Holiday Job Realization

The holidays made me realize how burned out I've been with work, not merely due to the 2 hour each way commute, but due to the lack of direction and progress during the 8 hours in between, while I'm there, which is made palpably worse by the restrictions and rules on me while I am there. As a result I gave notice yesterday, something made rather easier by the fact that I was offered a position at equivalent salary at a place without such restrictions that happens to be 10 minutes from home : ). Given that I live in the middle of nowhere, the chances of getting something 10 minutes from here are slim to none, and slim usually left town, but there just happens to be an engineering site in a little town 10 minutes away from this little town, and they were looking for just such a developer as me.

So today I go back to my old job after the holiday and get to piss around until they get sick of me being there and tell me not to finish up my notice, or like everything else there nobody pays any attention and I put in the few days I have to give and then quietly disappear. Either way it's much better than the stress I was under, and I'm looking forward to a better milieu beginning January 7.

One job, two jobs, three jobs Oh My!

So now I do have two jobs to choose from, one offer is more verbal the other more concrete, but they're both pretty much 100%, and so I have to decide. Ah the joy of being the one in control! For the moment I'm just letting things settle in my mind and working out the full advantages and disadvantages of each. It's a much nicer place to be to have a job and be offered two new ones than to not have one and be in the market.

Goodbye Windows Server 2008

Well it's back to OpenSolaris as Windows Server 08 had one problem after another, first the network list service crapped out, then COM+, then FTP no longer worked. Sigh, I guess RC0 is still not ready for prime time.

Working in the Middle of the Night

It's an odd feeling working through the night at Domus Daedali. For one I tend to work in the bedroom, really I do a lot of things in the bedroom, besides the obvious ones. But this bedroom is home of Bed Major, a 9 ft wide combination of beds put together that serves to sleep all the adult population of the house. Yes all four of us sleep together in one room, one bed. And we all have laptops on wireless. In fact I have two of them. So back to working.

I often work from home, particularly on my latest contract, where due to the nature of what I'm doing (this part of the project is pretty much solo, it involves doing work at a client site I'm not yet allowed to visit, etc.) I gain no apparent advantage by being in the office. One thing people who never work from home don't realize is that you tend to work harder at home. Sure you take breaks whenever you feel like it and such, but you make yourself always available by phone and at least within a few minutes by IM, and you take on and commit to producing much more work than you would have at the office so that nobody will think you're slacking.

So I wind up with work due at 9am, and it's 3:57. And my eyes are damn tired. In fact I decided to blog simply because I can't go to sleep, but for various nefarious reasons have to do my work work on a laptop with a crappy screen, when I own a Thinkpad with a beautfiful clear bright screen, and can only use it for personal stuff. *sigh*

But there are some wonderful things about so often being up while everyone is asleep (I'm an inveterate insomniac even when there's no work due). I can listen to mitda's sweet little snores. emmie cuddles up against my leg in her sleep. Jubal sends me into stark amazement every night by his ability to be asleep within 90 seconds of hitting the bed, and staying asleep barring trips to the bathroom until it is his appointed time to get up.

Damn I love my family.

Sulking doesn't become anyone

Yes, unbelievable as it may sound in a supposedly professional atmosphere, my co-worker is sulking and not speaking to me because I took two half days off and worked from home due to a migraine and fever.

I don't put up with such behaviour from my slaves. Very quickly they would find their sulky selves over my knee and their backsides welted and bruised. But of course if I did that here I would at least be fired if not charged with aggravated assault (would be true - I'm very aggravated, lol).

mitda had me take out some of this frustration on her on the weekend. It helped a lot but today I'm back to wondering what I'm supposed to do when the team lead on my project isn't speaking. Taking it out on her also pushed her deep into subspace, something she craves more than anything, more on that later.

"Acceptance of the inevitable does not guarantee experience of the necessary."