco. We got there so late we didn’t have time to do much. We hung out in the Castro all night. We got pretty drunk.
Sunday – John wanted to see trees so we drove to Muir Woods. We got to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge on the way there. The woods were fun. We go a lot of exercise walking along the trail. After that we drove back to Reno because I had to catch a flight back. I made it back to Portland via Seattle a little before midnight.
I had a great time. I think that was the longest I’ve been away from Portland since I moved here. It was great to get away for a little while and it’s always fun to hang out with John. I think I’ll be seeing him again in November.
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