Posts tagged with "work"

The Perfect Job

I now run the IT depart­ment for a lab­o­ra­to­ry of about 45 peo­ple. I’m in charge of all instal­la­tions, upgrades, main­te­nance, back-ups, and secu­ri­ty for both hard­ware and soft­ware. I make the annu­al com­put­er bud­get, decide if/when any­thing needs to be pur­chased, and am involved with any devel­op­ment projects that come up. I can design my own projects if I feel like they’ll help the com­pa­ny. I’m involved in mar­ket­ing, design­ing ads for mag­a­zines, fly­ers, trade shows, and web­pages.

I have a huge desk that cov­ers three sides, and share an office (not a cubi­cle) with one oth­er per­son. I have a health plan, two weeks paid vaca­tion per year, and most of the time I make my own work instead of some­one telling me what to do. The indus­try is grow­ing, secure, and has lit­tle impact from gov­ern­ment cut­backs.

My boss is a good man with a great vision. The com­pa­ny pays for any train­ing or class­es that I take. I can spend as much time as I need doing tuto­ri­als or read­ing

I’ve signed the con­tract. I’ve been giv­en a time­card, a lock­er, and a set of keys to the office and stor­age room. The hours are flex­i­ble enough for me to fin­ish cours­es for this term, at which point I’ll switch only to work.

As with all my pre­vi­ous jobs, the first pay­cheque goes to my grand­moth­ers, the sec­ond pay­cheque I split with my friends, the third pay­cheque goes to my sav­ings.

I’ve start­ed the per­fect, per­fect, per­fect career.

New Parts, New Mattress, New Restaurant, New Marks

I bought a sec­ond ATA133 60GB hard-dri­ve and installed it today. It feels good to get into my case and fool around with the cables and parts. I feel like I’m soup­ing up a car with NOX, where I should be say­ing stuff like, “My sec­ondary cable is too short, so I had to put both dri­ves on the pri­ma­ry, so my back­up dri­ve is run­ning as a slave now”. I bought it to keep as a back­up of all my data that I don’t want to con­stant­ly burn to back it up; stuff like my cur­rent mp3’s, my tem­po­rary mp3’s, my tv episodes, my web­pages, and my movies. I got some soft­ware called Second Copy which backs up all the infor­ma­tion auto­mat­i­cal­ly. I’ve been get­ting freaked out from all the reports of hard-dri­ve fail­ures, and hard-dri­ve for­mat­ting web­code, so I thought I should find a solu­tion. After all, I would­n’t want to have to remem­ber every mp3 I down­loaded, and try down­load­ing them all again. Although nei­ther of my dri­ves are Fujitsu’s, there have been lots of reports on huge war­ran­ty reduc­tions of the major man­u­fac­tur­ers in the last few months. Better safe than sor­ry.

My mat­tress arrived today, and it feels amaz­ing. I was so used to a crap­py, old mat­tress, that I guess I for­got what good sup­port felt like.

I went to a restau­rant called La Gondola for lunch yes­ter­day, to see Melissa Kenny off for her new job, and the ser­vice sucked. The food was alright, but I could prob­a­bly have made most of the stuff at my home. The wait­ress rushed every­one to get their bills, and did­n’t ask a sin­gle time how the meal was going. I ordered a decanter of white wine with Natalie, and it tast­ed watery. I left a $1.00 tip.

I’m not sure if I’m going to look for a job for next term or not. I’m still a full-time stu­dent, if my final project is con­sid­ered as a full course. I’m not real­ly sure where I would work, but I know that I’d be okay with a shit job. I love mon­ey too much.

I final­ly got back a pass­ing mark in my algo­rithms course, which still means that I’m fail­ing on the whole, with only two weeks left. I’m pleased, I guess.

I Lost My Job And My Grandma Died

Well, things just can’t get any bet­ter.

Yesterday I found out that my con­tract, which expires in December, will most like­ly not be renewed. This could mean that I will be out of a job when I grad­u­ate, since my posi­tion will be filled by a full-time employ­ee. If things get busier at the office, then I might be asked to come back again. Until then, I might not know. The avail­abil­i­ty of a full-time posi­tion will not be known until next years bud­get­ing comes around, which is usu­al­ly around March.

This after­noon, I also found out that my grand­moth­er passed away. I did­n’t find out any of the details, which is one of the few times that I’m glad of my igno­rance. It sad­dens me that I did­n’t get to see her one last time, to show her that I cared about her, the next oppor­tu­ni­ty being with­in a months time. Yet she did­n’t last the wait, and my chance, twice pass­ing, has been missed. My par­ents will be attend­ing the cer­e­monies by fly­ing to Hong Kong on Tuesday. I haven’t cried yet, and I prob­a­bly won’t.

And appar­ent­ly, accord­ing to some Chinese tra­di­tion, the death of a loved one means that one can­not vis­it any oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers with­in 49 days of the death. Which means that I won’t be able to go to Hong Kong for Christmas vaca­tion, some­thing which I’ve been look­ing for­ward to with unspeak­able plea­sure. The tra­di­tion is not some­thing that I would gen­er­al­ly hon­our, giv­en the cir­cum­stances, but since it is impor­tant to my oth­er grand­moth­er, I eas­i­ly, sto­ical­ly abide by the rules of the funer­al cer­e­mo­ny.

