Categories
other thoughts

It’s been awhile

[Today’s run: 3.5 miles]

I am hoping to get in a short run this morning, the first in more than a week.

At the end of last week I was looking forward to running with the guys on Saturday and going to the MS State football game on Saturday.  But things took a strange turn.  Friday afternoon/evening I came down with some kind of a GI bug.  I didn’t do much of anything on Saturday, layed in bed all day more or less.  Sunday was a bit better but still didn’t go anywhere.  Monday it was back to work but about 1/2 speed.  Finally by Wednesday I was doing OK.  So today I hope to get in my first run for a over a week.

On the project front, I had the electric service guy come by and look things over.  He said I need an inspection sticker from the county inspector.  Yesterday morning I went to town early and paid $20 for a “permit” and told them I am ready for my inspection.  The lady said it may happen “as soon as tomorrow”, which would be today.

I’ve had one more Uber driving trip.  The Uber app gives me about 15 seconds to respond to a ride request.  I’ve missed a couple because I fumble around trying to get past my screen saver and get to the app.  By the time I get there the thing is done ringing.  This 15 seconds thing would work fine in a big city with lots of trips happening.  It is kind of stupid when I only get half a dozen per week.

I was kind of stuck in my weight-loss until this GI thing.  That bumped me past a plateau and I’m down another couple of pounds from a week ago.  From my starting point I’m down about 20 lbs.

The fall/winter ham radio fox hunt has started again.  It is Tuesday and Thursday evenings.

I have various computers.  The one which was my “home” windows PC, with the turbotax and email and pictures and stuff on it, the disk drive died before I got it replaced.  I have a Windows 10 backup of it.  But I don’t think it is a complete replacement backup, just a file backup.  So anyway…  I have some work to do on the home computer.  I’m using a different computer for the moment while I brace myself to dive into that project.  (I’m now using the laptop I use for radio station programming.  In this room at the moment there are 4 running computers, all Linux of some sort.  In my work/work area there are three.  And I can read email, etc with my smart phone also.)

Our weather has finally turned to winter wet.  The trees are dumping their leaves.

We had “fall back” switch from daylight savings time. That causes me some extra effort on the radio station programming front.  But I just stuffed the 2 AM hour with lots of extra content and it worked out OK.  I have various scheduled things that happen by the clock, both at work and home here with the radio station.  It is a good idea to avoid the 2-3 AM time slot.  Let’s imagine I schedule processes A B C  to start at 2:20 AM, 2:30 AM and 2:40 AM.  In the “spring ahead” event the clock goes from 1 AM to 3 AM and skips that hour altogether.  Usually a scheduling system will use logic like “if the time has passed, run the job” and it will fire off all three jobs at that moment.  Or in the fall we repeat the 2-3 segment but the jobs don’t run twice (you hope!).  So it is best just to not count on that hour being stable.  Daylight savings time is the stupidest thing ever invented.

(I don’t think anyone from my office reads this…)

I have been thinking about looking for a different job.  It’s my feeling that my current job is only going to last for maybe another 2-3 years, 5 at the most.  And there may be some organizational changes.  I hope to have more of a handle on that after my boss talks to the big boss about a few things, assuming he’s going to tell me what they decided.  If I took early retirement from my current job I could get a different job here in MS and end up with roughly the same income and insurance coverage.  It would be the end of my working from home most likely; back to commuting and cubicals and all.

2 replies on “It’s been awhile”

I suggest connecting with the IT folks over on the research side of the University. I know our genetics researchers are always looking for LINUX systems talent. Most of those jobs are word of mouth at my place. I would cruise the web pages to find the genetics researchers and then drop by their offices. The big number crunchers on the biology side will be involved with “sequencing”.

On the MSU web site I found a thing called the HPC. The trick would be to hook up with the customers of that facility. They also have something on campus called nSPARC that might be worth looking into.

And the Central IT groups are big SQL farms. Academic work isn’t going to pay as well as private business, but the benefits are OK. You might also put your line in the water for more remote work. One of my College’s main LINUX infrastructure guys has lived in Atlanta for years.

Finally, at UF a lot of the people who have been running the big database systems for student records and financials are retiring and so the slots regularly open.

I’ve worked for both UW Madison and UMN (in Minneapolis) in far less technical roles and agree about word of mouth and knowing someone on the inside. Hiring practices were archaic (I’m thinking in order to appear more fair?) and without an inside contact I would have lost interest from the struggle. This was over 20 years ago but I doubt things have changed much since then.

Comments are closed.