Sheep Guarding Llama

Thursday. Today is my seventh day of my new job. My thirteenth day in New Jersey, in total, since starting the interviewing process.

I had planned on being in nice and early this morning but that didn’t work out. I slept in more than I had wanted to because I was up too late last night. I wasn’t late to work or anything. Still far earlier than I was expected to be in. But I had wanted to be in about an hour before I actually was.

This morning I made my first serious attempt at taking the back roads to work from my hotel in South Bound Brook. Taking the back roads really helps to get you familiarized with the area. It was actually quite easy. I just drove north from the hotel into South Bound Brook and that took me right into Bonud Brook. From there I just needed to know to take Mountain Ave. and I just had to follow that all of the way until I knew where I was. It saved me a few minutes over taking the highway but not very much. I was hoping for a much more significant reduction in commute time.

I was running a little later than I had wanted so I skipped breakfast this morning. I skipped dinner last night. So by the time lunch was rolling around I was getting a little peckish. I actually had a busy morning and that made me happy.

For lunch I went down to the Thai House not too far from work, down in Warren, with a friend from the office. He has been saying that the food down there is really awesome and we decided yesterday that we were going to go down there for lunch today.

Lunch was really good and not too expensive. It is nice to get to know the area. As a vegetarian I need some variety or food gets to be pretty boring. It is nice working at a place that has food nearby and a bit of variety, it looks like.

Today went by pretty quickly. Now that I am starting to have more to do everyday at work time really seems to fly by. I forget how quickly the day can pass when you are busy. When I was working from home time really flew but that was to be expected. Oreo does a lot to make the day go by quickly. I miss playing with him throughout the day. We both really enjoyed that.

I stayed at work until after 6:00 tonight. This is the latest that I have worked yet. I am finally getting enough work to keep me busy. Yay!

I took the back roads back to the hotel. That went pretty smoothly. I am not sure that it is much faster or easier than the highway but, for the most part, the drive is more enjoyable. It is fairly scenic and it gives me a chance to see what the housing options are along the route. There aren’t very many housing options, though. Everything is far too expensive for us. We are really hoping for a low cost condo. Something small and reasonable that won’t break the bank.

I ordered a pizza as soon as I got into the hotel. I can’t believe how much Dominos I have been eating these past two weeks. I really need to switch my diet. At least their thin crust pizza is not all that unhealthy. It is the cheesy bread that really gets you.

I watched some television, worked on the laptop and ate my pizza. My brain was very out of commission tonight and I wasn’t able to be very productive. I eventually had to just give up on doing anything much and just relaxed. I did manage to place an order for a new computer monitor for Dominica to have in the living room. Now that I am never home she never uses the theatre because she doesn’t really like being in the basement alone – even with Oreo it isn’t enough. So she watches things in the living room all of the time. In reality we were using the Mac Mini in the living room for movies and television on DVD quite a bit when I was home so it is a pretty good investment either way. We have been using the old 17″ Mag Innovision LCD that I got Min for Christmas several years back – we each bought one for each other that matched that year. They were the first generation of LCDs that were affordable – $400! Imagine that. But I am really glad that we got them. They made using our computers a million times more enjoyable over the past several years. What a good investment. So the new one that I ordered is a 19″ Samsung refurbed unit. It is the largest monitor that will fit into the armoir in the living room so it takes up no additional space in the house but gives us quite a bit bigger of an image. The 17″ as a television is really small. The new monitor uses a DVI connector so we get to take advantage of the Mac’s digital output. It also has about twice the contrast ratio (800:1, if I remember correctly compared to 350 or 400:1 on the old ones) and that will make watching it a million times easier as well. So we are pretty excited about that. Not that I will have any chance to watch anything on it for a long time.

I did have to spend a bit of time on the phone dealing with a small project that Min and I have going on this weekend. This is one of those lingering “pre-New Jersey” projects that has yet to be completely wrapped up. It is going to cause this next week to be insanely busy for Min and I. I have to do a phone conference on Saturday morning and then will probably be working on Saturday morning as well. Then Min and I will probably work together on Sunday morning. Then she is going to be working a LOT on Monday and Tuesday. She will be doing the bulk of the project on her own. This is her first real tech gig. It is pretty basic and the timing is absolutely horrible and it is totally not worth either of us doing at all except that it is kind of a favour on my end and she really needs to get anything to put onto her resume so she can’t pass up any opportunities at this point. This project will be a major point in her favour for looking at work down here in New Jersey in the coming months. Every little bit really helps when you are at the beginning of your career.

