Tag Archives: weather

Red Meat

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I ate a steak tonight! First red meat I’ve had since January – since “the incident,” to be more precise. It’s probably an abundance of caution bordering on paranoia, but I’ve limited myself to fish since then (with chicken once or twice). Made some peas, carrots, and mushrooms to go with the steak. Everything turned out pretty good! Back to fish now.

The temperature today plunged back down to the low 50s. It had been in the 80s for the last few days, so it really felt a bit chilly this morning – I had the windows in the office open for a while (until it started to rain), but I eventually turned on the heat for a while. Strange, because I’d just switched from heat to air conditioning on Saturday.

I did manage to get some decent work done today – mind still wandered a bit, but I generally stayed in control of it. I also put in an extra hour just to be sure. Also played around with my Webcam quite a bit, and figured out how to drop “exotic” backgrounds into my video meetings – so instead of just me in my office, people can now see me in front of Lake Ahmic or the NC mountains or in a snow storm on the shore of Lake Huron. That was kinda fun.

Planning to hit the sack early tonight. Might as well take advantage of the cooler weather and get 8-9 hours of (hopefully) deep sleep. Nothing else to do in this “shelter in place” bit anyway. I could go for a walk, I guess, but I got nearly 6 miles in this morning, and I don’t want to push my feet any harder than that.

Cold Snap

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I woke up early this morning, and quickly discovered – on my way to the latrine – that it had gotten markedly colder than it was yesterday. The temperature itself wasn’t terrible, having only dropped a few degrees into the mid-twenties, but the wind was back with a vengeance. Not sure what the wind chill actually is (I used to have a chart for that), but I’ll just say that it has been COLD all day.

That being the case, I’ve spent most of the day inside the cabin, reading, snoozing, and listening to podcasts. I did bundle up and take a walk this afternoon – explored some of the Duncan Bay side of the point, and got in a bit more than 2 miles of exercise. Was forced to wear a gaiter than Cy gave me several years ago or my face would have frozen off; and I had on a tee, flannel shirt, windbreaker, gloves, and flannel-lined pants to keep the rest of me warm.

Today was pasta day at the old cabin. Made some ravioli on the wood stove for brunch and had some dehydrated spaghetti and meat sauce about an hour ago. Both were pretty good, but I’ll give the nod to the spaghetti. Mountain House makes some good dehydrated food.

It has also been snowing off-and-on for most of the day, although I got a couple hours of sunny clear skies during and just after my walk. No accumulation to speak of, but the sidewalk that I so carefully shoveled could probably use another scraping. That won’t happen today, as it’s already dark.

For some reason, the picture that I keep trying to attach to this post (a shot of my cabin kitchen) won’t upload, and my email doesn’t seem to be updating, either. That being the case, this post might not publish – but I’m going to click the “Publish” button now anyway.

That Was A Short Spring

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I mowed my lawns three days ago.  It was a beautiful sunny Sunday, with temperatures in the 70s and a wonderful little breeze keeping everything nice.  Monday, it rained.  Tuesday, it rained and began to get a bit chilly.  Today had no rain, but it’s back in the low 40s with 20+ MPH winds, and it’s freaking cold!  This winter is never going to end.

Before I continue, I must wish Dad and his bride a happy 7th (?) anniversary.  I wasn’t sure if this was the right day or not, but I had a picture from their wedding show up on my Facebook feed this morning and then saw another one posted by Dianne, so I guess it is!  Sorry, Dad.  You know I’m not really big on remember dates.

The GBB is plugging along, getting ready for the championships in a few weeks.  Hard to believe that we’re already up against it.  I’m not overly excited about the contest this year.  I don’t think we’re all that great, don’t particularly like the music, and don’t have the vacation time that I used to have.  Burning two days off to drive up to Fort Wayne and back doesn’t fill me with excitement, considering that I’ll probably want those two days back in the fall when I’ll – hopefully – take a decent break from work.  I’m planning on spending a week or 10 days in Canada in July, which is nice.  Truth be told, though, I’m really looking forward to what has become a tradition of heading to Michigan sometime in October.  Hoping I’ll have enough vacation time built up to spend a week or two there.

I broke down and bought two Amazon Echo Dots a couple of weeks ago.  They were on sale for $30 each, and I figured it’d be nice to be able to turn my lights on and off with my voice rather than diddling around with my phone while I lie in bed.  I was right.  It’s very nice.  It’s also nice to be able to ask “Alexa” to play a podcast (or a list of them), or to play any of a number of calming noises (ocean, mountain brook, wind in the trees, etc.) or to just roll a little hypnosis at me to help me sleep.  I’ve also gotten into the habit of asking the thing for weather updates or a morning news brief, or to play the occasional game of Jeopardy.

