.:: Yolospat ::.

Always stare at a spectacle

I just got an email from my boss and I’ve never felt like such a piece of shit which my work at this company than I do now. The emails I get don’t reflect anything relating to such. The emails I get back are “good job! Your great! We love you! Thank goodness your there! You are always there and always the most helpful”!

I don’t know what to do. I love my job 99% of the time. I live and breath my job. But then when your boss changes it goes from old boss saying “I couldn’t do it without you” to new boss saying “My way or the highway, I will not accept anything less” so everything I have learned in my job I’m having to unlearn in accordance to new boss.

New boss has never been in tech support. Fort the last 5 years I’ve lived and breathed tech support. I actually planned on living out my career here. Now I’m working harder not only here but at home and when I get a huge project done to help my team it’s shot down and I get 10 canines.

I’ve never been so confused.

So we have an IRC channel here in the office that connects our support staff with the IT staff we have at different sites around the world. I got some warm fuzzies from it today

I’ve been having some really horrible sleeping problems. My sleep meds have decided to quit working on me giving me nothing left to aid in the sleeping process so after a few days of that the body starts giving into the exhaustion to where I was finding myself asleep at my desk (which is quite comfortable to sleep at btw).

Finally, I was able fall asleep and it took a full 24 hours for my health bar to regain its full strength. The bad thing about this is it’s 3:30am so there isn’t much luck going back to sleep after I’ve already woken up. I tried, didn’t work.

I did however take another fall in the bathroom. I think my shoes were still wet from being out on the back porch trying to get my dog to come back inside I landed square on my right knee. For people with Fibro, falling has to be the worst. It’s not just a fall. It’s a total body flare up so not only does my knee hurt but my body feels like its just been through the meat grinder. Ouch.

My plan is to work early and go see my new doctor at 1pm. I hope he helps. I’m really tired of this doctor hopping. Mom keeps telling me there is a doctor out there that will help me and after a year my 8 ball is saying that things are looking grim. I’ll keep trying. What else can I do at that point?

I’m looking forward to the 31 days to a better blog challenge.

With my oxygen tank in tow. There are a few things I need t pick up at Lacy’s Pharmacy. Due to past experience this oxygen being administered via nose cannula does two great things. It makes sure the body gets the oxygen it needs, and it also dries out your nose to the point of daily nose bleeds. Vaseline only goes so far. Back in 2004 I remember that my nostrils were lined in bloody scabs. I don’t want that to happen again, so I’m going to get a mask and alternate.

How am I feeling? Well, I wrote a big long email to work about the situation and everything that was going on and I heard nothing back, which only means one thing. They are planning my hopefully “temporary” replacement. I have heard back from my boss and his boss however saying to take as much time as I need to get better. That was nice. I just don’t do good sitting idle so I’m going to learn something over this next week and it’s going to be amazing. I just don’t know what it’s going to be yet. Maybe I will drive into ruby and learn rails and gems.

I’m pretty certain I can make something really neat and cool with that to come back and WOW everyone with. I’ll try at least. I usually only WOW myself. WOW.

I’m digging out my ruby books now … and spending the rest of the night in programmers heaven (best time is when everyone’s asleep, like now)

No. I didn’t get fired. I have been in the hospital for the last 4 days however with bronchitis, pneumonia and sever asthma problems due to each. I am on strict home oxygen for a straight month. I am not allowed to return to work until the 13th :: glares at doctors note :: and only THEN will it be decided if I get to return for the remainder of the month while on oxygen.

You know why all this is happening? Because some fuckhead felt like coming to work sick (I know of one of them specifically who had bronchitis and girl, you and me are going to have words because I heard at least 5 people tell you to go home because they didn’t want to get sick) because she didn’t want to lose her job. Not once did she think, oh wait, we have people in the office who are on remission from cancer, or people with auto-immune diseases like Fibromyalgia who are magnets to this shit. That’s not even the bad part. This shit put me in the hospital and she’s sure not paying my hospital bill. I’m fairly certain they will have to put someone in my place temporarily until I get back (as my boss promised if I had to ever take medical leave, which, I guess is a test now because my hands are tired. Completely) So because this bitch didn’t want to lose her job or whatever, I got what she had and I when I was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital overhearing the EMT say “Ah shit, she’s dropped below 70, upgrade this to critical, stay with me now Jenny, come on Jenny, stay with me Jenny .. can you see me … grab my hand Jenny I was remembering her selfish little words. Pffttt, I don’t want to lose job. I was hoping not to die at that point.

