Work

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I am waiting on the street since there is some sort of fire incident in my office building.

Tactical Errors

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I gave my notice at work today. It has been approximately 92 days but it became apparent that this wasn’t the job for me. In allot of ways I liked the job allot, but in others it was not a fit at all for me. In the end there was a ton of reasons why I took the job and why I am leaving, but it boiled down to the environment not being a fit for me, and what I was doing was a step backwards to what I had been doing. Of course when I took the job I didn’t know the environment would be so different, but hindsight is always 20/20.

I chalk up my decision to taking the job in the first place as a tactical error. As long as I learn from it the experience wasn’t a total loss. I also believe I am not where I am today without everything leading up to this point. That means the good and the bad, so if I hadn’t made the mistakes I made over the years who knows how things would have turned out. And so far things have turned out ok (knock on wood). I think the new job I am going to start will be a good step for me. It seems much more like a fit for me. It is similar to things I have done, but is also very different in many ways.

I didn’t think I was making the wrong decision to leave, but after hearing what my boss had too saw about it I knew I was making the right decision. As much as my decision was a huge setback for him, I relieved tons of praise and encouragement. I didn’t really expect that but it was fantastic to get. I think he knew this wasn’t the right fit for me

Now I need to work on handing off my projects to others, while I prepare myself for my new position. I am very nervous, and excited at the same time. I start the new gig on September 8th. I get a whole day off between leaving my old job and starting the new one!

3 Month Anniversary

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Today marks my 3 month anniversary at my current company. It is weird. In many ways it feels like I have been there for ages, and in other ways it feels like only yesterday that I left my last job. I want to write more about this milestone but due to my own restrictions on what I write about work on the blog I won't go into further detail.

Today and a large part of yesterday was taken up with meetings, and vendor meetings. I am knee deep in trying to figure out the final design for a data center project I am working on. Today was spent dealing with that, and other fun administrative items. It is funny how days like today fly by.

I meet up with Luke for drinks after work. I only had two before I headed off to home to try and relax before I have to get up and do it all again tomorrow.

Drinks & Karaoke

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After an agonizing second half of the week at work I was glad to meet up with some friends for an all you can drink 2 hours, followed by some Karaoke. I can't go into what went on at work, but I am amazed at the positive and negative capacity of some people. I will probably write more about the topic on my private work blog but whatever I have to say really isn't for public consumption as much as I would like to vent about it.

I meet up with Luke and a bunch of his work friends at a bar relatively near Grand Central around 6PM, aka right before it poured. We had a two hours all you can drink for $15 special going on. I admit i am a light weight when it comes to drinking but I attempted to get my moneys worth. I can't recall if I did, so I might have! From there we went over to Japas for some Karaoke. We meet up with Vanessa, Ben & Mike. I hung out for a while until I went home to crash after my horrible week. Before I left I do recall taking part in some musical antics, but don't remember what songs they were. Oh well.

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I Cannot Stand The Blackberry Pearl

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I cannot stand the Blackberry Pearl! I know it is a really small phone, and it is a Blackberry but it drives me crazy. The only reason to have a Blackberry is to use it for email. I think all other functions of it are sub-par as smart phones go, so to have an email device without a full keyboard is driving me up the wall. My office gave me a brand new Verizon Wireless Pearl when I started and I tolerated the horrible keyboard since it was the nicest phone they had. The last straw was about two weeks ago when I was writing my boss and the dam predictive text or whatever you call it could not type out LAN, nor could I cancel out of the options it was giving me.

Early last week I had our telecom person switch me to an Blackberry 8800 that my predecessor had. That phone is huge, and kind of sucks but it has a full keyboard. I will use it until we can figure out why we cannot get the iPhone or any other Wireless Active Sync device to connect to our Exchange 2003 server.

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Light Friday Night

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Busy morning at work. A few meetings, and a few canceled meetings. I did get to meet up with Jayson for lunch. Since I started my new job back in May I haven’t had much opportunity to goto lunch with friends. The two main reasons are I am at a new job, and it is hard to get away for a while during the day, even if it is once every week or every two weeks. The main reason I haven’t meet up much with friends is because I am working on the east side again, and now all my friends are working on the west side. I went from being centrally located to everyone, to being really far away from everyone. That goes back to reason 1, not having tons of time to get away especially since travel time to meet up with everyone at our usual spot would take a while.

I was able to get some real work done in the afternoon (real, vs meetings I have been in since Tuesday). I wrapped up the day with staff meetings with most of my team. So yeah more meetings was fun.

Not much going on tonight. I didn’t see anyone online in the late afternoon to see if anyone was going out for drinks. I wasn’t really up for drinks anyway so it worked out. I have been drained once work is over for the past few weeks. I will take rest when I can.

What I Have Been Up To?

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I was writing regularly for a while and then dropped off the radar. The only excuse I have is that by the time I wanted to sit down and write I was dead tired. The new job is a bit draining. There is allot to do and get up to speed on. The past two weeks have been tons of meetings and planning. Two days last week were almost entirely meetings. Yesterday and today was also like that. And if some of our integrators have anything to say about it, tomorrow will also be a minimum of 5-6 hours of meetings. Don’t get me wrong, we are getting allot done. It is just there is tons of other work that can’t get done if I am tied up. That and even though your body is sitting around all day, you get emotionally drained from all that work and discussions.

THe 4th

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I am off to visit Jayson’s place for the 4th. I had a choice of Jayson & Gretchen in Poughkeepsie or my sister, and my brother in law’s sisters family with all their kids at their summer house in Penn. Since I just saw my sister and the kids last weekend, I decided to go upstate. The trip to Penn is a real pain and Jayson’s is just up the river on Metro North. Granted it is at the other end of the line on Metro North, but so far the trip is not so bad.

I got out of work at 3pm today, since the holiday is tomorrow. That was good. I got a moderate amount of work done today. Mainly updating project plans and going over documentation. Fun.

I was going to meet up with Louis for drinks, but he got really busy at work. I haven’t seen him since Mina’s going away party so it would be nice to get together even if it is for a drink or two. We are going to rain check and try again early next week. I am not holding my breath on that one. Since those plans were canceled I decided to pack my overnight bag and head up to Jay’s tonight instead of tomorrow morning. I figure I can head home tomorrow night after the BBQ or Saturday morning.

Another former boss I just spoke to was Gus. He IM’d to say hi. I love that he tries to make me feel guilty that we don’t hang out, but he is the one with the crazier schedule. Jayson won’t even put him down on a calendar to meet up because of the last minute cancel. He figures if i get together with Gus and it actually happens I would call and he would meet up. He is kind of right since that has actually worked for him a few times. I need to get back to Gus and let him know when is good to hang. It is alway too long between meet ups.