Work and the Week
May. 28th, 2007 01:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneEverything is going pretty well. Last week was kind of weird, though. Wednesday was the last day at work for our network administrator. He was responsible for the network infrastructure: routers, switches, etc. We had just completed pretty much replacing all of our core hardware with something on the order of $750k of new Cisco gear. We had a lot of teething problems getting it stable, and are still having some problems, but overall it's been a very good upgrade.
Friday was the bad one, though. The director of IT for the City left! Out of the blue he received a call from the State of California (how they got all of 'em on the phone at the same time I'll never know) and they made him an offer. He wasn't looking for a new position, he was quite happy with Las Cruces and he did a great job of bringing the department together and modernizing it. We've been retiring old equipment and just shut down a Unix box running Oracle and will be retiring the mainframe in about a year. I can't imagine what the change in the power bill will be, much less the change in noise level in the machine room!(which my computer is right next to) It will save a tonne of money in support contracts, that's for sure.
Still, Patrick is a really cool guy and I hate to see him go. We had a going-away dinner Thursday night, Russet came down and went to it with me. It was a huge amount of fun, and it turned out that we sat next to two science/science fiction geeks! Had lots of fun talking about the observatory and Star Wars.
Saturday was fun, we went to Truth Or Consequences, the town named after the game show. Two friends of mine, Glenn & Andrea (and Glenn 2.0, AKA Gabe) flew to Albuquerque from Chicago and spent some time with a relative. They'd never met Russet, and I don't think I'd ever seen their kid, so they drove down Saturday. Next to T Or C is Elephant Butte Reservoir, the major water supply for Southern NM. We went to the reservoir and hung out at the kid's play area and talked while Gabe ran around, then had dinner. Glenn & Andrea had to head back to Albq as they were flying out early Sunday, we cruised around T Or C and found a nice used book store and hung out there for an hour. I had reasonable confidence that T Or C had a good book store and I was not disappointed: I found a biography called Time Lord about the man who invented standardized time zones! I'm looking forward to reading it, geek that I am.
So tonight (Sunday night) we're driving across the desert in a truck borrowed from the observatory with my couch and a book case in the back, so slowly my apartment is becoming more livable. It'll be nice to have something other than the dining table chairs and the floor to sit upon. (I don't include the bed as I consider the bedroom to be used for three things, and normally putzing on the computer is not one of them.)
And Monday is my first paid holiday in four or five years! I've only held part-time or contractor positions in that time, so this is kind of cool for me. I don't get much in the way of vacation time for my first year, but that ramps up in my second year. Fortunately the only travel that we're planning for the summer is to go to Maine to see Russet's mom (who moved there two weeks ago) over Labor Day weekend. I'm taking one day off in a couple of weeks to fly to Phoenix for a game convention, I'm looking forward to that! Unfortunately I'm not renting a car, so I'm semi-stuck at the convention over Father's Day. Maybe my folks will come out to Mesa for lunch Sunday.
Friday was the bad one, though. The director of IT for the City left! Out of the blue he received a call from the State of California (how they got all of 'em on the phone at the same time I'll never know) and they made him an offer. He wasn't looking for a new position, he was quite happy with Las Cruces and he did a great job of bringing the department together and modernizing it. We've been retiring old equipment and just shut down a Unix box running Oracle and will be retiring the mainframe in about a year. I can't imagine what the change in the power bill will be, much less the change in noise level in the machine room!(which my computer is right next to) It will save a tonne of money in support contracts, that's for sure.
Still, Patrick is a really cool guy and I hate to see him go. We had a going-away dinner Thursday night, Russet came down and went to it with me. It was a huge amount of fun, and it turned out that we sat next to two science/science fiction geeks! Had lots of fun talking about the observatory and Star Wars.
Saturday was fun, we went to Truth Or Consequences, the town named after the game show. Two friends of mine, Glenn & Andrea (and Glenn 2.0, AKA Gabe) flew to Albuquerque from Chicago and spent some time with a relative. They'd never met Russet, and I don't think I'd ever seen their kid, so they drove down Saturday. Next to T Or C is Elephant Butte Reservoir, the major water supply for Southern NM. We went to the reservoir and hung out at the kid's play area and talked while Gabe ran around, then had dinner. Glenn & Andrea had to head back to Albq as they were flying out early Sunday, we cruised around T Or C and found a nice used book store and hung out there for an hour. I had reasonable confidence that T Or C had a good book store and I was not disappointed: I found a biography called Time Lord about the man who invented standardized time zones! I'm looking forward to reading it, geek that I am.
So tonight (Sunday night) we're driving across the desert in a truck borrowed from the observatory with my couch and a book case in the back, so slowly my apartment is becoming more livable. It'll be nice to have something other than the dining table chairs and the floor to sit upon. (I don't include the bed as I consider the bedroom to be used for three things, and normally putzing on the computer is not one of them.)
And Monday is my first paid holiday in four or five years! I've only held part-time or contractor positions in that time, so this is kind of cool for me. I don't get much in the way of vacation time for my first year, but that ramps up in my second year. Fortunately the only travel that we're planning for the summer is to go to Maine to see Russet's mom (who moved there two weeks ago) over Labor Day weekend. I'm taking one day off in a couple of weeks to fly to Phoenix for a game convention, I'm looking forward to that! Unfortunately I'm not renting a car, so I'm semi-stuck at the convention over Father's Day. Maybe my folks will come out to Mesa for lunch Sunday.
