My Christmas present to all of you is a few pictures of the house in holiday mode... Hit up my Yahoo Photo Album to check out the work in progress.
PBase is trying to get $23 out of me to host any more pictures and Sherry and I are not sure yet if we want to spend that... so feel free to email me and contribute some money :)
I have to say that it is amazing what a new correctly run company can do for ones psyche!! When I showed up at work on Monday I had orientation for the first half of the day and then was taken upstairs (3rd floor) to talk with my new boss (Mike). He took me to my....... NEW OFFICE! That's right folks, for the first time in my career I have a door! I know it is stupid but I feel pretty damn cool walking past a closable opening that has my name on it. But I digress, Mike then took me around and introduced me to lots of people that I will be working with, and then left me alone in my new office to set up my two (one brand new) computers. One for development and one for checking email, research and the such... not quite sure why I need two yet, but I am not complaining. I think it has something to do with extra security, even though I can still get to the internet on both computers?
As you can expect being an anti-virus / security company they are pretty hard corp around the office, I have to whip my badge from my waist about every 100 steps or so to get in and out of the doors that lead to and from the secure and unsecured areas... and there are some areas that I still don't have access to.
But my wife is dragging me out the door now. We are going to Coleman Nursery to see the holiday lights with Shawn Regina and Baby Jack.
Well I have taken the week of... well actually I guess I was "given" the week off since AMA continues to suck, and decided that one week wasn't worth it. But I am very relaxed now, did a little work on the house, and prepared for Mom and Don's visit right after Christmas.
I have started hanging some of the doors back that I have primed and painted a fresh coat of white. I have also been replacing some of the sockets and light switches and their face plates to give off a fresh look as well. But as usual when dealing with a 40 year old house that job turned out to be more then I bargained for... Seems that 40 years ago they didn't run a ground wire with the hot and neutral wires so that the three pronged outlets that I bought would be violating code if I installed them (which I did a couple of places any way). Running the ground wire might be a task for another day, since if you do try to run the wire through the same conduit as the old wires they will get shredded since they also used some type of tar and string concoction to wrap their wires back then, which doesn't hold up very well after 40 years and a fresh wire being rubbed against them.
I am very excited about Mom and Don coming to see our first house, and about opening our presents, sherry and I are very fortunate and have a rather large pile gathering for ourselves. Sarah and Heidi's presents arrived today and I had to force Sherry to wait til Christmas to open them.
... and only cost me $75! The water pumps pressure gage had been melted by electricity so they replaced it with a $25 part and charged me $50 for the know-how and labor to do it... which, after one week of not having heat in the whole house sounded good to me:-)
We did have a lot of good fires this weekend and hope to continue to do so... which reminds me... need to close the flu when I get home.
Just got done quitting at AMA and now looking forward to starting at Symantec!!!
Here is an article about them for you to get familiar.
In case you havn't been paying attention... Georgia Tech is really good at Basketball this year! They are currently ranked 13th in the country and have already beaten the #1 ranked (UConn) and #25 (Texas Tech, ranked in the ESPN poll) teams in the country. They are 6-0 and should be 13-0 when they start ACC play against a very strong conference, since UNC, Duke and Wake Forest are all ranked.
I received a call from Jim at Symantec last night. Looks like I will be getting an offer extended to me early next week! I can't tell you how happy I am about this. AMA is the most asinine company I have ever seen in my life, and it will be a very gratifying feeling to resign from them.
So Sherry and I went over to Shawn and Regina's to celebrate... well actually we had already planned to go over there for dinner and games. We played some Cranium, and split the husbands and wives up to minimize bickering. The Turemans one, but only because the cheated, as usual.
I tried to put Jack to bed, but did work out so well for me. Couldn't get the little booger to go sleep.
I posted my sister's picture from Thanksgiving at the river house. Hope you enjoy.
I know I have been slack on the posts lately... just finding it hard to find my rhythm again after the nice break.
I have an interview (final) with Symantec tomorrow, will let you know what happens.
Shawn's birthday is next weekend and we have decided to do that rather then go to the Company (AMA) Christmas party. My choice... but strongly influenced by the fact that AMA is so cheap they are having a cash bar... I know... how petty am I :)
