Friday, September 23, 2005

May Tag Repairman Day 3

Well, I have survived two days of training and now I am on day 3 of intense (not) training. LOL... Actually I am sitting here doing what is called Discovery and monitoring the Help Desk e-mail queue.
Discovery means that I get curious about this and that and I start digging around peeking at things, reading things and trying to figure things out. When my curiosity overwhelms me and I can no longer take it I ask Jay a couple of questions about things that I have "discovered" about my new environment. Jay has been doing an excellent job of showing me things and I am dutifully taking copious notes. :) Well, anyway, trying to take notes is more like it. It is kind of weird for me to walk into a server room and everything be working , in order and documented. What the he (double toothpicks) am I going to do to earn my moola here? LOL...
I figure that next week something is bound to break and Jay and I will be able to ride up on our proverbial white horse and fix it in record time. Monday morning early Jay is going to have to set up a digital projector for an all hands meeting and of course since I do not get in until around 9 am I will miss that historic event. Sigh... Maybe I can work 6 am to 2 pm that day so I wont miss it. Well, I guess I can handle setting up a digital projector so maybe I wont need extensive hands on training this time. LOL
It appears that Rita is going to miss a direct hit with Galveston Texas and has taken a turn to the north so that it can pound the coast line around West Louisiana and Beaumont Texas. New Orleans has had the Army Corp of Engineers working at a feverish pace trying to shore up the levees BEFORE this storm hits. Apparently they are expecting more storm surge and several inches of water from the rain bands of Rita as it comes on shore.
I picked up my pay check from US Security and MC (office manager) asked me if I wanted to go to Texas. I looked at him and laughed and said NO WAY... Are you serious?? MC said, oh yes, we are probably sending a team down to Texas soon. I was like " Good grief, not this person you arent". LOL.
I brought my wireless Logitech Keyboard and mouse to work with me today to use on my Dell workstation. The keyboard that was attached to this machine was heavy enough to sink the Battleship Texas and it was hard to type on. Everytime I would hit some keys it sounded like a chain gun going off. I also reallocated a more comfortable chair out of the conference room to behind my desk for further egonomics stress testing that should last me about 6 months. I will let you know what the results of this test is next year.
Yesterday afternoon when I got off of work I went by US Security to see if the payroll checks were ready yet and of course they were not. They do not have direct deposit because apparently they have such a HIGH turn over rate that the company would wind up paying more in fees than it would be worth. Anyway, I left there and like a good father I headed up to my daughters school that she attends to pick her up. I was supposed to be there around 5 pm and she was to be waiting on me. So, I get there about 3 minutes after 5pm and I sit in the car waiting patiently. Approcimately 15 minutes go by and I am starting to wonder where my princess is. I get out of the car and I wander the school complex looking for my princess with no luck. I get one of the assistant coordinators in the main office to make some phone calls to different classes and no princess to be found. On a whim I called the house and Justin tells me that Kristina has been home for quite some time now. GRRRRRR Princess Moffitt tells me that she tried to call her mother but of course Katy can not answer her cell in the middle of class. Princess Moffitt also could not find my cell phone number so she can call me. Princess Moffitt NOW has all of our numbers written into her note pad in her book bag so she can reference it should this ever happen again. This experience brings back the old addage that says this. Children, you gotta love em, you cant kill em. Children, you gotta love em, you cant kill em. I think that SC state law prohibits strangulation and other assorted methods of murder against juveniles and members of royalty.
Here is something else that trips me out around the house as I am assuming the roles of father every day. I have discovered that my children have selective blindness that occurs between 3pm and about 8pm. During the day light or with lights it does not matter. These children can not see anything at all. I think that they must have radar like bats because they seem to be able to make it to their bedrooms and to the refrigerator when they want. It must have something to do with the double wide trailer we are living in, not sure. The reason I say this is because my children have a chore list that they are supposed to look at and complete every day without fail. The standing rule when you get home is to do your homework and your chores BEFORE you do anything else. We might as well be speaking another foreign language because we find ourselves reading the list to them and repeating the instructions over and over and over again every week. I just do not understand how I can walk into the house after working all day and be the first person to see trash laying around. How can they not see a spoon or fork laying on the floor? They know that dirty dishes go in the sink or dishwasher. Yesterday afternoon I had to give them a virtual flow chart for how the clothes washing process should work. Take dirty clothes out of basket and put them in washer. Put in soap and hit the start button. Take clothes out of washer and put into the dryer. Clean out lint filter and then turn knob to desired amount of time and hit start button. Come back after X amount of minutes , remove clothes fromd dryer and take them to an area where they can be folded and put away. Now that seems like a very easy thing to do but apparently for a 10 yr old boy and 13 year old girl it is very difficult. The other morning I found dirty clothes mixed in with clean clothes in the bathroom as I was doing laundry at 1 am while everyone is sleeping. I was like, what the heck??? Why are dirty clothes and clean clothes mixed together? LOL.... Banging head on desk... Ouch that hurts...
Here is a saying from the Computer Geek Bumper Sticker
c:\windows c:\windows\go c:\pc\crawl
LOL



