The Cat's Nuts

Today is Thursday. It's a good day. Cool, mild, nice. Everything that you could ask for in a day, but I am locked in a larger conference room without windows. I think I'm getting Vitamin D deficiency. ugh. But alas, today is the last day that I have to be here. Next week I'm off to glorious Columbus, Ohio to work on a project for two weeks. No more renting cars, not more dealing with Long Islanders, no more driving on the LIE.....at least for two weeks. The best part about not coming here anymore will be the fact that I won't have to deal with SAP BW anymore. It's been giving me so many problems in the past week that I'm about ready to write it off completely.

For the past 2-3 weeks, every night when I would go to bed, I would wake up in the morning and try to check my email. Annoyingly, it wouldn't work. I couldn’t figure it out. My computer is usually running in good shape, but this problem was just something that I couldn't figure out. So last night I spent 2-3 hours just cleaning up stuff and getting rid of all the crap that was on my hard drive. I started the process having around 15 gigs free, and by the end of the night I had around 95 gigs of free space. How I had 80gigs of wasted space on my hard drive I'll never know, but it's nice to be back to a level where I have some breathing room. Additionally, I killed my Ubuntu installation in favor to giving Fedora Core 5 a shot. I'm not going to lie... I don't like it. I'm thinking that I may go back to Ubuntu tonight when I get home. Not that Fedora was all that different than the Dapper Drake version that I had installed previously, but when it comes down to it, I already learned Ubuntu and I don't want to bother with re-learning a different OS....again.

Tomorrow morning I plan on taking the train up to my parents house in order to prepare for the weekend adventure up to Lake George. Of course, after a quick check on weather.com it is telling me that there is a 60% "chance" of rain this weekend on both days. I have this feeling that we're going to get up there and it's just going to be a wet mess the entire weekend. It's supposed to be a high of 60 degrees too, so it's going to be cold and wet. Not exactly the greatest weather for Labor Day weekend. Oh well, what are you going to do? I'm going to pack some sweatshirts and a rain coat and we're going to pack some tarps and say fuck it. We'll stay dry enough in the tents and we'll find things to do under the canopy during the days. Oh well... We'll make the best of it I'm sure. Nothing a 12-pack of PBR can't help out with.

So over the next week, because I'm going to be in Columbus, I am thinking that I'm going to have a bit of extra time on my hands in the evenings. Instead of spending those hours doing nothing, or watching the 3rd season of 24, I am thinking that I'm going to finally re-do the CSS coding on my blog and get myself a nice banner for the top. It's been over a year now of being swaddled in the typical Vicksberg MovableType theme, so now I'll finally have the boredom to do it.

Oh, and I have another admission that I must make.... I have lost my manhood...I knit. It's true. I'm making myself a scarf. It's blue. It's going to be nice, and when I’m warm this winter, you are going to wish that you had knit yourself a scarf. Why am I knitting? I don't really know. Laura and I like to make things and do crafty hobbies, and well... we're giving knitting a shot. The other night we were going to make those stamp things (if you don't know what I'm talking about, it's not really worth me explaining) but we had already had 3-4 beers, so we figured it wouldn't be the best time to be carving anything with sharp tools. So we picked up some knitting needles and are giving it a go. Pending how much time I have and how much TV I watch, I figure that I can be done with my scarf by the end of October. It takes awhile to knit... wow... I'm lame. Anyway, I am going to run out to the book store to get a book for the trip.

Posted by Michael at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Last night Laura went out to dinner with her sister, so I decided to make plans for myself. I ended up meeting up with a friend of mine that lives over near Brooklyn Heights. We ended up going to a bar called The Brazen Head. On all of my previous experiences, I haven't had all that great a time over there, but last night was an exception. On cask (Hand pull keg that stays at cellar temperature) they had a beer from Chealsea brewing company. Normally, their stuff isn't that great.... it's not BAD, but it's nothing special. Well, last night they had a cask of their Cream Stout and it was AMAZING. It was, by far, the best cask ale that I have ever had. Anyway, after around 7 of them, I was getting pretty tired. I ended up getting on the G train and missing my stop and then took a $14 cab ride home. I was so cocked that the cabbie could have taken me whatever way he wanted. I don't know HOW it cost $14 to come home from Queens, but it did. Oh well. So this morning I am paying for my transgression and it's kicking my ass.

