1 Day.

Hi, My name is Chuck, this is my site - I think, it’s been so long…. I need a nap, but for a little bit of an update, I am alive, I am busy busy busy, been working like crazy in my wonderful 8-to-5 world, with a mix of FH/TN in-between - so far so good.

Tomorrow, 1 day from now, is my birthday. 28. Yowza. I have NO idea what I am doing to celebrate, there was talk of RollerRama, there was talk of bowling, but I imagine after my day tomorrow, the only thing I am going to want to do, is sleep - lol. But I do want to get together with friends, have a meal, hang out, eat some cake, etc. or such is my thought/plan - but as usual, down to the wire with me, I have no idea, nor have I had the time to honestly even think about it - work, sleep, work, sleep, hang out away from the PC, work, sleep. etc. that seems to be the “standard” as of late.

So tomorrow we’ll see - heck I am going to try to come up with something tonight, but then again I am going to start coding at 7, and probably not stop till 11 - soooo we’ll see what happens. For now though, I’ll say “farewell!” and head off to find something to drink.

Baby Day!

So here we are, Friday. A day of things it seems, a migration of email, that has some folks worried, no no not TN/FH related, but rather MLS - my 8 to 5 job has been having issues with the local ISP when it comes to email thus we looked at options and are going to Google Apps, so tonight the MX rolls out, and we switch over and online - a piece of cake really, tomorrow I’ll come in for maybe an hour or two and setup a secondary email account for them to check. Should keep things rolling smoothly, then in a week we can clear the old one and use only the new one.

Now of course what Friday wouldn’t be complete without a baby! Dan and Val are having their first, and the plan was to induce today so I hope to hear something more on baby status here soon, but I may call the Gavin and see if he can give me the skinny here in an hour or so since he has a cell phone, and like any good teenager it’s always on but I am looking forward to meeting the latest member of the Poon family!

So far this week though has been good, some fun challenges, but I get tired around Wed. and can’t sleep well, thursday drags on and on, then here I am whammo - Friday, only 3 hours under my belt, but strangely I am operating pretty fair (at least I think so) - but things are moving forward, I’ll probably post something more complete later tonight or tomorrow, but for now I am going to get back to it, reading Postini docs to see the best way to deploy.

Have a great Friday folks, thanks for the continued prayers and the occasional check up - I appreciate it!

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.

I have a Job.

And so it begins…. as of today around 2:45pm, I got the official word from the co-owner that I am officially on-board! So needless to say I was pretty excited - this means a lot for my monthly budget, my plans for my life, etc. this weekend I’ll probably even hit up the apartment complex and see what they have open right now - Lord Willing, I Hope they have the 2 bedroom + garage that I can come look at, that would be wonderful!

But a good first day on my own, only had 2 calls to the last guy for help, which meant calling my brother but all in all things went well - just wrapping up the afternoon, I have been on the phone here the last bit calling friends and family inviting them to come eat tomorrow night to celebrate, my sister made the good call and said El Pueblo, so needless to say my belly is excited! So tomorrow we will celebrate it up, and I imagine tomorrow I’ll get things going on my employed status, paperwork, etc.

So big thanks to everyone for their prayers! More news to follow I am sure, but I am just quick blogging this from Textmate here on the Mac - once I get home and settled in, I’ll probably post more thoughts, for now, PTL!