So with my permanent lung damage (like I need more) I’m going to have to call up my boss tomorrow and explain to him that, yes I could do the job. I’d be in right this very fucking second doing it if they would make sure that sick people did NOT FUCKING COME TO WORK. Now I have hospitals bills, I’m strapped to oxygen to keep me alive seeing this promotion slip out of my fingers so fucking fast I didn’t even get to taste victory yet. I’m sooooooooo mad. I’m soooooooooooo pisssed. I had zero choice in this. ZERO.

After the 13th, if they let me work from home I could do that but it’s hard to manage a team that you don’t even see every day. One other person’s wrong choice cost me this. I’m not about revenge, I’m not about payback, all that is bullshit. I am about bringing into prospective what people might have missed tho.

Anyway, my doctors card and me. The good news is I lost 3 pounds past my 50 lbs for the first of the year. So, thats 53 pounds in 59 days. There it is, this is almost a death sentence to me. Going to work actually MAKES me feel better so it’s going to be a long 10 days of getting cabin feather. I do have 5 portable tanks with me but just one of those portal tanks only lasts 4 hours. As for the poor me, I’m getting daily nose bleeds from a dry noise.

The only good thing about the whole experience was I got to walk talk and mingle with this harp player who comes and just plays healing music to everyone who wanted to listen. My roommates thought Jerry Springer was more interesting.

I felt better today than I have for a week and a half. I’m in the middle of changing and switching some of my medication around which has resulted in horrible side effects making me feel completely horrible. Hopefully I’m on the up-swing at this point. The next hurdle is meeting my new doctors on the 23rd of this month in which my Mother is flying over for. Now that I know I have Fibromyalgia along with Rheumatoid Arthritis I will be seeing a husband and wife team of Rheumatologists that have experience in both diseases.

I’m really disappointed in my doctor at the Fibro & Fatigue Center. I found out that he read some of my labs wrong (have I mentioned this yet? I don’t remember) and so I’m off most of the medication he had me on. Well, I’m off at least 7/8ths of the medication I was before and I’m already noticing a change and I’m already noticing that I am feeling better. Plus, the nurses at the Fibro & Fatigue center here in Atlanta have been dropping the ball left and right. My doctor wanted to see every 3-4 weeks and he’s booked solid for the next 3 weeks which means I won’t see him for at least 2.5 months which means, I’m going to be running out of medication .. and FAST. Hopefully my new doctors will work out and I can make an easy transition. Oh, and get this. Dr. C at the Fibro & Fatigue Center treats all his patients with the same plan of action so no wonder I wasn’t getting better. I’m just really disappointed in the center when at first it gave me so much hope. Maybe I was grabbing at the last rope I thought was out there, I don’t know. I just have to find what works and I know it’s going to be a frustrating battle and my patience will tested big time, well, sort of like now.

So with everything going on, having some severe medication changes, getting sick, being way over-emotional, fighting with the hubby its affected my performance at work and I only hope that they will find some sort of empathy and be patient with me too. The only thing that hasn’t gone away is the pain, so I’m still dealing with that. It’s hard for people to understand because I look well but everything under my skin, including my digestion issues and IBS is a complete mess. I just need all this to come together, and the sooner the better. Not only for me, work, but for family friends and everyone else that is involved. I’m trying my hardest to hang in there, I really am.

Went to see “Hotel for Dogs” tonight. It was one of those cheesy Disney stories, but it was pretty good. Nice and light and funny. I knew the ending as soon as it began but .. I thought it was pretty good. Good, no, maybe just cute. It was cute.

I gotta go to bed now, I’m tired.

I’m meeting with all my friends in Colorado. I’m getting calls and people are contacting me saying they want to get together. I’ve been feeling so lonely lately s this makes me so uber happy and loved. I have about 11 people meeting me at the Armadillo in Fort Collins, Colorado at 6pm so if anyone else wants to join the party, that’s where we’ll be.

