Today’s featured picture is of Joshua and Chamberlain.  They’re my boys, and if they’re happy, I’m happy.

That being said, I’m not happy.  When I first heard that I was on the surplus list, I figured it’d take me a week to find a new job – either inside or outside of AT&T.

Two months later, I’m starting to wonder if I can find one at all.

How does one convince a hiring manager that one is more qualified than at kid coming straight out of college with a degree in computer science?  That 30 years of experience is better than 4 years of dedicated study?  I’ve applied for a number of entry level jobs, and I’m not even sure that I’m qualified for them.

Argh.

Am trying to figure out how I can make a living by running a restaurant that only sells Mom’s recipes.  Think it can work?

Having completed two weeks since returning from Ahmic, I suppose it’s time to regale the world with what I’ve done since.

In a word: Sweat.

It’s sooooo friggin’ hot in Georgia.  It’s no wonder that this state consistently ranks at or near the bottom when it comes to education.  Everyone’s brain is fried.  I’m not exactly certain how, but I’ve managed to keep my walking streak alive (sorry, Dianne – I don’t run).  Even at 5:30 in the morning, however, it’s hot.  And in the afternoon?  My car’s thermometer was reading 101 yesterday, as I was driving.

Other than sweating, I’ve been easing back into work garbage.  “Easing” may not be the best word.  “Hitting the ground running” doesn’t really do it justice, either.  It was more like, “I was thrown out of a moving car” when I got back to work.  I’m not sure how so few people can screw up so many things in such a short amount of time, but they did.  I came up for air somewhere around last Friday.  This weekend, I’ve mainly been writing updates to older programs (per requests), although today I got side-swiped by a new offering which is supposed to roll out to the public next week.  The call center isn’t prepared to handle it, so I’ve got 4 days to get 100+ workstations configured.

Tonight marks my return to hosting a trivia game after taking a few weeks off.  I normally spend Thursday afternoons thinking up questions, but I’m just going with database leftovers tonight.  No energy (or time) to think up questions and research answers.  I’ll throw in a couple of “Current Events” offerings, but I’ve got plenty of questions in the DB that have never been used.

This weekend, I think I’ve got plans to go see something with Jenny.  A play, I think.  Wait!  I know it’s a play.  It’s a Dunwoody Community Theater play.  And I don’t know which one.  Sorry, Jen.  It’ll come to me.

Next weekend, I think Brett and I are going to hike up Stratton Bald in NC.  I hope it’s cool.  Or raining.  Or that I have lots of bourbon.

That picture up there is just one of Chamberlain and me relaxing one day last week.  It might look like it’s been photoshopped, but we’re really and truly melting.

Shout-out to Cleveland!  One more day of GOPcon.  You can survive this!

So I’m back in the ATL now.

Cy’s pain turned out to be a tweaked muscle, and it should be fine.

On Tuesday, Cy and Jamie and I took a trip to Parry Sound to sell (and buy) some books, then did a bit of souvenir shopping and picked up groceries.  Got back to the camp in time for them to sit on the dock and me to take another nap on the farmhouse porch.  Renny made BBQ for dinner, which was excellent, and we finished out the night with a game of Oh Hell – I lost.  Again.

On Wednesday, I hit the road for home.  Took the western route and crossed back into the States at Sault St. Marie, then continued on a beautiful drive down through Michigan and Ohio, stopping for the night in Lima.  Got up early yesterday and completed the trip, arriving home at around 4:30.

I’ve managed to pick up a pretty bad head/chest cold (probably got it from Jamie, who was feeling bad last weekend), and I’m currently sitting in bed wondering whether or not I’ve got the strength to go grocery shopping.  My food here consists of a loaf of bread and 15 pieces of cheese.

So yeah.  I should go shopping.

If all goes as it usually goes, my house will be bombarded by the neighbor’s fireworks for much of today and I’ll worry that it’s going to start on fire.

This year, however, I’ll be worrying from the cozy environs of Ahmic Lake, and I’ll check with Jenny tomorrow (assuming that she hasn’t called me first) to find out if I’ve got a house to go back to.