In order to combat the hangover, I decided that it would be a good idea to get a coffee and bagle for the ride to work this morning....that was a mistake. So in addition to being terribly hung over, the roads are wet and there is an annoying drizzle of rain that's coming down. Because I'm driving a shitty rental car, the tires need to be replaced and the windshield wipers are less than stellar. So my hung over ass was trying to drive and drink my coffee. Let's just say that I think I got more coffee in the cup holder than I actually was able to drink. This is definetly NOT my morning.

In addition to not having a great morning, I also found out that my paycheck wasn't deposited into my bank account. I have a bi-monthly system where we get paid once on the 15th and once on the....well... I thought it was on the 30th, because THAT would make sense...but nope. I guess I get paid on the 31st. What a pain in the ass. Oh well. So tomorrow I will be presented with all my riches that I have earned in the past two weeks, most of which will go towards paying the landlord. Such is life. I'm sure that I'll post later, but right now I need to catch up on the latest NFL gossip. :)

Posted by Michael at 09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's finally happened. I have finally, after working at my job for 9 weeks, been assigned to a project where I will be billable! Yeah! It's very true, but there is a major downside. The project is in Columbus, Ohio. Home of THE Ohio State University. So the day after I get back from camping at Lake George (5th of September) I get to hop on a plane in the early AM and fly out to Ohio. We're doing a project for a national Insurance carrier to take an assessment of their current data management system and see how it is working out. Apparently they just spent a whole lot of money on it and the users aren't too happy with it and therefore, aren't using it. So I'll be out in Ohio for two weeks working on this project and talking to the employees of the company. It should be interesting. I know that Laura is bummed out about me leaving and I can't blame here. It's going to be a long two weeks away, but at least I'll be something a little exciting.

I've finally been doing some work around here, hence the lack of posts in the past week, so that has been fairly nice. Although I've hit a wall with it and the program that I've been using (SAP BW) is locking up every other second on me, so I'm at a standstill. Hopefully the problem will be resolved in the next day or so, but at this point I can't do anything, so I am just sitting around not doing anything. Sucks, but I'm pretty used to it by now.

It has inevitably come to the time when I am able to take a "break from work", that being lunch time. I feel that today might be one of those days where I take an extended break and head over to Best Buy or perhaps Barnes and Noble and see if I can find something to do for an hour and a half. Seeing as how I have my Crackberry, it doesn't really matter because if someone is looking for me, more often than not, they just shoot me an Email.

Laura just Emailed me and told me to take a look at the weather forecast for the weekend. Obviously, since we planned on going camping and spending money on a nice boat rental, it's going to rain. Oh well. I've been camping in the rain before and we'll just make sure that when we set up our campsite, we'll make sure to put up some tarps and make sure that we waterproof our stuff. I just hope that we have SOME nice weather because damn it... I'm going water skiing whether it's raining or not.

Currently there are about three people around the office that are working on fixing my damn SAP problem. I am pretty sure that they are almost finished with trying to get it working. Supposedly I'm going to be getting something else to do in the next few minutes, so at least I'll have something, but who knows. I may not be able to do that either. I have this small hope in the back of my head that if I cant' get SAP working, then they will just allow me to go home for the day. That would be amazing, but I just don't see it happening.