I just got off the phone with SarahJean and oh it was so good to hear her voice. Thank goodness to the internet. I’ve missed everyone so much but I didn’t realize just how MUCH I’ve missed everyone until I’ve had a chance to talk to all these people just like we picked up where we left off in a way. This is the pick me up I’ve been needing and wanting. There’s a reason for everything, definitely.

In other news, there was a gas leak at work yesterday so we were all sent home to work from home. I got all cuddled in bed taking calls and working from my laptop. I got more done yesterday than I have all week. Today they had the heat up past 80 due to the doors being open all night to air out the building and it got stuck at 80 until 3/4 of the day was over and we’re all sitting there in our own sweat. Finally they fixed the temp and the rest of the day was comfortable.

With all these people I’m talking to, they are all asking about my husband and if he is coming. I wish more than anything he could, but he will eventually. It was such short notice and he couldn’t get the time off. I am telling them how wonderful he is and how lucky I am to have him. He’s my first lucky break.

Ohhhhh excitement feels good.

Right now I’m working on removing some twitter accounts that I don’t really care about, so if you see you got removed, don’t take it personally. I’m just missing a lot of tweets from people I want and need to see tweets from. My list is way too big.

I had 5 scheduled interviews today, and 4 people that actually showed up. The third guy we interviewed actually FARTED in the middle of his interview. He got really nervous after that. I was so shocked I couldn’t speak for a few minutes. I mean, who farts in an interview? Weird.

The last guy we talked to I liked a lot. Hopefully we have better luck tomorrow.

I got an iron IV this morning. I thought for sure it would make me sick but it didn’t. I actually felt pretty good today. It was one of my “good days” ..

Finally heard back from the folks at Xyrem. I’ll be calling them tomorrow to see what all I need to do to get my meds.

Sleep study is set for Sunday night. I’ll be fitted with a c-pap for the sleep apnea. Doesn’t that sound like fun. I love having devices on my face for a good nights sleep. At least I will be going OUT of Atlanta in the morning instead of IN or I’d be stuck in traffic forever.

I found the coolest thing ever today! A cane that looks just like House’s cane (you know, House MD). I really want to get that.

Ok, I’m hungry, and I need more coffee. I hate falling asleep all day long.

I’ve been so sleepy today. Not the “I’m going to sleep good night sleepy” but the “if you leave me alone for 5 minutes i will be sawing logs in no less than 5 minutes. I hope the xyrem.com stuff works.

I’m already on Provigal and it doesn’t seem to be doing much for me at all lately. Just tonight I kept falling asleep writing out this blog entry and it’s taken me all day long. I hate it. My doc wants to put m on xyrem. We’ll see. Dr. C made a surprise call to me on Friday himself. Usually if he needs to tell patients something he asks the nurses to do the phone call.

He called me 15 minutes after he received my labs. Sigh.

Mostly my triglycerides are over 500 which is stroke level. Oh great, ya know? JUST what I was needing to hear, especially since that way was one of my good days with minimal pain. When I would ask questions he said he’d talk to me about the rest of my labs on my appointment which is on the 29th. I finally made him give in enough to tell me that my labs were 3-5 times worse than when I had them 3 months ago which means non of my meds are working. Hurray! I just have something in the back of my head that it wasn’t the only bad news he wanted to give me and that’s why he keep reassuring me that I would be there on the 29th. I’ve never missed a doctor appointment, or an IV treatment appointment, or any appointment when it comes to the Fibro & Fatigue Center

Freaked me out. I’m supposed to be on bed rest and in his words he said “don’t move unless you have no choice. Um, ya, I have ADD. I don’t know how to stop from moving especially since I’m not on my ADD pills anymore. What if he has something really bad to tell me. Then I over heard him telling my nurse (Brenda) to call in tranquilizers so help me stay calm, so it’s not like the nurses weren’t there and yup, MORE pain meds that aren’t mixed with tylenol or Ibuprofen

Then he told me any dizziness I had, whether it was sitting up or If I started to feel numb at all to call 911 and to have my husband call him.

I just can’t get it out of my head that there is some thing really wrong and he’s waiting to meet me in person when he tells me. He’s NEVER called me about my labs before, what makes this time so different and why is he calling personally, when I have an appointment in a week and a half until my next appointment. I don’t know. Now THAT has got me worried.

