It’s been a few years.  5 days a week.  Almost 52 weeks per year.  I drive the same route to work.  Now some days I may alter the way I go.  It all depends on traffic accidents, weather etc.  But for the most part it’s the same way.  Most of the time it’s rather boring.  I see the same ole stuff every day.  I pass by warehouses, homes, oil rigs, industrial equipment shops, parks, downtown Fort Worth, you get the idea.

I know most things are static, I get that.  Maybe I’m not wide awake while driving.  Either way I have to make it 28 miles to work.  At least when I was in Seattle I had huge tall trees and awesome mountain scapes to look at. 

Is your drive to work the same all the time?  What do you see when you drive back and forth to work?

I posted probably almost one year ago about having my current office re-done into something more practical and usable.  Well I get to move again and will get new office furniture.  I think I will be getting new carpet as well, which will be nice.  I think I need a new chair, but don’t want to push my luck just yet.

I will most likely have to share the office just like the one I’m in but that’s OK, cause I think it will be some time before that happens.  I like new office furniture.  This will be a great new start to getting a test network up and running and having an eyeball on the server room at the same time.  I’m sure my new office mate will not like to hear the buzzing of servers all the time, but it should only be for a few months at the minimum.  They will just have to get used to it.

Right now it’s pretty tough out there.  I’m thankful I have my job.  My friend however not so lucky.  He was caught up in the Washington Mutual disaster.  January 31st was his last day.  I’m not sure if he found a job yet, but I pray he does.  With the economy the way it is and in certain over saturated city markets, I bet IT jobs are hard to find.  I guess my friend and all the others who got word better get out and start doing some job searches.

I don’t know the actual numbers but the unemployment rate is off the charts and I highly doubt that this so called stimulus bill that was passed will actually help out anytime soon, if at all.  I’m just thankful that I do have my job and hope that all looking will find some light at the end of the tunnel soon and find something.

I cannot believe it’s already the 17th.  This month feels like it has just flown by.  In fact it’s been so busy I haven’t posted anything in a long time.

Soccer started back up for 2 weeks now, and that takes up a couple of my free nights after work.  Trying to get the girls ready for spring league games which start in mid February.  Speaking of work, that has been busy too.  We usually are pretty swamped in January right after the holidays.  The IT Dept (my boss and I) came up with our 2009 goal list and there are some things we might not accomplish, but I hope we can complete all of them.  Here are a few items from that list which I also have to learn and research prior to completing.

• Moving from Exchange 2003 to 2007 (on a virtualization system)
• Windows Server 2008 (Active Directory)
• Put in new phone system (ah that is what I’m doing later today) – Check..
• Hire a web/print developer
• And various other goals and small projects.

I have put in a lot of Facebook time looking up people and using it more.  I haven’t played the Wii too much this last week but a whole lot up to last week.  I guess I need to jump on that today and get some time in =).  Tomorrow I will be taking my little brother (I’m a big brother for North Texas Big Brother, Big Sisters) to the movies it should be fun.   I have also been using up my commute time to listen to some cool books lately.  This one is called “The 7th Son” it’s by JC Hutchins.  I I just finished book 2 and starting book 3 today.  What an awesome story so far.  I highly recommend it.  Oh and it’s free to download.  And last but not least we got our final approval for our adoption/foster license.

The rest of January is uncertain except a few things.  Of course more soccer, might goto the sci-fi/comic con in Dallas next weekend and more work and soccer, lol.

Has your January been busy so far?

Today was our Company Christmas Party.  Yeah I know I should be more excited about it but I’m really not.  Granted it’s the only time of the year where the office actually closes for 2.5 hours and the staff is still in the building.  The party usually starts around 10:30am and it starts off with 3 groups of employees doing 3-5 minute skits in hope of winning some Christmas loot.  After that we had a drawing for 6 door prizes and then the employees presented the owner with his and his wife’s gift.  The drawback this year – we had a problem with one of our web servers that kept our attention till about 11am so I missed the skits this year

After the gifts and door prizes then the feast begins.  It’s a huge potluck where everyone brings in something.  And of course there is LOTS of food since we have close to 80 employees.  Overall it was fun.  I mainly just parked it in my office eating some food and just keeping an eye out on the systems to make sure nothing else went down while the party was going on.

Oh well back to normal work now, it’s been fun.

December for some companies is rather slow, some companies are rather busy.  Most times the company I work for is about medium pace.  However yesterday I made a list of the projects that need to be completed.  Some of them sooner than later, and of course all of them will take more than 1 day to accomplish.  Let’s not also forget the daily issues that come up.  Kind of like yesterday.

I had planned to start down my project list and then it happened.  “A Problem” hehe.  I get an email from our accountant and she was having some issues with quickbooks enterprise.  So I start to check into it and soon realized I was going to have to call their support line (which is a total pain).  That call lasted about 1 hour and to make a long story short, I worked this quickbooks issue from 845am till about 2pm.  Not really what I had in mind, but it’s my job so what can I do.  So moving along, here is a list of some of the projects that I need to start working on.

• Upgrade to Diskeeper 9
• Upgrade to Quickbooks Enterprise 9
• Upgrade our in house instant messenger (OpenFire)
• Patch our Domain Controllers
• Finish packaging up Adobe 9 to be installed by Group Policy Push
• Upgrade our VMware software
• Upgrade our LeftHand Networks software
• Quarterly maintenance on our Exchange Server

So as you can see I have a lot to work on and this is about 50% of my complete list.  I cannot pay you but if you would like to help any in way, I will greatly accept it, lol.

After being settled into the new office for a few months now, everything seems to be going pretty good.  Still liking the layout and there are only a couple of minor things to really gripe about.  However the lighting in the office is not to be desired, really.  The fluorescent lights are over powering at times.  The only drawback to this lighting and the layout is the corners do not get as much light as the rest of the office.  I’m trying to figure out a solution to this and I might need to check out maxim lighting.  What would really be cool is the under shelf lighting around the office, now that would be cool.  And it would brighten up the whole desk area as well and then the corners would not be that dark.  I’m going to go pitch that to management and try and get this issue resolved!

Related Links:
Office Makeover Update

OK so they got to work on the office today.  It’s about 1/2 way done.  They say we should be able to move into it tomorrow.  I will snap some shots of it after we get everything installed and hooked up.

Happy?  Yeah for the most part, somethings I wish were different already, but who am I to complain.

Here you go:

I really like the overhead cabinets and shelves..

I have added or maybe I should say that I installed a Do Follow for Comments plugin so all comments will now be followed.  I hope this might encourage anyone out there who does read my blog to comment once in awhile.

I have also installed the commentluv plugin which will enable you to have a link to your last blog post show up in your comment if you wish to choose that option.

Things have been nuts at work today and with soccer tryouts this week, I haven’t been all there mentally so hopefully I will find some time later tonight to get some posts moving along and get my drops back on entrecard since I haven’t had much time to spend dropping my cards on other people’s blog..

The office is about 1/2 packed up now and I have 1 of my 2 computers already in another location for the next 2 days.  One of the guys came in today and said it will take them 1.5 days to get it all done.  If they were not going to paint then it would probably be just one day.

So here are 3 shots.  One from the door, one of Jordan’s area and one of mine.  I will follow up with after shots on Friday.

From the door:

Jordan’s corner:

My Desk: