Blog

Still haven’t been paid. *sigh* Apparantly a check was cut for me on the 24th, but it still hasn’t made it to my office mailbox THROUGH CAMPUS MAIL. I could have sent it via USPS and it would’ve been here (and possibly back). Thankfully Nick (and Lori :)) have fronted me some money for the time being. That way I can go tomorrow and transfer my title to IL and get an IL license plate. I kinda need to do that soon, since my plates expire at the end of the month. Needless to say when my check didn’t come on Wednesday, I wrote an email to the lady (Rhonda) that I’ve been corresponding with about it, and then carbon copied it to my boss, the head of DS, and the two DS HR people. Thankfully I recieved a call from Rhonday promptly after the email, and my boss even expressed some interest. That was about it. Large bureaucracies make me happy, no, really. The new hire page hasn’t even indicated that my check was cut, so it makes it VERY hard to believe it’s somewhere in campus mail. I figure I’ll give them (another) work week to fix it, so come the first I will have had about enough. At that point, I’ll probably schedule a meeting with my boss and the head of DS, voice my thorough disgust and ask how THEY are going to make it right. If you can’t tell, so far my experience with DS has been less than savory. If only I had recieved other job offers…stupid economy…

On other notes, I’m almost done with KoTOR. However, since I decided to go the way of a light jedi, the end boss is about impossible. All the people I know who have beaten it have done it as the dark side, which allows you beat the final boss A LOT more easily. Speaking of the xbox, just ordered a 200GB harddrive for ~$22 today. Gotta love when dell screws up and has 2 $100 rebates on a product. Hopefully dell will uphold their end of the bargain and I’ll be able to have a place for backups (off of my main server).

Last weekend Ann came to town. I hadn’t seen her in awhile since she was in Spain for the last year. We had a good time catching up. Since Colleen worked all weekend, Ann and I went to the football game and did some other stuff. It was good to see her, and she hasn’t changed much at all. She still isn’t sure what she’s going to be doing now that she’s in the “real world.” She’s heading back to TX to stay with her parents and make a little bit of money. After that she wants to head to AZ and just start anew. Who knows with her though.

Colleen’s looking for other jobs because she can’t stand the little bit that she makes. I totally agree with her, she is definitely getting the shaft working there. She’s had an interview and she’s been keeping an eye out. I’m glad she started listening to me about applying. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen, they say no and she still has the same job? At least she has a job…

I’ve been getting back into climbing. I asked Ann to bring me back a pair of climbing shoes from Spain, since that’s where the vast majority are made. Got a nice bargain on a awesome pair of shoes: La’ Sportiva Mythos. Can’t complain when I got them for $90. Till next time…

First week of the new job’s done. Wow, is it so much better not being the one that runs around doing all the remedial tasks. It’s nice not having to run to 3 different buildings 8 times a day. I went to my benefits orientation on Wednesday, and WOW do state employees get the hookup. I get 2 paid vacation days a month (bankable to 48), 11 paid holidays, 5 sick days, Health, Dental, and Vision care, retirement plan that either I or the university can maintain (8% of my salaray and the university matches it with 6.5%), life insurance (the university covers the amount equal to my salaray, and i can increase to 4x that), and free tuition. Now I just have to sign up for all this stuff.

Ohh…Ohh, THE BED CAME!! It was delivered yesterday morning. Wow, is it comfortable. Definitely WAY better than the futon that we were sleeping on (no offense Bree). When I came home from lunch yesterday Colleen had taken one of our flat, full sized sheets from the linen closet and just layed it on the bed so she could sleep. She also took my comforter (also full/queen size) that we had on the futon and used it. Needless to say, when i saw that stuff on the king sized bed it made me chuckle. The bed is huge, and the sheet and comforter just barely cover the top. So, last night we went and got a matress cover and a cheap fitted sheet for it so that we could at least use the bed. When I get a digital camera, I’ll have to take a picture of it. The thing is definitely the main piece of furniture in the room.

It’s so nice not having to worry about school now. I go to work everyday and pass all the students going to class at 8 in the morning and just laugh to myself. Oh man, does it feel good to be done, and have a job that I enjoy. No more nights staying up cramming for a test, or trying to figure out what exactly the teacher was trying to get us to learn from those stupid assignments. Ahhhh…

Wow, these last coupla weeks have been busy/wierd. However, to start off with, I’d like to mention that I just signed my paperwork for DS, so as of Monday, I’m employed fulltime! It’s a great feeling. I’ll also be staying at DIA for (at least) a few months working as the DS consultant. I have more info on this, but I’ll refrain. Last week was HORRIBLE because of the stupid blaster worm. Of course none of our machines were patched on a regular basis, and so we were hit pretty hard. Needless to say I was there till 1am last Tuesday. A lovely 17 hour day…grr. However, now that all the machines have been patched to SP4 and the blaster fix, they can and have all been put behind an SUS server. Thank god for auto-updates.

I’ve finally gotten the cable jack upstairs, but I had to do everything myself. Grr, I hate Insight (cable company). Apparantly they wouldn’t install an extra jack in my apt because it was an “apt,” but they had no problem doing it to the 4 other apt’s in my building. All I can say is that I believe (as does Colleen) that I did a better job than Insight had done on the other jacks. Shit, and I did it for about the same price (and I have about 30 extra of everything ;)).

Oh, and so the bed came last thurday (the 14th). However, the boxspring wouldn’t fix up the friggin steps. BY ABOUT AN INCH. Joy. So I told the delivery guy to just return the matress and boxspring. So, I’m fuming as I drive to the furniture store to find out my options. Luckily, Nick (used to be my boss, now he’s my coworker) just purchased the exact same bed, except king sized, from the same place I did. Low and behold the king sized boxspring comes in *2* sections. Unfortunately, it costs 300$ more, PLUS Colleen and I will have to buy new bedding for it. Joy. So I buy it and now we’re waiting yet again for the stupid bed to come.

It gets better than this, right?!?!