So, doctors orders. Don’t move. I can get a lot of WoW in .. that is if I don’t keep falling asleep everywhere I go.

Sigh. I wish this were all over Most of my friends at work don’t know about this blog, but if they will know my secret usually only reserved for those closet to me.

My eyes are closing. I think I’ll sleep right where I”m sitting.

Another late night due to one of our sites being down. Three different circuits down, all at the same time. I’ve been on this conference call for hours now and I don’t expect it to be over anytime soon.

I was talking to one of my new guys I just hired and he’s sitting at home working and closing tickets. He said “years of night shift and VPN are like crack” and it’s true. The 1am conference call I had the time before last (last night) I closed about 50 tickets just waiting to join the conference call. We don’t really have “shifts” per say at work. We have our normal work day and if issues carry on throughout the night, then we sleep in and come to work late (like today). After 4 years and a handful of months, I’ve just gotten used to it.

Feeling like poop today, and tired. I’m supposed to do a sleep study to make sure I don’t have sleep apnea. Joy. I hate sleeping away from home, especially with a bunch of wires connected to my head. Maybe I’ll look like a robot.

Today is a day for family & friends. Today I’m surrounded by family and I’ve either talked or texted those closest to me wishing them a Happy Thanksgiving receiving well wishes in return.

Since my big promotion and added responsibilities, I’ve been sucked into work the past week and a half, night and day. We had a 2am conference call a few nights ago that lasted till 5am, only to turn around and have another one at 7am, then again at 11am then working till 7pm almost every night. I’m sliding into my new position of management like riding a bike. Some things are never forgotten and I’m in my prime. With my new idea’s mixed with imagination and motivation my future vision is on it’s way to being a reality more quickly than I thought. This included hiring more hands to match the work load, being pro-active on events coming down the pipe. Due to a busy week I’ve neglected email and my focus has turned to my husband and to my Mother and Grandmother visiting from Colorado.

I’ve also learned I need to exercise my time management skills and tweak it a bit to allow a healthy balance between work and home.

Mom and I went on a 4 hour road trip yesterday driving through nearly every small town between Kennesaw and Blairsville in north Georgia taking pictures and seeing more of this state that I now live in. We picked up my Grandmother who’s been visiting cousins a week ago today when we drove her up the first time.

Now that I’m finally caught up with friends blogs and email I have the rest of the evening to myself. Because of my husband and I’s insomniac ridden late night bedtimes we’ve been taking refuge in the basement so Mom and Grandma aren’t woken up by late night smoke breaks and gaming.

The pain from the Fibro is also getting worse instead of getting better so I’m seeing Dr. C on Monday. It’s getting to the point that walking a dreaded task. Not good, not good. There has to be a light at the end of the tunnel, I’m still hopeful. I’ve been issued a handicap tag by the Georgia department of Revenue to aid in the amount of walking I have to do each day. Several of my close friends have turned it into a positive experience due to my fear of being labeled like having front row tickets to do shopping for Black Friday. I will be doing my shopping online, but it was the thought that counted.

As soon as I get my pictures organized they will be uploaded soon, so be looking for a heavy picture post. Time to make more coffee and get a bowl of ice cream!

Work has been busier this weekend then it has for a long time. I’m merely “on call” which means I only get called if there is a “Priority 1″ or “Priority 2″ system outage. Mainly, one of our sites has to be completely down, or partially down. This weekend, it seemed like everything was down, especially the last 48 hours. I’ve gotten calls back to back all throughout the night up until this morning. I feel bad because my poor husband got woken up each and every time the phone rang. As for me, I’m exhausted as I’ve had little to no sleep.

The good part about all of this is I get some days off due to all of this. I have a doctors appointment Tuesday at the FFC with Dr. C anyway, so I’m going to take that day off for sure.

I’ve been lax with updating my wordpress plugin’s and such lately too so I plan on getting my site all up to date today. I’ve also finished a few afghan’s that I’ve made for friends which need a few finishing touches and hopefully I’ll get those out in the mail this week. Pictures coming soon on that.

Now for WP maintenance.

