April 11, 2006

I may not have gotten to bed until way too late last night but I was out of bed all by myself at 5:30 this morning. I didn’t get the best night of sleep because the BlackBerry that I am not used to yet kept going off and it would wake me up. I need to figure out the settings on that thing. This is my first night with it actually working.

I managed to leave for work just after 7:15 and discovered that if you go early enough in the morning there is almost no traffic at all and the drive only takes about 15 – 20 minutes! That isn’t bad at all. I couldn’t believe how quickly I showed up at work. It was just barely after 7:30. I really need to get up and get out the door by 7:00 everyday, apparently. Doing that will make my day a lot more pleasant. In the long term the plan is for me to work starting at 6:30 or possibly earlier every day. If that does end up being my schedule then the drive is going to be great. From North Brunswick to here is only 18 miles.

The weather is absolutely phenominal today. It is that warm and sunny summer style day that is just cool enough that you want to wear full length pants and stand in the sunlight but the shadows are still warm.

Today was a very busy day at the office. I didn’t get a chance to eat lunch until 3:30. Dominica had to run up to Rochester today to get certified checks for me to take to the lease signing on Thursday. Hopefully FedEx will get them to the hotel tomorrow. What a pain it is to have to deal with any large amount of money when the company does not accept credit cards! So much running around and fees and cash transfers to deal with. Ugh. It is a good thing that I have Min able to do that stuff. Heaven only knows how I would be able to deal with it all by myself.

Cool Tech News Today: KDE 1.5 released with a major update to KOffice. KOffice now supports the Open Document Format (ODF) natively making it the second major office suite to use ODF as its default format. To quote the KDE 1.5 release announcement: “KOffice was the first to support, and now with 1.5 the second office suite to announce full support for OpenDocument (ODF) as the default file format. With two independent implementations of ODF now available it is now a true industry standard. KOffice 1.5 is therefore the version that lets enterprises and organisations all over the world choose the office suite that fits their needs best.” Personally I have always been a fan of KOffice and I am really excited to see what they have done with their most recent release.

I actually had a lot of work to do today and ended up putting in a little over time by the end of the day. I was assuming that I wouldn’t even be approaching any overtime until I had been here for a while but there is a little bit starting to creep in here and there. I got to do some harder and more advanced stuff at work today and that was a lot more enjoyable. I actually had a good time learning new stuff today.

I got an email from a recruiter trying to get me to apply for… my own job. Yes, someone actually sent me my own identical job desciption for this little, middle-of-nowhere town specifically in the industry that I am working in. Hmmm… where could that be for? I had to respond and let him know that he was too late but did a good job picking me out of the stack of resumes that he had found online since I had successfully gotten that position. I wonder how often that happens to people in IT. Normally it is really hard to tell when someone is trying to submit you for a job that you have all ready been to an interview for or maybe all ready have. I know that the multiple submittle thing is and has always been a major issue because just about every contractor AND every contractee works with all of the big recruiting firms so everyone submits the entire list of qualified people to all of the same jobs. It is a really sad system.

I was pretty tired when I got into the hotel this evening and it was pretty late. I forget what it is like to get back from the office and only have three to four hours before it is time to go to bed. 🙁 But I have a long weekend coming up and I am going to enjoy that. Five entire days (sort of) with my wife and my dog!

No television this evening. I spent the whole night on the computer working. I wasn’t too productive but I did manage to build my first production wiki. That is at least interesting.

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