The Cat's Nuts

This morning was the start towards really losing some serious weight. After completing the soup diet…well, we kind of bailed on it after 5 days, but it wasn’t because it was too hard. It’s like when you are learning to drive a stick-shift. You can only start and stop so many times. At first it’s really hard, but after awhile it just becomes easy, but tedious to keep practicing, so you stop. That’s pretty much what happened with the diet. I felt that I had gotten everything from the diet that I wanted, so it was time to stop. I started the week at a whopping 243 and yesterday morning I weighed in at 231. Not too shabby for a week worth of watching my intake and eating healthy stuff.

So the plan of attack now is to get myself down to 205-210 by the start of December. This morning Laura and I started back up at the gym down the street. It was painful to be back in there, I’m not going to lie, but at the same time, I feel good to be getting back to a healthy lifestyle. Laura and I have yet to really set out a game to attack the weight loss, but I think that it’s going to involve lots of running and a bit of weight lifting to get our metabolisms really going. I’m excited about it. It’ll be nice to fit into some of my pants that I used to wear when I left school, not to mention just feeling good and being in shape again.

Last night Ryan and Fran stopped over for some fajitas, which were amazing. Laura marinated the steak for a few hours with a ton of garlic, jalapeno and cilantro. It looked kind of funny going onto the grill, but damn was it good. I actually have a good portion of it for lunch today, so I’m looking forward to that. It sucks though, because I got into work around 11:00 this morning because of a late start and traffic being terrible on the LIE. I hate that highway… there is just no way around it. There’s no other way to get to my job, or at least no way that I know of.

On Saturday I took a step towards making my computer at home a little faster. I ordered two 1 Gig memory chips. I didn’t really expect them to come yesterday, but to my surprise they did. The must be in a large box because the mail guy didn’t send them through the slot in my door, but he did leave the little slip saying I had to pick up the package. What I don’t understand is how he came around 10:00 in the morning when Laura was home and “tried to deliver” the package and she didn’t hear him. My contention is that the lazy postman didn’t feel like carrying around the box so he just left it at the post office and wrote out the slip so he didn’t have to bother. Most people probably aren’t home and it wouldn’t make a difference, but it’s just annoying that I didn’t get my damn memory because he was lazy. Oh well, what are you going to do?
Hopefully Laura will take a little bike ride down to the post office today and get it for me. That would be nice of her ;) (Hint hint)

Anyway, I have to get back to my training.

Posted by Michael at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today was just a bitch of a day. After coming off a great weekend where Laura and I were amazingly productive, I came to work with a hopeful feeling. I am greeted by my supervisor and his boss standing in the hall chatting. My supervisor, the one that is supposed to be teaching me Informatica, brings me outside and tells me that he’s leaving my company. I’m like “freaking great…I couldn’t even get him to help me out and teach me all that much when he was here…now what the hell am I supposed to do?”

Apparently, because he has such a specific skill set, he was a major contributor to the project that I am on, so the client would be very unhappy to have him leave, therefore, his whole departure is going to be quite hush hush. Again, very irritating to me. The other fun part about it being so closed lip is that I’m not supposed to know about this whole change of personnel. Because of the most recent development at my job, and because I have been working here for around a month and haven’t really done anything of value yet, I did what anyone else in my position would do. I complained to a hire up. Well… I wouldn’t say I “complained” but I did send an email to the head supervisor here letting him know what I was up to and that I felt that I could be learning more than I am, so we’ll see how that goes. He said that he’d meet up with me tomorrow morning after he had a chance to talk to the people that were supposedly supposed to be giving me some instruction.

This morning I went to the car rental place to get another vehicle for a week of driving to Long Island for this project. When I got there, they gave me the typical treatment and brought me outside and gave me the choice between three cars:

“Well, there are three choices…you could have the Taurus, the Camry or for $10 more you could have the Dodge Charger.” Yes, it’s true. I took the 240HP jet black Dodge. It’s okay… I think the SRT 450HP version would be a bit more of a thrill, but this one is comfortable and has a decent sound to it right around 4000rpm.

Anyway, it’s about time to get some work done.

Posted by Michael at 06:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Quick beer fact of the day: The first nonnative American is born on the southern tip of New Amsterdam- later to become lower Manhattan. His name is Jean Vigne, and he is born inside the first known American Brewhouse, Block and Christiansen’s, that opened two years earlier. Even better, little Jean would grow up to become a brewer and America’s first natural-born beer maker.

Fun right?

Yesterday, Laura and I decided because I didn’t have to go into work, and I pretty much didn’t have anything to do FOR work, and seeing as how Laura works from home and it was a lazy Friday, that she and I could head out to Ikea and get some shopping done. In particular, we were looking to revamp our computer room because frankly, while being very homey, it wasn’t exactly conducive to Laura’s job and was causing her great angst, not to mention that I couldn’t stand the way that it was set up. So off to Ikea we went. While we planned to be there for the 10 o’clock opening, we didn’t really end up leaving the house till around 11ish.