The Dots came on the heels of me finally getting around to hooking up the Ring spotlights that I got for Christmas from the X-Company.  This is also a fun li’l toy for me.  It’s a motion detector with spotlights and a camera over my garage, which alerts me with indoor chimes (also on my phone) whenever it detects anything large in my driveway.  The large thing, as it turns out, is usually me – either leaving for work or coming home from work – and the cats have quickly figured out that, when the chimes sound in the evening, they’re about to get some food.  Other than being woken up by cats, there isn’t much better in life than coming into my driveway and seeing a little feline face (or two) peeking through the front windows at me.  I’m impressed enough with the spotlight that I may actually spring for a Ring doorbell to go with it.  I’ve got to admit that it’s nice to be able to keep an eye on my place when I’m not here.  There is the sporadic annoyance – like during a very windy day a week or two ago when I kept getting alerts because trees were throwing moving shadows across the driveway.  And I’ve been startled a couple of times on rainy nights when the glare of headlights going past on the street set off the motion alert; but through tweaking and modifying the motion zones, I’ve got it down to basically only letting me know when there’s an actual person (or car) in my driveway.

Also good for knowing when packages are delivered.

I have not yet figured out how to network the Echo Dots with the Ring.  For instance, if motion is detected after dark, turn on the lights downstairs.  But I assume that I will eventually.  For now, I’m just exploring the new gadgets and having some fun.

Speaking of fun, I’ve taken advantage of my new position at work to start doing a little bit of coding on the side again.  Nothing major, and I’m pretty much restricting myself to powershell scripts, but at least I can spend an hour trying to automate things without having to worry about my ticket closing numbers dropping.  In the end, the scripts that I write will end up helping my team to take care of things in a few seconds that might take other teams a few minutes.  Or maybe I’ll share the scripts with other teams and show what a great guy I am.

Nah.  I want my team to shine.

By the look on Joshua’s little face right now, I can gather that it’s time for bed.  So I guess I’ve written enough for now.  A warm bed sounds pretty good.

The Big Game

Aside

It’s the night of The Big Game.  Starts in 11 minutes, I think.  I don’t have ESPN anymore, so if I do watch it, I’ll be doing so through the free portion of the ESPN app, which follows all of the action using only those overhead cameras that zoom up and down the field for the whole game.  No commentary at all.  Believe it or not, I prefer to watch the games that way, so it works out for me.

Should you not know, The Big Game is the championship game of the joke of a college football playoff known as “The College Football Playoffs.”  The actual college football playoffs, which has 24 teams and determines the actual Division I college football champion, ended last Saturday, with North Dakota State eking out a win over James Madison University.  I watched it.  It was a good game.  I might, as I said, watch a bit of the game tonight between Georgia and Alabama, but it’s not something about which I’m overly-excited.

I had a decent day at work today.  Knocked out a couple of problems that had been bothering me for the last week and continued to slice into my mountain of open tickets.  I was not helped by the fact that – yet again – one of the Level 2 people ran updates on numerous firms yesterday and didn’t bother to fully test said updates; so that, when we arrived at work this morning, there were already more than 25 of said firms who couldn’t use one of their most vital applications until we, the Level 1 team, manually patched all of their servers.

I don’t understand this trend – and it is a trend.  It happens all the time.  Somebody who has the job of updating applications does so, but doesn’t take the simple step of launching the applications after they’ve been updated.  I know that they don’t take this step because many applications will give a pretty obvious hint (i.e., they won’t launch) if you haven’t completed the update successfully.  Rule #1 for all application updates, going back to the dawn of the computer age: have a rollback plan.  The X-Company just doesn’t seem to grasp that concept; and, frankly, it really pisses me off.  It’s tough to guess just how many man-hours are lost – by us and by the clients – every time they do this, and they do it at least twice a month.

