airshipjones: (Plunge)
Well, it looks like I have a new job. I will be starting as the IT Manager at LeadClick on May 10th. This is awesome and really where I want to be going with my career. There are a bunch of things that made me really look forward to the job there. The technology I will be implementing will be cutting edge without being bleeding edge. They are a fiscally sound and profitable public company. And they have a ping pong table in the lobby! They are close to all my friends at my last job at PlayFirst. There are lots of places to eat and hang out near there. And it is easily BARTable. I was being considered for a couple other positions, but they either paid less or were contract positions with no real benefits.

In some ways it has been nice to have some time off, get some things done around the house, and get my perspective on what I want to do revitalized. There is still plenty to do around the house, but with the days getting longer I think I will still be able to continue the momentum we have developed in getting things done at home.

So, on to the home front. Things have been pretty good despite the financial belt tightening we have had to do. I have gotten a lot of paperwork and bureaucratic stuff taken care of like taxes, financial aid stuff and more. We have also been cleaning up the yard, the garage and the sheds. Dany and Lon have restarted the online book and eBay sales as well, and that has been going quite well too.

I am sure there is a huge backlog of things I will need to deal with once I start the new job. Both for them and when we have some money rolling in. But for now things are looking pretty good.
airshipjones: (Default)
So, because I don't post things of substance very often, here is stuff on what is going on for me.

Well, since starting work at PlayFirst, many things have improved in my life. The job doesn't pay as much as I was making as a consultant, but overall, I am much better off. The health benefits, and other benefits have been very good for me. I really like I the people I work with, and I am getting to do some cool stuff.

Working at PlayFirst has been good for me in a lot of ways. Even when I get really busy, it still feels fun, and I get a lot of support. My work stress is much lower and I don't take that home with me. My health has been good, and even with virtually everyone around me getting sick, I have stayed healthy. I feel a lot of of satisfaction in the things I am doing.

I may have mentioned that we have a yoga class at work two days a week. That has been very good for me, and the instructor is very good. I would highly recommend her to anyone looking to do gentle athayoga. You can get more info about Kristie and her practice here.

Also, some months ago, the marketing director at work got a bunch of free six months memberships to 24 Hour Fitness. I snagged one and have been going about two times a week. I have worked up to running about 3 miles and recently added some weightlifting to rehabilitate my left shoulder which was injured in a car accident about 7 years ago and never really has recovered properly.

I think I want to start riding bike to work next when possible, just because I really don't want to give the oil companies any more money than I have to. I have a couple options about how to proceed with that. I'm interested in getting feedback on ways to make that more feasible when the weather gets bad.

Home life has been slowly making progress. There are things I need to do, but most of them are not high priority. [livejournal.com profile] uncledark is looking for work as a game designer. He has realized that being self-employed as a therapist is not what he wants to do, though he likes help people. I really want to encourage him in this endeavor, and I think he will be very good at it, but the job search has been slow going. [livejournal.com profile] purplerabbit is dealing with various health issues, and some screws up from a change in our health insurance (it is nice to have real insurance!). [livejournal.com profile] purplerabbit has been doing a lot of writing and is quite pleased by her efforts there, and will be flying to the east coast in the spring to give a talk on one her older books because it is still very popular.

I would say that the only thing that is a problem right now is that money is kinda tight because I have the only real income. I think we will get through this though, and we have already taken some steps to reduces expenses. I'd like to have some money set aside in case of emergencies, and we don't really have that. But for now we have a nice place to live, the bills are paid, and I don't feel a need to buy anything expensive anyway.

So, overall, I am healthier, happier, busier, and feeling more satisfied with my life than I have in quite a while.
airshipjones: (Default)
I am seeing a lot of this meme going around in people I care about feeling overwhelmed, and like they haven't accomlished they things they wanted to and such not. Well, I have to put my two cents out there.

I feel completely 180 degrees the opposite. I have accomplished things I never expected to and done things I only dreamed of. And I have done a few things nobody else has (to my knowledge). I try not to let pride in my accomplishments run away into hubris. I am usually just surprised that I have come this far.

I was pleased when I completed an A.S. degree even though my grades at the time weren't that great. At some point, I realized that I needed more in my life and I completed a Bachelors degree and then a Masters degree. Nobody in my family (birth family) has ever gotten a graduate degree.

When I was working for IBM, I ran a project to integrate several different flavors of *nix into an Active Directory environment. The method we chose so that we could meet IBM's requirements was unique and I have never seen or heard of anyone else doing anything like it. I have also created some amazing scripts for monitoring security settings on Windows domains which even some very well known scripters (with published books on the subject) were impressed by.

I have experienced earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornados, floods, fires, car accidents, personal health crises, and I'm still here going strong. In fact, I think I am just getting better with age. If I can't run as fast, I'm smarter and wiser, and I will chose a better course. I won't last forever, and I dont' want to, but I do want to be a good example to my son.
airshipjones: (Default)
1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's yours to keep for the entire period.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, "life."
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately "work."
4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There's no part of life that doesn't contain its lessons. If you're alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
6. "There" is no better a place than "here." When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here."
7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life's questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this.
airshipjones: (Default)
I got a reminder from [livejournal.com profile] ogambear that I haven't posted anything of substance in several weeks. Sorry about that folks. Here is what I have been up to:

Working at PlayFirst has been a lot of fun, but has kept me very busy. It is socially engaging and there is a lot to do there. It has all the best aspects of a startup, but is large enough that while I do spend more than 40 hours per week, my schedule is pretty flexible when necessary. Also, the people there are pretty self-reliant. I have been so busy with prepping stuff for new users and helping folks move (we have been playing musical chairs the last week or so - the downside of a start-up) that I haven't been able to complete some of the server infrastructure work I had hoped to complete by now.

Last weekend - Memorial Day - Kublacon. [livejournal.com profile] uncledark and I went to the gaming convention Kublacon last weekend. We played in several RPGs, a couple board games, met some friend, and managed not to buy too much. We played a couple Call of Cthulhu games, a Champions game, and [livejournal.com profile] uncledark ran a short game of Don't Rest Your Head. We also played Zombies! There were several games we wanted to get into that were canceled or too full, but the ones we got into we pretty good. All in all, a lot of fun. Not enough sleep, but still fun.

Other stuff going on and coming up. I have been fighting with some issues with one of my domain controllers and my Exchange server, which I think I have worked out finally. But about that time my wireless router starts acting up. I start logging what is going on and it looks like someone is trying a DDoS/port scanning attack against my router. There are at least a dozen IPs, almost all from Eastern European countries. So far, my router has been pretty sturdy, and has dropped all the POD and Twinge Attacks, but the logs are huge. I am trying to decide if I want to contact the authorities since my ISP was useless in helping me to block out any of this.

I have been doing yoga at work, and and I am enjoying that quite a bit. The instructor is very good, probably the best teacher I have ever met. She is methodical, patient, and a very good comunicator, both verbally and physically. I am also doing some yoga on my own, and [livejournal.com profile] inflectionpoint and I talk and share poses and insights regularly. this has been good and I am feeling how this help, but I need to be more consistent about it.

[livejournal.com profile] fairieboy comes home for the summer this coming week. I am looking forward to this quite a lot. I want to take him hiking, and to the Ancient Ways Festival and do a lot of other things with him. Yay!

I'm sure there is other stuff. If you want to know, ask me.

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