Sometime around noon she and I arrive at the Elizabeth, NJ Ikea. After much searching and much debating, we finally find a nice desk and another piece of furniture that will go nicely in our little room. So we pay for the stuff and head out to the car. Now…our original plan was just to get two 96” pieces of countertop and mount the legs from our old desks, and in effect, making an “L” shape so that Laura has a nice place to sit and work. Well, we deviated from that substantially and found a pre-made “L” desk and got an extra piece so that I can sit next to her. It’s quite nice, but the fact remained that the main piece of Laura’s desk was much larger than the rental car would accommodate. So we did what any other ill prepared and misinformed individual did…we made ourselves a roof-rack out of cardboard and used the twine that they have available and put the bastard on our roof. Now, for anyone that has done this before, you realize how scary and terrible it can be, so needless to say, I was a little concerned, but after using around 300’ of twine and strapping it down on the roof in every imaginable way, we were finally heading back into Brooklyn.

Now keep in mind that in addition to the fun that is Ikea Shopping, Laura and I were also combating severe hypo-glycemia from our Soup Diet that we have been actively and studiously following. Needless to say, we were pretty high strung. And to top it all off, Laura got a message from her job that there were major problems with something she was practically solely responsible for (it turned out not to be her fault, but she was freaking out because we couldn’t access any email) so that was just the cherry on top.

Once we got on the road, things were going marvelously, so I turned on the radio. Laura was really concerned, because at this point it was around 4:30, so we were heading into rush hour traffic. I wanted to see what the traffic was going into the city, so hence we were listening to the AM stations.

“There are severe flood warnings for central and northern New Jersey, with multiple road closings.”
Laura and I didn’t really think much of it because it was fairly nice out where we were, so we continued merrily on our way. That’s when it started. It was a slight drizzle at first, and I assured Laura that the desk that was strapped to our roof would be fine and that we have nothing to worry about because the cardboard would protect it.

Around 45 minutes later, as we were exiting the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan, the rain had picked up, but it still wasn’t all the bad, and I still wasn’t really concerned, but by the time we were about half way across Manhattan, it started to really rain. Now, being the good citizens that we are, we were very aware of the contents of our roof and how they were doing. While we were on the Jersey Turnpike in stop and go traffic, we realized that the “roof rack” that I had constructed wasn’t holding up so well, it was actually sliding out in spots, so that was causing some concern. The sliding roof rack and the fact that the whole tabletop had slid about 7” to the passenger side of the car. Anyway…

Of course, when it was raining the hardest is when the traffic in Manhattan slowed down the most. We made our way to Chinatown, without realizing that we were going a little out of the way, and by strange luck(?) we arrived upon a bridge. I think the conversation went something like this:

“Michael, we need to go down Allen to get to the Williamsburg Bridge, so just look for Allen” Laura yelled over the thunder of the rain hitting our car (and her desktop).

“Ummm Laura!! What bridge are we getting on?”
“There is a bridge here?”
“What the fuck!? Where the hell are we?”

It was about that point where Laura just started to die laughing. I was rather pissed at her, as we were going around 20mph because of the terrible terrible rain. By the time we got off the bridge we had to pull over and get our bearings and figure out what bridge we just came over. Apparently we went straight through Chinatown and went over the Manhattan Bridge. So as we looked at GoogleMaps on my Blackberry and figured out the general direction that we needed to head, we started on our way….slowly…through the pouring rain. About 30 yards down road I realized that the twine were slack and my heart sank…did we lose the desktop?

I quickly pulled over and got out in the pouring rain. When I stepped onto the street, I stepped into a small river which was around 8” deep that was moving swiftly towards the storm drain. It was then that I was able to see my roof which looked like a dead piece of cardboard with a skeleton of a desk peaking out in numerous spots. I saw the reason that the twine went slack and it was pretty obvious had we thought about it. The weight of the desk, along with the rain caused our makeshift roof rack to collapse, thus allowing our huge desk to shift. Luckily for us there was a non-English speaking shop owner watching this whole debacle who offered us some old boxes and plastic wrapping to shove under the table and restore our table carrying mechanism.

From there it was just a matter of time before we finally reached home. Miserable, tired, hypo-glycemic and the proud owners of an “L” shaped Ikea tabletop.

Posted by Michael at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It’s right around 4:15 and I’m again sitting in the ever fun “War Room” basking in the warm glow of the florescent lights. Amazingly enough, I was into the office at 10:15 (when I’m supposed to get in), and I have yet to make contact with my direct supervisor. For most people that would be a great thing, just going about your business without interruption, but for me, who has no “business” going about it becomes quite hard without direction. So what have I done all day? Well, besides emailing quite a bit with Laura, I’ve just puttered around doing stuff for work.