Slept in the boathouse last night (like a rock), and woke up after 7:30 this morning.  Sleeping that late – plus the nap that I got on the porch yesterday – is finally starting to give me some of my energy back, as evidenced by the 14 miles that I walked yesterday.  I don’t even like to ponder what my sleep debt is like by the time I get to each vacation.  Probably about 7 years.

Cy had to head to the hospital in Huntsville this morning.  Hopefully nothing serious, but she’s got a pain in her neck (not “T”).  Probably a pinched nerve or something.  Here’s hoping those socialist Canadian doctors can take care of her.  No doubt, she’ll have to wait 17 weeks to be seen.  At least according to my oh-so-knowledgeable-in-the-ways-of-Canadian-healthcare buddies back home.

Had a swim after my walk this morning and the water is quite brisk.  It’s supposed to be pretty hot this week, though, so that might be a really good thing.

You know it’s not a good afternoon when you find yourself googling “how to stay awake at your desk.”

I actually have a playlist that I set up years ago for just such afternoons.  I believe it was the logical extension of the cassette mix tape that I made in the 80s and called “Late Night Driving Stuff.”  Being much older and wiser when I moved into the digital age, my stay-awake-at-the-office playlist is entitled “Good Working Shiznit.” *

Unfortunately, even this vital stand-by isn’t working for me today.  My eyes just don’t want to stay open.  Probably because I didn’t get to bed until close to 11 last night (was running a trivia game on the other side of town).  I never have been a morning person.  Don’t know why I thought it’d be a good idea to teach the cats to get me up at 5:30.

Yeah, I do.  Because, as obnoxious as they are, they’re still light years ahead of an alarm clock.

12 more spams since my last post .  I can see those getting to be annoying.  Might be time to just disable comments.

Anyway, life in the great white-hot south continues.  It is brutal today.  Went outside to go to lunch and thought I’d have a heat stroke before I got to me car.  If it were possible, I’d be heading for the mountains tonight, but Jenny and her brother are coming to the house to see the cats tomorrow AND I’ve got jury duty next week, so I have to call my juror decoder-ring number sometime this weekend.

I did text my friend Brett a few days ago and suggest that we give it a shot next weekend.  During the wet trip that I mentioned in my last post, I showed him my “RavPower” charger and mentioned that I’d managed to charge my phone with it for a full week before it needed charging.  That was all Brett needed to hear.  He got home and bought one…and a USB lantern and a USB headlamp and a new USB speaker and on and on and on.  I said, “Cool.  Let’s hit the woods.  And you do realize that charging everything you own from one power source is going to kill the power source in 24 hours, right?”

Smart guy.  Really smart.  Just dumb sometimes.

A part of the trail between the Au Sable Light Station and the Log Slide at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

I got my RavPower last year in anticipation of making a long hike on the AT sometime this year.  Have pretty much decided that that won’t happen, but I think I will go back to Michigan for a week or two in the fall and get some trail miles in.  I’ve found myself almost craving the hypnotic solitude of the North Country Trail in Michigan.

How to describe how gorgeous that trail can be….I really can’t do it.  I mean, just look at the photo and them imagine that the only sounds you hear are birds, the breeze through the tops of the trees, Lake Superior crashing about 300 yards to the left, and the sound of your boots on grass and/or packed trail.  Imagine that the temperature is in the mid-60s.   You feel – literally – like this area has looked exactly like this for the last 5,000 years, and you’re walking along game trails that mound builders used.  And you see a bear off to the right.  And you poop yourself and the bear walks away.  And then you walk the 5 miles back to your car in what seems like 5 minutes because it’s just so freaking perfect.

So yeah, I’m thinking about doing that again this year and maybe doing some back-country camping instead of staying at a campground as I did last year.  Though, to be honest, it was one of the nicest campgrounds I’ve visited in quite a while.  I could live with doing that again, too.

But I should probably do some work first.

* Lots of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, some  ABBA, up-tempo BST and Billy Joel.  You know.  Good working shiznit.

Seems like as good a time to update this as any, since I’m once again sitting a work doing absolutely nothing while waiting for an upgrade to commence.  For some unknown reason, I was informed that I had to get here 6 hours early for today’s upgrade – scheduled to begin at 11:00 tonight and to run for 4 hours or so (and once again, I’ll have my own little 5-minute part to play).