James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.myblogsite.com/blog
moffittj@bellsouth.net

Monday, September 19, 2005

New Google Personalized search page


If you have a gmail email account then when you go to the www.google.com webiste you can personalize the web site to have your news, weather, gmail account etc. Check it out....

A Day of Rest

Today has been a day away from work. Yeah, I LIKE that.
I spent most of my day running errands and then some more errands. LOL... Lets see, what did I do?
I waited until FedEx got here to deliver our new ATM/Debit cards which happened around 8:30 am. I sat around reading and replying to e-mail in multiple e-mail accounts. No surprises there aye? LOL...
I got cleaned up , gathered up my dirty uniforms and threw them in the car and off to the races I went. After dropping off the uniforms I zoomed up to US Security to see if my vacation check had arrived and of course it was not there yet. I spoke to MC and asked him to PLEASE figure out WHY I dont have it yet since I should have gotten the darn thing a month ago. I told him, WE NEED that money so please get it to me. Of course, he will forget to call the Atlanta office and I will have to remember to remind myself to call him every day until I actually see the check. I figure if I call him every day that he will finally get tired of the reminder and just do something about it.
Once I finished up with US Security I headed over to the bank to get them to change the PIN number on my cards. They sent the cards FINALLY but of course they did not work which means I had to go up there and have a new pin number reprogrammed so I can access our funds. Before I went to Mississippi two weeks ago I went in person to the Goose Creek branch and arranged to have new cards sent to us. When I got back into the state on Friday Katy told me that when she was making a deposit she checked on the new cards and of course they said that the order was never made. I got on the phone with a customer service rep and told them that I would not be waiting another 7 to 10 days for them to finally send me a set of cards. They put me on hold and called the manager at the branch who in turn promised to send me two cards overnight without the 25.00 expedite charge. LOL... I was like, that is nice of you.
Once I did that I made a trip over to a uniform shop off of Rivers avenue and 526 and bought some replacement batteries for my Pelican flashlight. I then went over and met my friend Heather and her mother for lunch at Fazoli's. I had lunch at Scholotsky's around 12 noon but decided to take a break and chat with them while they ate their lunch at 1pm.
The lunch/chat fest ended around 3 pm and I hopped in the car, ran down to the local car wash off of Red Bank Rd and washed my car. I went from there to pick up Justin at Sedgefield Middle School and was amazed at how many parents park on the curb despite the signs that plainly say DO NOT PARK on the CURB. The reason for that is because there is not enough room for EVERY parent to park on the curb without blocking traffic for those of us that do follow the rules and park our vehicles in the parking lot and then have to wade our way past the vans and SUV's that take up more space than there is space available to get around them. I wanted to get out of my car and calmly walk over to one of the dont park signs, take a picture of it, then walk over to each offenders vehicle , interrupt their cell phone chat fest and ask them if that sign is familiar to them. I would imagine that I would be cursed out more than once so I just saved myself the raised blood pressure and just waited patiently for the selfish and IGNORANT morons to move their vehicles.
I took Justin home and set him into motion doing his homework and chores and then fished the crescent wrench out of the credenza and went out to do battle with the mosquitos. It is difficult to swat bugs and use a wrench at the same time. I managed to get the fitting off of the propane bottle before the bugs sucked me dry of all the red blood cells in my body. Off to the races again to get propane which is now up to 12.00 per refill on a small bottle. I remember when it was 8.00 to refill one of these gas grill sized propane bottles. Imagine that, the cost of gasoline goes to 3.00 + and propane goes up to. How does that work?
Finally, I got home and both children were home, checked the mail and hooked up the propane bottle again. After that I spent more time checking e-mail and reactivating my Dice.com profile so employers can find me when looking for qualified IT people.
While I was writing this drivel Jena Baxter with TekSystems called me about a part time pc support position with an engineering firm here in Charleston and asked me if I was interested. I told her to find out the details and get back with me. Heck, if it pays more than my full time security job I would be a nut case not to take ir, right?
All in all today has been a busy but productive day for me. If I make the trip to tomorrow I have a task list of things to work through and maybe Jena will even call me with some more information on the computer support contract. That would be too cool.
chow...