Sorry about the lack of news, but I've been concetrating on my job search and trying to keep busy around the house as much as I can.

The job up in Willimantic didn't pan out. It's not right for me. What they want is someone who can do a lot of back end stuff with databases, networks, programming and web design as well. And since it's a hospital environment and the person in the position would be part of the IT staff, it would require being on call on a rotating basis for the whole hospital.

Na, na, na... I had enough of that when I worked as an IT dude in a medical lab. And for what they're offering and what you'd be expected to do in the position, it's not just realistic. If they want their cake and eat it too, that's fine; but I'm not the one who's going to be serving it to them.

But overall things still look promising. There aren't a lot of jobs out there, but they're out there. I'll find one. I just have to keep praying in the mean time.

Praise Him!

When I got laid off last week, I couldn't help but be excited. I don't know why, but I just knew that it was a sign that God had something better in store for me. Sure enough, I got an email this morning (yesterday afternoon actually, but I wasn't home to get it,) saying that someone at a staffing company in West Hartford had found a position that I would be a good match for in Willimantic.

Willimantic is only 35 minutes from my house!

I've been traveling anywhere from one and a half to three hours to get to work for the past 2-3 years. This is truly a blessing. I have become more and more involved with the music ministry at church and was starting to worry about exactly how much I could commit to it, because I came from so far away after work that it was nearly impossible to get there on time.

That problem may be solved very soon...

Well, it's happened again. I've been laid off from my job.

It's funny. All of my common sense is telling me that I should be upset, that I should be mad. But I cannot help but feel good about the whole thing. It's no secret that I wasn't 100% happy there. It was a really long commute and it was often a very frustrating experience. I wasn't being used as much as I could have been, they didn't even begin to tap into what I could do creatively. I spent most of my time, fixing dumb mistakes and adding little bits of content to the site here and there. I did accomplish some really neat stuff while I was there, like designing and setting up their intranet and extranet sites, but the dull times far outweighed the exciting ones.

Now I feel like there are all these possibilities open before me - I just have to ferret them out...

Speaking of which...

I was talking to Brenda's cousin last night on the phone because she was having problems with her system. It's acting real funky... She said that almost all of the desktop icons have disappeared, the start menu is empty and now it won't boot.

Me: Have you gotten any email lately that says something like, "Hi! How are you? I send you this file in order to have your advice..."

Her: Yeah!

Me: "See you later. Thanks"

Her (sounding increasingly agitated:) Yeah!

Me: ...with a strange file attached?

Her: Yeah!

Me: Did you open it?

Her: ...yeah.

Me: That's that SirCam virus that's been in the news...

Her: No, Sir! Get out! Are you serious?

I'm heading over there after work to see what I can do... She's been running their PC with zero virus protection, so it's probably buggier than MicroSoft _______________. [fill in abhorrable MS product of choice]

Hi! How are you?

I send you this file in order to have your advice

See you later. Thanks

. . . . . . . .

I can hardly believe that I am still getting these

Up until the beginning of this week I had been marveling at how nice this summer had been.

I don't like summer. I'm not a beach person (even though I do tan nicely.) I don't like heat. I'd much rather have snow and 20° than sunshine and 85° So I was really grooving on this summer - it wasn't too hot (mostly in the 70s - low 80s,) not too humid, but then Monday showed up and BAM!

Summer had finally, really arrived...

Tempature in the upper 90s with high humidity. The air was thick and moist. The sky at the horizon was a battleship gray color. My commute turned into utter hell.

With weather that severe, you know it's going to be something equally severe to make it swing back the other way and that arrived this afternoon - huge thunderstorms. We lost power at work and I got to leave early. Of course, that didn't traslate into my getting home early as I found myself being constantly re-routed due to downed lines, accidents and flooding...

Man, I hate summer...

Lately I've been having conversations with different members of the New Dream Network about the state of their site, the apparent lack of activity and the sorry state of the design-oriented mailing list. It seems that the main focus of the group has become their hosting service Dreamhost, which I use and would recommend. I always thought of NDN as more of community than a business and find it kind of sad that they've chosen that path. I don't blame them and don't think that they've sold out, but they really had a good thing going back in the day alongside Swanky.

Dallas assured me that there will be a renewed emphasis on community and more activity from the members along with a more distinct separation between the business and non-business aspects of what they do. I sincerely hope so... NDN and their members were one of my main inspirations for taking up web design and mailing list has really helped to shape and mold my vision as a designer.

I just pray he follows through with it.

Did you ever say to yourself, "Where's a cop when you need one?" Well, yesterday there was one...

I was sitting, waiting at a red light on the offramp from I-95 to Rte. 1 in New Haven. The offramp has two lanes and second in line in the left hand lane was a state trooper waiting for a green light. To his left was a large truck - so he was mostly hidden from people traveling along rte. 1 couldn't see him. The light turned red for the traffic on rte. and this SUV comes flying through the red light like a bat out of hell. Mr. trooper turned on his lights and pulled the idiot over.

I am not usually the type of person to take delight in the misfortune of others, but I threw my head back and laughed out loud in sheer joy!

Not exactly a slow day at work, but the time is dragging on endlessly. I look at the clock and wonder to myself, is it really only 4:15? I know why though. It's because I took yesterday off. A day off in the middle of the week sucks. Monday or Friday is cool because you get that whole long weekend thing going, but any other day just sucks...

On a positive not, I got a call today and learned that I have secured 4 tickets to go see Emeril Live! BAM! Look for me! I'll be on the September 15th show... I just have to figure out who I am taking with me...

Newly opened! The bigmisterc store @ CafePress.com. Just in case you don't get enough of me from this crappy website...