John’s Blog

Haven’t written in the blog in a long time. But then again lots has been happening and it is hard to keep up with everything these days.

So far in the last week we have:

• Moved to a different state
• I started a new and complicated job
• Been trying to get settled into new house

The result has been a very large lack of sleep, and almost no free time. So yeah, can you say tired and stressed out?

I will write more about our move, my new job, and other interesting developments as I get more free time (hopefully soon, like this weekend).

I had lined up some contract work that was to start this week and run for a couple of months. Now it wasn’t exactly anything amazing, but it was something to keep the cash flowing in while I kept on the job hunt. Unfortunately, the work I had lined up fell through. So instead of returning to New Hampshire and starting a new project today, I am still up here in Maine. Yes, the last month of coming up to visit family and relax was nice, but I am itching to get back to work. The only issue is that the job market around here is horrible to say the least. I am really thinking it is time for us to get out of this area all together.

Well for now I am off to do another job search, then go grab a coffee and some breakfast. Oh, and by the way, if you had considered visiting Maine recently but didn’t. Don’t worry, you haven’t missed much. For the last month pretty much all it has done is rain.

I don’t think that I could ask for more beautiful spring weather, especially for New England. We have been having almost two weeks of temps hitting or above 70 here. Which I must say is very refreshing after the winter we had (record setting snowfall). I have been trying to get out and enjoy the weather as much as I can. Which brings me to something that has been bugging me. We have three dogs, and for the last year we have been taking them to the local dog park. For them it’s great, they have a very large fenced in area where they can run and play off leash. The park even stayed open over the winter months, and with all the snow. However, on April 1st they closed due to muddy conditions. Now I completely understood that. I went by about a week later to check, the park was still closed, but it was dry as a bone. So I sent an email to the board about it. The response I finally received was that they were doing “maintenance” on the park and it would not reopen until the first weekend in May. The funny part about that, is that it is also when membership fees are due. Coincidence? I think not. I have spoken to many other members of the park that are just as upset that I am that with this great weather finally here, they are choosing to lock us out until May. But in truth, there really isn’t much we can do. They are the only game in town. So for now, we just have to wait for them to reopen and continue taking the dogs for long walks in the evenings after dinner. And it’s not like I mind walking them, it’s great exercise for both us and the dogs. But it is not as good for them as getting to run and play without the restraint of a leash.

On the subject of dogs, I have to give credit to out local SPCA. Over the weekend we took our dogs to their annual rabies clinic. Not for their shots, our vet had already taken care of that. They were offering something new this year. Micro chipping through Home Again. Many people don’t see the point in this service, however we do. Two of our three dogs came from rescue organizations. They were pulled from animal shelters where they would have been killed. The Home Again micro chip is implanted just under the dogs skin, and these days almost all vets and shelters have the scanner. When an animal is brought in it is scanned. If a chip is found they can attain the owner information from the service. This helps to not only identify lost dogs and return them to their owners, but also combat dog theft. The clinic they were offering was doing the implant for a greatly reduced price, only $35 per dog, about half what most vets charge. We got the clinic just before it opened and were almost the first ones in line. The whole process was done very quickly, from registration, payment, to actually seeing the vet doing the work. We were in and out in less than 20 minutes. Overall a very well run and efficient function, kudos to the SPCA.

Other than that, the hunt for a job drags on for me. I am approaching one month of being unemployed. Now granted the first two weeks I wasn’t really actively seeking another job, since I thought I was only temporarily laid off. I found out otherwise later (see earlier posts). So, since then I have been deep in the hunt for another job, and honestly, it’s not going well. This is the first time I have been out of work in as long as I can remember. Now I know that I am not going to land my dream job in a day. But the reality is that I am facing a horrid job market, especially in this area. I have lowered my standards on what type of work I do, for the sake of getting the income flow going again. However, the one thing I cannot lower too far is the salary I can accept. I know what I need to pay the bills I have, and unfortunately most of the employers in this area are paying well below that. I have had many phone interviews, and even one in person last week. All that interview netted me was a response along the lines of “We feel that you are too over qualified for this position and wouldn’t be happy here. We are looking for someone who will be a long term employee and with your experiance and background we feel you wouldn’t be a good fit in this position. But we will keep your resume on file should a management position come available”. All i could say in response was that while I did agree with them, you have to start somewhere and I would be more than happy to start out in that position until such time as a management position became available. They however did not feel the same way. Honestly at this point I starting to get discouraged, and more than a little stir crazy from not working. I mean since I have been working since I was 12, almost all of that time at least full time or better. So sitting here twiddling my thumbs is not exactly a good thing.

Well, hopefully things will turn around soon. If not, I may have to look at relocating, and that is something that I know will not be agreeable to the wife.

So, as anyone who reads this blog may know, I was laid off from my job on March 30th. (I blogged about it here).

