Here I am sitting at my friend Anshuls place relaxing. I'm happy. I know that I keep talking about that. But it's one of those things that you don't know you've been missing until it suddenly comes back and you realize whats been missing from your life.
I'm listening to the crickets and birds chirping outside, feeling the breeze blow in through the window.
I move into my house this week (!?!?!?).
I'm getting along great with my boss.
I'm smiling again when I sit in the sun and read. (yeah, yeah I'm getting sappy)
Guinness time ;-)
Been a busy week. No time to Blog. Let's correct that shall we?
First, I'm swamped. Work is keeping me REALLY busy. 12-18 hour days. It should get better soon, but as long as we're installing everything in the new lab it'll be pretty bad. But on a positive note I got almost everything done today. Just a few more fittings to connect and some holes to drill. No biggie.
Second, I hear that the former owners of my house are closing on their new place tonight. Hopefully this means that they will be moving asap. I'm sleeping on my friend Alshul's couch, which is tre cool, but I want my books back ;-)
Third, it looks like I'll be working with Stef again. She interviewed for a job working with my new group today. It looks promising. It would be similar to the work she did with me in Germany, only with a better boss.
Fourth, Beth is really stressed these days. School and other garbage. Haven't had much time to go out these days. But my moving in party day is her last day of hell and she is planning on indulging herself. I'll keep those pictures handy for later uses ;-)
What else ... oh, yes. Patrick and I are getting along great. Even joking routinely. That is so cool. The last boss I could comfortably joke with was Olin and that was years ago. I miss that.
Ok, I'm off to bed. Exhausted.
Ever since I was in my teens .. maybe a little earlier .. I've had a difficult relationship with my parents. My mother in particular. I'm an only child. Both of my parents had a difficult life growing up. They were also the first generation in the families to attend university. Both have graduate degrees and were ridiculed by their blue-collar families for not doing the traditional jobs. I think it was because of this my mother wanted a 'perfect' Rockwellian family.
That's fine. I like Rockwell. But no one paints portraits of me doing what I like to do. Namely sit in a comfortable chair with a good book, preferably a scifi or fantasy paperback. I like solitude at times. But my mother wouldn't accept that. For her we had to interact. So she would ask me what I'm reading. Then get a glazed look on her face when I went into some esoteric detail about the alternate history book I was reading, or get upset when I didn't break my concentration to talk to her. I HATE getting interupted when I read. I can sit in a bar and read for hours with a heavy metal band playing 10 feet away.
When I graduated high school and moved away it was wonderful. I finally had the freedom to live & experience life. It was great. I made mistakes. Made & lost friends. Dated people. Got drunk ... and recovered to learn my limits. Lived life. Got an education. Made best friends. Many things that I didn't do before, but never regretted missing. I was happy the whole time, including when I was a teen.
But I grew up. Mom couldn't deal with it. She still thinks of me as a 5 year old and made of spun glass. That is probably because I almost died when I was an infant and my parents decided not to have any other children.
But mom wanted to talk. We retreated to the only arena in common. Politics, government, etc. Here's the problem. Mom is a dedicated pacifist. I'm not. I've studied history and realize that sometime force is neccessary becuase the other guy doesn't care. Sadam is a good example. He's been under sanctions for 12 years. But it wasn't until marines were in Bagdad that it was over. And that took lives. I hate violence. I despise the waste of war. The wreck and wrack of lives wasted. But show me another way.
Last summer my parents visited me in Germany. We had a falling out regarding the war in Afgahnistan (among other things) and they left and we weren't on speaking terms.
Then I moved back to the states and we started talking again. Last week my mother forwarded me some information via e-mail that I disagreed with. I told her so and asked her not to forward things to me anymore. Then things got nasty.
We aren't speaking now. That's ok with me. I love my parents and respect them greatly. But I won't let them dictate how I live my life anymore. If it is neccessary to not speak with them in order to live my life then so be it.
My parents are wonderful, intelligent, smart (not the same as intelligent), educated, funny people. I love them both. But I am an adult. I live my own life. Make my own decisions.
Mom. Dad. I will always love you and be there if you need me.
At work we are dealing with some problems. Some fairly major ones at that. It basically revolved around one of our plastic plates. The quality is crap for our use. It's perfect for the intended one, but we're jury-rigging it. So it's crap.
Today I spent some time looking at alternatives. After a while I spoke to my boss about them and he said "I don't care. Pick one. It's your decision."
Wow. We're talking about a 50-100K dollar value for this year.
Damn.
:-)
1) Fey:
I got Fey today. The dealer got some inspector to pass her and I went in with all my paperwork and took her home. She even has her plates so I'm legal to drive her, hug her, and call her George ... er right ... sorry Beth. :-)
2) Friends.
There are a few open positions at my job right now and a very good friend interviewed for one. It looks very promising. I hope that they get it. It'll be cool to work with them.
Ok, I found something in common with Germany and Maryland
And it's a pisser. Go figure that Maryland would pick a beuracratic fetish to imitate.
