Saturday, December 15, 2007

End of the Week

Yesterday was a typical Friday closing up a very eventful week. Everything went pretty smooth. I showed up for work on time and we had our typical bi-weekly team meeting to get everybody in the team on the same page. I prefer not to discuss details of that meeting here as some of the information is considered business strategies that could be detrimental to our future projects. Gladly I'd say our meeting went well.

The rest of the day I spent trying to prioritize the couple of hundred projects I am working along with find solutions to some of the problems one of our customers complained about the day before in our meeting with them. I was happy that I found this export button that nobody really knew about in one of our tools so all I had to do was write and import function for that data to solve a large problem of having to fat finger data into our tool. The was the highlight of my day that didn't happen till the last 10 minutes of me being at work.

After getting home from work I was pretty damn tired. I needed a recharge from the whole week. My wife wanted Subway for dinner since I had a coupon for some free subs that I won from the radio station. The sub way good but Subway just doesn't put enough meat on their subs compared to Quiznos or Lennys. After dinner had went to take a nap for one hour but nobody came to wake me up for two hours but that nap was much needed. The rest of the night went as normal with no big events other than my wife cleaning out a cabinet in the kitchen.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Pay Day!

Today is Thursday and that means its payday. I'm not sure why that day psychological means some much to people but I guess it doesn't mean that much when you’re broke. Payday just means you can eat out for one day not feel guilty about it. I wonder sometimes how I made it by before with lower paying jobs.

Today started out OK even thought I got up late. I'm not really sure what time I made it to work but I made it there. I wasn't at work long before I had to leave for a dentist appointment. I maybe got through my email before it was time to leave. Yea another filling! The dentist numbed me up pretty good so I walked around most of the day with rubber lip. Having rubber lip made for an already eventful day. Drinking sucked unless I had a straw and of course eating consisted of bite size foods only on one side of mouth to ensure I didn't mess up the filling until it completely hardened.

After coming back to work I spent to next few hours in telecons and performing triage to the software project I work on. Later that day we had to go me with a contractor to get some informal customer feedback. I think I came off to them as an asshole but who cares; I come off to a lot people as an up tight asshole. I take my pill everyday to be the nice guy I use to be but sometimes Dr. Jekyll still finds his way through yawning haze of my brain to find its way to the outside. Yes I am a new person and a happily sane person when I take my meds but I sometimes forget to take them on the weekends or take them late which make me the asshole everybody sometimes sees.

My ride was your typical 45 minute to one hour ride home listening to music on my IPod and watching for cops as I mow my way threw every speed trap from Crestview to Fort Walton Beach. It was nice to get home from work at a decent hour for once and I could tell my daughter was happy daddy had come home. I'm not really sure if she understands why daddy leaves everyday or that it is just something daddy does everyday and the days he's home she gets to play with me more. I love playing with her first thing in the morning before going to work because it's just usually me an her up so she is all about daddy and wanting me to play with her.

Later tonight my wife got someone to give us a free plastic white toddler bed so we drove over to the base entrance to meet the guy so that we could pick it up. I was hoping the bed would be taken apart but it was in one piece when the guy showed up. We were able to make the bed fit in the back of my Xterra but it was a tight squeeze. You've got to love free cycle. I have acquired numerous items over the past couple weeks free just by being the first person to respond to and email offering free stuff for pick up.

I guess tonight my wife wasn't up for cooking or she just wanted something different because it was payday but we ended up ordering Hungry Howies pizza. After meeting the guy to pickup the bed she went to go pickup the pizzas while I took the bed home and unloaded it. Tonight was our daily eventful battle with my son to get him to do his homework. I compare my battles with him to like fighting small battles in war. The kid just doesn't know when to hush and would argue with a telephone pole if it could talk back. My wife practically helped with everything except actually doing the homework for him. Of course you could see him getting tired half way through the session so you know the battle is about to kick up, in other words he's about to throw a couple grenades across the wall and begin his attack. So then I counter attack which makes him hush for a few minutes but those times get shorter and shorter as the night goes on finally turning into one big whining fit.

After finally getting him to complete 30 minutes of actual work in the three and half hour time it took him to do it, my wife and I started watching Superbad but soon found this movie was completely stupid. I also had We are Marshall so we began watching that but my wife wasn't following along. I laid in the floor and did made some programming changes pertaining to the feedback I received from the contractors earlier today. Well now it's time for me to go to bed so that I can finish this week out.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Update Tuesday

Well today is Tuesday and that means it's update Tuesday for Microsoft Update. Today started out as good day. I went to bed at a decent hour and woke up refreshed. My daughter woke up before I left this morning and she was very playful with me before everybody else got up. Off to work I go.

