lexrobertson.ca

This is just a short post to say that the doctor cleared me for walking short distances and taking short flights of steps again today. Yay!! What can I say, but what a super tonic. No running for at least another week however - am not so happy about that.

My e-mail server is going to the data center which will becomes its home on Friday in the morning. *sniffles* These young servers grow up so fast these days!

The internet is still down in my condo so I’ve got a few e-mails in my outbox ready to go on their way, but I forgot to send them while I was at the internet cafe on Sunday and I haven’t hauled my laptop anywhere since.
Maybe I will tonight since my lesson and playtime (same cute baby!) is tomorrow evening this week. The course co-ordinator finally got in touch with me and if there’s enough people they’ll be starting an intermediate class on September 14th. It will run from then until I leave. I’m very excited about that.

So my goal is to write another post for you guys tomorrow because then I’ll have tied for published posts this month with November 2005 which holds the most posts in one month record currently. Of course there was a lot going on then. I think tomorrow’s post will be ‘A month in review’….

So today I went to work. Normally I walk, but due to my ankle I was going to take the bus which runs opposite my condo building straight down the road to work. But then because I missed the bus and (as far as I knew at this point anyways) I had a 930 meeting so I started to walk. And because the walk is in a straight line I was actually doing okay upon reaching the base of the building.

The stairs however killed me - I think the newly acquired knowledge that the meeting had been moved to 430 pm and I could have just waited for the next bus contributed too. I decided against going for lunch and asked one of my wonderful co-workers to grab takeaway for me instead. This was a good thing because the 430 meeting was actually being hosted at the client location - not our office any longer. I’m back from that meeting - having climbed the stairs to the third floor again. I’ve chicked out and asked a different (also very nice) co-worker for a lift home as the street the bus takes is a one way street from my home to the office, but the bus is woefully inconvient for getting home. This week is going to suck - however the tonic appears to be continuing to do it’s job so hopefully it will only be the rest of this week. Or it’s likely that I’m going to go nuts.

As I can no longer jog each day and complete my August goal I think I’m going to dedicate some of my new sitting hours to trying to finish my pet web design project - the last component of which is woefully over due.
I have to admit however that I am very tired and in more pain than I anticipated right now. Also using the office internet to post, but since our office hours are officially over at 630 and I have no idea if the internet at the condo is working I think I’ll let it slide just this once. But I have to admit that I hate being unable to move as effectively.

So Friday I looked at the to-do pile and realized that while there is a lot in it - none of it was actually due for Monday. So I declared the weekend off, got in touch with a flatmate to go see ‘The Breakup’ (Why exactly did I pick a movie about a woman who let’s herself get consumed by a relationship only to realize after two years that she’s putting all the work in? I don’t know, but watching it with that particular flat mate was a bad idea), and then seriously slept in Saturday morning.

Unfortuantely I woke up to a bummed ankle. The really bad news imho is that it is my *left* ankle. This is horrible for those of you who don’t know because it is traditionally my right ankle. And here I was just celebrating a year without a new spain and what happens? I wake up to something which feels remarkably similar. So yesterday it hurt to move my foot or walk short distances. Today thanks to some fantastic Chinese tonic my flatmate had - I can walk forward without pain. I’m nowhere near my normal pace and stairs are still a killer. But it doesn’t hurt just to wiggle my toes - so I’ll take that improvement and I’ll give the Chinese cure another go this evening.

The reason this is really going to suck is that my office building doesn’t have an elevator. And we’re on the third floor.

And of course - the internet is down in the condo again. So while I actually did make it through yesterday just staying in the condo and watching TV (I don’t even have any new books to read) - today I couldn’t take it. I’m currently out with my laptop in search of food and internet. Cafes with Wireless are among my favorite places. My ankle complained by the time I made it onto the train to come here, but I figure I’ll rest here long enough for it to stop and then head back to rest and sleep. Needless to say there’s a good chance I won’t be on msn later or available for games - sorry guys! And the net being down in the condo really toasts the work from home to avoid the stairs theory.

So I’ve watched a lot of TV and I’ve slept, but it wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I’d decided to take the weekend off.

My boss and I are having communication difficulties again. The new programmer appears to be giving herself anxiety attacks over the simple task of a website. And the client I need to chase appears to have dropped off the face of the earth.

Today I think it would be a good day for a post work beer, but our work social has been delayed. All in all not a happy shiny day. Hope everyone else is better.

Yesterday although the e-mail rollout is being pushed back (turns out the isp here wants an extra $200+ a month just to change us from a dynamic IP to a static IP) and the control is still broken - I left work right at the end of office hours.

Not admittedly out of rebellion so much as a co-worker was showing me how to find someone’s place and they needed to get going.

Last night I played with a baby and practiced my Chinese. I think I will do the same again tonight because it was quite a lot of fun. Sometimes I manage to forget how much I adore children, but usually when faced with one (even a crying one) I remember how much I adore them. My chinese also needs a lot of work - I can learn words, but retaining them and making sentences with them is proving to be a little more difficult.

Guess it’s time I considered buying some flash cards to work on my vocabulary. Have a good day today everyone.

Tuesday the demo got rounded off.