Enough about that.   Today’s featured photo is of my boy Joshua.  The tiny little runt of a Maine Coon who I chose – with no close second – out of a little of 11 when he was two days old.  He and his brother, Chamberlain, are coming up on (I think) their fourth birthday next month.  Both tilt the scales at around 15 pounds and, while both are incredibly sweet and loving, Joshua is still the daddy’s boy that he was on the day I brought them home.  The photo up there shows Josh lounging on my Kelti 20-degree sleeping bag on a Sunday morning a few weeks back.  He was there because…well….because I was there.  Joshua wants to be with me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  He wakes me up every morning, he follows me around the house until I leave, he sleeps on my pillow.  If I’m in a room, there’s a 95% chance that he’s in the same room.  At the moment, I’m at my desk and he’s on his little cat tree about three feet to my left.  A few minutes ago, I went downstairs to get a drink, and he followed me down.  When I came back up to my office after all of 5 seconds in the kitchen, he came back up with me.  There is no dog more loyal to his master than Joshua is to me.

He also plays fetch as well as any dog, and it is a constant source of amusement and, in a way, solace for me when I come home and find one of his favorite toys (he has three that he prefers far more than the 200 or so others in the cats’ toy box) at the top of the stairs or on my bed – evidence that he’s been entertaining himself while I’ve been away, by playing a game of solitaire fetch.  Every night before bed, he begs me to throw just a few tosses down the stairs.  He is a remarkable little animal.

So is Chamberlain, and Chamberlain will get his own write-up one of these days.

It has been outlandishly chilly in Atlanta for an extended time, and I’m almost ashamed to admit that.  I generally like to be a bit chilly.  I hate being hot.  I’ve got no problem with camping in the mountains in the winter or driving to the Upper Peninsula in October.  This month, though, has been different.  It’s just been cold. It reminds me of one of our last winters in Shoreham, when Dad commented to me something along the lines of, “It hasn’t gotten really cold – like 20 below – this winter, but this month-long stretch of 5-degree days really takes it out of you.”  Well…this month-long stretch of 30-degrees has really taken it out me, too.  To that end, I broke down last week and bought two pairs of flannel-lined pants from Duluth Trading company.

Naturally, they make me sweat.  But they’ll be good for winter camping.

Well, I must go watch a bit of this Big Game and fall asleep.  Joshua will be waking me up in just under 9 hours.

Is this year over yet?

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Today’s featured image is a shot that I took of the cat house on my deck on December 9th.  It began snowing on the morning of the 8th and continued for about 24 hours, leaving an ecstatic Atlanta populace to deal with four to eight inches of the white stuff.  I think the last time I saw that kind of accumulation down here was probably in the early 90’s.  My car and I had no problems with it – in fact, I almost enjoyed driving home on Friday night because pretty much everyone else in the city had panicked and gone home at about 1:00 Friday afternoon.  The roads were nearly empty.  The snow hung around on the ground for several days, but was pretty much gone by last Wednesday (the 13th).  It has remained pretty chilly, however.  Mid-30s this morning.

Memphis.  Someday, I’ll laugh about Memphis.  If you go back and read my last post, detailing what the plan was for Memphis, you’ll see the difference between a plan and reality at the X-Company:

Plan – Add machines to the domain and install anti-virus software from my hotel room on Sunday night.  Reality – All of the machines, including the domain controller, were offline on Sunday night.  I ate a sandwich and watched television from my hotel room on Sunday night.

Plan – Down day at the office on Monday.  I’d go in, set up the new network, put work on machines and printers.  Get things ready for Tuesday.  Reality – Got to the office at about 7:30 and there was no power.  Power remained out for about 4 hours.  Down day never happened, as everyone came in to the office and wanted to work.  Not only could they not do that because of the power situation, but they weren’t supposed to be there at all.  When the power came back on, they all tried to work while I kept telling them to stop working so that I could set them up.  Disaster of a day.

Plan – Train the users on Wednesday, then help out with individual problems on Wednesday and Thursday, come home Thursday night, prepare to go back for the office move on the following Monday.  Reality – I did go through the training presentation with the users, but it did not go well because the X-Company was having a full-blown crisis.  Users were getting locked out left and right, email wasn’t working, provisioning users (unlocking their accounts) was hanging up everywhere…we basically were dead in the water.  I spent most of the day trying to assure users that no, things didn’t usually suck this badly.  By late in the day, I’d gotten most of the users up and working and had their printers set up.  Then the firm admin – a network guy from Chattanooga – arrived at the Memphis office and announced that we’d be moving to the new office in 20 minutes.  This was Wednesday (planned for the following Monday, remember?).  So I grabbed the firewall and domain controller and moved them to the new office to get set up there.  With movers running around and people trying to determine where to set up, I basically locked myself in the network closet and got my domain controller and firewall plugged in, then went home early.   Got back to the office on Thursday to help people get started and discovered that the network guy had changed the network scope – so I had to reconfigure the domain controller and all of the printers.  I did this.  20 minutes later, he tried to set up the phones and ended up killing the entire network.  A vital piece of hardware had failed in the network closet and it couldn’t be replaced until the following day.  So I left at around 4:00 and came home.

