Sheep Guarding Llama

Min and I went out to a late breakfast this morning at Leisure’s in Lakeville. We ran into one of her ex-co-workers and her old boss there so we ended up hanging out for a while.

We got home just in time to find out that my job in Albany was a scam and that Teksystems was making up the whole thing, it appears. I put in a call just before we left for lunch to find out when and where we would be meeting on Monday morning. Then they emailed to tell me that, supposedly, at the absolutely last second, and contrary to all of the job requirements leading up until now, the client decided that I couldn’t start for two more weeks. Uh-huh. That seems pretty likely. The story in the interview was that I would have to start soon enough to overlap with the guy going on sick leave so that he could train me before leaving and then that way there would be an overlap of service. Then later, after stalling for two months, they said that they were hiring me for a different position and that I wasn’t replacing anybody and that that was why I was needed to start as quickly as possible. Now, when I am about to leave to head on out there, the story changes to that I am replacing the guy going on sick leave but instead of needing overlap, they can’t allow overlap so I have to wait for him to leave. Yeah, right. All of this after the little stunt that they pulled with me “getting the job” offer on a Monday, then being called by someone else on Wednesday to tell me that I was “at the top of the list” and then being told that I had the job again. None of this adds up. I can’t figure out what the game is, but something isn’t right. It seems crazy that they are willing to lose all of this time and money playing these games. Both Teksystems and Bank of America have to know at this point that I will be disgruntled going into the whole affair and that nothing is going to make me happy if they ever get me in there. I even made a point of telling Teksystems that they burned their bridges and that, even if I took the position, I would be hunting for another, better position, and that I would just walk when I got it. Because in New York, we are all Free Will employees which means we can start work whenever we want and quit or be fired whenever we want (or they want.) Since they don’t want to have a contract with me (that would have protected me come Monday) then the only thing that they are relying on to get me to stay working or to give notice when I leave, is business ethics. And since they have dramatically violated those, I have no obligation to hold to them either. In fact, it is very much to my advantage to not tell them that I am leaving until the second that I leave because I will be pretty much training the entire time that I am there and they will not want me to return if I put in notice. So I won’t be doing that. Businesses today really just don’t think through how the way they treat their employees affects them. But they don’t care. No one is there to make money. No one there is directly accountable for anything. They could lose all kinds of money on me but everyone will be happy because the interviewing process for new hires is less stressful than actually doing work and that is all that they really care about. No accountability, no work ethic, no professional courtesy, nothing. Just a bunch of lazy jerks looking to make their lives easier.

So that didn’t make for a very happy day. We have been doing a lot of planning around that job. Moving isn’t a little thing. Luckily we had only invested time and not a lot of money into the job because these kind of things are often done to “break” consultants to make them work like slaves because all of their other options are exhausted after cancelling other work, money is invested in moving, hotels, travel, etc. So anyway, I spent the rest of the afternoon attempting to contact every recruiter and headhunter that I knew. I am determined to have something better lined up quickly.

After that fiasco, we had to get ready to head on up to Avon to see Tony’s play, Blithe Spirit. It is his first lead and tonight is the second night of the show but the first night with Tony as the lead. It is a small cast show so they have two casts and alternating nights. That is pretty rough considering that the attendance for this type of show these days is pretty weak everywhere and Avon has an exceptionally large theater so it seems really empty no matter what. So there wasn’t a huge crowd there. Plus tonight was the Friday night football game. The show was pretty good. It isn’t my favorite play but they did a really good job with it. It is a really hard play to do because it is really long and the few character that there are are on stage almost the entire time, especially Tony’s character. Which means almost three hours of continuous dialogue.

After the show, Tony, Andy, Min and I played two games of AoE2. I wasn’t going to play tonight but I wanted to do something to get my mind off of losing the job. I think that that was probably a good idea, it helped.

Two more days before I head out to Albany. Boy are things getting close. There is so much that has to be done between now and then. I got my reservations made for this coming week. I will be staying at the Fairfield Inn Downtown Albany. So if anyone needs to reach me, I will be at…

1383 Washington Avenue
Albany, New York 12206
Phone: 1-518-435-1800

I am paying extra to stay at a nicer place so that I have good Internet access. Albany is a small town and there aren’t very many places to stay there. And not living there makes it extra difficult. So you have to go with what you know sometimes. But that should make things easier. I should be checking into the hotel on Sunday afternoon or early evening. I plan to be out there kind of early so that I will have time to get a good night’s sleep and to have time to look around a little bit since I don’t know town at all. Dominica is planning on coming out on Amtrak on Wednesday. If things work out well, then I will be returning by train with Min on Friday evening because the western fares are super cheap right now and we would be crazy to drive if we can avoid it.

Mr. Humphries has been awake all day. He hasn’t been running around but he has been an insomniac or something. Everytime we go past his cage he has his eyes open and is doing something. He is running around the house like a tiny lunatic right now while I am writing the daily. He just loves his new red ball. Dominica is down in the basement enjoying the theatre watching The Simpsons Season Four that she is borrowing from Andy. Speaking of DVDs, we have accounted for all but two movies at this point. So if anyone knows where Johnny English and How the Grinch Stole Christmas are, then let us know. Other than that, we have managed not to lose any. Whoo-hoo.

We went to breakfast with dad this morning. We would have been ready on time but Min’s glasses broke just before we left the house and she had to try to get her contacts in first thing in the morning which doesn’t work very well. And she wasn’t able to find her backup glasses so she was in tough shape. She finally got her contacts in and we went out to Denny’s for breakfast.

After breakfast, dad ran some PVC conduit in the basement for me to run some wiring through tomorrow. I am hoping to get a fax server up and running before I leave so that I will have access to faxes and stuff while I am out of town. That sure would be handy. Being gone for so long is going to be really tough logistically just to keep things working around here.

