Whoa, where have I been?

I just realized that it's been 14 months since I last posted. I've had little to say during that time, and less to write. I'm still unemployed and my unemployment has run out. Beth has joined me in the ranks, having been laid off two weeks ago now.

As bad as that is, we're looking for the silver lining on the grey cloud that's hanging over us. We've been talking off and on about moving out of the area, out of the state. We're now at the point that we have no obligations holding us here. Now's the time to do it, and why not? California's currently hanging at the bottom of the barrel as far as the unemployment rate is concerned and frankly, it's freaking expensive to live here in the Bay Area. If you ask me, that's just some bad math, no matter how you look at it.

Our solution? Let's look north. Way north. Portland, Oregon north. Maybe even farther, who knows? If all goes according to plan, I'll be heading to Oregon to look for employment and possibly a place to live.

Why Oregon? Ready for a random list?
It's not too far away so that Nick will still get to see his grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins on occasion.

Christmas visits with the families will still be very doable.

The cost of living is better than here.

We might actually be able to afford to buy a house some day.

Oregon has some really beautiful country.

Honestly, I'm a little tired of the Bay Area. I've been here all but a year of my life and I'd like to experience something new and different.

My biggest concern is how much Nick is going to miss going over to Grandma and Grandpa's house. Right now, he can (and does) invite himself over to spend the night at least once ever other week. We've started talking about moving, finding a new apartment, him getting a new room, meeting new friends... I've yet to bring up the fact that he'll have to leave things behind; the kids downstairs, weekly trips to Grandma's pool... That's going to be hard and frankly, I'm not looking forward to it.

Keep us in your prayers as we look for new jobs and a new place to live in a new part of the country.

We'll call it an adventure. That sounds more fun than "hauling all our junk a long ways away and trying to sort it out on the other side in hopes that something better is there waiting for us." :)

Here again

Last post, January 6th? Wow. I know that I've not been blogging, but I didn't realize that it's been that long since my last post.

I'm still looking for work, but there are a couple opportunities on the horizon. Next week, I'm going to start filling in for a friend who is going out of town for a couple of months and needs someone to keep his business running while he's away. Unfortunately, he and his wife just found out that she has the chance of getting laid off on the 17th. Fortunately for them, if that's the case, they still have his business to fall back on. Unfortunately for me, that means that opportunity will be gone.

The other thing that's coming up for me is the plumber's union. I went in a couple of weeks ago to apply for an apprenticeship with them and have an aptitude test scheduled this Saturday, the 4th. While it comes at a rather inconvenient time (we need to be completely out of our apartment by the 6th) it gives me hope of becoming gainfully employed in the not-too-distant future. It, however, poses a problem of its own. I'll also need to find a vehicle rather quickly. That wouldn't pose as much of a problem if I were already employed and could afford one. I'm thinking that a truck would be best, since I'm most likely going to need to be carrying tools and other large/heavy objects with me on a day-to-day basis.

All in all though, things are starting to look up. We have a new apartment and hopefully, I'll be employed again. I'll probably not be making as much as I was before I got laid off, but our new apartment is substantially less expensive. We're looking at getting caught up on bills and getting some money back into a savings account.

Now, all we need to do is get that lingering odor out of our new apartment. The people who lived there before us were obviously smokers. We've cleaned the carpet, but I'm thinking that we need to get a couple gallons of Febreeze... Any other suggestions?

robrdavis - Networking Guru

First off, my title is "Desktop Support Services." I'm the guy that comes to your desk because your mouse or keyboard stop working. I can install software as needed, but beyond that, I have almost no IT power within my company. I'm not the low man on the totem pole, I'm more like the low man next to the totem pole.

With that said, our office network is down this morning. Something happened with our ISP and due to the way things are set up, if we have no external (internet) connection, we can't access any of our servers, even those that are physically here in the office. I'm using a cellular card in my computer to access the internet so I can keep in touch with our help desk in Kansas City. While waiting for something to happen so we can work again, I'm also surfing the web and posting this to my blog...

One of our managers came to my cube (fortunately, I was checking work email at the time) and asked "So, what are you doing to remedy this network outage?" It took me a while to explain that since it's external, there's nothing that anyone in the entire company can do to bring it back up, let alone little ol' me.