Plan – Go back to Memphis on Sunday and help users settle in to the new office until Wednesday.  Reality – I went back to Memphis on Sunday, and ran the anti-virus setup on machines that I’d missed the previous week, then went to the office on Monday morning, where everything was actually running pretty smoothly.  Helped some users with little problems, tweaked some printer settings, was just getting into a good groove….and power for the entire block went out.  I informed my office, then, after sitting around for a few hours without power, I texted my boss and asked, “What am I supposed to be doing here?  They’re doing fine (when they have power) and there’s no moving going on (remember that was the plan).”  He agreed that I didn’t need to be there, and decided (I don’t know why) that I should go to Chattanooga instead and help the people in that (much larger) office until Wednesday.

So I left Memphis and drove to Chattanooga.  Spent Tuesday and Wednesday there, fighting a losing battle against people getting locked out of their accounts (because of settings from their former domain that kept throwing out bad credentials), and escaped on Wednesday night.

Oh, yeah – it was also decided to make me the primary consultant for this firm after all of this.  So I’ve not got thirteen firms and something like 600 users.  Two of those firms are having a terrible time getting anything done because, I suspect, they weren’t setup correctly.

I am buried in tickets.  Normally, I like to carry 8-10 open tickets.  I currently have over 60.  I need for this year to be over.

 

Wind

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And it’s been three weeks without an update again.  Neat.  I do it this way just so that I might have something worth typing about.

Brett and I went back up to our hidden hunter shelter the week after the eclipse.  Knowing what to expect this time, we planned on car camping and brought speakers and coolers and firewood and all of the other great things that you can bring with you when you don’t plan to hike anywhere – like beer.  We spent a great two nights up there (Labor Day weekend), and even found – holy of holies – a pit toilet hidden in the brush behind the shelter.  Not just a hole dug in the ground, mind you.  An actual cement vault with a toilet on top of it.  Not a great deal of privacy if anybody happened to walk up to it while you’re doing your business, but since nobody was anywhere around, it was pretty perfect.

Did a bit of walking with the dogs (Brett brought four of them), got some more ideas for my upcoming sojourn to the upper peninsula, and enjoyed nearly perfect weather for the weekend.

Then it was back to the grind at work.  Not much to say about that.  I got assigned as primary to three more companies, which isn’t as glamorous as it sounds.  Other than that, it’s just more of the same.  Oh!  I did get taken off of the phone queue, which is nice.  I can actually concentrate on some of my more pressing tickets now without worrying about being interrupted.

I guess the big news was that Atlanta was put under its first-ever tropical storm warning a few days ago.  Hurricane Irma swept up through Florida and headed towards the big A, causing damned near every idiot in my adopted city to freak out.  I couldn’t wait for the thing to arrive.  I’ve always loved strong wind.

And…that’s about all we got.  In spite of the governor declaring the entire state an emergency area.  In spite of schools somehow making the decision to close for (at least) FOUR DAYS.  In spite of my own company declaring that everyone should work at home on Monday and Tuesday (I didn’t).  Here’s what I experienced in this mega-storm:

Sunday: A beautiful day, with an absolutely fantastic breeze blowing all day.  Gusts of about 20 MPH.

Monday: Light rain and breezy in the morning.  Empty roads on the way to work.  Me and one other consultant in the office.  Sprinkler system going full-blast all around the office.  Rained on and off all day – never very heavy.  Some pretty significant gusts (50-60 MPH) in the afternoon, lasting less than 5 seconds per gust.  Lots of leaves on the ground (you know – like it’s FALL or something).  Empty roads on the way home.  Rain stopped by 7:00, beautiful breeze continued with some occasional strong gusts.  Opened all of the windows (the cats loved it).  Sat on the deck for a while with my eyes closed and imagined I was at Lake Superior.  Went to bed with the windows open.  Slept like a rock.

Tuesday: Light rain and breezy in the morning.  Empty roads on the way to work.  Drove around two trees that had fallen into roads (over the course of my 14-mile commute).  Me and three other consultants in the office.  Rain ended by about noon.  Breeze died.  Light traffic on the way home.  Rehearsal until 9:30.  Home in a drizzle.

