Tag: work

When the walls came tumbling down

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The economy is falling apart, but life goes on. I’ve decided not to look at my retirement accounts for at least a year. I figure it will take around that long to make up any losses I’ve taken. I woke up this morning feeling pretty good about finishing up my workshop story yesterday and that generally good feeling has lingered throughout the day.

Good day at work. I’m working about 100% of my time for our Facilities group for the duration and spent most of the day today figuring out what needed to get done. I lost the last hour of the day to network problems, which sucks because I was in the zone.

Stopped at the grocery store on the way home from work. When I got home, I put away the groceries, cleaned out the litter boxes, emptied the dishwasher of clean dishes, loaded the dishwasher with dirty dishes, wiped down the counters, took out the trash and recycling, fed the cats, and collected the mail. (The latter was completely uninteresting. I received a check for $8 from Chevy Chase bank, which, if cashed automatically enrolls me in their fraud protection program. I wonder if the program protects me from checks that automatically enroll me into programs I have to pay for.)

Scott Adams’ blog on the economy today amused me. Particularly this line, which is vaguely reminiscent of Steven Wright:

Lately I have been hearing that the $700 billion should go directly to help the people who need it, not to help the greedy corporations. In other words, the government should borrow $700 billion from the taxpayers and then give it back to them. I think that is the kind of thinking that caused the problem in the first place.

I’m determined to finish up part 2 of Rob Sawyer’s serialized novel, Wake, before I have to go an pick up Kelly.

Wrapping up

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Today marks the end of the fiscal year and I more or less finished my part of a multi-year project in which we developed a sophisticated, web-based project portfolio management system for our research units.  6 of our 8 units are in production as of today, and that’s what we needed to meet our goal.  Beginning next week, for the foreseeable future, I’ll be working full-time for our Facilities department, getting their applications (which have been sidelined due to other projects) moving forward.  Anyway, I feel really good about the work I did on this project.

I did about 500 words of the workshop story at lunch today.  It stands at 7,000 words now.  I’m really going to try and tackle the remainder of the first draft this weekend.  I’d like to send it out to the group Monday or Tuesday.  At this point, it’s looking to be somewhere between 10,000-12,000 words.

Kelly has her flex-day today.  She got to sleep in this morning.  We still have a few last minute wedding items to take care of.  Yesterday I reserved us a limo to the airport.  I also confirmed with the place we are having our rehearsal dinner, and found out when they needed the final count.  We have our seating arrangement essentially done.  And I have some text I need to send to he11o_sunshine  that will be included with our program.  (I requires just a little clean-up, Jen, I swear, and then I’ll have it out to you.)  We are trying to get as much wedding stuff done as possible this weekend so that we have it all wrapped up.  Next weekend we need to cleanup the place and pack for the honeymoon.  I can’t believe that we’re only 15 days away from the Big Day.

Had a lazy TV night last night.  Kelly made mushroom-stuffed ravioli and we sat down and watched essentially 4 hours of TV, including Smallville and the season premier of The Office.  Season premier of Dexter is on Sunday.  Tonight, I’m planning on watching the first presidential debate.

Washington Mutual collapsed today–or was taken over by JP Morgan, whatever that means.  This whole financial crisis is fascinating in the same way watching a train wreck is fascinating.  I wonder if it will come up in tonight’s debate on national security?

Financial “crisis”, part 1

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Yesterday was the last real crunch day at work.  Today and Friday will still be busy, but I think I got through my tough part yesterday.  I’ve been working steadily all morning, but the pressure feels somewhat off.  Two more days left in the fiscal year, and we may actually meet our project goal.

Kelly and I worked on the seating chart for the wedding yesterday.  We think we’ve got it more or less nailed down.

When I got home, I watched the most recent episode of The Shield, which was waiting for me on the DVR.  After Kelly went to the gym, we walked over to Shirlington for dinner.  We used part of our "date night" gift that he11o_sunshine  and stubiebrother  got for us.  We ate dinner at Guapo’s, and I had an amazing, bacon-wrapped shrimp fajita dish.  The shrimp was stuffed with cheese and jalepenos, wrapped in bacon, and there was an excellent garlic butter sauce to go along with it.  It was the best meal I’ve had in a long time.