It's amazing what people think you can do if your job is computer related. It's also amazing that people sometimes don't understand that there's a lot more than just flipping a little switch or plugging/unplugging a wire.

I find it ironic that I look at most of these people and think "There's no way I can do what these people do. They're engineers. They build bridges that span huge chasms and can hold up trains. They design airports and freeways and it's their designs that determine how well traffic flows." I just can't get my head around some of the stuff that they do. At the same time though, many of these same people come to me with questions that seem so basic; questions that I could have answered when I was in High School.

I forget sometimes that just because people are smarter than I am in some subjects, that doesn't mean that they're smarter than I am overall. We all have strong areas and weak areas, things we know and things we don't have any clue about.

It makes me feel good to know that generally people are just as dumb as me. It's just one big world of goobers.

irony...

As the only IT guy in our company in North of Orange County, I support all of our Nothern California offices and field workers. Most of that work can be done remotely, so at this point that hasn't been much of an issue. I'm based in our Oakland office. We also have an office in San Jose and a small office in Sacramento. Fortunately, everything works out pretty well that I'm not spending all my time on the road.

I take the train into work in the mornings and grab a company vehicle for my travels. It generally works out pretty well as I avoid commute traffic and don't have to worry about the wear and tear on my personal vehicle. However, it seems that every time that I plan on going to the San Jose office, something comes up here in Oakland that keeps me from leaving at the time I plan. The more urgent my need to be in San Jose, or the more time critical my arrival time, the harder it is to leave Oakland.

For example, today. Everyone's up camping and I'm meeting them tonight. (See my previous post) I drove the truck into Oakland today with the plans of leaving here by 10, spending some time in the San Jose office getting someone set up on their new laptop and leave there by 1 or 2. Unfortunately as I was pulling into the garage, I got a phone call informing me that our network is down. Fortunately, it's only our WAN (internet) connection. Unfortunately, nearly everything we do requires that connection to access our corporate servers. Our phones are all VOIP, so nobody can call out as that's all internet based as well. Time cards need to be completed and turned in by 11:30 on Fridays. Yep, internet access required.

Fonrtunately, being the computer guy, I have connections. I have internet access via a cellular card. Unfortunately, my computer is being used as a timecard kiosk. ...which means I have to go.

A couple of pictures

No pictures yet? Aren't they required in a blog?


Sure thing, but remember, you asked.

Apparently the best place to sit is either on the back of the couch or on top of Mommy and Daddy's headboard. Since the back of the couch is strictly off-limits, the headboard will have to do for a quick minute of relaxation. Less than two weeks from now, Nick will be three. I can remember the first pictures I took of Nick and Mommy asleep on the couch after bringing him home for the first time. I didn't want to wake them up, so I set for a four second exposure to compensate for the extremely low light. I spent over an hour getting it just right. Now it's impossible to get him to sit still for four seconds!

My soon-to-be-former cube. A week ago it was the cleanest cube in the office. Now that I have to have everything packed and moved by this afternoon, it looks like this. It's 1:30pm and the last 20 minutes that I have spent actually in my cube is the longest length of time I've been able to do so today.

Two promotions in my office have lead to moving six people to different offices and cubes. The three office moves of the senior managers isn't really a problem. They're all away this week at a meeting and my responsibility only entails phones and computers. To move the three people (including myself) that are going from one cube to another involves good timing. We're basically rotating cubes, me to Mary's, Mary to Norene's and Norene to mine. While Norene is ready to go, I've not had a chance to pack a single thing, and the last I asked Mary about her status, she just laughed. At least I'm not that far behind the curve!

Nicky and Daddy being silly. There's nothing more wonderful than the laughter of your child. I find I'm willing to endure a lot of pain for that laugh. I'll probably lose my voice at some point from growling and making raspy voices. I guess I'll have to resort to hitting myself on the head with his Nerf bat at that point.

Wait... I do that already.

(Yes, I was in desparate need of a haircut and a shave when this picture was taken. I've visited the barber since then, so I'm a bit more presentable. I need another shave again though.)

That's all for now. I'll probably have more this evening.

(After posting I noticed that the formatting sucks. I'll try to remember to try to fix this. [Did you catch the loophole I left for myself there?] Large pics and left justtificaiton don't play well together.)