Last night, as I was walking out, I ran into my supervisor…we’ll just call him Bill. Bill tells me that his boss (refer to previous posts) has something important to talk to me about concerning where I’m going to be working and what I’m going to be working on. He tells me that his boss, let’s call him Jim, is going to speak to me tomorrow morning, which just happens to be today. Now, as it rounds towards the end of the day, I have still not spoken to Jim and it’s not for a lack of trying. I realize that I am the most impatient person I the world and that I should just be happy that I’m not being flooded with terrible coding or some other crap that would just be tedious and miserable, so I suppose that I’m happy to be out on the job site, but at the same time, I don’t like the fact that I’m getting no guidance or feedback, so that sucks.

One of the nice things about not having any real work to do, is that I am free to do whatever training programs I’m interested in, and that includes learning about Linux. It’s nice to go through an actual training program that explains stuff about Linux. I feel that as an operating system, it’s pretty easy to use and get around in, but there were lots of little questions that I just never bothered to ask, and using the training I have really gotten a better understanding of the way it works. I also got the chance to do a little more SQL Server training, and that’s been good, but not nearly as interesting as working with the Linux training. Additionally, I feel that SAP may be my next training materials seeing as how there has been talk that I’ll be doing some work with that, even though, from the little experience that I have with it, I think it’s a terrible horrible piece of software. Oh well, what are you going to do?

Today is day number two of the soup diet. I have to say that it’s perhaps the strangest diet ever. The first day consisted of eating just the soup and fruit. That wasn’t so bad because I just got a huge pineapple and ate that all day along with a bunch of grapes, a few apples and various other juicy fruits. For someone like myself who loves sweet things, it wasn’t too bad. For Laura, she kind of struggled with it. But, at the end of the day we made it through. Now, for the second day, it’s the same concept as yesterday, but today we’re eating only vegetables and soup. I’m not going to lie… I hate today. I never really realized how few vegetables I liked. Another problem is that any of the good vegetables, like corn or avocado are off limits because they are “bad” for you. Ugk.. oh well. I’m pretty hungry as it stands, but I’ll get through it, because at the end of today, I am allowed to have a baked potato. Yes.. that’s right. I’m even allowed to include butter on it. Yes, I know it’s amazing. Oh, and tomatoes are out of the question too. The remainder of the week is just as strange, but I’ll keep you informed of that as it comes up… I mean I gotta save SOMETHING for the rest of the week’s blog posting.

So the time has come upon us once more….yes, that’s right, it’s almost football season. There is only another two weeks or so before the start of the first pre-season games. August 12th is the first game of the Dolphins, which is against Jacksonville, so that should be a potentially decent debut for them…and more importantly, their amazing off-season acquisition, Daunte Culpepper. It’s going to be a good season.

Once again I have gotten myself into a situation where…you guessed it, I’m the commissioner of the fantasy football league. I’m going to really put my foot down this year and everyone is going to have their money in by the time the draft goes off. I’m not going to bother going into the season without people’s money, it’s just too much of a pain in the ass. Hopefully, everyone will see it my way and get it done.

Well, now that I’ve wasted a solid amount of time, I think it’s time to get back to my Linux training. Fun times.

Posted by Michael at 04:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After my flaming post yesterday talking about the terrible lunch that I had from my first day at client site, there is some good news. Tuesday, my second day, the head executive guy came up to me and brought me into the hall and had a talk with me about my role at the client site and what he hoped to get done with me while I was here, so that was really nice. He let me know that I could come and talk to him and whatever...pretty much just made me realize that I'm not here just to rot in the corner and keep our of trouble.

In more homebound news, Laura and I have been thinking about starting a major change of lifestyle and change the way that we live. To kick it off, we're launching into the "Soup Diet". Yes, I know...it sounds lame, but apparently it's a good way to detox your body and really get yourself feeling good about losing weight. Today is the "fruit day" where you eat nothing but fruit and the soup that you make. The soup is pretty much just water, V8, some onion soup mix and vegetables. It's not too bad, but since there isn't a microwave around here, it kind of makes it rough because I have to eat it cold. Apparently I can put it in the blender and make a vegetable "smoothie". Yuck! Oh well... I'll suck it up for the rest of the week because the diet is only a week long process. After you have been detoxed and lost that first little clip of weight, you go and just eat healthily. We'll see how this will work. People claim losses of up to 17 lbs in a week and I just can't believe that shit. I mean I expect that I'll drop 5 lbs... sad as that is, it'll bring me down to 240...Yes, I'm a fat bastard. Oh well. We'll see how that goes.

I've been pretty delinquent about putting up pictures because recently I have been working a "real" job, so I've not had much time at home to edit and set them up. But speaking about my "real" job, I have to get back to my work and end my lunch break.

