The work week is over. Thank goodness! No work this weekend so I’ve had a couple of drinks to help me relax after such a horrible week. I am going to bed now because I don’t see what I am still doing up at this time. But honey, I’ll be waiting for you…
Till then…
I just came back from a week from hell.
I was on-call last week and I was kept awfully busy, which meant long drives back and forth from the different locations and my house. Yes, the paycheck coming on Thursday will be a pretty nice one but it will be really worth it.
I did get my new phone. I was supposed to write a suite to the Day 1 post but I got my new phone on that day. It had the same OS as the old phone, but I was able to install the new OS and it has been working fairly well since. I have some issues with the alarm which is alarming (I couldn’t help that one) considering it is not working properly. I used to have it set to wake me up at 5am and I could hit the snooze button for an extra 10 minutes of sleep. In this case, I can barely hear the alarm and when I do hear it and hit the button, the alarm shuts down. Not quite recommended especially these days when nights are rather short.
I did get to see the Dolphins game on Sunday and that was fun. There will be a separate entry and some pictures for that one.
I usually don’t check my work e-mail at home, except when there are hurricane alerts or when I am on-call and already connected to the network.
Tonight, I did check my messages although I had no real reasons and I saw an e-mail from my boss where he was rescheduling the on-call calendar since we have lost one of our team members who went to work for another department. For some reason, we have new techs and they are still not scheduled to get in the rotation. Anyway, the boss sent an e-mail with the new dates for each tech and I was not a happy camper. In 2008, I already had to work on Memorial Day AND Labor Day. Last year, I had my first on-call rotation and it was at Christmas. This year, with the new changes, I GET CHRISTMAS AGAIN! I was expecting New Year’s, not that I really do much for the New Year, but I like to be able to have a drink or two on that night. And it was getting to be the perfect solution since the wife told me this morning her parents want to come at that same period. It was going to be the perfect excuse to skip whatever they have planned for during their visit.
And if that wasn’t quite enough, my following on-call rotation will be the week of my birthday! NO!!! My birthday falls on a Saturday next year and I don’t really know what I will be doing then but the one thing I am sure I do not want to do is to be working at all that day. So I don’t know… I will need to change those two dates and I don’t expect it to be any easy for December. I will talk to my boss to see if he can do anything about it.
It’s getting late and I am falling asleep. If this needs to be edited, it will happen in the morning. Right now, peace off.
Till then…
P.S.: I have said it so many times in the past: I should not blog while I’m falling asleep. Or I should have saved this as a draft and published it after reading it. Hope not too many people did get to read the original post!
It’s been a day and a half already since I was suddenly deprived of my BlackBerry. I really expected it to be really tough but it’s been ok. Sure, I find it strange not hearing the different ring tones warning me of incoming messages, e-mails and other calls and killing time has been a little harder. Only when I was in a position where I would pull out the phone from my pocket and engage in some activity that I remembered that the mini candy-bar in my pocket was nothing but my old, old phone that I have dusted up and am using until I get my new phone. I pulled out my old PDA to keep me company, but tomorrow will be a tough and hectic day and I don’t really expect to have any downtime at all.
One down, two more to go!
Till then…
1:35am. I just got back from a couple of calls at 2 different locations. I was falling asleep on my way to the first location which is located across the street from my office. Since I was there, I made a quick stop and had a Mountain Dew which did not do a thing. I went across the street and was really happy to find that the Starbucks was still open and got me a venti white chocolate mocha that helped me a lot. Almost 3 hours later I was out but I was wide awake. I went to my second location to find out that they found a way to fix their problem but nobody bothered to let me know before driving the 10 miles to get there. It was ok though since I was still wired from all the caffeine in my body. But the last mile was hard again, since I could barely keep my eyes open. But I am happy I made it back in one piece!
It’s almost 2am now and I should be waking up in about 3 hours. I will definitely have a very hard time today but I guess I should make sure to make my coffee really strong before I leave today.
I really hope that I won’t hear that phone again tonight. I don’t know what might happen if it does ring.