So for the past two weeks, Laura and I have been talking about our "situation". Our "situation" is the fact that she and I live in New York City and neither one of us really wants to be here. She contends (and I agree) that had it not been for me going to school during this past year, that she would have moved the hell away from New York years ago. Understandably, especially since her job allows her to move anywhere, she's itching to get out. The plans that we had were to move to Austin so that she could establish residency in Texas and apply to the University of Texas. With residency, she felt that she would have a much better chance of getting into her top choice law school, which is UT. The flaw in that plan was that if we moved down there, I would have to quit my job and find another. That in itself wouldn't be so bad, but the problem would come when/if she didn't get into UT and ended up needing to leave to another city. Pretty much, for me to have three different jobs in 2 years, would look pretty bad on my resume. So Laura and I talked it over, and we have made a plan that we're going to finally stick to. Laura is going to retake her LSAT and see if she can't get a better score. Once she has done that, she's going to ramp up and apply to around 15 different law schools around the country. Pending where she gets in, we're going to make plans to move there as soon as possible, and when I say "make plans" I really mean that I'm going to search for a new job. As of right now, we have no idea where we're going to end up going, so that kind of sucks, but at this point, we're just happy to have a game plan, and I'm happy to know that I'm not going to have to bail on a job that I just started.

Anyway, it's just hit noon, so I'm going to head out to BestBuy and see what fun things I can find.

Posted by Michael at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Around 7:15 I pulled my car into the parking lot of the 3 office building complex where I work. I had left the house around 6:30. Why in God's name would I arrive two hours early to get to work? Well... I have a "condition" that needs to be tended to. So I'm off to the damn doctor this afternoon. Why am I labeling it a "condition"...well.. frankly it's none of your damn business. :) And no, I'm not impotent. Just ask Laura.

The bad part about having to leave early is that I actually have work that I'm doing today. It's amazing right? They FINALLY, after two months, gave me something to do, so that's just amazing. I'm so excited. I think that I may need to tone it down, because I was given a project to do yesterday which the guy thought would last me till around Wednesday afternoon. Well... I finished it this morning. It was rather funny because as I was working on it (it's creating reports in SAP BW) I was figuring out faster and faster ways to do it. By the time I was done, I had totally revamped the process that was shown to me. I guess that's just the consultant way.

Yesterday, when I told my boss that I was going to be working directly on the working Network of the project company, he asked me "Are you sure you are comfortable with this? Other people are working in that environment."

"Ummm yeah, I'll be okay. I was shown how to do it, and it seems fairly straight forward."

Meanwhile I'm thinking to myself "OH MY GOD!!! What is wrong with you! This shit is so simple and straight forward! How could I POSSIBLY mess it up?"

Granted, I don't know everything or even 5%, but the process in which I was working on was sooooo simple. There was nothing to it. Oh well. I guess that's why I get paid the big bucks.

This evening, after my Doctor's appointment, I am going to be meeting with my "Coach" to talk to her about how things are going on the job. Not really looking forward to it, but it could be potentially helpful in understanding some of the other stuff that's going on. At this point I think that I have a pretty firm grip on how things work at this "new" job, so the desire to meet with her is somewhat diminished. Laura is planning on meeting me in Manhattan to get some dinner after I meet with my coach, so that'll be nice.

Even though I have a shortened work day, I still had time to run over to the BestBuy that's 10 minutes down the road. What was I buying on August 22nd from BestBuy? Yep, that's right. Madden 2007. It sucks that tonight is so packed full of stuff, but I think that I can deal with it. After dinner I'm sure that I'll be able to get at least a game in, so that'll be enough for the time being. Additionally, Laura is going out to dinner with friends tomorrow night so I'll have a solid window there.

It's currently 12:30, so I have another two hours to wait till I leave. I just got a work E-Mail so hopefully it is the new assignment that I have. Awesome. :)

Posted by Michael at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Of course, as it may have it, I have amazing luck. Without fail, whenever I walk outside to use my cell phone at work, without fail, my boss walks by or interrupts me. Hell, today I was outside calling my insurance company and there goes my boss who stops and has a small exchange with me while I'm on hold. After my brief call, I walk inside and sit down. I find the number of a doctor that I'm going to see, and I head outside to call and make an appointment. Sure enough, during the massively long 5 minute phone call, there goes my boss out the door again. I just can't win. Maybe he feels bad because I catch him leaving all the time. Hmmm.. there's a thought, but I doubt it.