Wednesday: Any other day.

So that was the Tropical Storm Trauma, huh?  Not much different than any summer storm.  Yet many schools are closed on Thursday….

I mentioned that I got some new ideas for my Superior trip during the Labor Day car campout.  Ended up buying a Kelty 12-foot hiker’s tarp (which I’ve actually been meaning to do for years), and while looking for it, I stumbled across a double-wide Kelty sleeping bag, rated to 20 degrees.  It’s pretty fantastic.  Has a zip-off quilt and internal blankets and I’ve been sleeping in it on my bed for the last several nights.  Incredibly comfortable, very warm when it needs to be, but wide enough to let me stretch out, cool off, and be very comfortable.  It will be a wonderful topping for the air mattress in the back of the Subaru.

Can not wait to get back to the lake.  I don’t remember the last time that I needed (and I do mean NEEDED) a vacation so much.  Ironic that I’ll be going to basically the same spot where I found out that I was probably getting laid off, which is what ended up making me need to go back so much.

And that’s about all that’s new for now.  I’ll probably think of more stuff later, but won’t write about it for another two weeks.

Fun while it lasted

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As expected, I spent most of today removing Ubuntu from my Surface Pro and reinstalling Windows. I’m currently downloading the Windows 10 update for it – which is what I was trying to accomplish when everything went balls up last year. Hopefully it will work this time. I’m typing this on the SP, which has Windows 8 installed currently, and it’s just so much better than Linux. I try. I really do. But I’m still a child of Microsoft.

I finally got a little bit of training regarding the work that I’m supposed to be doing in Annapolis beginning next Sunday. One interesting li’l tidbit that came up during said training: Book flights 21 days in advance. Had I been planning on flying, that would have been a good thing to know prior to 7 days before leaving, huh? I’m also a bit ticked that travel expenses are reimbursed, rather than put on a corporate card, but maybe I got spoiled at BS and ATT. Wonder what would happen if I just say, “Hey, I can’t afford to pay for this up front. Sorry.”

Anyway, I still haven’t been able to get in touch with the project manager or the team lead for this little trip, so it’s going to be interesting. I don’t know who the client is, what the address is, if there’s a preferred hotel….this is all stuff that I was supposed to have been told three or four weeks ago. I was talking to Jenny about this stuff today, and I honestly think the X company has just grown too fast this year. They’ve got people in middle management who don’t know how to manage. Two months ago, they were doing network installations. Today, they’re supposed to be managing projects with multiple new people – like me – who haven’t been given any real training. It’s not frustrating. It’s not frightening. It’s just annoying. Trying to keep a good public attitude, but it gets tough.

Weather-wise, it has been ridiculously hot for the past couple of weeks. I actually mowed the lawn in the dark last week because I just couldn’t stand the thought of doing it when I first go home from work. Too hot. That’s also been cutting down on my morning walks, as I’d rather just go back to bed at 5:20 AM instead of walking for an hour in a 95-degree sauna. Not going out every day has started to play a bit of hell on my feet, as when I do go out, they tend to hurt. Went through the same thing a few years ago.

I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a post on this thing that will be updated frequently – like every day – with just a “what I did today” type of thing, while still reserving the right to compose longer things every week or two. I’m not sure how that would work, which is why I haven’t tried it so far.

That’s about enough for today. Not much new in my life, as you can tell. Still not satisfied with the employment situation, still wondering how and when I can just retire…still wondering what the big picture of my life is, to be honest. Or if there is one. And, if so, do I really care about it all that much? Maybe THIS is the real mid-life crisis, and that little mental vibration I had a few years ago was nothing. It felt more urgent then. Now, it’s just…eh.

Tally-ho and all that. My next post will probably be from Maryland.

Chillin’

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Today’s featured image was taken on this day one year ago, and is of the Little Santeetlah Creek in the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest – one of my favorite places in the world for a quick getaway from city life.  My buddy Brett and I had actually planned to go up there a couple of weekends ago, but it was covered in snow, gates were closed, trees were down, and the roads were basically impassible.  We opted instead to hang out at Fires Creek in the Nantahala Wilderness for a one-night campout.  Bing tells me this about the JKMF:

Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest is an approximately 3,800-acre tract of publicly owned virgin forest in Graham County, North Carolina, named in memory of poet Joyce Kilmer, best known for his poem “Trees”. One of the largest contiguous tracts of old growth forest in the Eastern United States, the area is administered by the U. S. Forest Service.