Issues with my old Credit Union account.  I no longer use the account; we have our accounts at a local bank now.  I thought I’d had all my automatic payments moved to the new account, but I apparently missed on.  The account was overdrawn yesterday.  Fortunately, as a member in good standing, the credit union covered it, but it was an annoyance that had unintended side-effects.  And to add to the misery, I found out that I owe about $35 on the water bill for the old house.  The final bill was never sent to me.  It was sent to the new tenants who were justifiably confused by the whole thing.  I had a similar problem early in the week.  When I switched the gas service from the old house to the new house, I was told that I would not beassigned a new account number.  My BillPay kept paying the bills, but I received a statement saying that I owed two months worth of gas service.  Guess what?  They changed the account number.  The payments on the old bills were going into the ether.  I guess that’s the danger of automatic payments.  Nevertheless, I prefer these little snafus to having to remember to actually make the payments each month.

We’re supposed to get some rain today.

Late night, early morning

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Long day yesterday.  I took an hour at lunch when I worked on my workshop story.  Then I went back to work.  I worked until 6 PM.   I met Kelly at the mall and we headed home.  She had her second and final fitting of the wedding dress last night, so she and Sarah left around 6:30.  I watched an episode of Entourage and an episode of True Blood.  Then I logged in to do some more work.

Kelly and Sarah were back just after 8 PM–and Sarah was stuck at our place for about 2 hours.  There was a police officer shot on I-395 at Glebe Road, which is essentially where our house is.  They freeway, along with the 14th Street bridge was shutdown for a few hours, so Sarah stayed here and waited it out.  She and Kelly watched a movie while I worked.  I wrapped up around 10 PM.

Up at 6 this morning and heading into work early.

The Yankees were eliminated from wild card race last night.  Like Jeter said, they just didn’t play well enough this season.  So their 13 season playoff streak has come to and end.  Coincidentally, Joe Torre was not the manager this year.  Instead, he’s managing the Dodgers and it looks like they might make the playoffs.  I was at least glad to see that Mussina got his 19th win last night–and that he’ll have a chance for his 20th win on Sunday.

I wish it was still the weekend

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Back to work today and it was a busy day.  I worked straight through again, without a break (I packed my lunch and ate while I worked), and I even took my laptop home to do work this evening.

To relax this evening, I watched the first two episodes of the new HBO series, True Blood.  I’m normally not into the whole Vampire theme, but this show has an interesting take on the whole thing.

I made us a chef salad for dinner tonight.  Kelly went to the gym and I did some work.

After work today, I stopped at the Mens Wearhouse to pick up my new suit, and also to donate my old suit and shoes to a charity that they had going there.

Spoke with Mom today.  No reading or writing.  Maybe tomorrow.

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We are on our way to NJ and currently sitting in heavy traffic at 10:20 pm in Philly. Go figure. Another busy work day today. I worked 7 straight hours before I took a breath. But I made progress so I guess that’s good. This evening, I got more work done on the workshop story. Probably about 300 words at home and then another 400 words in the car. A bunch of mail today but nothing of consequence.

Looks like we’ll be getting to our destination around midnight.

Limited wifi access this weekend so most of these posts will be from the iPhone–that is, brief. Probably a great relief to everyone.

Good nights, long days, but I win in the end

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I actually had a good night’s sleep last night.  There is justice in the universe!

Into work at 7:30 and didn’t leave until 6:30.  It was an incredibly busy day.  I don’t really even want to think about it anymore, other than to say that I kept myself entertained by finding my inner Puckishness.

Kelly got fitted in her wedding dress today.  After work we met her friend Becky again (as we did last Thursday) for dinner.  We had Thai food this time and I ordered what I thought was the spiciest thing on the menu, but it wasn’t nearly as spicy as I thought it would be.  Still good though.

Home and watched the Tivo’d season premier of Smallville, which was a good one!

Today was the second day in a row that we received two packages.

No reading today, but I did manage to squeeze in some writing on the workshop story.  I did about 700 words on Part 3 of the story, and I’m happy with it so far.  Off to bed now.  I have another full today tomorrow and then tomorrow evening we are heading up to New Jersey.

