The Sargasso Sea of My Mind

Current Mood: content

On Sunday, alycewilson decided that she'd take me out to dinner to the restaurant of my choosing. So, I picked Jones, a restaurant themed around the 70s and comfort food.

( All about Jones )

( Thoughts about Starr restaurants )

Current Mood: disappointed

I know, I know. It's been like, forever since I last posted an entry. My wife, alycewilson, pointed out that I hadn't even written an entry about our wedding (which was wonderful and the best day in my life and I'll write about it soon). But, I need to post this in the name of networking.

For the last year or so, business at work as been a bit rocky. We haven't had any new business, and we've lost some clients, one of them quiet large. Today, we had an all-employee meeting, of which we have one every month. This month, however, we had the president of our parent company, the head of human resources, and the chief operations officer. Yes, a bit unusual. To the president's credit, she didn't beat around the bush or dissemble. She was direct, to the point and, importantly, empathic.

The long and short of it was that for the amount of business that we had in our company (our office), we had too many people. Some changes would be made down the road to move some functions up from Florida to make our office more of a regional office, but we still had too many people. They had options for each of us, and they would discuss them with us individually, in alphabetical order by our first names.

My turn came in early afternoon. So, I entered our VP's office, and the head of HR didn't beat around the bush. The majority of the functions that I perform would be moved down to the Florida offices, so my position is being eliminated. Because there's a transition that needs to take place and would benefit from my knowledge and experience, they want me to stay on to the end of April. In exchange, I'd get a severance and be eligible for unemployment. Well, not a whole lot of choice for me. Well, moving to the main Florida office is an option, if there's a position I qualify for. I'm not real interested in moving to Florida, though.

So, I'm going to be looking for a new job. I'll see things through to the end. It's just how I am. If anything, I'm loyal. If anyone knows of any management level IS/IT openings in the Philadelphia area, let me know.

It was an interesting ride. I've been with the company for over seven years, and I've seen it grow. The last couple years with the new ownership has been stressful and filled with uncertainty. I have to say, it's actually something of a relief, to be rid of the uncertainty. I've certainly had worse layoffs

In a bit of irony. I'm getting a manager's performance bonus in my next paycheck for meeting certain criteria last year, and if the board of directors approves a pay raise, I'll be getting that retroactively back to the beginning of February.

Don't worry too much about me. As I said, it's something of a relief, and my heads in a good place.

Current Mood: pensive
Current Music: TV - Throwdown with Bobby Flay

Before I start talking about me...

Happy birthday, vyxle!!

So, at work, we're migrating our claims system from being locally hosted to ASP hosting. We've done the testing and tomorrow's the day when we migrate. We're closing early, so that I can archive up the 30+ gigabytes of data that we're going to have to transfer up. Then, our vendor will take over, transferring the data and placing it on the ASP server.

We've spent the last week testing a test copy of the data, and things have gone mostly smoothly. Pretty much all the issues have been resolved. We'll still be doing testing this weekend to make sure that everything went up smoothly.

It's been rushed. We only had a week to test, and our vendor said that we'd be setting a record for speed of testing and implementation. But, we don't have a choice. Our sister office down in Florida is migrating to our claims system, and they need to go live on October 1. So, we don't have an option of saying "Well, this isn't working quite right, let's delay a week..."

So, instead of going apple picking with my friends early Saturday, I'm staying home so that I can play Mr. Fixit for anything that crops up in testing.

Then, Monday I get to deal with everyone griping about the new system.

Current Mood: drained
Current Music: TV - Throwdown with Bobby Flay

So, while simalyce and I were out looking at reception sites on Saturday (http://www.alycewilson.com/wedding_tomorrow2.htm), I decided that I wanted to have shrimp cocktail for dinner. simalyce mostly wanted to head home after our long day, but she's willing to do a fair amount when it involves my cooking and her getting to eat the results. Personally, ( I blame Alton Brown )

Current Location: Florida
Current Mood: good

As I mentioned a week or so ago, I'm now the Director of Information Services at work, and I'm on the Leadership Team. Basically, I'm one of four people that will essentially be running the company when the former owners retire around the end of the year. As a result of this, I'm currently attending the annual strategic planning retread that the parent company holds every year down here in Tallahassee, Florida. Today's a mostly free day, so I thought I'd come downstairs and sit on the patio and share.

( So, you want to hear about it? )

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: TV, Project Runway

Remember how I said to stay tuned for some big news? Well...