Brad, check your mail.

Posted by Michael at 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After a little harassment by Brad, I have decided that I’m going to take a break from my very busy work schedule and tell some tales of my life. Yes, I have three short stories to tell you, so here I go…

#1) The Tale of the Urine Trail
This past weekend Laura and I decided to head up to the Bronx Zoo to check out the animals and be outside in the heat. It was a beautiful day as Laura and I boarded the subway for the long ass trip up to the Bronx. Living in Brooklyn means that we have to go into Manhattan to get on the 4/5 train to head all the way up into Ghetto Bronx. We ended up on this 5 train heading uptown and there were a few tourists that were asking questions about the express trains. One “kind” person started to talk to them about it, but apparently he forgot to use his inside voice. This man has the loudest voice I have ever heard. It was honestly painful to sit in the subway car with him. Normally Laura and I would just suck it up as the crazies do their thing, but in this instance, we couldn’t stand it and had to leave. So at the next stop, after making a few loud remarks ourselves, we got up and moved to the next train down. Initially this seemed like a great idea. There were open seats, so we were able to take a seat on the way up to the zoo. Then we realized what situation we had walked into. In front of us was a nice Mexican family. About 6 of them in all, with 2-3 young children. As Laura and I are sitting there, the mother takes the little girl and stands here between her legs. I look down and see that the little girl is peeing on the train. I’m not talking like “Ohhh Mommy…I couldn’t hold it so I dribbled a little.” Nope, we’re talking “Damn…I gotta go and I’m going to let it rip”… At first I was thinking “That really sucks for that poor Mother.” Then I realized, as the woman reached into her purse to get her daughters underwear, that she had instructed her daughter to piss on the fucking subway. Granted, I’m not one to talk about pissing in public, but at the same time, there is a HUGE difference between pissing on the subway platform and pissing IN the damn train. I couldn’t believe it. Totally disgusting.

#2) Tale of the Peeping Perchers
Saturday night, Laura and I decided to stay in and not bother wasting time and money going out. Seeing as how I was flat out broke (I’ve been paid since then and it was glorious) we ended up staying in. Now, for those of you that may be too young to know, when two people are attracted to each other and left to their own devices, stuff happens. As it were, Laura and I were messing around in the bedroom, not doing anything too crazy, but messing around. At some point during the adventure of the evening, we decided that it was time to shut off the lights, so I got up to flip them off.
There is a strange thing that happens during the night when you turn off the lights. Instead of the windows just showing your reflection, you can see out of them, and if you looked out our window when I flipped off the lights, you would have seen the heads of around 8-10 people leaning over the roof of the apartment next to us, staring into our window. As soon as the light when out, they scattered. Needless to say, Laura and I were a little pissed off. We went into the kitchen, keeping the lights off, and went over to another window, and there we sat and watched, and sure enough a sentry came out on the roof next door to check on the “sexual miscreants” to see if there were any further hanky panky going on.
You know, I’m not a very timid person, and I don’t even care that someone was watching while Laura and I were messing around, but the fact that it was an entire group of people, just staring in and gawking, it just makes me a little ill.

#3) The Tale of the Awkward Lunch
Yesterday was the first day in which I was out at the client site. I picked up my car, a nice little Mazda 3 Hatchback and drove out to the middle of Long Island to meet up the with the Executive Manager that manages the project out there. From what I have heard, this guy is a Ivy League graduate consulting phenom who climbed the entirety of the consulting ladder at my firm in a matter of 6 years. Needless to say, I was excited to be working with him and learning from working under him. Upon meeting him, I was terrible disappointed. He was a smug and cocky individual. Within 20 minutes of getting into the office, he, my direct supervisor, another guy in my division, and I went out to lunch. I’ll give you a rundown of the fun points in the conversations:
a) “So do you know SQL Server?”
“Ummm not really. A little, but I was an Econ Poly Sci Major, so I didn’t do much that in school”
“An ECON MAJOR!...Jeez… (Speaking to the others) My God…we have to talk to the HR department about what we are really looking for in recruiting.”

b) (Coming from the Princeton Executive) “So Michael….these two guys are going to be the ones you can talk to if you have ANY questions….read: Don’t bother me”

c) The three of them were talking about how the client doesn’t understand things and asks stupid questions and how irritating it was to them. I chimed in “They must be Econ Majors”

Needless to say, it wasn’t the best lunch ever. I’m a little worried that I’m not going to be getting a whole lot of guidance of help here, so we’ll see. I should be getting back to trying to learn a little bit about this damn Informatica program. Oh well. That’s life I suppose. I did get an AMAZING paycheck yesterday in the mail, so it makes it a little easier to deal with, I’m not going to lie.

