After battling for a few days with a certain free (as in non-proxy-ed) wifi AP, I experienced approximately 5 minutes of unlimited freedom right after lunch. My friend Kelvin and I had spent a good chunk of our morning trying to figure out why the connection was dropping all the time but to no avail. I did some “googling” around and saw that some people have been complaining about the same problem but for me this only happens at this certain AP.

Sometimes I wonder how certain people get employed… really! I usually get drilled with a bunch of technical questions in every job interview I’ve gone to (with the exception of a couple where the hiring manager had absolutely no clue about IT… this re-enforces me original point!) and feel that I really have to show “what I’m made of.” In the meantime, some people get hired and surprisingly manage to keep their jobs whilst they lack (IMNSHO) the knowledge and skills.

Wow!!! It is amazing how great this whole week has been for me so far at work! Been churning out code for my very simple data to xml application and sometimes (the horror) I don’t even want to go home so I won’t interrupt the grooviness! Tomorrow I’m scheduled to give a live demo to the rest of the group! I’m ready to blow them off their socks! For such a simple and small program, I think I’ve done a pretty good job at making it usefull and stable!

Yesterday our recently elected CIO paid us a little visit for the first time. The entire IT team attended the hour long meeting where the CIO very eloquently explained his plan for the entire IT organization (which is actually made up of several smaller IT groups throughout the Board of Education). In the end he “opened up the floor” for questions and/or comments. For a grueling 10 seconds nobody uttered a word.

Today I actually enjoyed work!!! Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to mention “work” and “enjoy” together? I haven’t done it since early 2002 when I worked for the now defunct Synaptic Pharmaceuticals!!! I spent most of the day working on a new VB.NET application for work (something very small and simple for XML generation) and my C# (soon to become Mono) rss reader. It feels absolutely great to be back in the groove of coding!

What a week this has been… and it’s only Monday!!! After putting up with a lot of infantile abuse from my upper management things seem to be heading South. I used to feel that the entire organization was plotting against me and wondered if it was just me. But now, I have definite confirmation that my sanity is still somewhat intact! My new co-worker (and I think she was also hired to be my supervisor) has been experiencing all the abuse herself for a few weeks now and seems to be in the brink of walking out of here!

My daughter’s daycare was closed today due to the weather. Eventhough there’s less than 2 inches of snow on the ground they decided that it was safer not to open today. I think they just used a very lame excuse to have a day off and since they get paid no matter what, it doesn’t hurt them in the pocket. So today I brought my daughter to work with me for the first time.

Today was my first day back to work since last Wednesday when I flew to Boston to attend Linux World Expo. It started out just like any other day: woke up early, drove daughter to daycare, crawled through traffic on the FDR Drive, parked across the street and coughed up the $11 daily rate, signed in at 8:25am, walked into my cubicle, said hello to my co-worker… Only there was no reply… there was nobody sitting there… in fact, the space previously taken by my Russian friend was empty!

No word about getting a copy of my database backup yet… In the meantime, here’s a (mug) shot of my at my so called “prison cell.” Been here for almost 6 months and haven’t gotten used to living in this “cubicle forest” yet. The inhabitants are a bit edgy and can turn to cannibals without any warning. Boy, am I glad that Tux is here to protect me (that’s him sitting atop my pc).