Oddly enough, Kilmer himself was born, and lived most of his life, in New Jersey.  He was killed in France in WWI.  Why his name is attached to a forest in NC is somewhat of a mystery, excepting, of course, the reference to his “Trees” poem, of which I’m sure that everyone knows at least the first line.

Work was a bit more hectic than usual last week, largely due to the fact that I got another “primary” firm (meaning that I’m their primary consultant), and they’re brand new to The X Company.  McSoley, McCoy & Company is a small CPA firm in South Burlington, VT, and I’ve got to admit that I like taking care of them simply because of their location.  At this early stage, however, they’re pretty needy.  I’m told that it usually takes about 6 months for a new firm to settle into a cloud-based environment, and I’m hopeful that they get used to things a lot faster than that.  I’m spending a lot of time on the phone with them, and I’ve got 5 other primary firms that I’ve somewhat neglected since MMC on-boarded.  They’ve been fun to work with, however.  Nice people.

I tried to get some sleep yesterday – don’t have much time to do so during the week – but I still have things to do at home.  Managed to get a few loads of laundry done and to straighten up my bedroom.  Still need to mow the lawns, but storms rolled in yesterday afternoon and nixed any idea of working outside.  I should also mention that it was about 90 degrees and humid, so outdoor work would have been incredibly uncomfortable.  Took a 3.6-mile walk this morning in a steady drizzle, and the rain is predicted to continue for much of this week, so my lawns are going to be a major pain to mow by next weekend.  I’d hoped to maybe try the mountains again, but it looks like I’ll be stuck at home to mow and do other home-type things.  Still need to fix the toilet in my half-bath.  Been meaning to do that for about 8 months now….

Learned a couple of weeks ago that I will not be able to take a vacation in July, so Ahmic Lake appears to be out this year.  I’m trying to decide if I want to go back to Lake Superior in October (haven’t asked if I can have that time off yet…perhaps I should) or if I can find something acceptable that’s closer to home.  Basically, I don’t want much in a place, but there are some non-negotiables:

  1. It has to be cool, bordering on cold.
  2. It has to have plenty of tree cover.
  3. I have to be alone, or as close to it as possible.
  4. It has to have water into which I can immerse myself.  A decent-sized stream, a lake, an ocean.  No ponds.
  5. It has to have wind.
  6. It has to be secluded enough to allow me to take long walks in the trees.

Superior, of course, has all of those things and is currently at the top of my list.  The drive is the only problem.  Not that it’s boring (it’s beautiful for much of the way) or that it tires me out: It just cuts into my time in the woods.  Figure 1 or 2 days to make the trip each way, and my vacation takes a serious hit.  At AT&T, it wasn’t that big of a deal.  I mean, I got something like 38 days off every year.  At The X Company, I think I get 10.  I’d rather not lose 3-4 of them driving.

So I’m considering places along the Atlantic…North Carolina, Virginia, perhaps Georgia or SC (although I think it’d be too hot and too crowded in those states, not to mention the fact that the beaches in GA and SC have very little tree cover).  Have been looking into the other great lakes that would be closer – Michigan, Erie, Ontario – but I don’t know if they’ve got the tree cover that I’m looking for, either.

One idea that I’ve been pondering is to head to Vermont, somewhere along the Long Trail, and maybe talk The X Company into letting me have a couple of days “on the clock” visiting with McSoley, McCoy.  Not sure if that’d fly or not, but I’d be willing to float the idea if I can find a perfect camping spot in, say, the Northeast Kingdom.

“Why not just go to Joyce Kilmer,” you ask?  That is a possibility, of course.  The only problem with it is that hunters and rednecks abound in that area in the fall.  The “alone” part of my list is pretty important.

One other idea is Unicoi State Park in Georgia.  I’ve never spent much time there, but it’s in the mountains, it’s got a lake, it’s got trails, it’s got cover, and it’d be chilly in October.  Biggest drawback is that, in October, the leaf-peepers will be coming out of the woodwork.  It’s got some walk-in campsites, however, so I might be able to get away from the crowds.  Going to do some more research on the park.  If I could make it work, it’d be fantastic.  It’s only about 3 hours away, and it really is a beautiful park.

And I think that’s about it for now.  Still plugging away, still dreaming about a retirement life in the woods, still a bit pissed off at AT&T (I doubt that I’ll ever get over that, to be honest), but still trying to keep a positive attitude.  A few more years.  I can last a few more years.