Yesterday, Laura and I went for a little bike ride over to Prospect Park to hang out. We played a little volleyball and I took some pictures, and we laid out on a blanket for a bit. It was quite nice. Yesterday was a little humid, but because the temp is so low (85ish), it wasn't bad. Today is the epitome of a beautiful day. The air is crisp and the sky is quite blue. It kind of reminds me of the day the World Trade Center fell. Same kind of quiet beautiful morning.

I was called on Friday to come into the office on Long Island in order to do some "real" work, but as of currently (11:40am) I have yet to hear anything from anyone concerning work that I can be doing, so I am pretty much just sitting here for a bit. Not too exciting, but it does at least give me a chance to set up a doctor's appointment and write a little blog entry.

Tonight, at Midnight, is the release of Madden 2007. Not that I'm going to be one of those guys that's hanging outside of the video game store waiting to buy a copy, but I feel that I may take a short drive over to BestBuy tomorrow afternoon and pick up a copy if they still have any available. I figure that I'll have better luck going and getting a copy at the local BestBuy on Long Island than I would at any of the city locations. Then again, I think that I may not really even NEED to buy it, but we'll see. I'm sure that once Laura reads this post, she's going to tell me that I should be saving my money for our camping trip on Labor Day.

As noon is rolling around, I think that I'm going to take it upon myself to get up and see if I can't rustle up some work to do. I'll probably regret it, but it's worth a shot.

Posted by Michael at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've reached another landmark post on my blog. It's true. I've gotten to the magic number of 150 posts. Not exactly mind-blowing but it works for me.

I found this video while searching for a Windows XP Serial Key Viewer

While it was on the page, I did eventually find the viewer that I needed here.
Pretty much all the program does is tell you what the XP code you are using is. It's helpful when you have lost your number and want to re-install Windows but don't have the Key around anymore. Anway, good luck to anyone going into that venture.

The reason that I was looking for it was because my fucking internet on my desktop shuts off after about and hour using the computer. So I don't know what the problem is so I figured that I would just re-install Windows....again... fucking shitting software. Ugh. Anyway.

I've been using Linux alot recently and franklly, the way that I figure it, I really only need Windows for Photoshop CS and for playing a few select video games. If I install Windows with those intentions, I figure it'll be quite fast and without any real problems. I've gotten everything else I need to work in Linux (Ubuntu Dapper Drake), so I'm almost ready to give up on the whole Windows thing. So I need to re-install it and I figured that I would just re-partition my harddrives while I was at it. Don't know how I'm going to pull off that feat yet, but I'm sure that I'll figure it out.

Anyway, it's almost noon and I'm still sitting in my pajama pants, so I figure that it's about time to get my day started.

Posted by Michael at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After much debate and much internet searching, Laura and I have finally made some plans for Labor day. We're going to head out of the city on Thursday night or Friday morning and head up to my parents house. On Saturday morning we're going to leave early and head up to Lake George where we have a camp site rented for the weekend. Now, here is the kicker. Our campsite is on an island so we have rented a boat to get out there. The boat that we have rented comes with water skis and a tube for lots of water time fun. I'm really looking forward to the weekend. It's going to be quite the good time. We're going to be bringing James, Laura's friend and his boyfriend with us, so that'll be good to have some company while going up there.

Last year Laura and I went up to Saranac Lake for a long weekend and had an amazing time. It was perfect weather and we rented a sweet-ass pontoon boat. Anyway.. I was a good time and I have high hopes that we'll emulate that experience this time around.

I got a call on Friday while I was "working" from home telling me that I have to head out to Long Island for all of next week. While that sucks that I'm going to be traveling out there, the reason for them requesting my presence out there is to work on an actual PROJECT! WOW... amazing concept that I'll actually have something to do. In order to be able to work on the SAP BW stuff, last Friday I tried to download the add-ons that will enable me to work using BW, but I had less luck with it than I had hoped. I downloaded a bunch of stuff and tried to install the plugins that I needed, but I don't know if I got everything that I needed. Hopefully I can work with the helpdesk people early in the morning and get things straightened out.