Till then…
I have been raving about my BlackBerry Curve since I got it a few months ago. All the bad things I was saying about having a smartphone went out of the window as soon as I saw all the possibilities offered by such a small device.
But as I got more and more used to my BB, I found out it lacked some serious features, a video camera to begin with. I could shoot some beautiful pictures with it, play MP3 files but it all seemed somewhat clunky especially since it was considered as a top of the line phone.
Doing some research on the Internet, I found out the culprit: the OS or operating system. My toy was basically that: a toy. While other people were enjoying enhanced features offered by the OS version 4.5, I was held down with the older 4.2 version. The more recent version was out there on the Internet but did not receive the seal of approval from my provider and not wanting to have an expensive doorstop on my hands, I waited patiently until it would be available to download from T-Mobile. Many people raved about how fast it was, how sexy it was and how improved it was but I held my ground. Until today.
While reading my news feeds on my RSS reader, I finally saw the words I had been waiting for weeks. BB OS 4.5 was available for downloading at the T-Mobile site. YES! I got all excited, got my laptop ready and got out of the house as fast as I could so I could have more alone time to do this before the daily rush.
I downloaded the files, followed the instructions to the letter and about an hour later, I was told that the installation was successful. I disconnected the phone, all excited about the prospect of finally having updated my phone and all of a sudden, it reboots! Ok, maybe it needed to do that and I wasn’t told about it, but what the heck, it’s going to work. And actually, it did NOT work. In fact, it kept shutting down or restarting for no obvious reason, so I finally call customer service and I am told to reinstall the OS. For some reason, I knew I was going to hear that. What I also heard was the CSR say that if it didn’t work, that she was putting a note in my file to have the phone replaced. It sounded like a fair deal to me. So at lunchtime, I figure I was going to have enough time to go through the whole ordeal again and that this time it is going to work. I guess I was dreaming because it went right into reboot mode right away. Bummer.
I called T-Mobile again and a charming young lady helped me go through the whole process a third time and it seemed to work and I was happy again until we’re about to say goodbye. Reboot. Fcuk. So she called the BB people and she comes back to tell me that she had the sequence wrong and that we have to try again. Yes, a 4th time. We go through all the steps again, wait some very long minutes for everything to be deleted then reinstalled but the last step was taking too long. We had already spent 90 minutes on the phone and I really had to go. Admitting defeat, the CSR again added the info in the file that the device might need to be replaced. Great.
When I got back to my desk about 20 minutes later, the installation process had finished. I disconnected the phone and started to go through the applications and it rebooted. I called T-Mobile right away and told my story again stating that I was told twice that in case of failure, the device needed to be sent back for a replacement. The CSR did not try to convince me or change my mind and took my information and made sure to let me know how long it would take to get the phone and how much I would have to pay if I wanted it in 7 or 3 business days. So for the luxury of getting a replacement phone in 3 days, I have to fork out $19.99 + tax. I agree to be raped in such a way and I am left with a severely maimed phone.
I don’t give up quite easily, so when I got home, I decided to try it my way. I wiped out the device and proceeded to reinstall the OS for a 5th time. Same thing, an hour later and my phone keeps shutting down and restarting. As I type this, I can see it shut down and restart a few minutes later…
So that means that I will not be able to keep in touch with some friends throughout the day. That means that I can’t get my massive dose of news every hour. That means that if somebody calls the home number during the day, I won’t be able to answer. That means too that I will have to look for an old phone to use until I get my new phone.
And just a few short months ago, I was making fun of people who acted just like I am now.
I WANT MY TOY BACK!
Till then…
A fellow blogger, TerriTerri decided to scan some old pictures and post them. It is a wonderful idea I think, so I decided to follow her footsteps. I have a few scanned pictures of me when I was a baby:
I was a big, healthy baby at 5 months.
Baby Aliti
My Mom was so young herself when I was born but see how proud she is of her baby boy?
