Happy Halloween!

When I think about holidays, there are so many enduring traditions tat spring to mind.  New Years is all about making it to midnight and the parties that go with it.  Memorial Day and the 4th have cookouts, fireworks, etc. Thanksgiving is all about gorging on massive amounts of food and football.  Christmas has the snow, the presents, the decorations, and Burl Ives.

All Hallows Eve kind of sits off to the side, especially as I get older.  Hard for a 31 year old loser to put on a mask and go door-to-door begging for free candy that’ll do nothing but add weight to the gut, give me gum disease, and start me on the road to diabetes.  But the one cool thing about Halloween is working haunted houses. I’ve had some conversations recently about the best costumes we’ve ever had, and I always think back to my haunted house days.

I was working the Charlotte Jaycees house and had a couple different masks.  One was the mask that I wore inside the house (“Welcome to Chaos!!!”).  That one was pretty form fitting so the jaw moved with my own chin.  More effective than a blank slate of latex screaming at someone.  However, that pales in comparison to “Death”.  I had also bought one of those grim reaper hoods, which is a hooded head cover with a quasi-transparent sheet of black cloth where the face belongs.  Because of the way it was made, I could see out but no one could see in.  I donned this mask, a black outfit (either a black turtleneck, long sleeved tee, or sweatshirt and black sweats), black gloves, and a long black cape.  Then, instead of running around, yelling, and popping up out of nowhere, I would move slowly (almost stealthily) amongst the crowd and would not say a word.  I would just stand behind someone, in front of someone, or somewhere in sight.  Dead still.  No motion.  Most people who didn’t know I had snuck up behind them would turn around and scream in surprise.  Others would just act nonchalant, but get creeped out as I followed them around.  Just by standing in one place and not saying a word I could put people on the ground.  Powerful stuff.

Let’s see what else is out there.  I did a write-up this morning on Coach Rod’s Big East coaches press conference where he wouldn’t ignore the UNC opening.  Since writing that I’ve heard that his weekly WVU conference was filled with him reiterating that he is committed to West Virginia and isn’t going anywhere.  At the same time, I heard some news today that I’m unfortunately unable to share that irritated me about yesterday.  Good thing I wrote my glowing write-up before hearing that little nugget.

Another day…another sore ankle.  Aleve is my friend.

First off, I dusted off the plastic slipcover and updated the Sports Deck with some info about the fall.

The ankle still feels like crap.  On top of that, I’m starting to psych myself out regarding the treatments to relieve this condition.  Arthroscopic surgery to clean out any junk in the ankle sounds OK when hearing about it being done to someone else on Sportscenter, but to have it done to me is not a thrilling proposition.  Someone else described to me this morning about the “thrills” of a cortisone shot.  “Sure, it only feels like the worst pain ever for like 30 seconds as the infected bursa is punctured and drained!”  Thanks, man – appreciate it.

Besides, I could get used to the icing/wrapping/elevating therapy, especially on either the couch or the bed with full control of the remote.

We made a run to the new Sam’s Club last week.  It’s really not a good idea to share basement real estate with the 100 calorie packs of Oreo’s & Chips Ahoy, or with the 4 pound tub of pretzel sticks.

So yesterday was a pretty good day on the employment front, but there were plenty of other things going on as well.  To keep up the good front, I got back Homework # 1 from the programming class.  Something that was hard as hell, yet I know I didn’t put my best foot forward…still got a 69 on it.  

Why am I happy over a 69?  This course is quite difficult, seeing as how it is basically a coding class for business majors.  Accounting & finance folks aren’t learning Transact SQL, XML, C#, .Net or anything like this (and don’t even try this with the marketing folks – lol!).  On top of it, the professor is a very tough grader.  At least he recognizes it, though, and basically curves based on the class performance.  My 69 ends up being a B+, so I’ll take it.  Like I said, I know my coding did not get my best effort, but I also went through and documented my thought process when approaching each problem.  I just also happened to remember him saying he’s bigger on learning the concepts than merely the syntax (the program environment cleans that stuff up).  Therefore, I comment the hell out of the code to let him know what I was thinking and trying to do.  And get the associated credit for it.

On the downer, my ankle has been bothering me like crazy all week.  Basically, every time I (a) take a step, (b) pt my regular weight on it, or just (c) bend it there’s this moderate pain around the ball of the ankle joint on the outside.  It’s not enough pain to make me stop walking, but there’s plenty of it there to make me wince.  The easiest way for me to describe it is to imagine someone is jabbing the blunt end of a marker/pen/etc. into the soft spot under the ball of your ankle.  It’s not the first time it has flared up on me – it tends to act up more in the winter than anytime else, so I’ve chalked it up to a little pre-arthritis and gone on about my business.  Something about this week seemed sharper than normal, so I relented and saw a doctor yesterday.

