Today was an in the office day for me. I was feeling better than yesterday, but I still feel crappy so I didn’t make my scheduled trip to NJ. I ended up going to my home base office instead. I feel bad not trekking out to Jersey but I don’t want to kill myself. I will go next week. Today was packed with meetings. Talking while my throat hurts wasn’t so fun. I had two hot chocolates throughout the day. I actually used my work mug for the second time since I got it! Not a fan of having to clean it, but it is ecologically more friendly than using disposable ones I guess.
Work
Sick Day
I took a sick day today from work. It was the first sick day since everything that went on in October. The stupid head cold I had was killing me. I couldn’t breath or talk. The lack of sleep because of the lack of breathing from my noise was the final straw. I figured I would rest up so I could goto the office tomorrow. I am feeling better than I was last night, but still no where near 100% better.
I totally forgot it was tax day. Of course I did my tax’s in February so it didn’t matter to me!
I am Sick
I have a head cold. I started feeling my throat get scratchy on Saturday night. Thankfully I saw the signs and started taking Zicam as soon as I could. By Sunday morning my throat hurt bad. Today at work wasn’t fun talking on all the conference calls, but at least it was a work from home day so I didn’t have to run to and from work. Tomorrow I will have to do that. Actually tomorrow I have to run to my main office (aka the office I am based out of), then in the afternoon I have to go to a meeting at our midtown office. At least I will be closer to home when I am done, but I am not looking forward to running around while I am sick!
My Birthday
Today was my birthday! I worked from home most of the morning. Then I meet up with Jayson, John, Danny, and Eric for lunch at Angelo Maxies. Steak birthday lunch was really good. I then headed to the office for a meeting in the afternoon. Then it was home to meet up with my parents and Beata for birthday dinner. Dinner was good. I had king crab legs! The perfect birthday food.
After dinner my mom gave me my gift. I knew what it was but it was still cool to see. A few years ago my sister bought me a sheet of $2 bills for a birthday gift. I wanted it since i thought it would be really cool. I hadn’t done anything with it for ages and mentioned to my my mom I wanted to get them framed. She got them framed (and had a much better job done than I would have paid for) and broght the finished product. It was really cool since I had it framed in a way that you can hang it with the front or back facing people. It looks awsome. I need to get a special hook to handle the weight of the frame and find a place to put it!
The Laptop Upgrade
I got a new laptop at work today. I am switching from a Thinkpad T61 to a Dell Latitude D430. The 430 is not as fast as the Thinkpad, but it is only 3lbs. Since I am never in the same place two days in a row working it is worth the performance loss to get the portability. I am not a huge fan of the fact that the build I get has XP on it but so did the Thinkpad so I am not complaining that much. I had to spend what little free time I had today moving my stuff onto the new computer so I can give back the old one. I guess it is being repurposed right away. The jury is still out on how good the Latitude is. My D420 at Redcats wasn’t horrible, so I am hopeful this guy is pretty good.
Working On A Sunday (and Monday)
This weekend was a 3 day weekend (4 days if you count the day off I took Friday). I wouldn’t have know that if I looked at what I did this weekend. See I worked all day yesterday and today. I actually just finished up a call a few minutes ago. That means I was working on and off since 10 AM this morning. Fun. If that wasn’t enough fun, I worked from about 11:30 AM to about 9 PM last night also. I had problems with something at work that required attention. I don’t like days like this, but I also know that days like the last two come with the job. That doesn’t really make you feel much better when a weekend is ruined, but it is true.
I didn’t have major plans yesterday but I wanted to do some shopping. That was out. I didn’t plan on it, but Beata wanted to goto dinner tonight and I couldn’t because of a planned call I had, that actually turned into two calls that lasted about two and a half hours. Having to cancel or avoid making plans because of unplanned after hour work is not fun.
Now I am sitting on my bed with my netbook writting this post and some other stuff, while listening to music. I am trying to unwind from the crazyness I had all day and get ready for sleep so I can get up and start the real work week!
On top of all the craziness that went on, I also ended up taking some migraine medication since I started getting a head ache this morning. All in all a stressful semi depressing weekend.
The Work Weekend
I had to work this weekend. It wasn’t just work, but I had to be onsite at a data center for all of Saturday. I can’t and won’t really talk about what I did, but it was allot of waiting, and then allot of work. During a lul in the work I left a little before 9PM. I got home before 10 and was back on a conference call regarding the work that was going on. Unfortunately things took allot longer than originally anticipated and I had to get on another call at midnight. It didn’t end until after 4AM.
I vaguely remember getting to bed around 4:30 and was up by 9:30 freaking that I slept past an alarm I had at 9AM for another call. Thankfully that call never happened anyway. I ended up working for the majority of the day until after 5. Thankfully everything worked out ok, but things were dicy for a while. I really would like to talk in more detail but I am mindful of the sensitivity of what I work with. So nothing more than the vague descriptions I gave.
Thankfully I was able to get a little rest in tonight before sitting down to write this. Now it is off to bed.
A Release in Progress
I am eagerly waiting for one of the guys on my team to finish a software release on one of the applications my team supports. They have been working on it almost all day. I don’t have anything really to do with the release again until tomorrow morning but I know I won’t sleep right until I hear that everything went OK. I am hoping I get that nice all OK email in the next 90 minutes! Fingers crossed.
Busy Thursday
My new job (well not so new since it has been almost 3 months) is unlike any I have had before. Previous jobs I have worked with people in remote offices, but at my current job virtually everyone including my entire team is remote. That means most of my day is taken up by phone calls, emails, and lots and lots of conference calls. Since most of the job is communicating with others elsewhere I am able to work pretty much anywhere. My boss has been very flexible and I have been working from home a few days a week. I go into my main office once or twice a week and one of our other offices in Manhattan a day a week or so. It is weird working from home so much. In many ways I like it allot, and in other ways I don’t like it. I do miss the socialization that is work in an office. Of course since the main office I goto doesn’t house my team I don’t even really have that when I go in. When I go to the other office in Manhattan I am around allot of people I work with, but who are in other groups I interact with. That makes the days I am there great for face to face meetings.
One day a week all the local members of my team get together in one office to meet. Since I started that has been my office in NYC since the office most of the remainder of the local team (NY & NJ) are in is being renovated so space is limited. On that day there is almost no time free from meetings. If it isn’t regular scheduled meetings it is an entire team meeting, or one on one meetings with each person on the team. The other day in the office usually isn’t as packed with meetings but this week it was. This week, that day happened to be today. Thankfully tomorrow is almost free of meetings so I can try to get administrative work done. Of course we have a big project release tomorrow so who knows what I might need to be involved with that if stuff breaks!
For a point of information, if you read this you might think I am complaining about the hectic schedule. That is far from reality. I actually live off the fast pace (to a point), and would be bored out of my mind if it wasn’t so busy with stuff to do. Honestly some of these conference calls are kind of boring, but most of them are interesting, and you have to stay on your toes or you miss lots of stuff. Here is to tomorrow and hopefully some decent time to finish paperwork!
3 Month Anniversary
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.