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: TV - Throwdown With Bobby Flay

Well, given the headlines today, I thought I'd share an AP headline that I saw the other day on the ticker at the Loews hotel here in Philly:

Truck spills penguins, tropical fish and an octopus on Texas highway.

I thought I was having post-Otakon hallucinations. I could just picture penguins belly-sliding around on a highway, with an octopus sitting in a puddle of water tries to grab variegated fish flopping around on the pavement. In the background is an overturned truck while traffic is stopped in every direction.

Yeah, I'm easily amused.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: TV, Feasting on Asphalt

Okay, don't be shocked. Especially folk that have known me for a while, like siliconivy.

Current Location: Home
Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: TV -- Feasting on Asphalt

Sorry, I guess it's been a while. Well, to summarize:

• I've been promoted at work. Not only, am I the Director of Information Services (with a nice raise, as well), but I'm also now one of four members of my company's leadership team. We're taking on the leadership role for the company, as our original owners retire towards the end of the year, and working with the parent company. To this end, I'll be travelling to Florida later this month to attend the annual strategic planning meeting for the parent company.
• I have a direct report at work. He's officially our System Administrator, and he's looking much better than the last one I had a year or two ago.
• I have a new laptop. A nice HP Pavillion dv8000 with a 17" widescreen. We went multimedia with it, and it fills the role of "desktop replacement" very well. It'll travel with us when we travel, and is already a bit of a world traveler on its own. It's a custom-build laptop, and to avoid its arrival while we're at Otakon, I paid for two-day shipping. It was ready on time in Shanghai, but apparently, didn't make the shipping cutoff. After seeing a one week delivery time, I call HP. HP assured me that it was awaiting customs clearance in Alaska. A couple days later, it surfaced in Paris. France. Not Paris, Alaska. France. Right. It then proceeded to Memphis, once again Tennessee, not Alaska, where it cleared customs. The wayward laptop then proceeded to Philly and was delivered on its originally cited one-week delivery time. Certainly more than two days. Yes, HP refunded the shipping charge. But, the laptop's here, and it's shiny, black and has lots of blue glowy bits. I like.
• We're off to Otakon tomorrow. I'm head of human resources again, but this time I have simalyce as my assistant. Also, while previous time off from work has been a source of trepidation, I'm feeling pretty good about it this time with my new sys admin. He's working out well.

Well, that's about all for now. I'll have some more, really interesting news in about a week or so. Stay tuned

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Food Network

I'm not much of a hat person. I have a knit hat I wear in the winter, and I've had a series of fedoras. Any fedora that has the misfortune to be owned by me is doomed. I have this horrible tendency to lose them. I lose them in stupid ways, too. I left one in a movie theatre. Another one was left in a cab. And yet another, as near as we can figure, was knocked out of the car at a PA Turnpike rest stop.

My current fedora is a rather nice lined one from The Duluth Trading Company that simalyce's mom gave me for Christmas. I like it, and I look good in it. I get lots of compliments on it. There's this one woman who works in the building where I work. Everything about her says "ex hippy," and I mean that in a good way. Not only does she think I look good in my hat, but she also likes that fact that I'm a man in his thirties who would wear a hat. Nice.

I also get odd comments. Like the moderately intoxicated guy on the bus Friday night who decided that I looked like Indiana Jones. I get it. I do. But, buddy, do you have to go on about it all the way from Cherry  Hill to Camden?

This morning was priceless, though. I'm on the bus this morning, and this woman gets on and sits nearby. She sees that I'm working on my laptop, and asks me how much one of those costs. One should bear in mind that this woman looked and sounded like she would fit in perfectly living in a rundown with enough cats to form their own towns, or in the park surrounded by every pigeon in a five-mile radius. In short, not someone you would want to give laptop purchasing advice to. True to type, she then proceeded to ramble on about her daughter's laptop and the disease it had caught.

So, when I'm getting off the bus, so I put my hat on. And the woman promptly says "Oh, what a nice hat." Well, she might be a little loopy, but she at least has some taste. She continues to say how she would wear a hat like that when she was a kid. And pretend that she was a cowgirl. Naturally, everyone on the bus found this very amusing, as did I.

Of course, coming home, I had the same driver. So, I just had to say "Howdy, partner." Like I said, my hat garners all sorts of attention.

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Food Network: Ham on the Steet

Sorry I haven't posted in so long. I got busy with work and holidays. But that's not important.