The e-mail server is in need of some policy editing and some anti-virus (which I had on my checklist, but somehow I kept managing to get side tracked from actually purchasing) so tomorrow I’ll get in touch with the ISP to transfer us from a dynamic to a static IP and get in touch with the Trend Micro rep. Their online store only accepts Canadian or American credit cards so the company card was stupidly useless. However, needing an anti-virus capable of e-mail means that we are finally replacing McAffee - can’t articulate how happy that makes me. A centrally managed anti-virus, single password for logon, e-mail, and file store access. Role based permissions. Now all I have to do is set up a system for deploying unattended xp, office, and a few other essential programs for two different profiles - one for sales and one for tech. Then I’ll be happy with our internal IT environment.

By the end of business I may have our new internal IT environment started, the demo will be on it’s way to its big show, and if I’m lucky I’ll have figured out why the control is choking all of a sudden. That would be a really good hump day, right? Then I can get back to design for the product(s) coming out this FY and chasing the second necessary client sign off. Our work social is Friday night maybe I can make it an occasion to celebrate.

The day, it was of course a Monday, started out okay with a solution for the RAID card coming through and an okay looking schedule for the day.

Then the salespeople reported a bug in the demo (which they didn’t bother to write down or record the actual error of!) which they need fixed by the end of tomorrow and an e-mail came in from a client project reporting a non-working component. In addition to the rush to get the new server up and running before the current e-mail hosting expires.

G’damn - I take one day off and Monday has to go to hell in a handbag because of it?

So originally I saw Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen) playing opposite Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and I couldn’t help but stop to watch.

Then it turned out to be a wonderful satirical show about a law firm. For those of you who’ve heard of scrubs it’s in a similar vein. Which while I hate scrubs, is really appealing here.

So I was watching it last night and I saw Danny Crane (William Shatner) with Alan Shore (James Spader) after a trying day. And Danny listens to Alan’s problems and offers some suggestions. Alan says “I’m amazed at your simple ability to keep living each day” and Danny says “It’s either that or die”. Now it’s not the actual content of the lines which prompted me to post, but the sentiment. One of the things I was looking for when I came out here to Singapore was a mentor.

It’s silly, but watching the show last night brought that to mind. Lesson learned: don’t watch television it makes reality look worse.

So I did get the client sign off I needed and promptly managed to only work normal overages for the rest of the week.

Had a bit of a geeky spell where I played with our linux test machine and did some urgent on the fly data recovery, but all in all it was fun. Felt good to be reminded that I do actually have a variety of skills at my disposal and that they are useful.

Registered for distance classes first semester. Registered for a few Computer Science classes second semester. Told my boss. She thinks we can work something out involving my continued employment at the company while I’m in Canada doing my studies. I’m not sure I share her optimism on that one, but we’ve got a couple of months to see if we can actually work something out. Regarding the universities here in Singapore, let me clarify that I checked with them and each and every instituition told me that they do not accept transfer credits from non-Singaporean instituitions. Not only is their tuition much higher, but it would also mean starting from scratch again - not going to happen.

Had my review. Out of the three review types (self, peer, supervisor) my Supervisor gave me the highest, my peers gave me the next, and it turns out I am the least impressed with me. Not sure if that strange or good. The HR person told me that I had the lowest deviation between the way I saw myself and the way either my co-workers or my supervisor saw me. That I have to believe is a good thing - it means I am aware of the flaws I possess and am realistic about their impact on those around me in the workplace. Unfortunately I was not impressed to hear that “Nothing concrete will be learned by the employees during these reviews”. So I know nothing further than I did before.

As my own personal form of rebellion against ‘nothing concrete’ - I did not come into the office on Saturday at all. I slept in, went out rollerblading/biking and to dinner with two of my flatmates (landed on my butt once with the roller blades and then traded them in for a bike. My sense of balance hasn’t improved any it would seem), then caught a movie with one of the flatmates and her very cute friend.

Slept in again today too. Almost didn’t come in, but realized that I did need to know decisively if the new server is capable of funcitoning as an e-mail server or if I have to send it back again because the RAID card just refuses to be recognized by Windows. Also that I need to finish up the first project schedule for the new programmer who is joining us for her first day on Monday.

However, I can easily say that this week I put in a record low of extra time since at least the end of April and that having a life (especially one which included the option to sleep in!) felt pretty good. So tomorrow’s Monday and it’s off to work we go…

Okay a few pieces of information I obviously missed:

The comment about people being uncommunicative was not meant to be a guilt trip, a salvo, or anything else. It’s just the facts and I’ve accepted that. I miss all of you and I love hearing from you when you have the time, okay? But if I do manage to catch you online please forgive me if I seem overly nosey - it’s not as easy as it used to be to do so.

I will not be returning for September for several reasons not the least of which is that it wouldn’t be practical. Aside from giving a proper notice period at my job (if only to be fair to my co-workers) I am still in a position where I need to give a month’s notice on my room here as well. I will be back in December one way or another and as it’s just started to be Tuesday the 15th here I expect I will let you all know soonish what I did or did not do. I’m actually on my way out the door to a meeting right now and it should actually be a celebratory one since I should have a client sign off sitting in the fax tray when I make it to the office afterwards. *the sign off which I have working hard on getting for quite some time* This means that although I will have to spend some time doing code and paper work tomorrow I also get to start building the new server. Which I am looking forward to!

So it’s the start of another day and it is possibly a big one.