Seriously.  6 freaking hours early.  And people wonder why I despise my job.

Theoretically, my boss and I will be chatting on Monday about another job opening that I spotted yesterday.  It’s the second of the two potential jobs that I mentioned a few posts back – the one that is basically systems administration, and the one that I really really want.  I know that I’m qualified.  The guy posting the job knows that I’m qualified.  My boss knows that I’m qualified.  The only question is whether or not my boss will once again block me from moving to another job, as he did last month (a move that – he knows – severely pissed me off).  When I mentioned this new job posting to him yesterday and requested that we talk about it, I basically told him that I’m at the breaking point and he’s going to lose me one way or another – either because I start working for someone else and supporting his team or because I start looking for a job with another corporation.  May 10th is coming up, after all….

Last weekend was the North American brass band championships in Cincinnati, and the contest, by and large, went pretty well.  There were the regular complaints about the venue, and there were the regular complaints about the judging (I kind of agree with those), but we had 23 bands and a couple hundred soloists show up and stayed pretty close to our schedule.  I got a serious work-out over the two days of competing by running up and down 12 flights of stairs to take as many pictures as possible.  My little pedometer told me that I cleared 5 miles each day and around 95 stories.  My feet were, not surprisingly, pretty tired by Sunday.  Got to spend some time with Amy, however.  That was nice, as was her cornet solo (“I’d Rather Have Jesus”).  She also got picked up as a ringer by the band that ended up winning the First Section, and the band that hired her to work with its cornet section a couple of weeks ago ended up taking 1st in the Championship Section – which *nobody* saw coming – so I’d have to say that she acquitted herself pretty well on the weekend.

Yard work began in earnest today with the mowing of the back yard.  A few weeks ago, I trimmed the holly in the back yard and pruned a couple of trees that were trying to grow through the side of my house, but I’m not counting that work.  The front yard is scheduled for tomorrow if the weather cooperates (and it looks like it will be another gorgeous day).  I also need to trim the front hedges pretty drastically.  I hate doing that because they look completely dead for the first month after I cut them back, but they’re encroaching on my sidewalk, so…..

Not much else to talk about.  Every day is sort of smashing into the next recently.  Get up, go to work, go home, watch some television, go to bed early.  Jenny and I nearly went to a minor league hockey game last night, but agreed – at around lunch time – that we were both too tired to do it.  We could possibly reschedule that for tomorrow.  It depends on how much sleep I can get tonight and how the lawn work goes tomorrow.

Hope everybody else is having a good spring.

TWD

How do I keep forgetting to update this?  Huh? HUH?

I even REMINDED myself to write something here yesterday – and immediately forgot to do so.  See, I had to go into the office last night for a number of trivialities – a truly bogus conference call to go over various types of alarms and how to respond to them (uh…we’ve been doing this for the better part of a year, folks.  We know what to do), mapping the layout of the call center workstations (why this had to be done last night – or any night, for that matter – is beyond me), and four separate systems updates with which I had nothing to do.  So my plan was to sit at my desk and type an entry…and I completely forgot the plan.  I ended up asking a bunch of questions that everyone knew the answers to on the alarms call, had a great time turning workstations on, writing down their host names in my little notebook, and putting together a pretty decent floor plan in an excel spreadsheet.  I even tried to pay attention for about 5 minutes during the first systems call; but, as I usually do when I’m on a call that doesn’t involve me, I lost interest and eventually just left at around midnight.

YesterDAY at work wasn’t much more exciting than last night was.  I finally got my laptop reimaged yesterday afternoon and spent much of the day reinstalling programs on it – many of them not approved by the corporate software Nazis (things like Office 2013, Visual Studio 2012, and various other apps that I use on a daily basis).

Today was more of the same.  Installed a few more programs that I need, helped a technician who was having problems during an install at a customer’s house, helped the IT guy (who’s job I want) set up some command center workstations, paid some bills, wrote some code, drank some coffee, and left.

