Archive for category Work

Not As Far As You Think

Philadelphia…. or to be more exact… King of Prussia, PA.

Yes, there is actually a city called King of Prussia, no idea why it is called that, but there is a city called that.

Anyway, I drove here last night/this morning. I could have flown, but I like driving better when it is not too far. I love driving at night as well, no traffic or problems. Definitely not as far as I thought it was.

So after 327 miles and 9.75 in tolls, it only took 4 hours and 45 minutes to get here. Rather nice I think, no traffic!!

Such a fun ride, the only problem was a dink from Maryland who was tailing me almost the whole time. He would sit behind me and just follow me, fall back and catch up, fall back and catch up, change lanes with me, and then if someone was going faster than us, he would go follow them and stay right behind them, and then if they got off, he would slow down and get back behind me. Why not just drive what you want to drive instead of sitting behind someone else?

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I Think My Boss Hates Me

I am going to the booming metropolis of Watertown, SD this week…. it looks to be the middle of nowhere.

I sent a couple of emails to people from there who are on MySpace asking what kind of stuff there is to do, but no response yet.

This is where it is located:

and this is the plane I will be taking to fly into the local airport….

this is gonna be a LONG week….

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My Time in Mexico

Well, I have spent a week in Mexico and it was interesting to say the least.

I have discovered that immersion does work, as long as you have some sort of background, I was actually able to remember quite a bit of the Spanish I learned while in school that I normal cannot even come close to remembering, but since I was in it, it just kind of came to me which was nice, not perfect, but respectable.

My room in the hotel, was satisfactory, very small, but it did not need to be big to do it’s job, a bed, a counter along the window for a desk, a TV and a bathroom.

The bathroom was interesting, it had no tub like most hotels, but it had a shower, with a real door on it, a clear glass door at that instead of a frosted door or something else. Also, the toilet was interesting as well, the flush was attached to the wall behind it and there were 2 options, a light flush and a heavy flush. I am going to assume you can figure out the purposes of each.

Food was good, I had a decent wide variety while here, some tacos, some regular dishes, and I stuck mostly to chicken since I can be rather picky about my other meats at times, so chicken is usually the safest.

The company I was at is nice, very nice people and a comfortable environment. The one really neat thing was how they deal with lunch, anyone who works in the office versus out in the shops, gets to go to the “cantina” every day for lunch where the company provides them a lunch as part of their salary. The food was really good and the options and extra nice as well, each day was a chicken or beef option with a different type of rice and 2 kinds of soup as well. Then on the tables there are corn tortillas and bread, as well as a small salad bar with fresh cut fruit. I had Jamaican Water while there, it is made from a Jamaica flower and it similar to a fruit punch like flavor, only not so, if that makes sense.

Taxi drivers are insane, but I think that goes for anywhere in the world. The only gripe I have is that not a single taxi I was in had any seat belts in the back seat for me!

Walmart, Home Depot, McDonalds, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Burger King, Dominos all have a good strong presence in Mexico, not sure if that is good or bad though.

I watched tv most nights since I was told not to venture too far from the hotel, and I was able to catch some of “Latin American Idol” and wowsers…. the language doesn’t really matter, bad singers are bad singers no matter what the language.

There was a mall right next to the hotel, pretty typical like most in the US except for the Ferris wheel, and mini roller coaster in it, as well as a lot racing track for people to use. The only 2 major differences were the smoking inside the mall and in the food court, which is pretty non-existent in the US(at least near me) and the number of people, not teenagers, but people in general hanging out and making out with someone in the mall. To each their own I guess!

ummmmm there is probably more but I forget what….

and I did buy tequila! I have 4 bottles to share with people and 3 of them are mezcal, 2 with the WORM in it!

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Buenos Dias!

Well work is at it again, I have been sent to our neighbor to the north once already for work, and now I am being sent to our neighbor to the south! MEXICO!

So yes, I fly out this coming Monday and come home on Friday, currently I am only scheduled to work half of the day on thursday so I will end up with some free time to explore the sites and sounds of Mexico, I am sorta near Mexico City and Monterrey so I am going to be sure to have my camera with me and take lots and lots of pics… which will get added to the lots and lots and lots of pics I have from everywhere else and have not sorted yet… someday I will get around to it and it will be awesome… someday…

Any requests? Legal one’s that is….

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The Ups and Downs

well I was up and then I was down and I ended up even…. that was a fun night, 3 hours in the casino and I broke even for the night.

sweet, I broke even! and spent 3 hours drinking on the casino’s tab!

Rock on!

now the real bad news… I am not coming home right away, I have been re-directed to…. oh yeah baby… Salt Lake City! very little drinking, Mormons and polygamy, how can life get any better?!?!?

oh yeah, words to the wise to anyone visiting Vegas or other places with lots of heat in the desert…. do not leave sealed full bottles of anything in the car, especially Soda…. it is not pretty…

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The Coolest Company So Far

So I was supposed to be in Cincinnati this week, but I ended up in Beavercreek just outside of Dayton, although I saw no beavers nor any creeks so it was a tad disappointing.

However 2 highlights from this little trip.