I talked to Andy and Min again tonight before going to bed. I was really exhausted by the time I finally got to bed. It was around 11:00. I decided that I needed to rest and that I wouldn’t even set an alarm for tomorrow.

Wednesday. Hump Day. It has been so long since I have done the regular Monday through Friday work week that I forget what it is like to have a day in the middle of the week.

I was in to work nice and early this morning. There is very little to report from the work front. Still no word about the apartment down in North Brunswick. I hope that I hear something about that soon so that Dominica and I can start making more solid plans for moving. Hanging in limbo is tough. It isn’t that we are worried about being able to find an apartment if this one falls through but the hassle would be pretty significant and the hotel cost while we continue to look would be pretty hefty. As it is we will have spent $1,800 on hotel bills down here if we are able to get into the apartment on April 15th when we are planning.

This morning I had breakfast for the first time at work. The cafeteria does quite the breakfast spread. It is awesome. The have a full breakfast selection including the waffle and pancake family of products, eggs, meats (ick), hashbrowns, a bagel bar, fruits, etc. It is nice that I can just walk down there in the morning and start the day. And I can either eat down there or bring food up to my desk and eat while I work. It would appear that their breakfast is pretty popular around here. They must get at least half of the traffic that they get at lunch time. They have a nice coffee selection too with high end coffee.

I have been trying to drink tea while I am at work. Less caffeine and it is better for me. Most of the time I am drinking green tea. I go through several cups a day. Maybe ten or more.

I did a simple lunch at work today. Strombolli. It was pretty good but not as good as the pizza. I did discover that they have menus that we can take up to our desks so that we know what there is going to be before we walk down there. It is a good idea but having the menu on an internal web site would be better. Then we wouldn’t have to walk down the first time to figure out what was going to be there the rest of the time.

Dominica rescheduled my doctor’s appointment that I was supposed to have this week. Who knows how I am going to deal with that. It is the little, everyday things that are really a problem when you work a regular schedule AND switch jobs AND are relocating. If I wasn’t able to pay most of my bills online and if my mail wasn’t going to dad’s house all ready I don’t know how I would be able to handle it.

I was out around 5:30 and made an attempt at driving home via the backroads. I didn’t get lost but I didn’t manage to go a very efficient way. I don’t think that it ended up saving me any time. It was a lot more scenic though. Tomorrow morning I plan on actually trying to figure out the right route to take and coming to work the shortest possible way. Everyone has told me that the highways are really slow and that the normal roads will be much better.

Last night, in the hotel, I watched television for a bit of the night and I wasn’t too happy afterwards. Once I start watching, though, I find it hard to turn off. I get into the “doing nothing” groove and that is the end of my productivity. So that doesn’t really work. So tonight I didn’t even turn on the television and spent the entire night just working at the laptop. That worked much better but the lonliness is really noticeable when you are sitting in a silent room with no motion or sound going on.

I was pretty full after having gotten both a full breakfast and lunch at work so I decided to forego dinner this evening. It is easier to not watch television when you don’t have food. Food and television really go well together. It is hard to eat and use a computer because all of the input and control devices require the use of your hands which are either busy moving food to your mouth OR they are messy from having eaten and you really don’t want to touch the keyboard or mouse until after you have had a chance to wash them. But television provides hands free, automated entertainment (or whatever) and when I eat I find it hard not to use it as a distraction. Another reason why I like going out to eat or just eating over the kitchen sink.

I spent two or three hours on the phone with Andy and Dominica (one after the other – not at the same time.) None of us really get much of a chance to talk to people these days. Andy has been super isolated ever since he moved to Brighton. With our new schedules none of us ever get to see each other. I don’t get to see anyone anymore 🙁

I got to bed around 11:30 tonight. A bit later than I had wanted. But it is hard falling asleep when you are so bored. It would be really nice if I had something to help occupy my time. But driving anywhere in the evening is not enjoyable so I avoid it at all costs. I can’t wait to have a shuttle to the train station. That will be awesome, I hope. If it runs often enough it could make going to Manhattan and Philly in the evenings really feasible in which case it would move up to Hawsome. But that doesn’t seem very likely. It seems more likely that I will normally have to drive to the train station. It is very close though. Maybe two miles away at most.

I was up and at’em nice and early this morning. I was into the office by 7:30. Hard to believe that I am getting up early in the morning and driving to work. Who would ever have guessed? I like going in early because you get a chance to get started on the day without so many things going on. You can get through the email and stuff and get a nice relaxing start. I also like it that there is a little less traffic than there is just a little bit later. I hope that if I shoot for 7:00 that the commute might only be fifteen minutes or so.