Then the fun began – or at least a little fun began.  Today was bonus day – that glorious one day a year when we get our obscenely-large bonus check.  Traditionally, I take the opportunity to pay off a credit card or a car – or make some other large and relatively responsiblee payment; and I also buy myself a toy that I otherwise wouldn’t.  Past toys have included a new refrigerator, a camera upgrade, a nice lens – one year I put a down payment on new windows; but this year I’m still waffling on whether or not I’m going to get a new car, so I didn’t really want to spend a great deal on my toy.  True, I’ve had my eye on the Canon D1x since I rented it several times last season – and I had indeed considered making it the 2013 bonus toy – but after much thought, I decided that I’ll just rent it a few more times this year rather than dropping $3000 on it.  I’d dearly love to have one of the things at my beck and call, but I’d also dearly love to be debt free and/or behind the wheel of a Subaru Outback (maybe I’ll talk about my car research in tomorrow’s post); so in the end I went with a much cheaper toy, but one that has also been catching my eye for the last couple of years: a GoPro sports camera.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that there is absolutely no way to consider this purchase to be anything other than a big boy’s toy.  It is highly unlikely that I’m going to be shooting any footage for National Geographic, Alpine Ski commercials, or the Survivorman television series – although the little camera that I got for myself is indeed capable of doing any of those things (as you’ll see if you go to the link I provided).  No, this is strictly for the type of filming that I’ve wanted to do for years, but the hardware to do it was always ridiculously expensive and/or crappy.  The GoPro Hero3 that I bought shoots high-definition video (or 12MP stills); is waterproof, shockproof, crushproof, and coldproof; weighs in at about 2 ounces; and can be mounted on virtually anything – a bicycle, a shoe, my wrist, chest or head, a car, a roller blade….or a tripod.  My camping buddy Brett and I have been experimenting with hiking videos since about 2000, and I now have the camera that will let me do some of those sequences that we’ve never been able to do.

First up, however, I’m going to see if I can do a time-lapse film of the trip from Atlanta to Chicago.  It’ll be a fun way for me to get used to the camera, and I do love time-lapse stuff.

So roll your eyes all you want to.  It’s my toy.

TWD

Yeah.  So I make it through two whole days of me “post a day” month before forgetting to update this stupid thing.  I guess that doesn’t portend great things for the rest of the month.

I actually have an excuse.  Not a good one, but an excuse just the same: I was being productive yesterday.

Pretty much all day, even.  As a result of that, I have a freshly-shampooed rug in the living room, lots and lots of clean laundry, a vacuumed bedroom floor, enough groceries to last a week or so, and my legs have carried me at least 5.5 miles further than they otherwise would have.

Granted, I still have a fallen flag pole in my front lawn and there’s still a tree attacking the side of my chimney, but there will be time to deal with those things, right?

Work today was certainly nothing to write about.  I’m still without the services of my laptop – this in spite of the fact that I called the helpless desk this morning and reminded them that I opened a ticket to have it reimaged on Friday.  They assured me that somebody would call me within 2 hours.  That was about 8 hours ago.  So I installed some development tools on the loaner workstation that I’m using, tweaked some code, and sat in on a team meeting wherein our upcoming schedule change was discussed while not being discussed.  By that, I mean that the incredibly managerial management staff decided to let us figure out how to provide 24/7 coverage.

We did this last August.  I’ve been waiting to pull the trigger since then.  Now that they’ve decided that we simply MUST have this round-the-clock coverage, it has been decided to think about it some more.  And in the meantime, the moronic “on call” schedule will continue.  Don’t know if I’ve talked about our “on call” schedule – which, to me, has always meant,  “When I am on call, you may call me if something goes wrong and I will try fix it.”  In THIS group, “on call” means, “I’ll check my email for any signs of trouble 24 hours a day for a week.”

Needless to say, when I’m on call, the email doesn’t get checked. If there’s a problem, somebody can call me – and I’ll try to take care of it at that time.  If the “on call” schedule is designed to provide 24/7 coverage, well…here’s an idea:  IMPLEMENT A 24/7 SCHEDULE!

Needless to say, I’ve been in a bad mood all day.  That may be due in part to the fact that Mom died on this day three years ago.  Yes, life has continued on.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t miss her and wish that I could talk to her about this cluster that is my job.

Eh bien.  As Ahab said to Starbuck, “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.  Another day it will be.”

TWD