TWD

Midwinter Update

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Mea culpa for not realizing that it’d been nearly two weeks since I put anything here….though I have realized in the last week that I should have done so.

The featured image for this post is of me at a game at VMI in (I think) 2014.  If memory serves, it marked the first game in Lexington, VA, since VMI returned to the conference after leaving for 10 years or so.  One of the cheerleaders took it for me – good kids, those.  I missed them more than the games themselves when I took last season off.

Anyway, the job search came (more or less) to an end last week, when I accepted an offer to join The X Company, an an Alpharetta-based cloud services company for CPA firms.  I’m not going to pretend that this is my dream job, but it has good and bad points.  It’s a small company (just over 100 employees), which has been around since 2002, has revenues of about $12 million, a 66% growth rate over the last three years, and has been honored by Inc. 5000 five times.  That information is both good and (potentially) bad, because I’m frankly tired of working for big companies (3M, NYNEX, ComputerLand, BellSouth, AT&T) and much prefer the little ones.  During my interview, for example, the CEO and co-founder was apparently making faces at my interviewers behind my back – I like stuff like that.  A potential drawback, however, is its growth: I learned from my time at Compaid (an Inc. 500 honoree) that small, profitable, companies are ripe for takeover by the big boys.  I am really hoping that I don’t have to go through that garbage again…and the fact that The X Company’s been plugging away by itself for 15 years is heartening.

The job itself (Hosted Services Consultant 1) is a severe jump backward for me.  My paychecks will be just over half of what they were a month ago, I’ll be on the phone for much of the day, and I’m basically at the bottom of the barrel.  I think the “on the phone” part of that scenario is what disheartens me the most, but hopefully I can stay busy and interested enough to either enjoy it or advance out of it.  I still have a few leads with other companies, with jobs more suited to my experience and preferences, and I’ll wait to see if anything pans out with them.

I’ve cleared all the pre-hire hurdles with The X Company, however (background, credit, and urine checks), and am scheduled to start work next Monday morning.  In Alpharetta.  I forgot that part….my commute will go from 5 minutes to probably 45+ minutes.  No more lunches at home.

At least I’ll be doing something.  Unemployment has been, to put it mildly, sort of exhausting.  I’m still getting up at 5:30 – the cats don’t care if I’m going to work or not – but, after my walks, I’ve just been kind of sitting around playing tiddly winks.  No energy to do much of anything, and I’m usually wiped out by 5:00 in the afternoon and in bed by 7:30.

I do have some work to do in the next few days, however: cleaning the house in anticipation of a new roommate.  My friend Mary, who I’ve known for several years, is coming up on the end of her lease in March and will be taking up residence in the guestroom.  She’ll be bringing her adorable little cat, Pretty Princess, with her – which is both very cool and a bit terrifying.  I have no doubt that Joshua and Chamberlain will be quite welcoming, but Boo isn’t the friendliest kitty when it comes to meeting new friends.  It will be a fairly slow and cautious introduction, with alternating days of cats being closed up in different rooms so that everyone can get acquainted without much bloodshed.

Hey, Jenny and I combined four cats.  Hopefully, Mary and I can do the same.

The GBB is back in rehearsals as of last week (although I didn’t start until last night – had a terrible cold/flu last Tuesday night).  The board is being pretty active about looking for funding and additional performance opportunities, which is nice.  Our board has been pretty lethargic for several years, and it’ll be nice to have input and organization from more than just the 2-3 people who’ve been running the show.  We’ve got a mini-tour of GA, AL, and TN coming up in (I think) April, a return engagement to Kennesaw State in March, and a couple of other local gigs scheduled in May.  I wouldn’t mind adding two or three more gigs, but a lot of the band folks are really weird about that.  They don’t want to play more than 5-6 concerts a year.  Not sure why you’d want to be in a band if you don’t want to perform a lot….

The weather in Duluth has been, shall we say, varied as of late.  A week ago, it was 18 degrees during one of my morning walks.  Today, it was pushing 65.  I actually had the A/C on in my car yesterday.  Am still waiting for the “chill” hammer to fall, when we have temps in the 20s for a couple of weeks and I can watch my natural gas bill go through the roof.  But, so far at least, the utilities haven’t been too overwhelming.  Which is good…because I haven’t received my severance check yet, and February is going to be extremely tight, financially speaking.