This morning was very quiet again. Hardly anything going on at all. Yesterday was totally devoid of people. Today there is a little more happening but still not very much. I got to start doing some training on Solaris at work while there is nothing else going on. It is a good use of my time. I am very excited. I have worked on Solaris in the past but have never done any sort of formal training on it. This is a really good opportunity for me. There is a lot of Solaris at work and adding that to my repetoire is a really good point of stability. Good long term investment.

I got some real work to do today and my first client. Now this is confusing to a lot of people because they think that I have a normal job and then hear that I have a client. The way it works is that we are a huge IT organization that services the non-IT portion of the company. Business units within the larger company then go to the IT division and get assigned resources much like consultants. So you get to have a personal relationship between yourself and your clients and everyone knows the people that they deal with. It is a really nice way to deal with this kind of stuff on a large scale.

After work I just spent a quiet evening alone at the hotel. I watched some television tonight – I just needed a break. I got just about nothing done but that is okay. I just wanted to relax. I ordered in some Dominos to make life simple.

I have been trying to upload my commute video from Monday but I can’t get OurMedia to accept it. The upload tool that I use is not working at all now but I am not sure why. So you probably won’t get to see the video until I return to New York on Friday night.

Dad and I are planning on going to the York Central High School Musical production of “My Fair Lady” on Saturday evening. Not sure what time it is. Probably 7:00 or thereabouts. I had originally hoped to be able to make it to the musical at Ithaca High School on Friday night but I can’t imagine that there is any chance of that. But we will see. There is always a slight chance that I will get out of work early and can make it there before the curtain goes up.

Boy was I tired when I got into New Jersey last night. I was totally exhausted. Even so I only slept about four hours. I don’t think that the wake up call at the hotel has actually woken me up once since I started working down here. I am consistently awake on my own at least half an hour before I have to be up. But that is better than waking up to the alarm. I hate waking up to alarms.

I was up at 5:30 this morning, got ready for work and wrapped up yesterday’s post to SGL. I left the hotel at 7:30 and went to work. I decided that I probably didn’t have to be there before 9:00 but I don’t want to get into the habit of coming in that late so I am trying to always be there by 8:00 even though almost everyone else straggles in quite a bit later than that.

I got to work and discovered that there was just about nobody there this morning. I was quite surprised when this continued for the rest of the day. In fact, I sat alone in my cubicle without any cubicle neighbours even showing up for the entire day. Once, during the entire day, one guy from my team came by to tell me that the mail room called and needed to know my cube number. And late in the day the UPS guy stopped by to drop off an envelope. But that was it. That was my day. My whole day! It was nice having the peace and quiet but it can be maddening when you have to just sit there in the silence all day long. There were other people in the office but they were few and far between.

I did lunch alone. There was almost nothing vegetarian in the cafeteria today so I got pizza. Yes, I finally don’t get pizza in the hotel and I end up getting it at work. And I had pizza last night too. I need to cut back on the pizza. The pizza at work is wood fired and really awesome. I also had some wild shitake mushroom bisque and a cookie. We have a pretty rockin’ cafeteria.

Right at the end of the day my boss’ boss came by to say hi and acknowledge that I really exist and to explain why the place was a ghosttown. Then I figured it was probably time to go home as there was no chance of me being productive at that point whatsoever.

On the way back to my hotel room I decided to stop at Taco Bell and pick up some dinner to eat in the hotel. It is a lonely life, let me tell you. I ate my seven layer burritos and watched the end of Home Improvement.

I spent the evening working on a couple of projects in the hotel. I have been putting in a ton of work trying to get an Asterisk server working and it is driving me nuts. I finally gave up on it this evening and had Dominica run an in depth memory test on it to see if that might be the problem.

I was hungry and so Min told me to go down and try the vending machine. I tried it but it was broken. So I walked across the street to the drug store. But they closed just before I got there. So I went on to Dunkin Donuts and got some donuts.

Overall I would say that today ranks as: uneventful.

It was freezing in our bedroom and I had to work hard to keep Oreo warm. He isn’t very good at getting under the covers and taking care of himself. We assume that this is some sort of problem that developed from having lived in Texas and never having been cold enough to have figured out the theory of blankets.