Work was a chaotic day. Everything was go, go, go and I need that software solution now, no wait yesterday. I've been stressed out at work lately with the amount of work to do and all the new projects that I need to complete. I wish I had the time to do them all and had the motivation I use to have. While at lunch today I had some links taken out of my watch I received the other day as an award.

After work I had to drive by my mother-in-laws house to swap out a printer toner and see what's wrong with her email. I changed out the toner and looked for her computer but couldn't find it. Later I find out it's under her pillow in her bed. I guess she thinks I'm the tooth fairy.

Anyway she came over to our house later tonight and I spent the better part of two hours doing Microsoft updates but couldn't find anything wrong with Outlook Express. I think it was the keyboard input device (User error). Well tonight I really haven't done much. I spent the night updating my computer, the web server, and monitoring the home server making sure it's still backing up to the remote backup location. Right now I am trying out Carbonite and it's running for the second day and isn't a third of the way through 250GB of storage space. I ended up having to fix my wife's computer too because Yahoo messenger wasn't working. Ohh good the panic! I'm sure the world would have ended if she went another day without it. Had to uninstall Zone Alarm and everything worked. I could have sworn I had uninstalled that before but I guess I hadn't.

I didn't go swap out my truck's battery today so I had to put my truck on the charger tonight so it wouldn't die tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to make it tomorrow sometime so I can get this done.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Back to the Grind

Yesterday was a typical weekend. Everybody laid around the house. I ended up going outside after messing with server and the router for a little while. My time outside was spent collecting my thoughts, listening to my IPod, and cleaning the cars. I like cleaning the cars but never really have time to do it. It's also depressing to usually see how dirty the back seat is in my wife's car from the kids throwing toys and food everywhere. Anyway Sunday was pretty hot for being mid December. My son and I ended up grilling some burgers later that night and hanging out by the grill to talk while the burgers were cooking. My son is finally taking an interest in things I like to do and is interested in cooking. Something I like to do. He loves my beef jerky recipe.

Today is Monday and that means it's back to the grind of work. Actually work is quite fun. I spend most of my day fixing problems, lining up new work, or finding ways to do stuff faster. I am a paid DBA but mostly do programming and server maintenance. I have worked my way up from the bottom and am pretty happy where I have made it to so far. Today at work was a surprise. My manager and program manger came into my office and I begin shooting the breeze with the them as that's something we usually do. All of a sudden my program manager starts saying that the program thanks me for everything I do and have done in the past and they would like to give me a gift as appreciation. The program manager hands over a gift and I proceed to open it. I was like in aw... already but then I open up the box. It's a watch and not just any watch. An expensive looking watch with the company name on it. I didn't know what to say at first. I regularly get awards at work but have never gotten an award of this caliber. I stood up and shook both of their hands and began thanking them. This was the highlight of my day.

Later on today I had to leave early to go to a dentist appointment. I was expecting the worst as I'm not the greatest at keeping on to brushing my teeth twice a day. At one AM brushing my teeth is the last thing on my mind. The dentist repaired a cavity and scrapped all the old cement off of my teeth. I was glad to see how white my teeth were under all the cement, especially after the pain. Well after all the pain I expected to pay the normal $75 for a cavity but it was only $25 because I had met my deductible for the year. I thought well since I've met my deductible lets get my other appointment moved up to this year so I only have to pay $25 again saving myself $50.

After my dentist appointment I still had some time till 5 and hurried on over to Battery Warehouse to swap out my truck battery for a new battery since I've been having to jump my truck off first thing in the mornings. Last night I left the charger on it all night so I wouldn't have to jump it this morning. The guy at the store came out to check it and said the battery was bad. He looked at my receipt since I paid for a 60 month battery and still had 37 months left on my warranty. Of course this place didn't have a single tool so I'll have to throw my toolbox in my truck so I can go back tomorrow and swap it out.

Well now I still have a few minutes before 5 and I'm right down the road from the radio station. I figured well why not run in and pick up my tickets I won Friday night. I didn't win anything big, just some free food at Subway but anything that is free is always good.

All and all I had a pretty good day. Started up a new project at work today so I'm excited to get working on it.