I'm back

I got back last night.

Still tired. But the show was a big success. It might just be our breakthrough point for my division.

Yay!

ZZZZzzzzzz

Back to California (but only for a little while)

I leave in a few hours to catch a flight to San Francisco. From there I go down to San Jose for a trade show. I'll be gone most of the week. See most of you later!

Overall, a Very Good Week.

Well, this week really only had one bad thing happen and that was a small injury I received at fencing practice. It hurt bad for a while, but then stopped. I suspect it may have been when I tried to parry a blade with my wrist. Didn't turn out so well. Sadly, the injury caused me to leave practice early since I was getting distracted by the pain and it was making me irritable.

But that was about the worst thing of this week. The really, really GOOD news is that they have put me under a new supervisor at work! Finally I have a boss that has a better idea of what I do and how much time it takes!

Y'see I was underneath a boss who does a good job covering his field (operations) but nothing I really do comes under operations. So with no way to measure what I do, he tried to measure me by how many lenses I put on the shelves from the surplus stock. This an area our division is, while not abandoning, is certainly de-emphasizing. This was the only way he planned to measure my work. Needless to say, I was not happy, and continued to be unhappy. I made my dismay clear to my initial boss (who is not often on-site) and she finally arranged things so that I was put under a worker who at least knows what I do for a job. So that is my really good news for the week.

The other cool thing that happened was an unexpected call from an old friend and housemate from years back. He had taken his wife and kids down from NYC to Philly to visit the museums and asked if I wanted to have dinner with them. I said 'cool' and we went to TGIF (hey, we had small kids). I haven't seen them in years (their oldest kid was 'week outta the womb' size last I saw them, and there wasn't another one in the works at that point). When they put the kids to bed I went out with my former roommate and we enjoyed beer while watching the Eagles lose.

So overall, things might be improving a bit (knock on laminated particle board).

Fairly Busy weekend.

This weekend ended up being more active than I anticipated. At first I was just planning to get a haircut. Of course, when I went downtown Center City was jammed with traffic, good thing I was on foot. I got my haircut, went to Barnes & Nobel and bought some books. I expected so little more of this weekend that I rented videos on the way home. But then I remember that I was supposed to help my parents buy new TV and remove the X-mas tree on Sunday. Still no big deal. But then I got invited out and had a good time, but got home late.

Buying the TV wasn't too bad, but installing it was a bit of a pain, mostly because my parents have to be dragged to 1970's technology kicking and screaming. The main problem was the plug on the TV: It was three prong and the old one was two prong. There were some anxious moments while Dad scrounged up an extension cord. But the thing was finally in place. At last my parents have a TV with a picture which isn't so stretched that everyone looks like Frankenstein's monster.

The tree was easier this year, mostly because my suggestion (dutifully rejected last year) to cut off the branches to make the thing easier to move was accepted. I took off all the lower branches and could actually carry the thing out myself. Keep in mind this tree was about 10' tall.

Not much else to say right now.