I was awake around 7:30 this morning and finally got out of bed at 8:00. That is only six hours of sleep since the clocks got moved forward last night. I hate daylight saving time. What a stupid idea. This is one thing that really makes me think Banjamin Franklin was a loon. No one has ever managed to explain to me how changing the clocks makes there be more or less sunlight. As if all humans are tied to some strange atomic internal clock that makes them get up at a particular time as dictated by congress and not by having enough sleep, the way the sunlight is, etc. I think that everyone should run on UTC (aka Greenwich Mean Time) and just refer to everything in that way. Life would be so much easier. Sure noon wouldn’t be the time that the sun was highest in the sky but it isn’t now either. Okay, maybe it is now and not during the winter, I can’t tell which is normal and which is adjusted. But you understand. Under our current system it means that half of the time and the other half is total random. So once we have lost our connection to what the time means why do we use such a pointless, arbitrary system at all? Wouldn’t it be great if you could tell someone anywhere that you want to talk to them at 3:00 and it meant 3:00 and you didn’t have to adjust for each other’s time zones and daylight savings issues? In today’s global economy it makes no sense at all to have twenty four separate time zones with multiple countries in each deciding independantly whether or not they will honor daylight savings. And to make things more complicated, now America is considering changing WHEN they use daylight savings. Imagine the issues that that will cause. Now there will be multiple daylight savings systems. Computers will use one. Canada will us probably the same one as the existing computers. Atomic clocks will use the new ones and people in Singapore that have to work with us won’t be able to figure it out at all. As it is they laugh at us for changing our clocks twice a year on a set schedule. Come on people… we should be downright embarassed that our country does this. It is totally ridiculous.

So SGL topped three quarters of a million words this week! Whoo-hoo.

I spent the morning while Dominica was sleeping working on that server that was giving me problems last night. It continued giving me problems this morning but I managed to show it who was boss around 11:00 or so. It is a server that I am working on to be my new VoIP PBX system. I want to have all of the telephone calls come through that single point and have voicemail, extensions, a receptionist, hold music, etc. It is not a small project and I have been working on it for a while. I hope that I now know enough to actually be able to do something useful with it. With me being back and forth between New York and New Jersey all of the time it seems like now is a really good time to have a really powerful and robust telephone system. As it is we can see how the Lord was really watching over us to make sure that dad, Dominica and I all had brand new cell phones with unlimited calling between us. We didn’t have that before and now it really makes a difference. And having Vonage as our main telephone service is a blessing as well as I can make it send the voicemail to multiple people so that I know that at least someone is getting a copy of the messages while I am away.

Dominica didn’t get up until after 11:00 today. It is a beautiful, sunny day today. It reminds me of, well, New Jersey. Tee hee. I have managed to have been in New Jersey for almost every nice day this Spring and I am starting to get the feeling that Jersey is just a lot nicer, weather wise, than New York is.

Dad came over after church to get lunch with us at the Omega. This is my last Omega meal for another week 🙁 I have gotten used to this routine.

After lunch Dominica and I came home and spent the afternoon at the house. There was a lot to be done before I left like packing and preparing the server that I had been working on so that it would be running all week so that I can work on it remotely from the hotel room. This ended up not turning out so well because the server has turned out to be unstable and I can’t get it to keep running. So all of that time was wasted. I am guessing that the server has bad memory in it but it will take time to be able to determine that for sure and time is one thing that I just don’t have any of at this point. So I guess that the big plans I had for being really productive this week are mostly shot. Oh well.

Just before I left Dominica and I went to Pizza Paul’s in downtown Geneseo and got some slices and a big chocolate brownie. Those are the best brownies! Then it was time to say goodbye and to start my drive.

My drive to New Jersey was uneventful. I was on the road out of Geneseo at 7:30 in the evening. I stopped in Dansville to get some gas and was on my way. My stomach was bothering me a little and I ended up having to make a stop in Campbell for a few minutes and I stopped again just south of Kirkwood to pick up a diet soda to get some caffeine into my system. After those three stops I still managed to arrive at the hotel in just four hours and fifty minutes. Not bad at all. The route through Easton really does appear to be the fastest way through even though Google Maps says otherwise. If I was to be going straight to work instead of to the hotel it might shave another fifteen minutes or so from my time as long as the traffic was the same. Sunday night traffic is really great along that entire route.

I was checked into the hotel a little after 12:30 and was in bed a little after 1:00. I got my hotel room set up before going to bed. I set up the laptop and hopped online and didn’t even have to sign into the Internet access again as it was still on from Friday. I am in the same room as well. It feels just like I never left. Ho hum.