When I was laid off I was told I would be able to return to work when things picked up (in a month or so I was told). But I left with a very weird feeling about the whole thing. I couldn’t shake the feeling something wasn’t right. But I tried to keep as positive of an attitude as possible about the whole situation. I immediately filed for unemployment, and just in case things didn’t turn around looking for work and sending out a few resumes (again just as a precaution).

So far I am still waiting for a determination from unemployment, they are working slow as ever on this, looks like they will take up the entire 21 days the federal government allows them to process the claim. In the meantime I am left waiting and wondering. Unemployment in this state is not great. I will be looking at getting about half of what I was making at work. Which in and of itself is not a rewarding prospect since we were just getting by on that and my wife’s salary. So yes, it is belt tightening time and we are doing so. And it was my sincere hope that before my first check even arrived that I would be called back to work.

Well today I learned that I would surely be getting a check first. Since I got a lovely email from the President of the company. It had no words in the email, just a Microsoft Word attachment. Upon opening and subsequently reading the letter. It informed me that I would not be returning to work for the company. Going on to state some bullshit about how there was not enough business to warrant it. Now in a lot of positions I could understand that train of logic. However, when I was laid off I held the position of General Manager for the company. I drew the second highest salary to the President (and honestly it wasn’t that much). So the reasoning to them is cost savings apparently. But in reading the letter, I also discovered that his son, a person who was brought into the company as a technician, and that I trained, has been promoted.

How can I see this as anything but a cowardly and feeble way of forcing me out of the company so his son can take over? There is no other way to view it. I am sure that from the outside looking in there are ways to spin it. However after being there as long as I did and knowing what I know. It is undeniably what happened.

So here I am, not just laid off, but unemployed. This is the thanks I get for the years I spent turning that company around. When I started the customer base had dwindled due to the types of people that had been employed there in the past. They had driven away customers and clients with poor attitude and customer service. Not to mention shoddy technical work at best. There was no reporting, no tracking, nothing. I came in and changed that. Made sure we hired knowledgeable people who worked hard, services those customers and clients. Ensured that all work we did was done with quality and accuracy in as timely a manner as possible. And you know what? It took about 6 months to see the difference. We had old clients coming back in, and new ones developing all the time. I got out there, advertised, networked, did whatever it took to bring in business. I worked all the time, whether it was from the office or at home, weekends, holidays, you name it. I gave up a lot over those years to make a difference. In the end I did, granted at the time I was “laid off”, things were slow. But that was normal for this time of year at that business. And to be honest compared to years past things were up, even with the shitty economy. Could business have been better? Of course it could. Could it have been worse? Hell yes it could have been. I’d seen the books, and had I not turned things around from day one, I am sure they would have been.

In the end, all my hard work didn’t matter much for me. I had spent my time setting up the boss’s son with the perfect opportunity to make a go of it. And once they had drained all they could out of me, they tossed me out.

Well hopefully on to bigger and better things. I do predict a rough patch ahead for us. Since with the economy being the way it is the job market around here just isn’t what it once was. And decent positions are that much harder to come by.

Well I guess that’s enough of a rant for now. Back to my job search.

Not that I’ll be going anywhere, or doing anything fun and exciting. It’s just that I feel like I need a week away from the office. I have been in my current job for over 2 years now. It’s very stressful and the workload is enormous, and in that over two year time frame, I have rarely had even two days off in a row. In fact I can count the number of times on one hand.

So even though I can’t take off and go somewhere nice for a week. I’m thinking that one week away from the office would be a nice break, and hopefully keep me from burning out (I am right on the edge of it now). My only problem is finding a way to actually be out of the office for a week without everything falling apart. I mean I work from home on Wednesday’s, and by the time I get back to the office on Thursday things are almost always a mess. So I can only imagine how bad it would be after a full week. That being said I am going to try and find a way…I need to…I have to.

Being sick really has to be one of my least favorite things. And the last two days by far and away have been some of the worst. Now I am the first to admit that I have sinus problems year round, that’s nothing new. But lately it has been unreal. For the last month or so I have been battling a cold, not winning, and not losing, just fighting it. Well Sunday night I finally lost and my body gave in. By the time I woke up Monday morning, my throat was so sore I could barely swallow, my chest felt like I had lead weights on it, and my sinus were so plugged up I could barely breathe. I stayed home from the office (as much for myself as for the people that work with and for me, no need to get them sick too). I spent the day yesterday on the couch with the tv remote, my laptop, and lots of orange juice. Unfortunately by this morning it hadn’t helped much and I still felt like death warmed over. So I in turn stayed home again today on the road to recovery. I can’t say I am feeling 100% better as of yet. But I am getting there. My throat is a lot less sore tonight, and my chest and sinuses a lot clearer. However, I still have the fever and massive sinus headaches. I’m just hoping by tomorrow I am feeling good enough to get back to the office and get some work done. This was to be a busy week for me and I can only imagine how much I have missed/need to get done/is waiting for me.

