armlessbear.com

IT LIVES!!!!!!!!!!

Last night I had Abba’s Super Trouper pop into my head and since I hadn’t actually ripped the entirety of Abba Gold I pulled out the CD and apologized to Mike in advance.

Tonight the Super Trouper lights are gonna find me
Shining like the sun (Sup-p-per Troup-p-per)
Smiling, having fun (Sup-p-per Troup-p-per)
Feeling like a number one

This morning it was still rattling around in my head and I decided to save my sanity I’d rip it and pull it and a few more Abba songs on my blank sob iPod.

Pushing Buttons on my iPod

I was tired today. At first I couldn’t sleep because I itched. Then at 12:30 am Adam came upstairs wet. Despite the fact that I was sitting next to my bedroom door reading a book and had the light on, my little sad, wet sleepwalker walked right into our closed bedroom door. thunk
I carried him downstairs, changed him, changed his sheets, tucked him in and went back to my scratchy chair and my damp, rough towel. 30 minutes later Adam come back upstairs, this time coming straight to me instead of straight into a closed door. “mommy i need you.” I try to convince him to go sleep in my spot on the bed. He goes to look and comes back a few minutes later. “Daddy’s there,” he tells me. Daddy, it seems, has sprawled in my absence.

I HATE the Millenial Generation

This morning and last week Morning Edition on NPR ran employment segments about the “Millenials” who are entering the work place. The segment last week was infuriating and this one just reminded me of how pissed off I was last Wednesday morning.
Apparently these people need lots of rewards, encouragement, and general hand-holding by their supervisors. If they don’t feel their contributions are recognized and values, then they’ll leave in search of a more rewarding position.

From the NPR website:

I forgot my iPod

Sure, mock me and my technology dependence.
But if you had Billy Joel’s “Italian Restaurant” running through your head for the last hour, you’d be just as annoyed as me.
Because:
Brenda and Eddie were the popular steadies and the the king and the queen of the prom
la la la something about car-top down and radio on…
la la la random snippets of song
Bottle of red, bottle of white, it all depends upon your appetite. Meet you anytime you want at our Italian Restaurant
And then, it starts all over again in my head.

aaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggghh!

Oncall during DST patching

I was “on call” last week at work, for the uninitiated, “on call” means that you’re the guy that gets contacted by some combination of automated systems and live human beings if something goes wrong that needs attention.

At my company, it’s more automated systems than live human beings. This has its ups and downs. On the plus side, when the pager goes off at very-very-AM in the morning, you’ll be dealing with a computer, not an irate, sleepy human. On the minus side, you’re the irate, sleepy human that’s getting paged by the (not-too-bright) automated system. The automated system can’t make the value judgments like “that can wait until morning”, or “that happens every third day at this time. It’s safe to ignore”.

Officially a UW Employee

Yesterday was my first day at work. I have a colorful UW ID, a bus pass, and a stack of benefits paperwork to prove it. I even had my first day of training of the software I’ll be the sysadmin for and it seems pretty easy and intuitive thus far. The hard part is the disease dictionary. I was looking through the list of diseases and was recognizing a good 70% of them… standard things like TB, Meningitis, Hanta Virus, Ebola, Chicken pox, Measles, Polio, the laundry list of STDs, and then a whole bunch of WTFs that just sound ominous. Blastomycosis?

Happy New Year!

Whoopeeeeeeeeeeee! It’s 2007!
Happy New Year to everyone! Hope everyone had a great holiday week.
For me, so far, so good. I got a job offer the Friday before Christmas and I start work at my new job next Monday.

I think I’ll miss (a bit) staying up til well past midnight and sleeping until 9 or 9:30 most mornings. I’ll miss playing with Adam and spending quality time getting to know the inner-workings of the 3 year old mind, and I know he’s going to HATE going back to school next week. I think that going to school will be good for Adam, too. He needs more interaction with kids his own age to run around and play with him.

I Lost the Race

Ever since I received the first e-mail about my clients I knew the clock was ticking. I had 2 interviews that brought nothing to fruition unfortunately.
Then yesterday at 4pm I was called into a “meeting.”
I knew what it was the minute I heard my now former boss say my name.

I get 2 weeks severance pay which is a relief. That means I don’t have to go into full-on panic mode for 2 weeks. Hopefully I can find something temporary in the next 2 weeks. I have an interview already on Thursday and a 3 hour clerical staffing interview tomorrow.

The whole thing is a relief.

That sick, queasy, nauseated feeling I’ve been waking up with for the last month is gone.

Over the Rainbow?

My shades of gray view from my office window has been replaced by full color and I can actually see green in the trees on the far side of Lake Mendota. The lake is calm, the sky is blue and the clouds are white and fluffy.
I haven’t had such a pleasant view of the outdoors since I was working at the PTO and had a view of the grassy area behind PK5. Of course, this view isn’t “enhanced” as my previous view. We had a military guy who would exercise vigorously on his lunch break. In tiny, loose shorts. While doing pushups and the sort of leg stretching where you hold your ankle behind your back (while standing, of course. Right outside my window. At least he wore briefs.

Something to remember

When biking to work, it is important to remember to bring breakfast.

I am starving and thirsty and have no money for the vending machines and forgot to bring a lunch.