Mother And Son
Now if you wonder how come I turned to be so bad? Here is a perfect explanation of my life of debauchery:
Ribs 'n Beer
I’ve had this project to scan all the pictures I was able to get from all the old boxes and bags that had pictures in more or less good shape. Hopefully I will find enough time and willpower to take care of that task.
In the meantime, enjoy!
Till then…
Before I started blogging here, I was blogging over at JournalSpace. It was my main blogging site for a couple of years before I got so tired because of all the outages and downtime and poor service that it was driving me nuts. I was paying supposedly to get pro-access, which in fact was just paying to get a few extras like stats and the ability to have polls but I never thought that justfified the $30+ they asked for that. So I decided after another episode of unexpected downtime and the loss of my layout to get out of there once and for all. Unfortunately, I was also leaving behind some friends. Some did follow me here, stopping by every once in a while only to realize I did not post. One friend got so frustrated, she just stopped coming here altogether.
Lately, there was this collective wave asking me to reconsider my position and go back to JournalSpace. The same reader that stopped coming here went even to try to bribe me with coming all the way down here to have lunch with me. As much as I would have been delighted to have had lunch with her, I could not risk the fact to miss lunch because of work, since I have the worst eating habits and I am known to skip a breakfast AND lunch because things are so damn hectic sometimes. But I gave in and went back to blog at JS. The only real problem is that I do not have enough material to maintain 2 “official” blogs and all the “unofficial” ones already hurting that bad. So yes, there will be times where there will be some double-posting, although I will still consider this place as being my main blog. I don’t have the same readership here that I have over there, but that’s ok. This place is more peaceful, more reliable and much better than JS, and that’s why I will not change a thing.
But the previous post, was written over at JS. And that is what prompted me to write this post. And now, you know everything…
Till then…
My life has been hectic for a few months now. Between the projects at work, being down one tech, the kids, the different problems at home and back home, it’s like there is no time for nothing.
And yet, I think I just found what I needed. It is still early and everybody’s in bed. It’s quiet inside and outside. And I am having my favorite drink which will no doubt help me to go to sleep much faster tonight.
Tomorrow, another week starts, with more of the same plus the fact that I will be on-call. Seeing how tough it is during the day, I do not expect anything going smoothly this whole week. And I still have to find a solution to my being on-call this next Sunday when I have tickets to a football game. Dee and I are going to see the Bills play the Dolphins and she is absolutely excited about it. And because I have such a big heart, I agreed to swap on-call time with my partner who will be celebrating his birthday next Thursday and will be taking a few days off. I will not ruin his birthday but I have to find a solution for next Sunday. Hopefully, someone will be nice enough to cover for me if needed.
It is unfortunate today is Sunday. I would have loved to have had this yesterday. Oh well…
Till then…
Last year, I was on-call during Christmas week. It wasn’t so bad since it was a quiet week and Christmas is more for the kids. I’d rather do something for New Year’s Eve because it is much more symbolic.
When the on-call calendar was published for this year, I saw I was going to be on for Memorial Day and Labor Day but nothing about Christmas and/or New Year’s. I vaguely made plans about finally going to Chicago since I promised my daughter I would take her there so we could play in the snow and show her around but because baby boy came in between and him being so small, I scraped that idea. Nevertheless, I was still happy I had dodged those on-call bullets.
Yesterday, my partner asked me if I have anything planned for next week because it’s going to be his birthday and he wants to swap weeks with me since I come after him on the list. Not having anything planned, I agreed without any further thought. And it’s only last night that I did think about it and came to the conclusion he got it wrong because he’ll be on-call in 2 weeks.
This morning, I brought the subject up and he told me the calendar has changed because the third member of our team left and so all shifts have shifted up one week. So instead of being on for the first week of November, I am stuck with the last week of October. And instead of being on for the first week of 2009,I’ll have the honor of being on-call for the New Year. That means a sober celebration at home instead of having a few drinks somewhere. Anyway, I see it this way: I’ll probably be by myself anyway and if I am called on January 1st, I’ll be paid more than a regular day.
Next year, I better be getting a break because Aliti needs to have fun too!
Till then…