Laura and I went out last night and had a nice time, but ended up imbibing a little too heavily and thus, upon arriving at home, slept till around noon. Not a good thing, but ehhh... that's what Saturday's are for I suppose. Tonight, Laura and I are going to go and see A Devil Wears Prada. We don't know where we're going to head to dinner yet, but it'll probably be something low key seeing as how we're going to have some heavy spending when we head upstate into the mountains. Damn I'm excited. Hopefully I'll be able to bring my bike along so that I can cruise around. We'll see...

Anyway, we're off to go and see about dinner, so I'm going to end this one right here.

Posted by Michael at 06:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You write posts on two consecutive days that have the same title without realizing it.... yes... my life is just THAT boring. Ugh. I need to get a hobby. Oh wait...it's taking pictures.... yeah, I should work on that. I've been terrible recently about posting stuff, but that's going to change. New years resolution time!! hehe anyway.. back to "work".

Posted by Michael at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After spending a day working from my “home office” I am back in the Jersey City office for the day. It’s really quiet here. All the other people that I started with are now on assignment so I’m the lowest level employee of anyone in the office.

I got into work early today in hopes that I could take some pictures of the New York skyline, but it was damn bright out and the torrent of people coming off the PATH train was enough to dissuade me into waiting to make it a lunch time endeavor. At least I have something to do. I think the remaining portion of my day will be spent on reading materials on SAP BW which is what I did all of yesterday. I will hopefully be getting access to the testing environment for BW so that I can actually apply all the concepts that I’ve been learning.

Last night Laura and I took a little bike ride over the Williamsburg Bridge, into Chinatown and then back over the Brooklyn Bridge and back home. It was quite nice and without incident. We picked up some crab on the way home, so we cooked that up and finished up watching the first season of 24 which I had downloaded. It was a nice evening and after downing a few beers it was easy to pass out afterwards.

I can’t believe that the week is already almost over. I am going to be going to the Mets v. Rockies game on Friday, so that’s something to look forward to for tomorrow evening, but the better news is that I have procured tickets to the Jets v. Patriots game on September 17th when the Pats come to the Meadowlands, so that’s exciting. I was able to get the tickets at face value, so that’s even better.

I spoke to a friend of mine from high school yesterday and she was telling me that she’s about to finish up graduate school (Mechanical Engineering) and trying to figure out what she’s going to do with her life. She’s been dating this guy for around 4 years and after he graduated from Columbia, he started working as an I-Banker at Merrill. I asked her when she was planning on moving out of New York and she told me

“I figure that in two years we’ll be ready to move and at that point I think we’ll just use my boyfriend’s 3rd year bonus to buy a house outside of Chicago”

I didn’t want to ask exactly how much he made, but she assured me that in his first year out of school he made more than double what she made (she who is also a Columbia educated mechanical engineer), so it’s pretty decent money. Although she did mention that he on occasion works 120 hour weeks. After this conversation Laura and I started to talk about our careers (as we have been doing in the past week) and came to some conclusions. We both realize that the whole “consulting” thing is good to get your feet wet, but at the same time, neither one of us is really passionate about what we do and while I haven’t had the time to really sink my teeth into anything, I just don’t see it happening. Somehow I don’t think I’m going to grow a heartfelt warmth for SAP and just want to devote my life to it. I think that Laura and I would do much better working in an organization with a product that you could really love and devote yourself to. I think about my brother and the work that he’s doing now. He currently is the store manager of a high-end cycling shop up near Boston. He LOVES his job and literally devotes his life to cycling. He has always been into biking, but since he’s been working there he’s really grown into a fanatic about it. I hope that wherever I end up, I too could be fanatical about my work and really enjoy going to work.

As an afterthought to my conversation with Laura, a few months ago I did have a meeting with a guy that owns and operates a hedge fund in Austin, Texas. I met with he and his wife about three months ago and they gave me some tips about applying to jobs in Austin while I was living in New York. Pretty much, after speaking to them, I got the feeling that it was going to be damn hard to find a job, but they assured me that I would, if I worked at it, be able to find something. They also told me that whenever I was thinking about seriously starting a search in Austin, to let them know and they would send out feelers, which is… well…amazing. Laura and I feel, especially with the days getting shorter, that we have about one more New York Winter left in us and after that we’re going to have to get out of here.

