The Cat's Nuts

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.