I’m so frustrated with my job. Sometimes, especially when I feel like I’m putting 150% into my job, I’m getting -50% back. Because I’m one of two people that knows how certain things work around here technology wise, I work more and spent more time on getting the problems fixed because problems don’t go away, and our department doesn’t exactly grow in size. In fact, it seems to get smaller. I’m not the only one here that feels this way.

It’s frustrating. I was asked to research out a problem today that I had already exhausted my resources on. All fingers pointed to one individual to fix the problem. I was told not to dump this problem on this individual, so I went to seek help from other individuals. They all said “Ask IndividualIAmNotSupposedToAsk” … nice. Nothing like being a ping pong ball. I think more time/effort is spent on politics then the actual issue. This has been such a problem lately. I’m so not down with drama, or the politics, I just want to do my job and make technology work. I like technology, but it’s only nice when it works, ya know? That’s my job. I fix things. Being completely frustrated with that I set that problem aside.

Then I get a call. It was one of those arrogant men who thinks all woman are secretaries if they are in IT, because they just aren’t smart enough to “actually” be in IT. I just love those types, you know, they talk to you like they are leaving a message on an answering machine. Anyway, this guy was telling me about a server of his, and why it wasn’t working. It’s a Linux box, right? He was getting the error message “Boot device not found” .. he wanted to know what to change in the BIOS because he thought it was a hard drive problem. I wanted to make sure the hard drive was getting power and he says he was positive that that CDROM was. Caught off guard, I asked him to tell me what he tried. With a snooty tone he says he threw the Windows XP Boot CD in the drive and was able to install Windows.

:: head desk ::

When I was silent (more so in shock) he told me, he has Degree’s and he knows what he’s doing.

I’m so ready to go home.

This is what I have learned about putting in the extra effort at work the last few months.

1. Your a fool for doing it.
2. Comp time is something that doesn’t exist.
3. You just got used.
4. You need to find another job.

What has this job done for my boss? It’s turned him into a liar. My boss is also a friend of mine (was?). I guess I’ve lost a lot of respect for him.

Sad.

I’ve been “boss” this week at work because my boss is on vacation. When I say “boss” I don’t mean being drill sergeant yelling at staff while holding some scary looking stick threatening to pound anyone’s face in who even hints at slacking off. I mean, make sure all work is done and bosses boss is pleased and doesn’t yell. At least too much.

The bulk of what I’m doing are the jobs and tasks I never really wanted to deal with before, because it would have taken some actual thought and I would have had to logically thought about something. I used to just “leave those” to my boss who always used to “take care of those jobs” .. well, guess who’s taking care of them now? Guess what. They aren’t so bad. In fact, they have become quite fun. Weird. Someone has to do them. They take patience sometimes. They are really fun sometimes. My appreciation for those jobs had totally changed. I’ll probably continue to do these takes after my boss gets back. I sort of feel bad for slacking on those before. Whatever. Moving on.

I’ve been saying “moving on” lately too. I would send out department emails, someone would be defensive about something, and I would reply “moving on” or “moving forward” because frankly I don’t care about excuses, I don’t care about setting the story straight about who did what and when. What I care about is did A, B, and C get done? If it did, I really don’t care how. Smile!

I think that everyone needs to be boss for a week because it’s opened my eyes up to everything my boss puts up with. I have a new appreciation for his position and I feel like I’ve held together what could have easily fallen apart. I even got kudos from the bosses boss, so stick a fork in me, I’m done!

I have been, BUSY. So busy that I’ll be writing to my advisor tomorrow to drop one of my classes. I think I’m going to drop Java, I think. I’ve been staying late at work mostly due to our lack of competent support staff. I’ve had to fix a lot of mistakes lately for people. It’s extremely frustrating. I’ve been handed this huge job of configuring and maintaining the Altiris Helpdesk, including custom automation, setting up notify rules, and building custom forms that integrate into the software and database itself. I’m not a DBA, but I feel like I’m soon becoming one.

