Cotter’s Corner

So, how cool is the new place? Well, since it is a 24×7 operation and because of the nature of the business – outages and downtimes are kept to a minimum. Because of this, they don’t allow any code/network changes during their busy times. The busy times are the weekends and of course, Christmas. So, the weekends begin at 8am on Friday and end at 8am on Monday morning. The upshoot of this is that the place is like a ghost town on Fridays. So, not a lot happens on Fridays around there and alot of people (myself included) work a flexible schedule so that we can take off on Fridays. I’m currently working 7:30am until 5:30pm so that I can take off every other Friday.

So today is my first day off, and I have to say it’s very, very cool. I wish I wasn’t sick (see prior post), but at least I have today off (and this weekend) to recover. I’m hoping to be well enough to take my son to see Star Wars this weekend at some point. I don’t think it will be today, but it will need to be soon considering the good reviews I have been reading. Thank goodness one of the last three is worth spending money to go see.

So the big running thing at work has been that Paul made the entire building sick. He went to training in DC and got sick while he was there. And since coming back the sickness has invaded the office like the second coming of the black plague or more recently like people posting mindless drivel about their lives on the Internet.

Anyways, so between all the coughs and sneezes and groans of agony that ring off the cube walls comes the phrase “Thanks Paul!” which, when properly executed comes after a particularly long coughing fit. To which Paul replies “Sorry $person name”. This has occured over the past two weeks of my employment there. And here recently when I’ve been prone to coughing fits Paul just tells me “Sorry Joe”. To which I reply, “Thanks Paul”.

I have sat back and really thought about my last job. Seriously thought about it. It could have been really, really great. And it’s easy for me to sit back now and rain down on all the stuff that happenned with fire and brimstone, but you know. I’m okay. I’m happy with things at my current job and I guess that’s most of it. In fact, I’m home right now. My wife is going to pick up my daughter from school early and I’m going to go and pick up my son from school. THIS is the way that I hoped that things would be. I did some good work this week and I’m getting my reward for it.

You know, I was tired and upset when I wrote that last post. I know that there are a lot of people who were happy to see me post that, but I probably worded it a little too strongly. There are things in there that should be out of the public eye. I’m going to file that away and get on to the rest of my life, I think.

In other news, went in this morning at 4am for our scheduled outage and got the new PIX 525s in place on the network. Get this, not a SINGLE problem reported with them. So, that’s encouraging news! I guess I managed not to screw up the rule-set.

Well, it’s officially Saturday – but I wanted to post anyways. I am now, officially… unemployed. It was a lot more emotional than I thought it would be. Mostly because T is a guy who I consider a good friend. It felt VERY weird leaving there knowing that I would not be back on Monday.

I got both projects to a point where I don’t feel like I dumped anything on anyones lap either – so – that’s a good thing as well. A nice happy ending. Sorta.

So this weekend my Dad is coming over and we’re going to kind of take Sunday off I think. Just so I can prepare for Monday and the new position. Whew. Can’t wait!

Tomorrow is the last day. At last. I have been working my ASS off here the past few days to make sure that I leave with little or no baggage leftover. I have very nearly finished both reports. I am only waiting for the people down in the hospital in Georgia to write back to me and I’ll be ready to roll. But, if I was a betting man I’d say that isn’t going to happen tomorrow. Lets hope it does.

I’m very nervous about the switchover to the new job. I realize that is probably dumb, but I am. It’s pretty intimidating starting a new position with someplace. Especially when you were (supposedly) the second in command at the joint. Now I’ll be a mere cog in the wheel. But, I think that this experience will provide me with a valuable opportunity to “shore up” a side of my experience which is sorely lacking. Hard-core networking. Some of the things I will be doing are just mind-blowing cool. So, here is to hoping I can provide some valuable input and not just get in the way while I get up to speed.

Mothers Day is coming up too. Not much going on (for a change), other than my Dad coming over for a visit. I tried to talk Robyn into going to the airshow this weekend, but was not successful. Sure wish I knew it was going on this weekend before I learned it an hour ago.

Tomorrow should be an easy day. Work on a document for a bit. Transfer some files around – clean up some stuff and then a nice lunch and home. No “going away” lunch for me. Just a nice lunch at Satco. A little beer and some Mexican food. That’ll be a nice going away.

So I emailed my friend Paul (who I will soon be working with) and asked him some general and harrassing questions about whether I had a place to work, a laptop, etc. And he forwarded along his project list in an email. WOW. It’s impressive. There is a cazy amount of stuff going on over there. I’m looking forward to it enormously.

As for the status of my other projects – I am all but finished with the first one. I need two more paragraphs and a small change to the grade that I assigned and I can call that one finished. The second one is going to take a bit more work. I am, in fact, down in Columbia, Tennessee today trying to collect all of the rest of the information that I need to finish writing it. Hopefully I can get it all today and work on it throughout the day. Basically when I get done with both of these I am done. And that will be a glorious moment. It’s funny how I used to really enjoy the challenge of report writing. Taking all that raw data and technical information and turning it into something pallatable for the CEO/CIO/Director level people that I deal with. And how now it has turned into such a painful chore. Anyways, at least the guy that replaces me will have all of my documents to use as a template. At least he won’t have to come up with documents from scratch.

One more thing that I will miss is the people that I’ve had the pleasure of working with. And I’m not just talking about co-workers. There are quite a few fantastic customers who really made me feel like I was a part of their organization despite the fact that I was only there for a few days at a time. It’s just a nice feeling to be able to provide help and insight to someone who values and appreciates it. In fact, customers made up for a lot of the shortcomings with the place I work now. Okay, I need to work now. More later.

The end keeps growing near. And I should mention that I went back and edited my post from yesterday. I don’t want anything personal to come from any of this stuff. So, I’ll try and keep the negativity out of here for now. I also got my very first feedbacks from a couple of funny guys who are a lot more hard working than I am.

I have an appointment today to see the doc about my hand that’s been bugging me. Hopefully he can figure out what the deal is. Not being able to make a tight fist is a weird feeling. Damn, I’m getting old.

Not working here is going to be pretty weird, I can get the feel for that already, but I think that it will all work out for the best. The new position seems very exciting, and I get to work with an old friend that I admire and respect. So, while it is a good deal less money – the world for me (anymore) doesn’t revolve around that and I will be just fine with the salary there. I’m hoping that I can do a lot more with the family in my free time. I’m damn near giddy at the thought of being at a different job. I guess I’ve not realized how stagnant I’ve become here. Soon Joe, very soon…..

The stuff about work will probably consume a lot of this space for the next week or so, and for that I apologize in advance. However, since you brought up work I will mention that I am now at T-minus 5 days and counting.

In other news, I suppose I should have made this a seperate post, but whatever. It’s my thing here and I can post how I wanna. (So there)

I was looking at some pictures last night and as I was sitting there smiling at this picture and I was just thinking how wonderful pictures are at conjuring a feeling. You know, I smiled because all I could think of were the fun parts of our trip to Gatlinburg. I didn’t remember about how Connor was acting “12″ and Maureen was acting like she was “6″. You know, it was all good. We were having fun then. And we DO have fun. We have moments and grumps and everything just like the rest of the world, but I just love traveling with my family.

We’re good eggs.