On all 8 cylinders

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Have you ever had one of those days where it seems you are running on all 8-cylinders?  Where everything moves smoothly and seamlessly, almost effortlessly?

Today was not one of those days.

It was, in fact, an incredibly busy, fragmented day at work.  It was one of those days where I was in two meetings at the same time (go ahead, ask me how that works, I dare you).  Lots of coding, lots of meetings, lots of coding while sitting in meetings.  We are crunching on impossible deadlines which is always fun.  Hopefully this doesn’t last more than a few more weeks.

Back at home, there was some good mail today:  the October issue of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN arrived–and I still haven’t cracked open the September issue.  My voter registration card came, too, which means I am all good to vote on November 4.  We received not one but two packages in the mail today.

I watched the most recent episode of The Shield which Tivo recorded for me.  When Kelly was finished with work, we headed up to Laurel, Maryland, where we met with our DJ.  We were back home around 8:30 PM, and we practiced our dance for a few minutes.  Kelly has some work to do, and I’m going to go read before bed.

Reading and writing

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Another busy day at work today.  I managed to find myself in meetings from 11 AM until 3 PM.  Looks like I’ve got the same schedule on the books for tomorrow, too.

I finished John Scalzi’s The Ghost Brigades at lunch today.  I loved it.  I was very tempted to rate it 4.5 stars, but in nearly 400 books, I’ve avoided half-star ratings, and I felt I couldn’t break my streak, so I gave it 4 stars.  Nevertheless, it was a great book, the rare sequel that I felt was even better than the original.  I took that and Rainbows End back to the library at lunch, only to find that the branch doesn’t open until 1 PM on Tuesday.   So after work, I dropped off those books, and then headed to the Central Branch library in order to pick up the next book in Scalzi’s series, The Last Colony.  (I’m nothing if no obsessive.)  I started it right when I got home, and so far, so good.

Lots of mail today, mostly junk, but more wedding gifts arrived today.  I forgot to mention that yesterday, Kelly’s wedding dress came in (as promised) and so she is all set for a fitting on Thursday.  (Maybe I did mention this.  I’m too lazy to go check right now.)

I paid a few bills this afternoon.  Kelly headed over to a friend’s house after work, and left me at home where I could do some writing.  I worked on what I think is a crucialflashback scene in my workshop story and managed to do a little more than 1,000 words this evening.  It probably needs some fine-tuning, but I think it’s capturing the tone and feel I am going for and I’m pleased with the results.

Incidentally, in this story, I’m naming characters after friends.  There’s a Norman, a-la vickyandnorm , as well as a Dr. Straus (strausmouse ) and Krupp (kruppenheimer).  I’ve never done this before, but I’m finding it amusing.  I certainly hope they will forgive how poorly I sometimes treat their characters.  Krupp and Straus, are, I must admit, redshirts.
 

Get! Rich! Quick!

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We had a production push this morning for the project portfolio software that I’ve been working on for the last year or so.  There are eight business units that are part of the overall push, and today was the third one that we pushed into production.  It meant a long morning for me, running some final tests, then doing the production push and validating the results.  I think it went well, overall.

Otherwise, a relatively quiet day, which was nice for a change.  The weather started out muggy, but ended up beautiful.  I came home from work and read for a while (I am really, really enjoying Scalzi’s The Ghost Brigades, which is a sequel to Old Man’s War) and then I managed to fall asleep on the couch for 40 minutes or so.  Let me be clear that this was not due to Scalzi’s book, which I was fighting tooth and nail to keep reading.  I was just exhausted.  I didn’t sleep well last night (at least not until around 2 AM) and I think I needed the extra sleep.

Picked Kelly up from work and we had scrambled eggs (with cheese and peppers) for dinner.  Watched a little TV and then headed to the gym.  The gym was unusually busy.  No ellipticals available.  So I ran on the treadmill.  I ran for 15 minutes before my knee started to act up.  It was the longest treadmill run I’ve done in years, about 1.25 miles.  I was pleased even though it wasn’t all that far.  I didn’t push it though.  My poor knee is getting older and can’t take that much and I need to treat it well.