Posted by Michael at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Time has finally come where I can say that I know where I’ll be for at least a little while. I received an email from the Project Manager at the site on Long Island, and he let me know that I can head out there on Monday. Whoop-de-dooo! He said in his email Monday afternoon, so I don’t know what that means, but it’ll be interesting none-the-less. He’s supposed to call me today (although he was supposed to call me for the past two days and never got to it) so hopefully, once he does, I’ll be able to figure out what I’m supposed to do about renting a car or at least finding out how to get out there. I have this terrible feeling that he’s just going to tell me to commute for the week and “give it a shot”…ugk. We’ll see.
I recently at work, I’ve been trying to get this repository server running on my local machine so that I can learn this piece of software that I’m supposed to have some sort of mastery, and I can not get the bastard to work. Hell, I can’t even get my email working half the time, so I suppose that running a server with a referential SQL database would be a little over my head. The worst part about it, is that there isn’t even anyone here that I can ask for help. The office, because everyone is always out on client site, is so incredibly dead, so it’s pretty much myself, the secretary, a few higher level people and two other entry level people that are doing the same stuff as I am. Not exactly a cornucopia of excitement.
If I do end up having to travel out to Long Island on the train, I am thinking that I’ve gotta go on a downloading spree and really stock up on some TV series or something like that. I’ve found that downloading TV shows is more bang for your buck than anything else that you can download. For example, a Season of 24 takes around two days to download if you have a good torrent. From that one season, you have a whole 24 hours worth of programming. I downloaded 3 seasons worth of 24, so at least I know that I’ll have myself a good number of shows to watch before I run out of material. I don’t know what I’m going to do if I’m trapped inside a car for 45 minutes each way. That would be strange considering how I’ve never done any sort of commuting in a car, let alone for 45 minutes, and tack on the fact that I haven’t driven with any consistency in ummm..yeah, 6 years. That’ll be interesting. Maybe I can make myself some nice books on tape.
This week hasn’t really been all that exciting in terms of getting stuff done, or really anything. This weekend is looking to be about the same. While Laura and I have some things planned for the evenings, the weekend is pretty free. I was just speaking to my mother the other night on the phone about how nice it is not to have “homework” or school papers and that sort of stuff hanging over your head. You always forget how terrible it is to have deadlines. While they are helpful, they fucking suck.
I will end this post with a fun and interesting new site that I recently found.

Posted by Michael at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So over the past few days I have once again tried to update my blog. For any of my few regular visitors you may have noticed the changes. I switched to Wordpress for a few days. I liked it because of the ease in which you could add and edit things. I think that the GUI that it uses is just far superior to that of MovableType. But in the end I went back to MovableType. The reason for the reverse migration was that I still have yet to be able to get listed on Google. Laura, who never updates her page, is listed on Google all over the place. Anyway, I'm not bitter about it. So I was on Google Analytics the other day and saw that Google now has a "sitemap" option where you submit to them an XML file listing all the pages that you want their spider to crawl and the next time that it comes around to you page, BAM you should be listed. We'll the damn spider is taking its sweet ass time getting to my site. It hasn't visited since July 7th, so I feel like I'm due pretty soon.
Anyway, its now Thursday and I have yet to hear a definitive answer as to when I am going to be assigned and trvel out to my project, and its kind of getting a little irritating. One of the senior directors (way high up guy) said that there will be no news till all the sudden I should have been out there 2 hours ago. That will be awesome. Oh we'll.
Last night I was able to download the ETL tool (it pretty much allows different data sources, like databases, to sync up to a main server) so that I can finally play around with it. The connection at work is slow that I couldn't even come close to downloading it. It was rather funny because yesterday I was on the company's web page and I filled out a form to get a little demo downloaded, and not 15 minutes later I got a call from someone at the company trying to sell me something. I told the guy "I was just told to learn it. I'm possibly the lowest person in my company. " He just laughed. Its great to be the low man, right?
Once again, my train ride is coming to a close so I've gotta hang up my blackberry. (What kind of dork blogs on his Blackberry?)

Posted by Michael at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today is Wednesday, my third week of work, and I still don't have clarification as to where "officially" I am going to be stationed. One of the directors of my practice group (Business Intelligence) told me that he was working on getting me staffed in long island, but I have yet to hear from the project manager out there. After talking to a few people it has become obvious to me that I am going to need a rental car or I will be relegated to spending an hour and a half on the train every day as opposed to 35 minutes in a car. I just hope that it works out like that
For the past few days Laura and I have been working on getting the "cow" data ready to send out to her grandfather's ranch to assist them with sorting out which calves to keep and which ones to get rid of. It has been a trying process to say the least. In the next year, once I have learned a bit about database design and GUI design, I hope to be able to apply the massive amounts of data to a real database so as to make the annual "update" a non-issue. Hopefully , if what I have been told at work isn't a lie, that shouldn't be a problem.
Yesterday, for the first time, we got introduced to the CBT modules (computer based training) at work, so that is exciting. They have everything on there from managing your 401k to advanced JAVA development. I am just glad that they finally gave us access so as to let us start our "informal" training.
Last week I returned my ever flawed Treo 700p. I hated that thing. Granted, the Treo has some nice functions but my phone didn't work for shit. It constantly dropped calls and the internet hardly ever worked. I was totally sick of it, so I brought it back and got myself a "Crackberry". Functionally it works much better than the Treo, it just doesn't have that supper tech feel to it. I do enjoy that its super light and much smaller than the oddly shaped Treo. So as an experiment, I have been typing out this entry on my way to work to see how easy it is, and I have to say that besides the whole hunt and peck of the keys, its working out very well.
Anyway, its about time to get off the train and my fingers are getting a little numb, so I'll end it here.

