Get your walk on.....

Work has been steady if not more towards busy the past week. It's so strange to actually have a job that I constantly have to work at. I've been spoiled the past six years. Being a professor was never this much constant work (though many would argue if it was work at all, but take my word for it, being a good teacher IS a lot harder than you think) and the last year at my other position (upstairs) never challeneged me this much. I'm finding that the current job is providing a great balance between the grunt work of development and the creative work. Once I master a particular system (file format, database, index record file format, whatever) there's usually another one on the horizon that I need to tackle. And in the rare times that there is not another to tackle right away, I get to spend some time improving on the things that I just wasn't quite smart enough to do right the first time.

I pretty much finished up the SMS Rodney this week. All the major painting is done, though there's a few spots that could use a little more love. I haven't attached the main super strucutre yet because as soon as I do, it won't fit in it's box anymore. I'm debating on which to start on next. I'm thinking either the Prince of Wales or the King George V (they are both very similar).

Big'J and I picked up a new game this week. It's called Titan Quest, and if you liked Diablo II you'll probably like it to. There are a few things that are missing, the two major ones at the moment are the stash and the closed battle'net style games. The multiplayer is strictly open (i.e. your character is stored on your HD so one can cheat if one chooses too), so there's not quite the total feel of what I would consider true multiplayer for this style game in our current age. One of the things I really do like about it though is the setting, Ancient Greece, Egypt and China. It's not a ful historically accurate interpretation, but you do get the feel of the time period. Monkey Boy also picked it up and plans to host our MP games.

Speaking of Monkey Boy, I was told by a little birdie that the Product Manager of the department MOnkey Boy interviewed for is supposed to be calling said Monkey with a job offer. I don't know if it will be the position here in B'ham or in the Cullman office, nor do I know if the job offer would be considered sufficient for the move. I'm just excited that there is a chance Moneky Boy will move to within an hour or so of me. Strange how life works out.

I never called the waitress who's number I acquired last week. I had made preliminary plans with her (i.e. let's go out Monday, I'll call you Friday with specifics) and then later that day, I busted her trading oral fluids with some guy. Needless to say I wasn't overly thrilled about the situtaion and just decided to not bother calling. Life is messed up sometimes.

I started walking this week. Yes, actually on purpose. I've been telling myself that I need to be more active because I come home from work (where I pretty much sit in a chair all day) and then sit around the house. I'm not ready for a marathon yet, but I've been walking about 1 mile every evening. It's not much, but 1 mile is better than me sitting on my fat butt. Right now I'm walking at about 2.5 mph and I make it back to the appartment sweating like a pig and breathing slightly hard. My short term goal is to get my speed up to at least 3 mph if not 3.5 and then start working towards 2 miles. I could probably make 1.5 miles now, but I'd never make it up the 1.5 flights of stairs into my apartment when I'm done.

Ok, time to log some Titan Quest!

Super fly pimptastic.....

Week recap: Crazy at work, but I'm off the support calls and on to development. Crazy girl called me Thursday night late and wanted to hang out (no hanky panky). Tuesday night, went out for drinks as a pseudo-bachelor party, was almost vomitted on. Thursday at lunch, got a chic's phone number. Saturday night went to the Askew's wedding (was very nice), found out the woman I'm in love with is single, got drunk enough to ask her to dance (4 times btw) and then asked her out, she said yes, we'll see if she was to drunk to remember.

Tuesday night, we brought Askew out to the local Wing's to have a few beers and some dinner in order to celebrate his upcoming wedding (Sat.). Him being the groom a few of us egg him along to drinking to much and he ends up vomitting at the table (not so much gross at the time, but utter hilarious). At the time I was sitting right next to him and was about to sign my check. When he blew, it refilled his 25 oz beer mug and then overflow (streaming style) onto the table and cover my receipt (just barely missing my hand). Our cute waitress (who's number I got two days later btw) was in shock like the rest of us at first, then said, "I'll get you another receipt and some towels." At that point I busted out laughing. Wednesday morning at work, I drew up a PowerPoint slide of "the crime scene" and spammed most of the people in his (my old) department (Askew works with me). We had a good time with that one.

Plum tired....

Week recap: Got pissed off at work, realized that I'd rather be pissed off than pissed on (i.e. rather be mad in current dept. than happy in the last), had dinner with a female (granted she's a freakin lunatic), had the chance to hang out with a buddy I don't get to see enough (Monkey Boy), had a chance to hit the hobby store (bought spray paints mostly), and spent a little over half a day with one of my "brothers" and the closest thing to a child I'll ever have. So over all, I'm ahead of the curve I think.

Monkey Boy Morton drove, yes I said drove, from the Orlando area to B'ham on Thursday. Took him most of the day. He made it to my place around 4:15 or 4:30. We went to outback and had some 22oz beers. He had a chance to go visit another friend of his who lives up here. Friday was the big day, he had two inteviews which both went well according to both the interviewee and the interviewers. We just have to wait and see what they can offer him. I have a feeling he'll get an offer to work with the developers (don't know if he'll actually be a developer or not) which means he'll end up living in Gardendale. Not my personal favorite outcome, but if the money and the job is better, then I can't blame a monkey for doing what's right for him. He left this morning and made it safely back to the Orlando area.

