Well it has been one long weekend. I am totally worn out today. I worked on that server all weekend long and got practically nowhere. I am not encouraged by the progress that has been made thus far. I have no idea where I am going to go from here. I really wanted to have this over and out of the way by the end of the weekend but apparently this nightmare is going to be with me all week long. At the rate we are going I am going to be incredibly fortunate if I am able to wrap up this server build by the end of NEXT weekend.
Dominica had to be up early this morning so that she could be ready for dad to pick her up at the house at 8:20. She is going down to Castile to help teach today. Dad will be alone tomorrow so that Dominica can stay home with Oreo. I will be out of town (see previous posts so I don’t have to repeat my itinerary too many times here.) I slept in until 9:00. I had to get up because Oreo decided that he needed me. Then we proceeded to have two and a half hours of uninterrupted “Oreo needs his daddy” time. I had to take him out no less than five times and had to spend all of the time that I wasn’t taking care of him outside to play with him in the living room. I have never seen him have so much energy before. He was totally nuts. I was starting to sweat from playing with him for so long. He didn’t give me a break. I think that he wore me out more than I wore him out. Finally around 11:30 he laid down and went to sleep.
Today is a busy day of me getting ready to travel Tuesday and Wednesday. I am really bad about getting up and getting ready early in the morning. I always end up forgetting half of the things that I need. I am a terrible traveller in that way. The travelling itself and the being out of town isn’t a problem but just getting ready to go I find very stressful. I know that I forget things so I worry about them a lot. I made a list of things and have been getting things together all day and putting them either directly into the car or into a box that will go into the car. I have maps and directions all printed out. I have my cell, a camera (why not) and am filling my MP3 player with plenty of IT Conversations stuff to keep me really busy. Hopefully there will be something really interesting to keep me occupied while I drive. Fourteen hours is a lot of driving.
I made hotel reservations at the Comfort Inn in Easton, Pennsylvania. Ardent followers of SGL will note that this is one of the hotels that I stayed in while working in Eastern Pennsylvania during the summer of last year. It was while staying at that hotel that I took the long evening walk and ended up in New Jersey. The hotel is about twenty miles away from the interview but I didn’t find a Choice Hotel near to the place where I was interviewing (Warren, NJ) and I figured that it would make more sense to be familiar with the hotel than anything else. I know how to get there, how to get out and I know that the Internet access works. Not that I will have any time for that. I will be arriving very late at night tomorrow night and need to be awake pretty early in the morning. So I might not even bother to set up my laptop. But I have it just in case. I have not yet used my new laptop while out of town, I don’t think. I will definitely be getting some use out of it next week while Andy and I are in Pittsburgh.
Dominica got back from Castile and did some errand running for me. She took a stool sample from Oreo over to his vet so that they could identify his worms. Of course they didn’t find any so they didn’t have any good advice for us. But she had to make a second trip over there to get an alternative worm medication for him to try. She also ran over to the dry cleaners to pick up my huge load of dress shirts that she had dropped off on Thursday (I think it was Thursday. I am too lazy to look it up now.) Now I have something to wear to the interview. Hopefully my suit is okay 🙂
I have a book packed. Never travel without a book. That is a key to happiness when traveling. You never know what might happen that you will have no power, Internet access, television, et ceterra and the one thing that you will have is your book. I generally bring at least two books and a few magazines so that I have a selection. Best to be prepared for just about anything when you are out of town. I don’t need too much for this trip. It is just one night and I am going to be very busy Tuesday and I will be coming home the moment the interview is over on Wednesday.
Now I know that everyone is rooting for me to get this position but lets not be too hasty. This job is a long way from home in an area that I am not very familiar with. The consulting firm is willing to help me get an apartment and everything but still the logistics of the whole thing will be a nightmare. We could sure do with the money. That would be great. And it would do wonders for the company because it would mean suddenly that we were able to keep Andy on full time for the duration of my contract time in New Jersey and probably a bit longer than that. But still the job will be a huge headache. Dominica and Oreo will almost never see me. I should be able to come home most weekends but I will be exhausted by the time that I get home and Dominica works all day on Saturday so we would only see each other on Sundays. And I would have to drive back down on Sunday evening so our total time together would be pretty minimal. She thinks that she would be able to get some serious time off from work so that she could spend every fourth week or so down in Jersey with me. That would help tremendously. It would mean that we would have every other weekend together down there. And then I would drive back to New York for one or two weekends out of every four weeks. So we wouldn’t actually see each other too much less than we do now. It would be tough but doable. But there are other options. I have been getting lots of calls about jobs recently and I haven’t even been looking. It wasn’t even a part of the plan for me to get any work this year. Of course, with the pending danger of Pittsburgh next week we may end up needing me to work but that is another matter. So we really aren’t tied to the idea of me working in New Jersey. We will just wait and see where the Lord leads.
I did get a call about some small survey work that T-Mobile needs to have done over the next few weeks. I might even manage to keep myself busy if they give me enough sites. I love the small projects that this because they can’t possibly get too stressful and they help to fill in between things. I should know more about that by Monday.
I got everything packed and ready to go with Dominica’s help by 10:00pm. I had some web design and maintenance work that needed my attention this evening so I had to squeeze that in as well and I continued working on that awful server nightmare.
Oreo desperately needed a bath so I saw to that this evening as well. Oreo much prefers getting a bath from me because I steam the bathroom to keep him warm and actually give him a shower instead of a bath. He is very content just standing in the warm water. If you move the water away he will actually move to get into it. I think that it keeps him warm. He gets cold very easily. We had to give him a bath today because Dominica was doing the laundry and all of his blankets were washed so we couldn’t have a stinky dog on clean blankets (and boy does he have a lot of blankets.) He is very spoiled and he steals everyone else’s blankets whenever he can. He has two that are “his” that always have been plus two that he “keeps” in the basement and two that he keeps on our bed. So six blankets dedicated to one little Boston Terrier. All in the same house. Now tell me that that isn’t one spoiled dog. He also has two pillows of his own as well. Custom made pillows just for him.
Finally tonight I got to the point where I am 99% sure that I am not going to be able to get the new server up and running the way that I had hoped that I would and I am going to have to fall back to the old server with a new build. That is really a bummer. All of this work for nothing. And a bit of money spent that isn’t exactly wasted but that isn’t the investment that we had thought that it was going to be either. Ah well. C’est la Vie. At least I am to a point where I know what needs to be done and I have so much to do over the next few days that I can’t be focusing on it anyway. It is a really straight forward process once I get back and have the time to devote to it.