Finally got around to paying my Virginia property tax today.  $24 formy car.  I imagine I’ll get my sticker sometime soon.

Kelly is going out with a friend after work tomorrow and I plan on making some good progress on the workshop story.  I’ve got a busy workday tomorrow on the books.  Something like 4 hours of meetings, if I remember correctly.

Apparently, we are in the midst of financial chaos today.  Oh goodie.  Perfect timing for, say, an election year.  Am I the only one who sees this housing bubble debacle as nothing more than a rerun of the Dot Com bust back at the turn of the century?  Only instead of technology, it’s financial companies.  I guess this is what happens when people try to get rich quickly.  Thank goodness I’ve never wanted to get rich quickly.


Fire alarms

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The Fashion Centre at Pentagon City, atop which my office building sits, and into which the windows of my office look, seems to have fire alarms blaring several times a week.  Sometimes, there are signs up warning that they will be testing the fire alarm system.  Other times, it seems to happen randomly.  When it happens, I look out into the mall to watch people’s reaction.

Everyone ignores them.

Shoppers ignore them.  Children carted about in Bugaboos ignore them.  The security guards ignore them.

I’d like to point out that if there is ever an actual fire at the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City and the carnage is particularly high, investigators need look no further than this blog to understand "what went wrong".

For Pete’s sake, give the damn alarms a rest, or force people to evacuate.  Don’t train people to ignore alarms!
 

The roads must roll

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Just finished up 4 scene critiques for the writers workshop.  Professor Gunn has us working on "setting" this week.  I think I have two more critiques to write, but those scenes haven’t been submitted yet so there’s not much I can do.

Very productive day at work today.  My Universal Importer for the Big Application we’ve been working on for the last year got it’s first trial run and was successful, which made me happy.  I spent all morning on it.  It was one of those days where I got into the office, disappeared in code, and when I came up for air it was 12:30.  I had to interview someone this afternoon, and then it was back to work on the Universal Importer.  I headed home around 4 PM.

Comcast called me early this afternoon.  They wanted to see if they could troubleshoot my phone problems now, rather than have me wait for a technician on Monday.  "Monday?" I said, "I was told he was coming today between 3 and 6 PM."  Turns out, when the Comcast rep said, "Tomorrow between 3 and 6," she meant "Monday between 3 and 6".  They called me back around 4:30 to do some troubleshooting.  They were going to remotely reset the modem or something.  They also told me that the phone number we’d been assigned was never "registered", whatever that means.  In any event, they solved half the problem.  I was able to make an outgoing call from the house phone tonight, but still not able to receive an incoming call.  So the Comcast tech will come on Monday.

Did some banking today, depositing various checks.  When I got home from work I found our engagement pictures on a CD in our mailbox.  There are 91 pictures, many of which came out really good.  Especially the pictures of Kelly.  At some point, we’ll make some of them available.  I also had a message from the concierge that they had a package for me.  I walked over there and would you believe they couldn’t find it.  They were very apologetic and asked me to come back tomorrow–they’d have it all sorted out.  Stay-tuned.

Paid the credit card bill and that means the honeymoon is paid for in full now.

Spoke to Mom briefly this evening.  Also spoke to vickyandnorm.  I did laundry when I got home from work.  It was my first time using out washer and dryer.  Kelly likes doing laundry, but I badgered her into letting me do some today.  She made us scrambled eggs with mushrooms, peppers, and cheese for dinner.  High protein.  We headed to the gym around 8:30 and I got in a decent chest and back workout.

I’m 172 pages through Rainbows End and it’s slow going simply because there isn’t enough time in the day.  Tomorrow we’ve got Poker Night; Saturday is the Think Tank softball tournament (if it doesn’t rain), and on Sunday we’re planning on wrapping up what’s left of our wedding to-do lists.

And if that isn’t enough, when I checked to see if Dad’s tux had been added to the list tonight, I discovered that it had–except they spelled his first name "Dan".  This is remarkable only because I spelled out his name when I called to have him added.  I’ll get it changed on Sunday when I go in to get fitted.

To shower and to bed…

Happy Birthday, Casey!