1- I got hit on at a bar by a circus clown, she was not all dressed up, but the circus was in town, no, seriously, the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Baily Circus was in town and performing at Wright State University which was basically across the street from my hotel. It was fun and interesting but it never went past the bar. I may be freaky but I just could not go there.

2- This was the coolest company I have gotten to go visit so far with my job.  They are really small but they make a ton of money because they manufacture Night Vision Goggles. The real ones that the military actually uses. I got a tour and saw how they are manufactured, and it is pretty neat.

Then I got to test out a pair!

It is totally exactly like you see in the movies!! The green hue and everything. The room was totally dark, I mean TOTALLY dark. I could not even see my hand 1 inch in front of my face, but they worked and I could see nearly perfectly once I had them turned on. No colors except shades of green, but I could see everything right down to the contours of my tour guides face.

I SO want a pair!! they run on a single AA battery, now if I can just figure out where to scrounge up an extra $15k to pay for one set of goggles.

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The Good and The Bad

The bad first….

No hot water yesterday, at first I thought we were just out of oil cuz the tank sounded pretty empty when I was banging on it, but no, that was not it.

What it turned out being was the circulator pump was all clogged up so the water wouldn’t get hot, and also, the water heater has RUSTED OUT! So yeah, water was on the floor, not a good situation.

Also, today I went to court as a “witness” against one of the guys who broke into my house, but unfortunately the asshole who was on trial today is getting off because of a lack of evidence, no one was able to identify him, even though he was caught running from the area, covered in leaves and dirt, while sweaty and out of breath. Sometimes the court systems piss me off.

but onto the Good news…..

I have my first paycheck sitting at my desk at work! So I can pick it up when I go into the office tomorrow, and then deposit it into my ever shrinking bank account!

I had my first day of real work yesterday, it went well. I was out in Springfield at a customer site, I learned a lot about the installation process. Although I was very jealous of the computer we were working on, please pardon the geek speak that is forthcoming, Quad Dual Core 3.0 Ghz Intel Xeon Processors, 36 Gigs of RAM, with a hard drive capacity of 1.5 Terabytes of Storage space, a Terabyte is the equivalent of 1000 gigabytes, which is the equivalent of 1024 MB.  That is a crazy sick amount of everything! To put it in perspective, the normal computers people have in their homes are a a single processor that is between a 1.0 and 2.7 GHz in speed, this server had the equivalent of 16, SIXTEEN, of these in it with the quad dual core xeons. The RAM in a normal personal computer is nowadays 512 MB or 1 GB of RAM, this had 36!! and the space on the hard drives?!? That is enough to store the equivalent of 384,000 average size mp3s! And it was all rack mounted with a super cool fold away LCD screen.

Ok, all done with the geek speak.

The super duper good news now….. my water heater was under warranty!!!! YAY!!! So I do not have to buy a new one, they replace it for free, except I have to pay for the labor to have it installed, hey I can deal with that, it will end up only costing me like 300-400 for the labor instead of the 650-800 for labor and the new tank! I am definitely gonna drop the $100 for a lifetime warranty on the new water heater, how can I go wrong with that?!?

Also have an appointment to get my taxes all taken care of on Friday…. which will be great, definitely gettin back a nice chunk of change with that one!!!

Ummm… I am sure there are some other things as well… but my brain has kind of shut off  for the day…..

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Walkin in a Winter Wonderland

SNOW!!!!!

How fabulous was today’s snow? It was BEE YOU TEA FULL outside, cold but nice. The snow was dry and light and fluffy, terrible for a snowball but great to shovel!

Driving was not too bad, I dropped the roomie off at the T so he could go get his car, and then tailgated the plows on the way home, but not before going into a parking lot and doing some donuts and just plain having some fun with it all.

Still have some more shoveling to do tomorrow, but most of it is done today.

Still loving my stove, cooked a pizza in it today and it was wonderful!!

No real work for me tomorrow, some more development work at home, the trip to Springfield was called off since the other consultant is still on the west coast, his flight into Hartford was Cancelled.

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Ok, So I Really Did Start on Thursday!

I was in the office on Thursday, for real, this is not a dream!

I went in, picked out a cube, spent some time with my boss trying to figure out what phone extension I was going to get, got handed a whole bunch of training manuals for our software product to read, spent an hour and a half on an HR Welcome to the company do you have any questions conference call, and then went to the post office.

All in all, a pretty successful day in my mind.

Friday, I worked from home reading the previously mentioned manuals.

It is now Saturday morning and I am just sitting and waiting for my stove to be delivered, sometime between 11:30 and 3:30, but with my luck I figure it will be at 3:30!I can’t wait to get this thing in here and get it all set up, very little excites me like this, I will finally be able to REALLY cook in my house after almost a 4 month hiatus!

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So I Started Today…

but yet again, no not really.

Boss called me at 7:45 and told me he was busy with a customer, and my laptop and stuff had not arrived yet so there was not much of a point for me to come in yet.

So I am going to start tomorrow now, although my official start date is still 1/31.

I am getting too many breaks, I need to get on my laundry now and actually do it and finish setting up the office in the empty bedroom.

On a different note, my new stove gets delivered on Saturday, and hopefully will be installed in time for dinner Sat night. Any suggestions on the first meal?

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