Long story short, I’ve set myself up with a game plan. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, such as my falling in love with SAP BW and never wanting to leave my job here, in February of next year, I’m going to get in contact with the gentleman that I met and his wife, and I’m going to start to throw my resume out into the world. I have a feeling that it may be fairly difficult for me to find something, but I’d like to give it a whole hearted effort. Hopefully by that time Laura has decided on if she’s going to attempt the Law School thing and hopefully she’ll be accepted or at least have a good idea of where she’s going to go (Psssst…. Probably UT) and we’ll take it from there. I just wanted to get this down in writing so that I can, when February (early March) rolls around, I know that this is my goal.

Oh, and on a more personal note: In 15 days, once I get my next paycheck, I will be able to completely pay off all my credit card debt that I have accrued since starting back up at school. It’s going to be nice to know that I’m totally free of debt (except student loans and the little money that I owe Laura), but free of all “real interest accruing” debt.

Now that I’ve successfully thrown myself an hour into my work day, I’m going to start working on building my love for SAP BW.

Posted by Michael at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I feel like a record that's stuck on repeat because every time I sit down to write something, the only thing that I can really talk about is how my job isn't really panning out to be how I had thought it would be. Meaning that instead of actually having a job, I spend my days commuting to Long Island to sit on the internet, browsing news about the NFL and tinkering around on the Linux forums, searching for reasons to expand my 40 gig Ubuntu partition.

Recently I have been doing a LITTLE work, and by little I mean that in the past week, I have probably done around two hours of real work. I've been trying to work my way into working with Visio and doing dataflow diagrams. I was given one the other day and churned that out. I got a little praise for doing a good job, but other than that, it's been pretty quiet. Hopefully I'll be getting another one of those to do today.

There's been some stirring news on the home front. For some reason, which honestly doesn't bother me, Laura has been getting a little frustrated with our life in New York. I think that she and I are really tired of sitting in New York, just working our jobs and now really seeing any sort of future. I think it comes down to both of us being "Goal Oriented" and right now we don't really have any set goals. Other than just making money and living, we don't have anything that we're striving for, and honestly, that's a problem. So after a little bit of talking, Laura is again looking back into going to Law School. She has decided that because she has a very analytical mind, that going to Law School would allow her to have a career where she could analyze things and argue, two things she is particularly good at. It's kind of funny because just the other day I told her that if she were going to go to law school I would have a hard time being there for her, because at that time she didn't have direction. There is nothing worse, in my opinion, than just going to school to get a degree and not using it. It's the biggest waste of time I can imagine. But in this case, Laura is actually planning on being involved in Family Law and maybe having her own practice one day. Who knows. But the good thing about having something like that in the future is that it is a goal and gives us something to work for.

Laura really wants to end up going to U.Texas Law, which is quite a good school, but it's going to be hard for her to get into. I sincerely hope that she's able to get in because that would allow the two of us to move to Austin and after she's done with her first year of school, and I've established residency, I will hopefully be able to get into the McCombs School of Business at UT. As I said, these are just rough plans, but they are moving us in the right direction.

I feel that until we have actual plans, things are going to be pretty stressful because we are both creatures that need direction and just a goal of making money isn't enough.

Posted by Michael at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After yesterday's disappointing news, I found out this afternoon that I will be traveling back out to Long Island for the remainder of the week. I have a mixed bag of emotions about this seeing as how I don't really feel like driving out there, but at the same time, i think that having something to do out there is better than sitting in the office in Jersey City. I guess it's just the price that I'll have to pay for the time being.

