My summer job

I now have a summer job. It's going to be over at the end of August and then I can be a full time unemployed student! My summer job is a lot like my other job, because technically it's the same job. Now that my job is just a "summer job", it's a lot less unlikeable. My summer job is kind of a joke and that's OK because it's just a summer job...

Stress Management

Back in the beginning of February the college sent me a letter congratulating me on my acceptance to the Respiratory Therapy program. Along with the letter was a confirmation form that I had to send back to the college. The form indicated my intention to start the program in September. There was a May 1st deadline associated with the form, so I've been getting a little bit stressed by the fact that the college didn't send me anything acknowledging that they had received the form. Did they get the form? Did I get screwed by Canada Post or some kind of a clerical error at the college.

I sent the Registrar an email on Sunday asking for a confirmation of my status. This afternoon, l still hadn't received a response to that email, so I went to the college to find out what my status was.

What a relief. Everything's fine. I am confirmed and I was given a status of confirmed on February 25th. This has been bugging me for quite a while, I should have enquired about it a lot sooner.

Here comes the sun

OK. I don't think it's going to snow again. That was a long hard winter.

Some signs of spring, and the fast approaching summer, in my neighbourhood:

Damn college kids :-)

Oops

Yesterday at 4AM, I decided to get some work done. I decided to apply some patches to a couple of servers, at work, that needed some patching. Unfortunately I accidentally logged into our mail server and started patching it. One of the patches required a reboot, so I did the reboot. Actually I tried to do a reboot. It didn't work out so well.

The server didn't come back up. I was in a different city and couldn't go in to take care of that fact. After 45 min of desperate hoping, I decided that I had to get someone to go into the office to see what's going on. I called a coworker who lives close to work and got him to go into the office to see what was up with the server not coming back up.

When he got to the server he gave me a call and told me that the server was stuck in a part of the POST (Power On Self Test). There was a message at the bottom of the screen that contained the phrase "...press F2 to continue." I hate that. When you reboot a server it should just boot up normally. It shouldn't ask you any stupid "are you sure" questions. My coworker pressed F2 and then the server came back up.

Unfortunately, after the server came back up it wasn't accepting mail from the Internet. After about an hour of testing and coaxing, I finally got the damn thing to behave the way it's supposed to.

Oops. Doing something on the wrong server is a bad thing. Rebooting the wrong server and then not having it come back up, on its own, is an even worse bad thing.

I hate computers.

I say that at work a lot. People think I'm joking.

I know what's wrong (with everything)

I just had a revelation. I know what's wrong (with everything). Smooth talking weasels. If somethings seriously messed up and "that's just the way it is" there's a smooth talking weasel someplace, who's responsible.

If a smooth talking weasel suffers from some sort of "unfortunate incident" and I'm somehow responsible for it, I'm wondering if I can use something that I would like to call "the smooth talking weasel defence".

Me: "Your honour, I had something to do with that unfortunate incident. He was a smooth talking weasel and he had it coming."

The judge: "OK. You're free to go."

Me: "Do you validate parking?"

Very stupid and funny

Very stupid. Maybe I shouldn't find this funny, but I do.

Arterial Blood Gas Sampling

I was talking about donating blood today, so I started thinking about Arterial Blood Gas Sampling and the fact that that will be part of my job as an RT. This is a video about taking an Arterial Blood Gas Sample.

I don't have to

Why are all my coworkers demoralized at work, when I'm not? I've been trying to figure that out for a while now. I tried to convince myself that "I don't care", but that's not really the case. If I find myself unemployed, between now and September, that definitely would be a financial hardship. A financial hardship, that would be best avoided. I also have a great deal 0f sympathy for my coworkers who are becoming increasingly demoralized and almost despondent, about their workplace, so "I don't care" isn't exactly honest.

I woke up yesterday morning with one thought on my mind. I DON'T HAVE TO.

I don't have to have a job. I don't have to put up with any crap at work. I don't have to get pissed off at work or about work. I can get by. I can dig a little bit deeper into my retirement savings and get by. I don't have to quit my job because I can stick it out for a few more months and save some more money for school.

Wrong answers

Until recently, whenever I was asked family history questions by a Doctor, I was giving the wrong answers.

There is a history of Diabetes in my family. There is a history of Heart Disease in my family. There is a history of high blood pressure in my family.

According to the BMI (Body Mass Index), I'm about 30lbs. over weight. I currently weigh about 220lbs. According to the BMI, I should weigh about 190lbs! 190lbs. doesn't seem reasonable for someone my size. I think a weight of 200lbs would be more sensible. I'm going to try to lose about 20lbs. in the next 5 months.

No crazy diets for me. Lots of long walks and a bunch of healthy eating should do the trick. The biggest challenge will be, the eating out for lunch, when I'm at work. Restaurant food just isn't very healthy...

Spring is here

Window wide open.
Lying on the couch.
Listening to the birds.
Falling asleep.
Spring is here.

More changes at work

Almost everyone in my department, is now looking for a job. My new boss isn't making much of an impression on my coworkers. My old boss is now an IT head hunter.

My least favourite person at work, got fired last week. His replacement started a day later. A couple of people, in my department, are convinced that they will lose their jobs.

I'm mostly just waiting for school to start. School starts in 147 days...