Before I forget, Tony West is performing in the Avon High School play tomorrow evening and Sunday afternoon. I think that the show is at 7:30 tomorrow. Andy is planning on going and Min and I are going to try to make it. But with everything that is going on, the chances aren’t very good for that.

After getting some work done around here, Min and I headed up to the city to deal with her glasses. We went to lens crafters and had her see the eye doctor there. She got new frames because the old ones they weren’t willing to work with. That might be for the better because the new ones that she got are much more likely to be able to hold up to the massive levels of abuse that she dishes out for them. After the exam we went over to the food court to get some dinner. Min had her eyes dialated and so she couldn’t see to get around at all. I hit Wahl’s and she went to Subway. After dinner we went back to pick up her glasses. I ran over to Target to return a DVD that doesn’t play while she was having her glasses fitted. I also picked up A Cinderella Story which, of course, when we got it home didn’t play either. It has been one of those weeks.

I got to work doing some homework and Min watched A Cinderella Story and Jackie Chan’s Mr. Nice Guy which is one of my favorites. She had never seen it before and Andy and I could hear her laughing hysterically all over the house. All of the movies that we have had for a while and know are good are still playing fine. Which is good because sometimes we worry that we are having problems with our DVD player. But it looks like we just have to make another trip back to Target tomorrow. What a pain. I am hoping to take A Cinderella Story with me out to Albany so that I will have something new to watch.

After all of that, I am just writing some dailies and hitting the books. I have tons of Project Management homework to be doing but I needed a break and needed to get an update posted. Hopefully being out of town will make me write a lot more. But I am only going to be alone for three nights so that isn’t very likely. If we are really lucky, we will manage to find an apartment this week. Boy wouldn’t that be nice?

Min stayed at work an extra hour on her long double again giving her a seventeen hour shift. It is a good thing that she works at a place that has good there or else that would be really rough. But she gets breakfast in the morning so it isn’t quite as bad as it might be. She was pretty tired when she got hom. They had her doing laundry through her entire seventeen hour shift because the previous shift that had multiple people on didn’t do any and left it all for her to do.

Eric and I are supposed to be going to Washington today to do some training but we can’t find anyone in DC who can verify that a meeting has been scheduled and that there will be anyone for us to train at all.

Today was a big homework day for me. Min is working her double tonight so I have tons of time to myself to get it done. We slept in very late today after staying up until 3:30 this morning playing video games. We got up around noonish and Min made pear and cheddar wraps for lunch. Those are pretty good. She had me spend the time between lunch and her leaving for work to try to get some computer based training modules loaded onto her laptop so that she could use them to do some studying at work tonight on her long shift. She is working hard at completing her CompTIA A+ exams and getting that boring cert out of the way. We thought that the CBT’s might be a good learning method for her, they sure worked for me. I did a ton of work but there was a problem with the site to download them from so I wasn’t able to get them done before she left.

I did some homework, mostly reading (I am about 400 pages behind in reading right now) between 2:30 and 7:00. At 7:00, I drove up to Henrietta and picked up some McDonald’s and brought it over to Min at work. She had a really busy evening though and didn’t really have any time to eat with me. But at least she got food this way. Otherwise she has to brown bag it. I took the laptop and plugged in in the lobby of the hotel and got to work downloading those CBTs for her and doing some reading while I was doing it. I managed to get quite a bit of reading done while I was there. I am up to date with my Project Management reading which is insanely boring and I am reading the vastly more interesting Systems Analysis and Design books now and that makes it all a lot easier. I am flying through this material. A lot of it is stuff that I have read before in a different edition of the same textbook so I can go over bits pretty quickly.

I finished up at the hotel around 11:30. I ended up staying with Min through half of one of her shifts. I got all of the stuff that she needed downloaded for her so she has plenty of studying to do now. I drove home and got back to reading while I waited for the hamster to wake up so that I could clean his cage. Mr. Humphries has been sleeping in later and later recently so it took forever before he decided that is was time to wake his lazy butt up. I got tons of reading done while I was waiting for him, but it was really late before I got to go to bed. I put Mr. Humphries in his new ball and he ran around the house like a lunatic while I got his cage all nice and sparkling clean. I got him back into his apartment and searching for hidden treats around 3:45am. Boy am I tired. Okay, time for bed.

Jeremy crashed here last night so Min got him up this morning and put him back to work in the garage. It is starting to come along. They got about 2/3rds of the garage painted with its first coat of Rave Wine. The garage is going to look really weird once they are done. Weird and dark, but the colour is really cool so I am hoping that it will turn out pretty nice. Definitely not what you expect from a garage. I am really tempted to keep the cars outside, lay down some carpeting in there and have another room of the house. Since the ceiling is fully finished and now the walls are painted a very interior looking colour, it really makes you feel like it isn’t a garage anymore. Especially since the cars are all outside while we are painting it. Actually, before getting to the painting, we all went over to Denny’s and had some breakfast. We aren’t that much of slave drivers.

The painting went on all day, there is a lot of garage out there. After the painting was over, Min and Jeremy went down to the basement and watched more of “Homestar Runner” on DVD.

We ordered a couple of pizzas from Mama Mia’s for dinner and had them delivered. I love living in a place where you can get pizza delivered. I haven’t been able to easily for so much of my life that it is still a novelty to me. We ate out on the deck. It has been a little bit chilly but not too bad. We are really appreciating our new deck furniture that we got this year. It makes our deck into another room of the house. John and Michelle have that in DC, that really treat their deck as another room. But in New York, unfortunately, we are stuck with only being able to use the deck for a few months and the wasps and bees are so bad here that it makes it really difficult to use it for a lot of that time as well.