Laura asked me the other day if I was interested in possibly applying to work at her company. I have to admit that the offer is very tempting. Not that I'd be a shoe in because well... I don't really have any more experience than when I walked into my current consulting role, but at the same time, it would be a drastically different work environment. The way that I figure it is I can't, in good conscience, quit my job here within the first 6 months because I have to give it a legitimate shot. It's been about 6 weeks and things haven't been great, but they haven't been terrible. My biggest complaint here is the terrible lack of things to do. I figure that I'm going to wait on applying to Laura's company till we arrive at a time when we are both looking to leave New York and I have exhausted my job options in other cities. Hopefully I'd be able to just find a job elsewhere instead of having to rely on using Laura's position to get me a new one, but that's a long way off. We are going to make it through fall and winter and re-evaluate our situation here in New York.

I think the biggest thing that Laura and I are looking forward to when we leave New York is having a piece of property that we can actually OWN. In Manhattan or Brooklyn, it's so damn expensive to own anything, it's going to be out of our price range for quite some time. If we were to move to a city such as Austin, we could buy a house, live there for two years, fix it up a bit and then resell it and upgrade. I think that Laura and I would be good at doing something like that (as opposed to a straight flip) because we like to take on little projects here and there. Anyway, those are pretty much my long term (5 year plan) of what I'm hoping to get done, so we'll see how that all pans out.

I was looking on MySpace, which I refuse to post myself onto, and found a few profiles from people from High School. One girl in particular caught my eye because she lives in Vail, Colorado and is a Ski-Instructor/Tour Guide. Additionally, one of Laura's friends from home has a similar type of job where they are a tour guide. Now, on the outside, these jobs sound great. They rank right up there with being a Park Ranger and that sort of thing, but I was thinking about it today and as much as I would enjoy being outside, the earning potential just isn't there. Then later in the day I was looking at one of my many photography magazines and it got me yearning to take more pictures and thinking about how great it would be to be a photographer...but again... no money. I guess what it comes down to it finding a job that makes a nice balance between money and enjoyment. I figure that I just have to find a way to have my own business and be outside at times. Perhaps incorporate a little mountain biking or photography in there? Any ideas? Anyone?

Anyway, it's almost 2:30 and since I actually may get quizzed tomorrow when I go talk to the guy in Long Island regarding SAP BW, I should probably do a little reading before I jump into the fire. Laura has grand plans for us to do a bit of cleaning tonight, so I better get cracking because I certainly won't have the motivation to do it when I get home.

Posted by Michael at 02:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

For many months now, I have been in pursuit of getting TheCatsNuts.com listed on Google. It has finally happened. I'm up there and searchable. As expected, my hits, which hover around 5-10 a day aren't really climbing, but that's okay. it's only been a few days. Just makes me happy, ya know? I think what really did it for me was submitting an XML page to Google Sitemaps so that it directed the spider to all my content. Hopefully, as I continue to post, the little spider will realize that I'm an active and contributing member of the ever growing community of bloggers out there. Whoopee...

As expected, my job took another turn for the worse today. I was rejected from being placed at the bank in midtown, so alas, I am still reporting to the guys out in Long Island. On the upside, it seems as though, because I'm going to be there more long term, I will be getting "real" training and no longer just sitting idle, so that'll be good if it ever really pans out.

Laura and I got thinking awhile back, when we were planning our vacation to Mexico, that we would really like to rent out a huge place in the tropics and go with friends. As it turns out, this is a rather inexpensive venture when you plot it all out, because you get a huge place that is much cheaper than a hotel room for two and you have all your friends there and just go crazy. You bring or buy food to cook and it's a jolly old time. So as of currently, we're testing the waters with a few groups of our friends to see if people would be interested in participating in such a venture. I just worry that people would bail and whatnot, but I think that if we end up doing this, we're going to do some sort of "travel contract" with people as as to keep people liable to their word. I just don't want to be a week away and have like three people bail and all the sudden the cost of the trip goes up a couple hundred bucks per person. That could have quite the negative impact on the quality of the trip. Just more food for thought and something to think about.