Maryland requires all cars that are purchased to undergo a safety inspection. My car failed. They checked a gasket that wrapes around the shock for gods sakes!@! In the end there were a few fairly serious problems that would cost about 2000 to fix in total.
I called the dealer and explained the results. He told me to bring it in and they would fix the problems and get it reinspected. They also gave me a loaner. So it hasn't been a complete disaster.
It probably helps that the loan application can't go through until I give over some documents and I won't do that until I get the car certified. So I've got some bargaining power. They don't get their money until I get my car ;-)
I discovered something this morning. I'm pretty sure that it will put me in the running for a government grant to further study the issue.
When I grabbed my left over curry this morning to take to work I found that it had actually frozen at a temperature where ther beer and milk was still liquid.
This amazing defiance of thermodynamics (ok, yeah I'm pulling this one out of a random oriface) shocked me for all of 5 seconds while I tried to figure out how to get my solid lunch from the cooking pot to the tupperware.
Then the brain kicked in and I wondered if there was something else going on here. ... hmm, did the curry spice itself somehow affect the Tm of the dinner? Could there be some inverse-relationship between the spiciness of a food and the temperatire that is freezes at?
I think this phenomena needs to be studied.
Maybe my next job :-)
Last night I got to see my friend Robyn
I met Robyn when I was working at the USDA as a lowly lab tech and she was a shining new Qiagen sales rep. About a year later I took a job with Operon and said goodbye to her as a rep (stayed friends though). Then 9 months after Operon was purchased by Qiagen! I got an e-mail from Robyn that morning saying "Hey co-worker" That was cool.
Well, last night was the US-wide sales meeting and they held it in our building. Something like 200 sales people packed into our lunch room. But I found Robyn and we had dinner together and caught up. It's been over 1.5 years since we saw each other.
Welcome Eric & update
Eric (www.he.net/~stupid) is a long time aquaintence/friend and we share some .. interesting things in common. Enough of that. Thanks for stopping by dude. Ya coming to my house warming party next month? :-)
Other news ... lets see. On the work front things are slowing down a bit. So I'm only working 60 hours a week now. It's the lull though. I expect some critical parts to be delivered today. Then I get to utilize my plumbing skills. Putting that Genetics degree to use [grin]
The BIG boss from Germany is here today. AND the folks from Alameda are here. So I'm hiding in my cube.
I heard from my friend Stefi last night that her last week at work sucked. She is moving to the US this weekend to be with her fiance Big John. So Thursday was supposed to be her last day at the lab. But monday morning her boss came to her with a letter from HR saying that it was her last day. I think it was some SNAFU, but Stefi is bummed about the whole deal. John and I tried to get her to think on the bright side that she gets an extra 3 paid days off. She's doing a little better. Well, I'll get to give her a big hug this weekend. And bribe Tristan with fries [BIG GRIN]
On the personal side, this whole split shift dating thing bites. On one hand it's probably good since we don't 'technically' work together. On the other hand it's almost impossible to see each other during the week. Oh well, we'll see what happens.
Poor Aggie. I managed to bust one of the clips that is used to hold the cooling fan against the CPU. I drove all over hell and back last night trying to find a store that sold Pentium 4 423 socket fans. Couldn't find one anywhere! So I ended up ordering one on-line. What a waste. In the meantime I'm going to try to repair the clip with some locktite.
Ok, off to visit receiving to see if my parts arrived. Woohoo!!
I re-added my web blog link.
Since I seem to have successfully ditched the person who was being a royal pain and analyzing(repeatedly and in more depth than the Marianas Trench) what I wrote there, I have decided to re-add the link to my homepage.
Welcome for those that are new.
I named my car today.
Her name is "Fey" from scandinavian myth:
From Dictionary.com:
a. Having or displaying an otherworldly, magical, or fairylike aspect or quality: “She's got that fey look as though she's had breakfast with a leprechaun”
b. Having visionary power; clairvoyant.
c. Appearing touched or crazy, as if under a spell.
d. Fated to die soon.
e. Full of the sense of approaching death.
I personally like c, d, and e the best :-)
I picked up my car tonight! :-)
Cool. Life if going good.
I closed on my house. I got the car I wanted. I'm dating someone really special. Job is making me very happy. Hell, even the weather is cooperating! It was 24 grad today. Nice and sunny. Didn't want to go to work. My friend Anshul picked me up and we almost played hooky.
Tonight I get to design the liquid handling apps for our lab. We've got to get the final order sheet done tomorrow so we can place the order by Friday.
I managed to scare the shit out of the local instrument sales rep when I told him what I was going to do with them. We plan on opening up our lab to potential customer visits so that they can see these instruments in real product mode. Well, I'm going to butcher these instruments and make them do things that the original designers never intended. :-) The sales guy is scared spitless that he's going to have to make my stuff work for a new customer ... or worse that he's going to have to do it in order to get a sale
I'm off.