Though not yet confirmed, he’s thinking I have bursitis under the joint.  Nice.  I’m waiting on the referral info to come back for the sports medicine orthopedic guy I’ve been recommended to see.  In my advance work, treatment looks to range anywhere between ice & anti-inflammatory drugs/painkillers to treat the infection all the way up to scoping the ankle to either clean out junk or put in a fake bursa.  (I must hat-tip that last nugget to my wife and her newfound WVU football player connection).  Whatever the diagnosis & treatment, I am looking forward to getting rid of this irritation.  It sucks.

Six more days until the big showdown.

When I moved back to Morgantown in 2004, I took a huge risk.  I (with the blessing of my family) uprooted our whole existence in Charlotte, leaving behind six years of our life and career opportunities.  I still had my job at Wachovia doing what I had been doing, but it was pretty much accepted at the time by everyone involved that it would likely be my last job in the bank.  At the time, telecommuters were pretty much locked into the job they were doing – especially if they were commuting from a long distance away.  Let’s face it…Morgantown is a lot farther away from Charlotte than Asheville.  I think everyone figured tat I would be working at the bank until I had re-established my network locally and found a job here in the area.  

Oh how times change.

In December 2005 it was publicly announced that my long time manager was being promoted into another role on our larger team, and our new manager was announced this past February.  In some ways this was scary, since I would have no idea how this guy would perceive me as a valued team member because he didn’t see me every day.  On the other hand, this was also a great opportunity.  I was highly respected on the team and had a great performance history.  He also supported additional applications beyond ours.

Earlier this summer organizational changes were announced which opened positions supporting one of these applications.  This app is a database which houses network hardware inventory items and how the different pieces relate to each other in configuration.  System analyst skills would be required and expanded by learning a new system from the ground up.  The position would be a promotion, coming with an increase in title, responsibilities, and pay.

Now it is official.  I received my acceptance letter today, signed it, and faxed it back to HR, meaning that on November 1st I become a Business Systems Consultant.  

The gamble has paid off.

Ah, once again I fail at filling this blogging goal I set for myself.  As usual, I might add.  It’s not like I don’t have much to write about.  To the contrary, almost too much has been going on, and when that happens little things get lost in the shuffle.  This, for example.  

Well, now is as good a time as any to get back on the horse.  To quote Vito, “looks like the Hambone is in an updating mood”.

Where to begin in this crazy, crazy autumn?  Classes sound like a good place.  I’ve got two senior level courses, Systems Design & Analysis and second semester Business Application Programming.  Hard, hard stuff – probably the toughest two classes I’ve ever seriously attempted before.  (I had some just as hard in the Finance division, but I didn’t really try back then.)  Systems Design by itself is OK, because I have a working knowledge of the subject matter.  That’s the basis of my job.  Of course, that also gets me in trouble at times because my working knowledge consists of enough to get my daily work done.  I’m in a tedious position with this class – balancing an effort to learn a more focused approach from the ground up to augment my knowledge while not destroying the old methods and crippling my productivity day-to-day.  So far, so good.

Programming is another beast entirely.  I’m going for an IT Design/Systems Analysis career track (always nice to give fancy titles to something I’ve pretty much been doing all this century) so I don’t need to know how to write millions of lines of code.  However, I do need to have at least a fundamental knowledge of programming concepts…hence this course.  .Net, SQL, Web apps….good, tough stuff.  I can wade my way through the academics of an Analysis course, but with Programming I’m lucky to keep my head above water.  At least as an academic we get licenses for cool software.  Visio, Visual Studio, SQL Server/Client.  Memory hogs on the HD, but still fun stuff.

The Mountaineers are looking good.  Between DVR and Parent’s Day tickets I can honestly say I’ve seen every game this season, except for Mississippi State and the SEC’s damn archaic thoughts about televised football.  Thanks to the DirecTV installation I’ve also got Sunday Ticket and the Carolina Panthers at my disposal…not so good.  The games I saw on the 700 channels were embarrassing losses.  The games that made regional broadcasts were wins.  Go figure.

Still working in the basement in my sweats.  Good stuff coming down the pike that I’ll detail soon.  With school I don’t travel much, but I did complete a quick hitter trip the other week.  I enjoy traveling down there, but the quick hitters are tiring and aren’t often useful.  Still, for all this complaining I could have it worse.  I could be unemployed down by the Mon.

Traveled a lot with the kids.  Between the grandparents, zoos, the Thomas the Tank Engine special in Cumberland last month, the car seats get a workout.  The minivan continues to prove it’s worth and the car DVD player continues to hang in there.