Posted by Michael at 08:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's 4:00 right now and the World Cup Final is going into overtime. Things are pretty quiet around here because Laura is out with some friends and I'm sitting at home all by-my-lonesome. It's actually quite nice to be able to kick back and relax and not have anything going on that is pressing. This coming week is going to be fairly interesting in terms of work because it's the first week where I'm "on the bench" which is pretty much consultant jabber for not being assigned to a project. I'm pretty much going to spend my week talking to people and getting training scheduled and learning about different programs by myself. It's actually going to be interesting because I can pretty much choose what I want to do (although I do have guidelines) and see how much I can get done and how much I can learn.

Tonight is a planned brewing day, and I expect that Laura and my brewing friend should be here shortly to help with the brewing process. I'm in no mood to brew, but at the same time, at least it's something to do. I just keep thinking about how messy it's going to be and dreading the cleanup and the smell, which normally I wouldn't mind, but with the kicking hangover that I have, it's going to be rough.

I was thinking about my blog, and all the planned changes that I had for it, so I think that I'm going to take this chance to change my theme and perhaps start using WordPress. From what I've seen, there seems to be much more support for it out there. While it may not be the best platform, I know that I can always go back to Movable type if I so desire, so we'll see. After I finish this post, I'll have to check it out and see how easy it'll be to move over to WordPress. It shouldn't be bad because my host, www.bluehost.com will actually install it for me, it's just a matter of getting all my entries moved over there. We'll see.

Anyway, with this hangover, my desire to keep plugging away at this entry is diminished, so I'm going to go and look into setting up my blog in Wordpress.

Posted by Michael at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Once again I am amazed at the highlights of my day. At work, I was learning how to submit queries into SQL Server and that was just great. Then I got home and placed my constipated cat in the litter box and low and behold, the little bastard took a shit. Isn't that amazing? Hell, it only took 3 vet visits and around $400 for it to happen. I can only hope that he stays free-flowing and all the plumbing works from now on. Guess I won't be buying anymore Krasdale (C-Town Brand) cat food. Ugh...

Last night turned out to be a bit of a bust. As you can see from the pictures, we were behind a fence from the massive construction that is going on along the Brooklyn Waterfront. As it turned out, I think I was able to manage to get a decent picture. I have to give Laura credit for seeing the artistic vision in that scenario. I was rather irritated that I didn't have a nice clear shot of the fireworks, but, thanks to her cajoling, I took quite a few pictures and was able to salvage some of them.

Tomorrow is the last day of my formal training at the consulting firm. I'm pretty happy about it, but still quite apprehensive because throughout the whole process, we have been kind of left in the dark. We keep hearing about various projects that the company has going on, and we hear about "additional" training that some of us will be getting, but almost no one knows what they are doing past tomorrow. It's all very confusing. The only person that knows what they'll be doing is one girl that is going to be shipped off to Orlando for two weeks to get certified in Oracle. I am going to say it, and I know that it makes me sound like a huge dork, but I'm terribly jealous. Not that she gets to go to Orlando, but that she gets a snazzy certification. I look at this first job as somewhere that I can gain the skills and experience to move onto something much bigger and better, and getting a certification in a piece of software such as Oracle would be a big boon to my experience. One of the managers said that I'm slated to learn Cognos, so that's pretty nifty too. Hopefully tomorrow will shed some light on the upcoming weeks and I'll have a fuller picture of what's going to happen.

So this last weekend, Laura, Ryan, Fran and I went to Jones Beach. While there, I decided to trade in my Treo that I just got. I found that it doesn't work on the network at work, so in essence, it's worthless. Since I found out that my job will pay for my cell phone bill if I use it for business, I've gotta make sure that my phone can actually do business-like functions, such as get email. Since my Treo sucks and doesn't work on our network, I'm going to get myself a blackberry. So anyway... I went to a Sprint store in the mall near Fran's house and explained to them that I wanted to exchange it. The proceeded to tell me that they were formally a "Nextel" store and their database was different. All I could think of was "What fucked up consultant firm did they hire to do that merger?" In the end, they guy was a total dick to Laura and myself and I couldn't exchange the phone. I did find out that my timeframe for exchanging it was a month, so that at least gave me a little more wiggle room in terms of getting the phone in for an exchange, which I am planning on doing tomorrow.