I will miss the Christmas lights and spir­it, the cool­er, more tol­er­a­ble weath­er. I will miss my chance to pur­chase a much need­ed leather jack­et, to buy presents for my friends, to do some much need­ed relax­ation.

But what can I do? Feel sor­ry for myself? I believe that this is the worst string of news I’ve ever had. There just does­n’t seem to be any act I can accom­plish to make this pain go away, except for talk­ing about it. So many things have fall­en apart with­in the last 24 hours, so many things being changed. There just does­n’t seem to be much to live for right now, since I gen­er­al­ly tend to sim­ply live day-to-day.

A part of me wish­es that some­one tru­ly cared. A part of me wish­es that I felt much, much worse. A part of me wish­es that some­one could under­stand what is going through my mind. Most of me wish­es that some­one would help make the pain go away.

It’s hard for me to under­stand what I should be think­ing or feel­ing right now. Everything just seems so numb. I guess things have just come so sud­den­ly, and caught me by sur­prise.

I’m real­ly at a loss for words.

Full-Time And Miyazaki's Films

My sched­ule has­n’t been too hec­tic late­ly (in fact, it’s been fair­ly relax­ing), but that will change with­in the week. I have two assign­ments due in six days time, which I haven’t start­ed yet. I should prob­a­bly start study­ing for exams, but that most like­ly won’t hap­pen any­time soon.

My work has expressed inter­est in hir­ing me for a full-time posi­tion once I grad­u­ate. Most peo­ple would be hired for a CS-01 posi­tion, but since I’ve been work­ing there already, and I would have a uni­ver­si­ty diplo­ma by then, I would most like­ly be hired as a CS-02. There’s great dif­fer­ence in annu­al pay between the two, and a CS-02 has a pay range that’s sim­ply amaz­ing for a new grad­u­ate. It’s very close to my goal in terms of salary, some­thing that I believed that I would have to work a few decades to achieve. This makes me hap­py.

On the oth­er hand, Aaron’s con­tract won’t be renewed, which sucks because we’ll hard­ly have any time to see each oth­er oth­er­wise. He just seems to be too busy to do any­thing with. He’s the type of friend who would want me to tell him about any prob­lems between us, but I’m afraid that this isn’t real­ly his prob­lem. I don’t feel that I have the right to demand so much of his time, since I know that he’s a busy per­son, with impor­tant things to do.

I saw two more of Hayao Miyazaki’s films, called Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, and Princess Mononoke. I felt that both of them weren’t quite as good as Laputa: Castle in the Sky, but still reflect­ed Miyazaki’s amaz­ing writ­ing and direct­ing abil­i­ty. Somehow his ani­ma­tions are able to make me feel hap­py with­out feel­ing cheap. Both of the movies fea­ture the music of Joe Hisaishi, whom I feel is a ter­ri­bly good com­pos­er. He tru­ly cre­ates beau­ti­ful music which com­ple­ments both mood and vision.

So Much Reason To Stay Awake

I need to stop writ­ing for an audi­ence. It feels like I’m not being true to myself, that I can’t say what I want to say. Yet I do, some­how, in some equiv­o­cal man­ner.

The win­ter is so beau­ti­ful. Usually I study bet­ter at night, but when it’s win­ter time, and every­thing is white, I feel much more moti­vat­ed dur­ing the day. It’s as if God final­ly real­izes that the entire world is shit and cov­ers it with a huge bleached tarp.

I bought Dolly a new toy on the week-end, and she loves it. It’s got a soft ball cov­ered in fur on the end of an elas­tic string. She’ll try to take the ball where she wants by grab­bing it in her jaws, but when the elas­tic stretch­es past its lim­it, the ball will rip out of her mouth and make her go even cra­zier. She plays with it until she’s tired, then she’ll lay down on the ground below where the ball lies, and just try to bat it with her paws.

I’ve been work­ing on the new lay­out, and I com­plete­ly scrapped the metal­lic idea. Pictures just did­n’t seem to fit well in it. I actu­al­ly have the final design done and cre­at­ed in html for­mat. It allows for a bet­ter for­mat­ting of con­tent, though it will take me more work. I’m not com­plete­ly sure if I’m sat­is­fied with it, but it will prob­a­bly have to do since I gen­er­al­ly have lit­tle con­tent to work with.

Sometimes I start think­ing, and then I real­ize what a fuck­ing idiot I am, and that thought just sticks in my head. That hap­pened for most of today.

I have to set up two lap­tops for these high up execs at work. One of them actu­al­ly made a com­plaint about me and Aaron to my boss before. It’s hard to work for some­one with this kind of his­to­ry, but some­how I can just grin and bear it. I think that being sto­ic is some­thing that I’ve learned very well from my child­hood. An alarm went off in the build­ing too, and we had to evac­u­ate. My boss asked me if I want­ed to get some beer and piz­za, but I told him that I had too much work to do. The temp­ta­tion was almost too great.

I’ve gen­er­al­ly been neglect­ing my eat­ing habits and my sleep­ing habits, and my school­work, even though I half-resolved not to. It’s good to know that no one cares. At least it’s hon­est. I know that I need much more bal­ance in my life, and I think that it’s some­thing I can achieve. It’s just been so hard with every­thing going on. Pat thinks that I should take a week off work. After all, it’s the rea­son why he quit the job in the first place. But he had a high main­te­nance girl­friend, and I had a neg­a­tive main­te­nance one at the time.

There just seems to be so much rea­son for me to stay awake late at night.