 Well time for another big glass of orange juice and some more cold medicine.

Well it has been a while since I have posted anything on here. Seems like everytime I say I am going to get better about posting more often something comes up and I never do. This time it has been both work and the impending holiday. I manage a business that also has a retail shop, so with it being Christmas time that has been extra busy. Add to that the fact that the end of the year is approaching, which means that many business are looking for end of year write offs. We have been building out and installing servers, desktops, and laptops for business clients all month. Which has had me running like a mad man since 99% of the field service calls are done by me. All that has left me with little free time at home, and what free time I do have has been spent preparing for the holidays. I am at the office today finishing up a few things here before taking 3 days off for Christmas. We have our Chrismas party tonight for work and then I will be doing some work from home on Monday before heading to Maine to spend Christmas with the wife’s family. I hope to do some updatting of the blog and such during the break.  But if I don’t post again before the big day…Merry Christmas!!

So there I was today at a client’s site installing Windows 2003 servers and trying to get his Windows 98 clients to work right with them, and I heard it on the radio. That some nut case had taped something that looked like a bomb to his chest and taken hostages at Hillary Clinton’s campaign office in Rochester, NH. Now if it had been anywhere else I probably would have just taken note and not paid to much more attention. But being that my wife and I just moved out of Rochester under a month ago, it hit home. We only lived a few miles from where all this is happening, and boy am I glad we moved. I can’t imagine the crap that we would have gone through with closed roads, huge police presence and such. And after the day I had I’m not much in the mood for that.

What really strikes me is that from what I have seen on the news the ass clown that pulled this little stunt is a local and know to police as being mentally unstable. To make it even better they are saying the reason he did this is that he is upset over mental healthcare in the U.S. Well gee, guess that is one way to draw attention to the issue, and land your monkey ass in jail for a good long time.

I guess things are just getting crazy all over. It makes me harken back to my long dream of moving out to the middle of nowehere and not having to deal with these retarted fucking morons anymore. And no I don’t just mean this guy, I mean alot of people. Our society as a whole has gone down hill.

Well enough of a rant for now. Time to grab some dinner and relax for a bit. Tomorrow is Saturday and I have to be at work bright and early in the morning. Which reminds me, it’s time to start ye ole job search again.

Had a very nice Thanksgiving yesterday. We decided to keep it simple this year. My wife and I cooked a nice dinner at home, and spent the day together just relaxing. It was a nice change for me to get to spend the day relaxing instead of working or running errands. And after everything that has been going on lately and how busy we have been it was much needed.

On the moving front, we are finally finished unpacking and getting almost everything straightened out. It took quite some time to get settled in, but we finally got there. Really the only thing left to be setup is my home office. I have made exactly zero progress on that so far. The main reason being is that in our new house the cable modem and router are a few rooms away from the office. So I have to figure something out for access in that room. I am thinking a wireless bridge to bring signal in to the room and I can hook a switch to it from there. It would be nice to have that all setup, but for right now I am working off wireless and my laptop. On another note I have to admit that this is the first place I have ever lived that has oil heat, and man oh man is that expensive. Right now heating oil is around $3.09 a gallon, I bought 100 gallons when we moved in and that gave me under half a tank for $299.98 (oil was only $2.99 a gallon at that time). So it’s looking like we have an expensive winter ahead of us.

As for work, well that could be going better. It has been busy and stressful as usual, but lately things have been getting worse. I am feeling more over worked and  underpaid than ever before. It is at a point that I am contemplating leaving the company. Right now I am holding off on making an decisions for a few weeks. That is when my yearly review is up. I am going to be asking for a good bit more money and a better schedule (no more Saturdays). If I don’t get it then I am going on the hunt for a new job. It’s not that I hate my job or where I work, but at this point I just need more money (like something close to what I and the things I do are worth).

Well that’s all for right now. Going to head home from the office soon for some leftover turkey.

I wrote a post the other day expressing the fact that I was getting really stressed out at work. And it would seem that the gods read that post. Yesterday we had a meeting here in the office and after over a year of not having our company website up, it was finally approved. At first I was excited about this since in this day and age to not have a website up is almost laughable. Well my happiness declined greatly when I found out that instead of outsourcing the task of designing and implimenting the site to a company we do business with, it was decided that it should be done 100% in house. The worst part of that is that the task is mine. Since I am the only one here that has ever done any type of web design I now have to take on this project. The problem with that? I don’t have the time. I already have so many other projects going at once that taking this on is going to kill me.

I have started looking into using a CMS package such as Joomla or Drupal to possibly streamline the process. But I am still unsure how well I will be able to get this done and balance the rest of my work. Looks like things just got even more stressful for me.