Oh, and an update on my iced coffee experiment....yes, it worked, and it worked wonderfully. I was the envy of the office and I was lauded for my creativity and applauded for my contribution to the summer-time beverage selection in the office.

Posted by Michael at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's 7:50 in the AM on Wednesday, and yes, I'm back at work. Today we're slated to start learning the basics on programming in Microsoft SQL Server to that we get a better understanding of how databases work. I'm looking forward to getting into it.

The terrible thing about this day is that other than learning a little bit about programming, the highlight of the day is going to come in the afternoon when I go to the freezer and take out this bottle of water that I put in there. I had filled it 1/2 way and tipped it on it's side. My plan is to pour scalding hot coffee in there in hopes of making a nice iced coffee to avoid the afternoon "Hot Coffee sweats". Really interesting, right? Yah... that's what I thought.

Anyway, I should probably set myself up for class.

Posted by Michael at 07:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today is one of those holidays that’s just so much better when it happens to fall on a weekend. Having it fall on a wonderful Tuesday afternoon really steals away the promise of drunken fire-works watching and fun filled BBQ’s. It's okay though. Last year Laura and I threw a little shindig at our apartment and ended up going up
on the roof. Longstory short, we got yelled at by my neighbors for going up there and I was so drunk that a solid 3/4 of the pictures that I took of
the fireworks were utterly terrible. So this year I think that I'm going to remain sober and attempt to capture some the festivities a little better than I did last year.

Last night I had some of my new co-workers/orientation acquaintances come over. It was a good time overall but a little awkward mixing Laura, Ryan, and Fran with the new people, but overall, a day later, I can say that I had a good time. There was a little awkwardness when one of the girls got called out for being married...yes...married, and totally denied it. Why she did that, I still haven’t the slightest clue. It was just strange. Another point of contention with the night was when one of the guys insisted that http://www.allofmp3.com was an illegal site. He just had a hard time understanding the whole IP and patent rights discussions that are going on. The final and probably most awkward moment of the night was when one of my co-workers asked Fran (who graduated with
a degree from Columbia University in Bio-Mechanical Engineering) if she had even gone to school. It was the most condescending thing that I’ve heard of in quite a while. Oh well. Guess I won't be having any BBQ’s with them any anytime soon.

This week is the last week of the formal orientation training for my new job. I was told that after the training is over, I'm going to have another two weeks or so of additional training in some of the applications that I'll be using. I'm actually looking forward to the non-classroom oriented learning because I feel that when I'm working on learning software, I'd be able to pick up a lot more if I were able to work at my own pace, so I'm looking forward to that. Additionally, I really can't wait till I'm finally assigned onto a project. There's a bit of speculation, as I said in an earlier
post, that I may get put on an assignment on Long Island which is probably the worst case scenario because I'd either end up having to spend overnights there or have to commute two hours each way which, as I have experienced before, is annoying and taxing. So we'll see.

Posted by Michael at 01:43 PM | Permalink

Today Laura, Ryan, Fran and I went out to Jones Beach to get a little sun and relax. The morning started off with a phone call from Fran at around 9:20, asking if we could be ready to leave at 10:00 because they didn't want to miss the next train out. Of course, with the cat and his damn ass problem, we ended up being a little late because we had to administer some medicine. But we made it to the train on time and all worked out just fine.

We arrived at Fran's father's house around 11:00, and after a short but friendly reception we were off on our way. We hit up Wendy's for lunch and then finally made our way to the beach.

Overall, it was your typical beach day; lounging around not doing a whole lot. It was nice to get out and be away from the city for a bit too.

Tonight, when we got home, we had to get the cat some laxatives. Apparently, the medicine that we have been giving him was only lubrication, so now we've gotta get him some laxatives so that he can make doo-doo. I am 95% sure that he actually did poo when we got home.... you know.. I just came to the realization that my blog has become a diary about my cat shitting. That's great. Always what I'd hoped it would be come.

Tomorrow evening, after I'm done with work, there is going to be a BBQ at my place with my co-workers coming. Should be a good time. I figured that since they are all from out of town, with it being a holiday weekend, some of them wouldn't really have anywhere to go or anything to do, so I took it upon myself to make a gathering. We'll see how many people actually show. Speaking of which, Laura and I are about to plan it, so I should go and tend to that.

Oh yeah.. I got burned at the beach... damn sun.

Posted by Michael at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This week was the first week of my new job. The past week has been chock full of presentations, introductions, case studies, and overall everything that you would expect from a orientation. The first few days were pretty easy, but by day three, we were enmeshed in analysis and data modeling. It's quite interesting, so that's always a plus, but the days are long and we are cramming so much into them, it's taxing.

