Now that’s a Monday!

I have a amazing core group of friends, they are more like family to me, they are supportive, good company, and always a open ear, tonight we tried to get as many of us together, granted I know some folks Monday is not a good night, but the Foster’s were in town but leaving at 5, the Poon’s had a due date for baby, and yet somehow from a lunch with Matt we got ourselves together at Cindy’s for some grub, good company, and Uncle Chuck the Human Jungle Gym.

It was a good day overall, got some more stuff cleaned up in the office, organized a bit, got a laptop finalized and ready to go, all in all it was pretty nice - throw in the lunch and the dinner - a great time, and while I am exhausted and then some I would do it again in a heart beat - we sat, we ate, we talked, I played with Ethan, Evan and Carlie - even Jake had some fun with Evan, it was a good day that just had some really great high points to it, I hope the rest of the week has good stuff in it like this! If only everyone could of made it, Scott had plans already, and some folks have class on Monday’s so just not possible, but were going to setup something big and fun soon.

Anywhoo - busy week, got a copy of EE on the laptop, so I can work on it on the mac during the dead time, also have a few assorted things I am working on with FH/TN, and of course MLS has the Google Apps migration this week, I need to get the corp. card and get it paid for, as well as a few other purchases I need to make for building a small server to test a backup system, so lots to do! But for now I am going to zone a little to some TV, and then probably try to crash out early. Sleep will soon become my friend… I hope. Night folks! Thanks for the continued prayers!

New Woot! Shirt

Well it’s that time again, new shirt:

It’s a good shirt I thought, but sleep is nearing my mind, so happy Monday to all! More later today!

Possible New Home

Quite a weekend, working on the last bits now - fixing up the Foster’s computer - wish I had got it done sooner, but the job, projects, etc. all just been all over in my brain - quite a change to go from no sleep schedule -> 645am wake up! Oi!

Saturday I finally went off and checked out the apartment:

That’s the floorplan I am looking at, its pretty open, which is what I was hoping for, and the spare bedroom is just big enough to setup a small photography studio - along with all my iMac and Server, the media rig will probably get a new “Media Center” case, and be in the living room with the TV - but all in all I think I am going to move towards that setup, the price is $750 monthly - 2 bedroom 1 bath - I really like it, but the time table is what I am looking at, I don’t get paid till the first from the new job, then again on the 16th, but if I had a few more invoices in and paid I’d have the $400 deposit + first month, no where have they requested first and last, but that used to be the standard.

Anywhoo - I am pretty jazzed, I hope I can really get that rolling before the end of March no later, but if some magical way comes about, I’d just as soon do it before my b-day as planned, but sometimes the time tables we make aren’t the ones were going to end up following - but a new week is nearly upon me, Monday I have lunch with Matt, give him his box, enjoy a hoagie (mmmm pastrami) and tomorrow I may get news of a new member of the Poon family arriving! So an exciting week ahead, plus I get to make the migration to Google Apps at work, so busy busy, but fun fun! More to come this week, I’ll post more in the days to come with all that’s going on! Have a good night folks.

Network Blip

Well it never fails, Friday night, I crash early, and alarms galore go off. Tonight the backbone I am one was forced to do some emergency maintenance - it was handled quickly, but sadly not quick enough to avoid some downtime - but its fairly late, and no tickets, calls, or emails came in - so rather smooth, good guys at the new DC, human - no “scripted” responses, they have taken care of me, and are truly prepared to be my hands when I can’t get in there myself.

Things are leveled out now though, servers are responding, email is flowing again - so far so good, few more checks, then its back to my pillow for some quiet time Night folks!

Stupid Keyboard!

So I have found my first gripe about work. We use Windows. LoL - it’s not that bad, but being on Mac as a primary for so long, I haven’t used Windows keystrokes for a while, I have gotten used to the command+c vs. ctrl+c for copy and such, tonight back at home and not passed out from my day, I have been working on the computer a bit and I keep using the wrong keystrokes! Silliness indeed.

I have been considering asking work for a Windows Laptop, be nice to have for various reasons, one of which is to use at a workstation, or take offsite to some of the administration’s homes where I do some work on their “work” stations, but we’ll see - after this next week we move to Google Apps, so one step at a time I suppose, looking forward to 25GB of storage, plus I hope to migrate folks to the mail interface online vs. @#%! Netscape 7.2 (replace special characters with angry/nasty/obscene words) - they use it for Mail & Browsing, my goal is to do some streamline work across the board and replace Netscape 7.x with Firefox 2.x (none of them use IE!), and instead of Netscape Mail put in Thunderbird or Outlook, at this point I am game for ANYTHING more modern than 2004!