The other night I was playing around with Ruby on Rails. It was a lot of fun. Even with all my web development experience, I never really learned about database stuff. I just knew how to set up MySQL to work with whatever web application I needed. After playing with Ruby on Rails I learned a great deal about SQL syntax and how to install, and create databases (through command line). Fun stuff. Dangerous for me however, because my idea bank really starts to expand when I learn new things. When I get to work Monday my head was exploding with all these idea’s for Altiris Helpdesk and how I was going to make it rockin’. I’ve already done some code customization work to it that was noticeable to everyone right away so that was good. Even a little encouragement and the idea’s in my head explode. That’s where I get into problems. I have to start one idea and take it all the way, then start another idea. I tend to switch what I’m doing about every 5 minutes, it even annoys me. Point is, there are some things I want to start working on now, like the custom forms but that’s not exactly the most important or demanding feature they want implemented.

So when I learned that the IT Director wanted to get the email notifications and automation running first I thought, shit. I’m going to have to document all of this. My mind works with visuals so to make these automation tools the idea’s explode but if I don’t get them down in a flow chart of some kind I get lost and I can’t keep up with my brain. So I spend a lot of today writing those logic flows out, and I spent a lot of that time being completely distracted with down systems and down networks.

I’ve been so busy dealing with work fires (you know, shit just breaks sometimes) from our sites it’s emptying my tank fast. I was on a conference call for 2 hours tonight, and on the phone with network engineers for an hour and I wasn’t done working on putting these fires out until midnight. That’s a 14 hour day today people and keep in mind that I’m a full time student. Yesterday I wasn’t done until 10 PM. Do not want fires, I want to work on these projects and get my homework done and stuff.

I’m still not feeling well.

Well, it was sort of made of win. Pepper went to the vets to get his cast off today. After taking xrays his vet decided that his little bone isn’t quite healed good enough and they put another cast back on him for the next 2 or 4 weeks. Poor little guy, I’m sure he’s forgotten he even has 4 legs.

Other than that, it was a great day at work. I’m getting a lot done, and I have some huge projects on my plate for the week which feels great. I also got a raise, and I happen to be one of the two in my department that aren’t … :: cough :: … leaving the company not by their choice soon (if you know what I mean).

So what does that mean? That means I get more money, and they think I’m a smart valuable cookie. That makes me feel good

Got Brendan a new phone today too since he put his through the wash. It’s an LG Shine (black). It’s amazing how phones really haven’t come super far, of course when they aren’t iPhones.

Finals going on today and tomorrow. I haven’t been playing WoW because of this, and because I have to pull off at least a B in these classes. I miss WoW

My job has been frustrating lately and I’ve been really whiney about it. It ranges everyday with every issue. Overtime it just becomes defeating. I talked to my boss about it yesterday and my bosses boss today. Talk about a breath of fresh air. My bosses boss is always one to vomit positiveness and he didn’t fail this time even mentioning that I’m one of the most valuable people in my department. He doesn’t usually say those things lightly.

Ultimately this isn’t what I want to be doing all my life. The IT support/tech/network field. I’m a software geek, I want to make and create.

I need to finish school first.

I did get sleep last night. Stupid sleep, I hate sleeping. Waste of time! I could get so much more done and I could learn so much more without having to depend on sleep.

I have really really awesome bosses. I’ve been lucky in that sense.

More upbeat entries later ..

So, I broke down and bought another power adapter for my Macbook Pro aka Lexi. See, Lexi goes everywhere with me. I don’t go many places. I don’t have much of a life other then work and school. When I’m not at work, you can find me in my front room office working away on homework consisting of some Java program while pulling out my hair but eventually the light bulb goes off. This meant I was unplugging my power adapter to lug it to work where I would plug it right back in. After a few months of doing this I’ve noticed a lot of wear on my power adapter. It’s just so much easier to unplug while leaving the power adapter plugged in and simply plugging into a new power adapter at work. It’s going to save my wear and tear too, and I’ll stop hitting my head on the bottom of my desk when I’m either plugging or unplugging from the power strip.

I’m trying to make my life easier, I really am.

Speaking of Mac products, I got a mighty mouse for my MBP and after a few weeks it would stop scrolling down. I was within my 30 days of purchase so I simply took it back to Bestbuy and got a new one. Then this new one did the same thing. I should have googled it the first time, but it’s a simple fix. The little roller-ball gets dirty see, so to make it clean I did this:

1. Turned mouse off so it didn’t cause havoc all over my screen.
2. Got a new blank piece of printer paper and laid it flat on my desk.
3. Turned the mighty mouse upside down and went up and down the sheet of paper with the roller ball.
4. I’m horrible at explanation, here watch this video.