Went over to Big'J's place and helped him to slay some chaotic evil plums with my paring knife +2, +5 vs. fruit. It's the time of year for him to start the wine making process. We pitted about 30ish pounds of plums which should make about 10 gallons of wine in about a year (maybe a little less). I have to say, I really enjoyed my day. It was great to see Lil'J. He has such a great "happy baby" aura around him. He didn't even cry when I came to near him, though I didn't dare try to hold him. His birthday is coming up, July 9th. I never thought I would be trying to find a b-day gift for a 1 year old. It was also great to sit and just kinda talk "life" with Big'J. We sat on his back deck pitting the plums and just talked about things on our minds; how great is was to see Monkey Boy, houses, Monkey Boy's wedding, Askew's (my neighbor) wedding, family (both living and dead), the yard, just about whatever came into our heads. It has been a long while since he and I have had the chance to kind of "bond" as it were.

As I write this, I realize how much he and his family mean to me, and how lucky I am to call them my friends/family (and Rich and Laura, Doug and Casey/KC, Dwyer and Tammy, Kenny, the other Casey/KC, Pat, Dewitt, Big John, Espen and Julie, Brian, the other Brian, the Fentons, just to name a few). Crap, I think I'm getting all emotional. However, I'm coming to the point in my life where, though I love my father dearly, family is no longer about blood. It's about those people I look to with great respect. People who enrich my life day after day. People that no matter how senile or sad I may get, are there to help put a smile back on my face and warmth in my heart. People who I don't say thank you to enough but still go the extra mile and say, "Hey, it's nothing. Don't worry about it." Just in case I haven't told you lately, thanks and I love ya'll.

Tomorrow, I'm going to drive up to Gadsden, AL to visist my father for Farther's Day. I'm not really stoked about having to drive to some odd city just to visit my father. I think I might even be a little bitter about it, considering he has as of yet to visit me here in B'ham even though he's been with 3 miles of me at least 6 times in the past year. But it's Father's Day, and it just wouldn't be right for me not to go see him. Besides, it'll cost me a lot less in gas money to see him an hour away instead of 5 ;)

Painting/Modeling this week has been pretty much at a standstill. My evenings have been pretty much taken up with www.TitanQuest.com on Mon, the Aksew's on Tues (Mike said he really liked the deck coloring on the SMS Hornet btw), dinner with very pretty lunatic girl on Wed, and Monkey Boy Thurs and Fri. I'm looking over at the SMS Rodney right now and thinking I need to get it done soon.

With forces that can span the globe....

I hate to say it, but I have the distinct feeling that posts are going to be a little fewer and farther between than usual (if possible) due to the extended amount of brain power I have to spend at work now. The new job is not, as of yet, as exciting as I had hoped. The grass is always greener. However, I do find it much more fulfilling on a bad day than my old position on a good day. So, I can't and won't complain (yet). Congrats to BJD, by the way!

There was another person (Jason - no relation to Big'J/ Lil'J, or BJD) from my old department that was interviewing with my new department at the same time. Before all my stuff was straightened out, Jason had negotiated his price and everyone involved had agreed upon the terms. Thus, Jason was all set to move. Two weeks ago, during my announcement to the dept. that I was leaving, Jason also had to make his announcement. Last week, however, the world almost turned upside down.

Jason was thrilled for his new job for several reasons. The main reason in relevance to this story is that he was getting an $8k salary increase. He had asked for a specific amount, let's call it K, and the hiring manager came back with K+c where c>2,000. Needless to say Jason was beyond words. Now I don't have the best business sense, but my pappy always said, "Drinking beer is good for you." Which, when translated really means "If it's too good to be true, then you're stupid." Or something like that ;). So last week the hiring manager discovers he made an error (go figure) and tells Jason that there is no way in hell that agreed upon salary can be met.

In the end they came to a new agreement, but the interim was sort of scary. I couldn't imagine what I would do if I had already pissed off my old job, quit my second job (b/c I'm going to make so much more at the new job), and then suddenly found myself in a position not to have any job. The practical side of me says that Jason was dumb. I mean come on, no manager in his/her right mind would ever offer more than you asked (extreme circumstances not withstanding). He should have known that something was amiss. The whole dynamic of managers vs. employees during hiring is the entire tradeoff between skill and desire on the employee's side counterbalanced by lowest cost and need to fill the position on the manager's side. It's a generalization, but I think it's still close enough to the truth to lend some guidance in the future.

On another work related note, "Monkey Boy" Morton will be visiting B'ham this Thursday through Saturday. He has been asked to make an appearance on the premises to an in person interview. I am most excited by this turn of events. I do hope my company and Monkey Boy can come to a mutually aggreeable arrangement.

The Skrubbtilla continues to grow. Along with the SMS Hood, a British E-class destroyer (unnamed until her sea trials are complete), and the SMS Hornet (Tamiya USS Hornet CV-8) now plow the waves. I'm actually very happy with the way the Hornet turned out. Her waterline dazzle along with her bridge dazzle really look nice. With the addition of the aircraft carrier (Hornet) my lethal forces of plastic can reach anywhere in the world! Fear my awe inspiring military power!!! The Rodney is up next at the shipyard, and has already received one coat of paint (though she'll need more).