All in all the first full week went well, survived my first meeting, fixed some problems, made some calls, did various things to lay some more groundwork across the board for improvement, Monday I am going to start experimenting with a backup solution for all the workstations, only going to need 2TB of data storage, shouldn’t be too hard but I am getting there, balance of TN/FH is going fair, haven’t been on top of reps, but over the next week or so things should really start to level out.

Anywhoo - again, I can’t say it enough - big thanks to everyone for their prayers & support, and I ask that you say some extra prayers for my good friends Dan and Val as they are expecting their first child this next week! (Feb 18th is the Due Date!) so keep them lifted up to as they prepare for some new excitement in their life but as for me, I am going to wind down this week with a Cheese Pizza, some mindless TV, and a long nap into Saturday - which I get $300, some time on a computer (Re-Install XP for Matt) and of course if time and management allows, a walk-thru of an apartment! So much to do, so little time Have a great weekend folks!

1am… I’m back!

So it’s Friday finally, another week down, my first full week of the 9 to 5 job (okay so it’s 8 to 5, but there’s a hour lunch) - Thursday I went and snagged lunch and ate at the park, it was gorgeous outside - it was a great way to spend lunch and get a breath of fresh air plus eat some tasty food.

I got home at 5:25 after a long day, first meeting, good progress on Google Apps, and a growing To-Do of mainly “not a top priority” things to do - but so far so good, plus on the TN/FH side, things are going smoothly too - tickets have been low, and billing ran today with no issue, so things are sticking it pretty smooth.

So why am I awake at 1:30ish in the morning? I dunno! I crashed out earlier, was just dead tired, looked for food, found nothing, my mom brought me a thing of chocolates for V-Day, then I just remember turning off the TV, and waking up wondering if I beat my alarm to the punch, and boy did I, only 5+ hours early, so I am going to try and wrap up my email, the one ticket, and then find my pillow again and get some sleep before the alarm goes - but I’ll post something more complete as to all the fun I am having probably Saturday, but thus far I do appreciate all the prayers, folks checking in on me during the day via IM - it’s much appreciated.

Anywhoo - I am off, part of me is hungry, but part of me is more tired, so I am going to let the tired part win and get some more sleep under the ol belt. Happy Friday folks.

Pee in a Cup, get a job.

So far so good on the job front, on my 3rd day solo, 2nd day on the payroll, I’ll get paid the 1st it looks like, or a very small check on the 16th, but so far so good, I finished the last leg of the HR hoops today (well the core stuff) by peeing into a cup, first time for doing it, even when I worked for KHSD I didn’t have to do a drug screen, I think it’s random in that case, but here I got to pee in the cup, it was a tad awkward with a wall-length mirror, but I survived!

Last night was fun, had Scott, Sara, Sarah, Beth, Michael, Ron, Karan and ME! we went to El Pueblo for dinner to celebrate the excitement that is my employment, it was awesome food, dad got mine, I got his (Chicken vs. Beef) - but still lots of fun, good laughs - I was going to hit Denny’s with Scott later, but I just got super sleepy - and backed out, still not 100% on this new schedule, and my body isn’t yet fully used to the concept that I can’t sleep whenever I want anymore - but it’ll level out in time, probably after the first check direct deposits into the bank I am sure that’ll give me peace of mind, but it is seeming like more and more I’ll be getting the apartment in March I am guessing, not a huge deal but it works.

Worlds are colliding with Work and Work, as it stands MLS is migrating from it’s current email offering with the local guys (who’s name I dare not speak, in fear I’ll go on a rampage) - but the replacement is the big question, I think Google Apps is the route I am going to take, it’s a nice solution for outside sales folk, 25GB of storage, etc. etc. but it’ll run the company about 3k a year in costs, as it’s $50/account - so we either need to slim down the email -or- one of these other options, currently Fusemail has my attention some, fair pricing, takes the cost for 25GB TOTAL storage down to under 1k a year, so a big savings in comparison. Granted I could always just setup something in-house, there’d still be some cost, but not sure. Already have the OK on Google, but I know there is resistance to it, so I want to have alternatives in the wings just in case, plus some of these offer anti-spam solutions so more for FH/TN to consider.

Anywhoo - things are good, getting the swing of things pretty well, the MBP is doing nicely (where I am typing now) and the office Dell I use for work, is not to shabby either. So now I am going to sit here and continue reading, lunch is in 2 hours, so tasty food is on the horizon! (I hope) I am thinking maybe of grabbing a slice or a dog from Costco down the street…. time will tell.