That should be enough for now.  In a nutshell, it appears that I’ve survived my first layoff; my days of living alone are once again about to come to a halt; the weather is nuts; and my biggest opportunity to hike the Appalachian Trail has, at least for now, eluded me.

But I’m going to do it before I die.

Crunch Time

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It has been chilly for the last two days, with temps in the 20s when I take my morning walk.  That being the case, I finally turned on my heat this morning (it was 48 degrees in my living room), which is something that I dread doing every year for a few reasons.  First, I’m always mildly paranoid about firing up the furnace for the first time of the year.  I have this idea that all of the accumulated crud in my ducts is going to immediately burst into flame and I’ll have fire shooting out of my ceilings with no way to put it out.  I meant to have the ducts cleaned earlier this year (not sure if that would have done much good for my paranoia), but didn’t do it.  Also haven’t had the furnace checked since last spring – my furnace people are supposed to do it twice a year, but they haven’t called me so far this winter – and frankly I’d rather not have to write them a check right now.

Second, I really hate turning on the heat because, obviously, my gas bill will now increase – and I don’t need increased bills at this point.  As of 12/28, all of my AT&T crap is going to double in price already.  I’m currently determining what I can afford to do away with.  Cable (DirecTV) is obviously the first thing to get nuked.  DTV, to put it mildly, sucks.  However, once I get rid of it, then I no longer have unlimited data on my phone, which is kind of important.  I’ll go back to having 2GB/month, which normally would be enough, but when I’m sending resumes out from my phone, data adds up quickly.

Had to take Boo to the vet yesterday because she had an ingrown claw.  Jenny and I spotted it about two months ago, and I’d been hoping that she’d bite it off herself, but she didn’t.  Came home for lunch on Thursday and noticed that she was holding up her paw.  Wasn’t complaining, wasn’t limping, wasn’t averse to putting weight on the foot – but every time she sat down, she’d hold up her paw.  So I looked at it and the claw was completely embedded in her pad.  Off to the vet.  They cut it out (bled like a stuck pig), and all’s well now.  Boo took it like a little champ.  Only cried once and settled back in at home happily after the ordeal was over.  I’m a bit worried about infection, but she’s doing a good job licking at the wound.  Hopefully that will be enough.   The bill, by the way, was just shy of $100 (she also, by law, had to get a rabies shot.  Stupid).  That’s $100 that I didn’t want to spend.

So I got a letter from Meditech yesterday informing me that I’m not going to be working for them anytime soon.  I knew it was a long shot, but I really wanted to land that job.  The rejection definitely put me in a funk.  I’ve still got decent leads at Georgia MLS and The Salvation Army, but haven’t heard back from either of them after great initial contacts.   I’ve also become convinced that applying for jobs online is sort of like pissing into a storm drain and waiting for a glass of water to come out.  So I’ve decided that, next week, I’ll start contacting recruiters.  Didn’t want to have to go that route, because the recruiters that I’ve dealt with tend  to want to put me into jobs that I don’t particularly want, but as the title says, we’re getting to crunch time here, and I need to get a paycheck lined up somewhere.  As far as I know, I’ll get a check on 12/21, get fired on 12/27, get a final check on 1/6, and then – sometime, hopefully before March – I’ll get a severance check.  The danger zone in all of that is February.  I’m glad, of course, that I managed to pay off all of my credit cards this year, but doing so depleted by basically non-existent savings.  If I don’t have a paycheck or a severance check by March 1, I can’t pay the mortgage.

To that end, I’ve investigated the possibility of getting an hourly job at Kroger or somewhere.  I really don’t need to make a bunch of money to get by (and, obviously, making a bunch of money prior to now didn’t do me a great deal of good), and I figure I can get by fairly easily if I can take home about $500/week.  The only drawback to going an hourly route, be it at a grocery store or in retail or whatever, is that I can kiss the IT gig goodbye forever if I’m out of it for too long.  Not sure how I feel about that, considering that it’s what I’ve done for the last 26 years.  I have no problem with starting a second career, but I’d rather it not be a dead-end one.

Have been wracking my brain trying to figure out a way to make money on my own.  Internet-based stuff, home computer/phone repair, something like that.  I really am trying to see this as a good thing.  A way to have a second act.  The world’s my stage and all that.  But I’ve got to take care of the cats, and that means I’ve got to keep paying the mortgage.

And the high heating bills, apparently.

The caption for my picture, by the way (which I created in the months after AT&T acquired BellSouth) is “AT&T.  Your World.  Destroyed.”

I thought it was a fitting image for the way I feel today.