Z.Monkey’s Blog

I found this site on the UNH page.  It has all the current construction that is going on on campus.  If you went there you might be interested.

As all of you probably know I am now changing diapers. Addie is now 13 days old and I’ve already forgotten what life was like without her. I haven’t written anything in a while because I have felt a lot of conflicting emotions. Not about being a dad, I’m quite alright with that, but about my new job which I start in 2 weeks. I’ve told some people about it but not many. It just seems anti-climatic. You know,

Me: “Here. Meet our baby. Her name is Addison. And I just got a new job.”

Them: “Ahh… she’s so cute.”

Me: “Yes she is.”

Anyway, I feel guilty about leaving my current job, as I’ve worked there (in one position or another) for more than a quarter of my life. That’s a scary thought. I’ve also never had any other “professional” job, so I’m not completely confident in succeeding at my new position. It can’t be that hard, right? So basically, I’m feeling excited, worried, confident, guilty, and extremely relieved.

As for what I’ll be doing at the new job… I’m not entirely sure. I was given a very thorough job description which looks like I could end up doing anything or everything related to (1) the university Help Desk for 25% of my time, and (2) system accounts management for 75% of my time. The organization seems much more structured and relaxed, which after the “do whatever the fuck you want” and “do more with less” mentality of my current job, is very welcome. We’ll see.

P.S. If there are grammar snafus, please blame Addison who is squirming away on my lap.

P.P.S. Professional is in quotes, because work feels more like a circus than an office. And after seeing how many “adults” work together, I’m starting to believe that professional is a label (or compliment) you can give to a person and not a profession.

A lot of things may be about to happen in our lives but, right now, there is just a lot of waiting. Here is what has not happened:

1. We have not had a baby.
2. I have not gotten a new job.

Both of these things will be really cool when they happen, but in both cases (more so in the first) I am waiting on someone else! Silly babies. Silly me not applying for more jobs! I just had an interview, which I think went well and which I am interested in taking, but I’m trying to keep myself from getting too excited. It’s probably not going to happen.

In the last post I mentioned a beer tasting extravaganza. I’m thinking that the beginning of June will be the best time, as it will give the Scientist and the baby a chance to recover. I’ll try to keep everyone informed.

Also, feel free to notice that Dan has a new blog. Apparently, he needs to keep making new ones.

And only two days late!  London was fun, Chicago was less so.  I am currently feeling very ill but trying to get a little bit of work done before I bail out and go lie on the couch.  Garr… my stupid phone is blinking that I have a stupid message.  Stupid.
I’d like to thank Jefe for picking us up at the airport even though it made him (us) miss the 1st period of our game last night.

I started working on a project for the Scientist and I realized that it is nice to have something constructive to do when not at work. While this probably may have something to do with me feel I don’t do anything constructive at work it is also a way of improving myself and learning something new. I’m looking forward to finishing it up later this week, which should give me satisfaction for having completed something… another thing I don’t get at work.

Besides that, things have died down after the holidays. I’m still playing Zelda, though nearing the end. I’m still playing hockey. We are still going to have a kid. People are still using there time constructively by modifying their cars to look like A-Wings. I’m still trying to over come my incredible desire to procrastinate at work. We are still planning on going to London in 3+ weeks. People are once again looking for alternative energy sources. I wonder how much putting a geothermal heat pump into our condo would cost?

Stupid Pascal pseudo-code! It would take a person with an incredibly illogical mind to understand you!  I am not crazy enough to understand its labyrinthine syntax!  Fie, fie upon thee, strumpet.

marriedtothesea.com

Pretty much nothing. I’m wide awake but brain fried. I think it may have something to do with working 10 hours yesterday and getting less than 7 hours of sleep last night. The changing of the clocks is messing with me a bit more than usual. Is it screwing with anyone else?

Okay, I did pick my team for fantasy congress, so I guess I did something.  It looks like only two others have signed up and that none of them have actually picked there teams (why tizzom? why?).  I’m thinking that I’ll activate the league after the middle-term election… I’ll have to revamp my team depending on gets elected and who controls the house and senate.  If there is democratic majority in both then the big players will probably be dems.  Hmm.

