For the past three weeks I've been on vacation and extremely busy. First I was on a cruise, then I was a custodial father for a week, then I was in Florida with my family for week. This past week I was getting back into the work groove. All throughout I've been busy with the initial stages of buying a condo. So far the running tally is almost $550K, 43K of which is in "options" (my budget was for 27K). The new place is being built by Centex and is nearly 2000 sq. ft. Sandwiched in a golf-course I imagine the value will rise rapidly, but mostly this is for the garage and the lack of yard chores.
I've also been listening to a lot of podcasts (time-shifted indy-radio for the uninformed). iPodderX used to be running all the time getting them... but I've mostly switched to iTunes 4.9 now for the aggregation and push to my iPod (60gig photo). Speaking of Apple... I've been using 10.4.2, and its still buggy. Naturally I'm not the only one (drunkenbatman is getting pissed too). Safari is still intermittent... it won't bomb for days... and then I'll hit a site doing AJAX (script-callbacks) or try to post to my blog (I'm using FireFox to post) - and poof, Safari quits. Man if IE was this buggy, Microsoft would be lynched - literally.
Speaking of Microsoft, I'm looking forward to the PDC. However, the government has decided not to fund it due to end of fiscal year and a recompete. I'm still hoping my company covers the cost (especially since I've already paid for registration) - otherwise I've got a big bill coming for airfare, hotel and LEAVE. Why am I the only developer at my company that sees this as the one Career MUST conference? Maybe it's because Career is not a concept that appears to be nurtured at my company. I've always felt that they are a body shop that lacked the foresight to keep (or make) their technical people the best in the industry. Training is a farce (with some really, really ancient classes being taught - for instance there are NO .NET classes AT ALL) internally, and external training rarely appears to be approved. Of course, we do get $5200 per year... but that's only for college classes (that must be approved by your manager, and you must take leave if its during working hours); and as everyone knows - colleges haven't heard of .NET yet, and have staunch UNIX and Java-centric curriculum's. Oh well.
Anyway, looking back at my post volume... I'm embarassed. I'd like to beef it up, but I doubt anyone is even reading this... especially since I'm not even in the main GeeksWithBlogs feed. I'm afraid my post volume will continue to be low for the foreseeable future (next week I'm flying out to Germany for work).
posted @ Friday, July 29, 2005 10:37 PM