Saturday, July 25, 2009

summer work

Did I mention that I had an intern? the key word being had.

I did mention that they were slashing 20% of my department at work and that some how maths out to one person with that person being my coworker. We had the same job title, worked at the same level and sat in the same large empty room alone in a mostly abandoned building downtown for many years. I always figured that he was my competition and would most likely be promoted before me since he had many years experience over me.. I was wrong(thankfully).

I am not promoted but at least I have a job. It was the decision of my boss' boss and for the first time I could see it in his face and hear it in his voice it was a hard one as he explained how he reached to this decision. It was a bittersweet moment as apparently my efforts had not gone unnoticed by the senior management but he the fallout is that will be jobless now and I will have to pick up his workload. To put things into perspective when I joined the company the job that my boss and I are currently doing was being done by a team of 7 people, a 71% reduction in staff. Now the competition(if any) is between the boss and myself lets hope I can survive.

Anyway back to the subject, shortly after they cut my coworker they gave me an intern. I was a bit confused as to how they were cutting people but still managed to maintain a summer program but I was happy for any assistance I could get. He was a fresh grad from university and was hoping to get a permanent job, this was perfect, exactly what I wanted. I treated him with respect, assigning him weekly objectives, giving him training material and gave him the ultimate goal to finish developing a database webapp I had started in my free time. My boss would have(and wanted) to give him some brainless slave work to do and I should have. He sucked at the work I assigned to him I had to be following behind him and fixing everything he did.

The final slap in the face was when the intern came to me at the end of his second week and resigned ughh!! two weeks gone down the drain. He was offered a [ever so scarce] permanent job at some other company so I let him go, I would never hold it against him in these harsh economic times. My friends and coworkers all think that I drove him away but hey if you cant stand the heat stay out of the kitchen.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Homeowner: check.

- Go back to Disney world.
- Get post graduate degree.
- Become propertied by 26.
- ... etc.

Well this is one life goal I am glad to cross off the list and I have now replaced it with the goal of shaving 17 years off my mortgage term to finish paying back my loan in 8 years. This of course is under the assumption that all things remain equal, yes I aim high.

It has been one week since I got the possession papers and keys and the only thing I have done so far is given my old landlord notice. Of course she asked why I was leaving(I am a great tenant) and I had to remind her that 3 years ago when negotiating my lease with her I made sure to assert that this will be the last place I was going to rent(I hate moving) and the next time I move it will be because I bought somewhere. good memories.. lets just hope that when my end date comes she gives me back my full security deposit and not try to nitpick like my last penny pincher landlord who kept a portion because she wanted to pay her way through medical school.

The place is fairly new, about 2 years old and mostly move in ready. I need to get the electricity turned up and security grills installed(a must given Jamaica's current crime situation). I bought a new deadbolt lock for my front door today and I'll probably drop by there early tomorrow morning before work to attempt to install it myself, how hard can it be?

Did I mention that it is less than a 2 minute drive away from one of my office locations?! Being so retardedly close to work I'll probably end up working from home and not going to the office most days.. lol lets see.

Sunday, July 05, 2009

Holocost movies

I think the first Holocaust movie I watched was 'The pianist' a few years ago. I don't remember much about it but I remember that I liked it very much. Recently I started watching the HBO series Band of Brothers and my interest on that time in history awoke again. Since then I have watched:

  • Valkyrie
  • The boy in striped pyjamas
  • Schindler's list
I've always heard about Schindler's list, never saw it on cable before though. It's a shame that I only recently when looking for it 15 years later. That's about 14 hours of movies/tv series on the second world war and the Holocaust. It is a bit much but I'd recommend all of them in a heartbeat.