Unfortunately, we were forced to go to this terrible, terrible scavenger hunt today to "build team sprit" or whatever they were hoping to get out of it. We had all these strange clues and just had to find what the clue was talking about and take a Polaroid of it. It's not that it was hard, it was more that there really wasn't much of an incentive to do it. No prizes, nothing, just the satisfaction of taking a shitty picture. Oh well. It probably wasn't as bad as I thought it was, but having lived in New York for 6 years now, I'm kind of past the point where I can gain pleasure out of scouring neighborhoods for random plaques and paintings.

Button and I baked those...

This week I have to go into work on Monday, but have off on Tuesday. I don't know why they are actually bothering to bring us in on Monday seeing as how I'm sure a good majority of the people in the office aren't going to be there. I feel sorry for the poor instructor that was roped into giving us a class on that day.

Last night we had a meet and greet with some of the senior consultants at my firm. We went out to a bar near the office and the majority of the people there proceeded to get totally wasted. It was rather funny because some of the other people that are in my group totally just didn't hold their liquor. One of them in particular ended up getting in a verbal dispute with some sophomore employees (from the class before us who just started in December) who happened to think they were hot shit. It was so lame. I felt like I was in high school again. I just sat and watched, keeping to myself. I am in the Business Intelligence division of the consultancy, and my Director of the New York division of Business Intelligence was out with us, and he didn't hold back at all. After he was about 4 Martinis deep, he was pretty loose lipped and just left anything go. One of the consultants was telling a story and the director stopped him mid-sentence and asked "Ummm when is this story going to get funny?" As I was speaking I said something to the effect of "So my girlfriend and I went out the other night..." and I got the "Wow...you have a girlfriend?!?" Rather rude I thought, but what are you going to do? Throw down with the director? Hell no.

After this coming week is over, the seven people that are in my group are going to be dispersed across the country. Four are in the New York office (which is actually in lame ass Jersey City) and the others are going to Atlanta and Philly. I'm glad that I'm going to be in the New York office, because apparently those that are in the other offices are traveling around 50% of the time. Last night when I was speaking to the director, he made mention that I may be assigned to a cosmetics company out in Long Island. My heart sank when I heard that because Long Island, as far as I'm concerned, could be bulldozed back into the ocean. Besides the people being just terrible, it's going to be a major pain in the ass to get out there, so we'll see. I don't know if I’ll actually be put out there yet. I was working my connections with another project manager that's on a project downtown, so hopefully he'll pull for me and I'll be put on a job in Manhattan. If I end up on Long Island, hopefully they'll get me a rental car, or I'll see about getting some sort of car of my own. I just couldn't stand having to come from Brooklyn, into Manhattan and then out to Long Island, nor do I think it'll be possible to commute that, so I'd probably end up staying there over night, which would suck. All I can do at this point is hope for the best.

Tomorrow Laura and I are thinking about going with Ryan and Fran out to Long Island....yes, I know, the irony, and going to the beach. I suppose if there is one thing a huge fucking sandbar is good for is the beaches. I don't know if we're actually going to go at this point, but at least it's something to do. Seeing as how I don't get a paycheck for another two weeks, and I whittled down my small fortune of a bank account into ummm...well... let's just say that I am lacking in funds right now. At least I have enough to pay for rent and some Raman noodles. :) Mmmmm Raman.

Before I started working at my job, I called the office to find out if they supported the Treo Smart phone. My inquiry was based on the assumption that if they used Outlook for their internal mail, then they probably weren't so concerned with network security, seeing as how Windows blows goats. Going on that assumption, I figured that the Treo would be supported. Upon arriving at work, I quickly learned that my assumptions were way wrong, and they only support Blackberrys. So looks like I'm going to be returning my $400 Treo and exchanging it for a Blackberry. I'm not super thrilled about it, but what can you do? There's no reason to have a snazzy phone if it can't get your work e-mails. Maybe I'll just say fuck it and get a Razor. Who knows. The only thing that I know for sure is that I have till Monday before my two week Sprint trial is up and I am stuck this this expensive non-functional phone.

Oh, and one last little story. Did you know that in order to find out if your cat is constipated it's going to run you around $400? Yep... fucking Seven hasn't been shitting and therefore was vomiting, so we had to bring him to the vet. Turns out his entire colon and large intestines are filled with poo. Tough shit....literally. So now we have in on some Cat-Lax. We were really worried that he wouldn't like it and it was going to be a big pain to feed it to him, but as it turns out, the little black bastard loves it. Totally can't get enough of the sweet cat-laxatives. Awesome, right? Hopefully within a day or two, we'll no longer have a cat that's full of shit. Again....fucking awesome.

Posted by Michael at 06:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)