I'm retiring bitches......

Two days on the new job and I must say that I'm still tickled pink about it. First day wasn't much in the morning (i.e. set up laptop and desk area mostly), though I worked a little on the 10k project. One of my co-workers was trying to talk my boss into buying me Copper Grille for lunch (supposed to be expensive, Big'J took his wife there for their anniversary), but no love. However, after lunch Big'J gave me a project, code named Sausage. The rest of the afternoon I spent poking around the data for project Sausage just to get a feel of what I was supposed to do.

Today, I went in early (30 min.) to get a jump start on the project and I ended up building the entire conversion tool by 4:30ish. Go me! I told Big'J, "That's it. I'm retiring on top!" I have a feeling he doesn't believe me. While I'm not totally slammed at the new job now, I have almost no time to surf the web or post.

Kyra's computer is done and out of the house (damn thing tied up my Internet connection for 2 days d/l windows update). Glad to get rid of that PoS. Apparently, handing the PC back to her doesn't get me off the punishment list. She insists on taking me to Macaroni Grill tomorrow night.

The SMS Hornett has as of yet to be completed. I am close to finishing one of the E-class destroyers. I did some research on 700th scale WWII planes and found 2 sets for the Japanese (one "early" war and one "late") and one set for the U.S. They run about $3 to $4 online so I'm probablly going to pick a few boxes of each up while BJD works on the rules for "BJD Pacific" (get to work you f'n slacker!!!).

I did find time to initiate "the chair" to it's new home. Dear Lord of Chair, it's comfy. I spent about 1.5 hours on the porch readying a book in the chair today. If it had wheels on it, I would bring it to work as my work chair.....hey, thats an idea.......wheels.......mmmmmmmmmm.......

Buh Bye Beyotches......

Buh Bye old job! Hello Crawfish and Ribs!! Today was my last day in the office working for bosses B & bosses D. Unsurprisingly all hell broke loose (and boss B just left around 10am, no PTO, no informing us, just left). The R&D dept. for my (old) product made the decision that for their 2006 release they would upgrade their database to MS SQL 2000. This might seem like a good idea, especially considering we were using Foxpro. However, what the geniuses thought was unimportant was actuall training for their developers and support staff on MS SQL 2000. But who cares if we have no clue how to do anything with the new system. Let's go ahead and install it on 9 different live environments for customers.

Well yesterday a customer called and said something is wrong. We dial in and find this 130 GIGABYTE ldf file. None of us has any idea what it is, so people start freaking out and calling other departments, the library, domino's pizza, and the Geek Squad all trying to figure out what this file is. Apparently these super brainiacs can't use google. So I get there, load up google, 20 seconds later I know what it is, why it's so large, and what we need to do to fix it. Now because the customer's HD is only 140 GB, we don't have enough space to do what we need to do. So they degrade our software from the 2k6 version to the 2k5 version (takes about 1 hour) then upgrade them back to 2k6 (4 hours). Had we caught this issue earlier (i.e. when we had sufficienty HD space), the degrade then upgrade could have been avoided.

Now I tell all three of my bosses that we are going to have problems with this particular feature, so it might be a good idea to go ahead and contact our other customers to fix the issue before it gets out of control. Did they listen? Do they ever? So 4pm rolls around, I start packing up my stuff to move, and all 8 remaining banks call just about at the same time and guess what? The transaction log files for SQL server are over 125 GB each, their systems are freaking out, and the only way we can fix it at this point is the degrade then upgrade option (5+ hours * 8 customers = 40 hours of work that we could have avoided if they could only have made a damn decision). Morons! Thank the Geeks that I'm out of there.

The SMS (SkrubbMS....get it? instead of HMS? gah!!!) Hood is complete. I finished her up last night around 7:30 then promptly fell asleep and didn't have a chance to post. I think she looks pretty nice, though nowhere near perfect. Having finished this prelim project, I have decided that while photoetched stuff looks awesome, I will NOT be suffering through it all again. So mad props to those people who do photoetch on the 700th scale!

My order from www.roocousa.com arrived today. The USS Hornet was apparently removed from my order (I guess she was backordered, I didn't get charged for her though so I don't really care too much) and the Scharnhorst was absent (I was charged for her though). In the Scharnhorst's place was the Tamiya Light Vessel Ordinance Set, which is not anywhere near the same thing. I called up the business, told them what happened and they said they'll mail me the right ship, BUT I have to mail them the Light Vessel Ordinance Set back. This thing cost a little over $6 to me, so I'm sure they paid like $3 or $4. What, they can't spot me a coupld bucks because they messed up? Now I have to shell out prorbably $6 to $10 bucks just to ship this stupid thing back to them. Bastages. I don't think I'll be ordering from them again (their in Miami so you can imagine what they sound like on the phone), even though they offer the models at a 35% discount. I think I'd rather pay www.TowerHobbies.com the extra few bucks to get better service.