Thanks little man. I just might subscribe to you.

I think I’ve known this for a long long time, but today it’s been present in every way possible. I’m ready for a career change. No no, I’m still a geek and the computer industry will always be my passion. I’ve been doing tech support since 1998 and at this point in the game, I’m completely burnt out. It’s just not what I want to be doing. My focus in IT has always been development and programming and with school I’m making the necessary steps to get to that point but more then ever I want to find an entry-level position in that field. Something to get my foot in the door, and eventually my life long dream of being a Software Engineer at Google.

So, I’m going to start looking for something. The tricky part is the time in between paychecks that might be hard, but at the same time, we just got our tax money back and we threw that into savings and paid off our credit card.

Baby steps are always hard for me. I always want every thing to happen fast but like anything big, it’s a slow process especially to work toward the end goal.

I have the next week off from school which is a nice change but I’ve been filling up my extra time with WoW which might not be the best idea.

I was going to have a BBQ this Friday with all the people from work, but I’m starting to second guess that and since I haven’t advertised it I might just forget it all together. I overheard a work friend today putting tech support down and it just put a bad taste in my mouth since he’s been a friend for years. In fact, I’m the one that trained him when he first came to the company. I guess you can’t always trust every one.

There is a classic problem I see day in and day out in my job which is not only frustrating but counter-productive in a way. Let me give you the scenario.

A service on a server goes down, thus causing several of our sites to down. We have 4 different IT guys with their hands in that server all restarting the same service that went down all in a matter of minutes. They are all thinking that this server “omg restarted itself and I didn’t do it” when it was really just another IT guy restarting the service. I have to admit, I logged on and saw all services running, then I saw them restart. I figured it out right away what exactly was happening and by looking at who was logged into terminal services confirmed my suspicion. Oy.

You know how when you disturb an ant pile, all the ants start running around in circles trying to fix and repair that damage. That’s IT here.

It’s frustrating. We have procedures in place for a reason. I wish I could do something about it.

You know what’s extremely frustrating? People who don’t even try to read directions, or do things for themselves. They just ask other people without putting any work into finding the answer.

I created a wiki here at work, for easy access to FAQ’s, procedures, bug fixes, and contacts. I have one co-worker that not only refuses to bookmark the site, but will ask me, Jen, what is the number for so and so. Jen, this site is getting timeout errors. Each and every time, with the upmost patience I direct him to the wiki site, and step by step I show him how he can find this huge database of information right at his finger tips. It never fails, 10 minutes later, the wiki is closed and he’s asking another question that seeks an answer, and ironically that answer is found on page one of the wiki. The same page that comes up each and every time he clicks on that wiki link.

Sigh.

Everyone who knows me (mostly) knows that my ultimate dream is to work at Google. Every once and a while I’ll go to their job site to see if there is anything new and/or exciting. First place I usually head to is the student section where jobs are advertised for new graduates, because one day I will be a new graduate. Google never fails to deliver.

In my visit this morning I learned they have a Google HQ in Atlanta. That is just way too cool. This is just a dream for me now, but one day I hope to accomplish it and for that to happen we would have to move. Again. I hate moving. This solves everything.

So, thank you Google.

Since I’m working the night shift for next week, and I’m assuming the next 3 weeks, I’ve come to realize a few things.

1. Everyone is in bed when I’m ready to talk and jabber. The dog knows more secrets than he should.

2. The minute I’m about to go to bed in the morning (around 6-7am), I’m bound to get a work call. It’s unenviable.

3. Night time, especially around 4am, is the best farming time in WoW.

4. I have lots of quiet time.

5. I have the next 3 days off.

6. My “day” consists of 2 different days since I’m up from around 4pm to 7am. It’s really hard to tell what day it “really” is. Wait, what’s today??

7. I really miss insomniac movie theater on VH1, or was it MTV?

8. When I’m ready to go get my oil changed, I can’t find a 24 hour oil changing facility. What do the rest of the people who work night shift do when they need to get their oil changed?

