Today is another of those insanely windy New York days. It is simply amazing how much wind whips through this part of the state.
I was up at eight this morning after having been up until two working on that blasted server. It just keeps going and going. I wanted to get another test started early so I was on top of that first thing. Tonight my cousins Sara and Jeremy are coming over to watch Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle or with its original title as we will be watching the subtitled version Hauru no ugoku shiro that just released this past Tuesday.
I forgot to mention on Tuesday’s post that I got a chance on my way to Ithaca to stop at Walmart and I picked up the new releases of Howl’s Moving Castle and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. So now you know.
I had my second round interview today for that position in New Jersey at 10:30. I interviewed three times last Wednesday and today I had a single interview with two people. One technical manager and one senior technical person. I think that it went really well. I got a really good feeling about it. But that is always dangerous. But the two guys that I talked with today sounded really nice and definitely made me feel more like I would like the position. The one person would be directly my team lead so I would be spending a lot of time dealing directly with him.
It is so insanely windy here today. A neighbour that lives several doors down to the left of us [looking out from the office] had their recycle bins blow all the way down here and into our neighbour’s driveway on the other side. The lamppost in front of the house is shaking and it is so noisy. That is the worst part. Even when you are just sitting in the house the noise of the wind never stops. It just keeps going and going. Half of the sidewalk lights that we have are blown half over from the wind. It takes a severe amount of wind to blow over a twelve inch high light post that is buried in the soil and almost directly against the wall of the garage on the leeward side with large bushes hanging over it!
More server work today. It seems like it will never end. I did actually manage to make some actual progress today for a change. But boy has it been a lot of work to get to this point. Way more than it should have been.
Today was a very nerve racking day as both Dominica and I spent most of the day just waiting for some feedback on this morning’s interview. Dominica actually managed to make herself almost sick because she was worrying about it so much.
One of my customers down in Ithaca had a viral disaster on their main office workstation this afternoon and I put in a bit of time dealing with that. It is a really bad new virus that none of the anti-virus companies have a removal tool for yet. What a pain. We put in a couple of hours working on it remotely and decided that it wasn’t worth this kind of effort. The virus is bad enough that the machine is pretty much unusable so we decided that it would be a more efficient use of time to just reinstall the machine. So I am scheduled to be down in Ithaca first thing tomorrow morning to deal with this.
I got the call at just a little after four o’clock this afternoon. I have been offered the position. Dominica is really excited. She spent a lot of the day looking at property down in New Jersey trying to find something that looked good. My start date is March 28th. Just two weeks away. Boy is there a ton to be done before I go down there. Sure, I will be home on weekends quite a bit. Especially at the beginning but still there is a lot that has to be done that I won’t be able to squeeze into the weekend times when I am home.
I called around to tons of people to let them know that I had gotten the job. Lots of people were praying for us. Times have been tough and this will help a lot. I haven’t had a traditional job since I was at IBM in 2001 and even that wasn’t that normal. My last really normal job was in 1999! This will be quite the change for me.
So the schedule stands as: Ithaca tomorrow for me. Then first thing on Sunday morning Dominica and I are driving to New Jersey. We will stay over the night and get a feel for the place and do some searching for apartments. We will be home sometime late on Monday evening. Then early Tuesday morning Andy and I are driving to Pittsburgh. We will be spending the night there and driving back to Geneseo on Wednesday evening. Thursday is the Symantec and Microsoft shows in Rochester. Friday is the teacher appreciation dinner for Castile Christian Academy. Saturday and Sunday will be crazy work days for me. My only real window to get anything done before going to Jersey. Monday I am scheduled to teach my UNIX and Linux Architecture lecture at Finger Lakes Community College. Then I have a little time during the later part of that week to get some stuff taken care of but I need to get a lot done before then. Only a few spare days before going to Jersey. I expect that I will be going down there on either the 26th or 27th. I will want to be settled in a little and comfortable before going to my first day of work.
Dad came over and picked me up at 5:30. We went over to the Omega and got our usual Friday night dinner. We both got Mac and Cheese tonight. Our regular waitresses were there and they were very sad to hear that I was moving to New Jersey.
Jeremy came over around 7:00 and played some Call of Duty 2 online while I worked in the basement trying to get that terrible server working. No luck. I am having some hardware issue now that I think I have the software issue solved. It just never ends. Sara came over at 8:45 and the three of us cousins watched Miyazaki’s latest movie Howl’s Moving Castle that just released this past Tuesday. It was pretty good. Not my favourite film by Miyazaki but definitely a really good movie.
Dominica got home just as the movie was ending. I needed to borrow an installation CD from Jeremy so Dominica, Oreo and I rode drove down to Leicester and got that so that I would not have to deal with it in the morning. Then we came back to Geneseo and went to Pizza Paul’s and got some slices for dinner. The students are on spring break (only educational institutions have spring break in the winter) and so the place was closing early. We were the last people there and we got all but the last slice of pizza. We got a gigantic and really delicious fudge brownie and split it. Then it was home and off to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a really busy day.