I may have said something about Jefe and I going over to the university proper to do some Labview coding.  This is intented to be something we can do on the side to make a little bit of beer/video game money.  Anyway, there is a person on campus, whose job it is to make sure that labs there have the equipment and knowledge to do the shit people do in labs (experiments and stuff).  He is the person we are working for and he is kind of difficult to work with.  When he is in the room, he hovers over your shoulder touching things, poking the screen and taking the keyboard away from you.  He even sat on my foot!  He questions everything you do and wants to do everything his way.  Basically he is a typical micromanager.

Have any of you had to work with these kind of people?  How do you get through it?  We find that if we just wait til he leaves the room we can usually hammer out any problems, but nothing can really get done while he’s hovering there.

Last night the scientist’s left for a conference and I didn’t really feel like sitting around on the computer (which I ended up doing) and the Anne Rice book I took out of the library is pretty boring. So ended I walked over to Jared’s last night to watch TV and play guitar hero. Nothing too exciting, but better than sitting by yourself. Here’s how I’m feeling right now:

• I’m tired of the news.
• I’m excited at the possibility of buying a house/condo.
• I’m waiting for something positive to happen here at work (i.e. the shit to hit the fan and a some sort of management system put into place) but doubt it will happen.
• I’m glad there are softball games tonight so I don’t have to hang out by myself tonight.
• I want to know if I’ll be offered that job I interviewed for but I’m concerned that I wont have any idea what I’m doing and will look like an ass (more so than usual).
• Heidi and I were telling my parents about our trip down to D.C. (to visit Ack) and I realized how fun it was to visit friends and just hang out. It made me want to try as hard as I can to get out to Seattle.

I added in a neat-O archive page that allows you to quickly browse through old crappy posts that you’d find here (I did this last night so don’t yell at me for doing it at work). It works okay but I haven’t yet got the thing to display without messing up the sidebar.

I really wish I could get the poll thing to work, because I want to ask what percentage of everyone’s time is ‘directed work’? For example, at “Google engineers all have ‘20 percent time’ in which they’re free to pursue projects they’re passionate about.” This would mean that 80% of a google engineer’s time is spent on ‘directed work’. I feel that about 25% of my time is directed work, but I’m curious what it is like for other people.

What I have I done tonight?

• Well the blog ’should’ look a little better (I referred to Heidi on aesthetics).
• I added an Ajax comment thing… meaning you can see your comment getting posted right before you eyes with out having to reload the page.  Wooooo.  Try posting a comment because it is kind of cool.  Sorry Dan, your comment probably wont show up as every single on of you posts has been caught as ’spam’.  I always knew you were full of shit.
• Add links to other blogs for Weird Old Guy.
• Got rid of the sidebar and went with a horizontal set of links (similar to Heidi’s), because it looks less stupid.
• Added little images next to links so that tell you if you are (1) about to leave the site, (2) watch a movie, (3) read a Wikipedia article, (4) read an IMDB article and (5) other things.
• Also, if you are into any social bookmarking I’ve added nice little icons you can press add any of my posts (check out the comments section).  I use del.icio.us, apparently Xumbi diggs.

I still can’t get the goddamned spellchecker to work.  Is anyone else using a spellchecker?  If so, which one?  Also, the sidebar looks like poop.  I was going to fix it but I got distracted by plugins… did you know there is a plugin that lets you list all the plugins you use?!  Anyone have any fun plugins?  Argh, again.  Anyway, I need to figure out the PHP functions that are being called and see if I can (1) use a different one, or (2) change them to do what I actually want.  We’ll see.

I would like to say that I can supply as interesting updates as Dan, but all I can say is I had an interview at a Public Library today for a System Admin job.  I think it went well, but I’m not entirely sure.  I don’t think they asked me enough questions to deduce whether or not I would be a good candidate… maybe they already have someone in mind.  Also, I think this is the first system admin job I’ve seen where Unix/Linux experience is not necessary.  Silly billy.