I finally updated my picture page that I'm trying to develop. I've been just using it recently for showing friends recent activities, but I never took the time to put up a SIMPLE menu. I finally did it today, and I'm quite glad. I'd like to set it up as an archive for all the things that I do, so maybe in about a month I'll have lots in there. Just a good way to keep things from getting accidentally deleted and all that. Not to mention have a place where friends can go to see pictures from the various events.

Seeing as how I am going to be thrown back to Long Island, I have to brush up on my Data Warehouse knowledge, so I've gotta catch up on my reading, so I'm going to cut this short. Once again, I'm not writing from home, so I don't have access to any pictures, but what can I say? Deal.

Posted by Michael at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This has gone on long enough. I can’t stand it anymore. I’ve been terribly busy recently, and fact of the matter is that I need a damn rest. It’s true. Tonight, when I get home from work, I plan on doing NOTHING. No cleaning, no unpacking, no cooking….nothing. I am going to get home, and order some food and just hang out. I’ve been on the go all weekend, and I don’t even feel rested at all. Since waking up on Friday, I have had 12 hours of sleep (spread over 3 nights), and included in that was a full day of work, two train trips, a wedding, a nature walk, attending and photographing a mountain bike race, and multipul hours of driving around upstate New York. Needless to say, it’s been a busy week.

As for the rest of my life, things have been going fairly well there too. Last Thursday I had an interview at a large bank. No, I’m not looking to leave my job, the interview was to see if my job was going to place me on a project out there. Hopefully I will be put on this job and have actual WORK to do. I will finally be billable and be responsible for getting things done, and that will just be amazing. Since I left school in May, I have been responsible for getting so little done, it’s amazing. The position that I’ll be taking at the bank is doing data analysis and data cleansing. What that means is I am going to be looking at data source systems and determining what we need to do with the various bits of data to improve them. The job is located in Manhattan which is great, because it means that I can get there very easily on the subway and I won’t be sucked into traveling anywhere. The bad thing is that the job itself, in the long run has the tendency to become QUITE boring and I won’t be learning any new software. Where as in the position that I currently have on Long Island, I would be eventually learning about SAP BW, which is a hot product right now and would make me much more valuable. By the end of the day I should have a much better idea as to where I’ll be heading for the next few months.

As I mentioned before, I was supposed to be heading out this week (and last week for that matter) to attend Informatica training. As it turns out, because they are waiting to hear on the Bank position, they nixed the travel out to Chicago. Perhaps next week, if I don’t get placed at the Bank, I will end up doing the training. I’ll have to see where it’s being held and if it’s even a possibility. I am just lusting for some industry specific knowledge that will enable me to be a more productive and educated person.

This weekend I got to hang out with some friends of mine from high school, so that was nice. It was just fun falling back into old times and spending time with friends. We all got together for the wedding of our friend Jessica. The wedding was a good time, I, being the designated driver, was stone sober and still had a nice time, so I suppose that’s a testimate to a good wedding. There were a few things here and there that I would have done differently, mainly not smearing chocolate wedding cake on the bride’s face, but hey, that’s just me. Overall, it was nice to see friends all out and about and having fun.

This weekend is going to again be one of long nights of drinking as we are hosting a birthday party for Fran. Laura had a novel idea of throwing a “Long Island (iced) Tea Party”. I just have this feeling that by the end of the night, I’m going to be mopping up some vomit and it’s not going to be good. I just hope that the night isn’t too hot so we’ll be able to keep people outside as to only have to hose down the lawn from the pukers.  I’m so optimistic sometimes it startles even me.

This weekend, my father and my brother participated in a 40 mile bike race up in Newburgh, NY. I went and took some pictures which I will be putting up in short order. Speaking of which, I’ve been a terrible person when it comes to hosting my other photo web page. I had all these grand plans for making it a nice little website photo-gallery kind of thing and as of yet, it just hosts one Flash Gallery of pictures. I think that is going to be a sober Friday night undertaking. I would like to really start to catalog my photo collection online. I think that would be nice. It’ll also help me to get a good grip on where all my photos are. Ehhh.. I think it’s more of just a project to keep me busy and not playing video games.

Posted by Michael at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)