Anyway, it’s different and weird. I haven’t worked the night shift in a year or something. I forgot about the silence of it, or the oddness. I’m a night person by nature. Night time, this time, these hours, are my prime time. I can wake up so much easier, I can go to sleep so much easier, but, I can’t get anything done.

I have a new boss at work. My previous boss is going to the middle east for the next month, and my former co-worker (now, new boss) is my boss. Good things are going to happen, I just know it. I’ve already been given new projects that I am going to have a blast doing.

Lots of things will be changing, and I can only see them changing for the better. I also started my 401K plan on Monday since my company just offered it to us.

I have new found excitement about my job, this is good.

Interesting night last night … My boss asked me if I could work late to get this certain project done, because of course, it was going live the next day (I’ll never understand why everything is so last minute at my job, but it is, and it drives me crazy). So I agree to it because I actually like overtime. No no, I like the money that comes with overtime, that’s right.

So, I informed my boss, sure, I’ll work on it, but I had to run to the Hollydogs Inn and make reservations for Jonah. Brendan and I were really fighting with the fact we would have to board Jonah especially after I saw the conditions of the boarding area of the last place we put him up in when we went on our honeymoon. Anyway, Brendan found the Hollydogs Inn which isn’t too far away, and it sounded like the perfect place, right? First impression was, it is soooooooooooooooo much better then the last place, but I was expecting more. Whichever the case, Jonah will be happy in his hotel where he can play with other dogs, and I will worry less about him then if we boarded him at the vets office like before. Moving on ..

When I get home, I eat a little dinner, then I get situated, and I let my boss know I’m ready to start working on the project. He said that it should take a few hours and I should be done by 9pm.

Riiiiiiiiggghhttttt.

The project was easy, it was just time consuming and tedious. At first I couldn’t VPN into work, then I couldn’t log in via WiSSH to my computer. After a bigillion calls to different people later, I found out my boss had Marci reset everyone’s password in our team, then failed to inform us of this. So I’m already an hour late starting this project. I’m starting to stress. Then I start to relax, because I wasn’t going anywhere until it was complete.

This is why I went to bed at 3am….. :: yawn ::

I feel like I’m too tired to update, but I am anyway. Kipp is being a dear and doing one of my panels tomorrow morning. Thanks Kipp!! I owe ya! Now I only have to be at work from 8-7pm, or, if I take comp time, 10-7pm. But I’ll probably be there around 8:30, just because I have so much to do. I need to go through and evaluate new Help Desk software, and get more work done on sharepoint. I think we’re going to go to a PHP based help desk, and something open source. Scott found Zentrack, but I haven’t had a chance to play around with it any. Hopefully tomorrow, er, today.

Took Jonah and went to Mom’s tonight for dinner. She was feeling a bit down about things going on at work. She called me today and wanted to know if I could take a day off tomorrow, er, today and we could go do something. I just have too much going on to take any time off, and I felt bad about it, but she understood. I wish there was something more I could do, but I know that when things are bad at work, then work just plain sucks. This is spoken from experience of hell for the last two years. I feel like I can finally breath now that work is going good. I just wish things were the same with Mom.

Don’t you hate when you get some popcorn stuck between your teeth. You know, that outer skin from the kernal? I can’t seem to get it and now my gums are hurting where it’s lodged up between my tooth and my gums. Argh, frustrating.

Jonah was acting a little funny when I got home today, and it continued until right before I left Mom’s house. Then he slept the whole way home, and he’s been sleeping ever since. I couldn’t figure out why, except that maybe he had a tummy ache or something. Then I noticed that he chewed the cord to my cell phone charger. Chewed right through it. I wonder if he got shocked. That would make sense for his whining tonight. If he’s still acting whiney tomorrow I’m going to call the vet. There is good news tho. The pee stake is working! He goes right outside and pees right on it, in the rocks even. I’m so happy. Now if I can keep this habit up, I can save the $$ I’ve been spending on doggy diapers. No, these diapers don’t actually go ON him, it’s like a mat that goes on the floor that he can pee on. He’s doing good, I’m just crossing my fingers. I’ve also noticed he’s getting a bit shy around new people and places lately. I haven’t really socialized him that much in the last few weeks, and now since it stays lighter later I’ll start taking him to the dog park after work.

Oh yes, I have more to write about, but it will have to be in a different post. You know, like a hidden one