The Times, They Are A Changing

As I'm sure you noticed, I'm not posting as fast and furious as I did before.

The reason? Not that much interesting stuff on a day to day basis. So, I'm cutting back.

I had Thanksgiving dinner with S. and her family. They all raved about the stuffing - I didn't like it too much. It was dry and it had spinach in it. Her Mom also used gravy from a can! The travesty! I scolded her for it appropriately, of course.

The next day I went to Maryland to go fishing with my Dad. It was the First Annual Elmo Bucher Memorial Fishing Trip. If you recall, Elmo Bucher is my grandfather who passed away earlier this year. Originally, my cousins Mike and Little Mike were going to go, however, bad news on that front. Mike's wife (second wife) was diagnosed with cervical cancer, so, they decided to go to Vegas to have some fun. His son (Little Mike, from his first wife) lives with his Mother who is newly remarried and their whereabouts were a bit unknown leading up to Thanksgiving since she's talking about moving to Florida and may have stayed in the Carolinas over the holiday.

So, it was me and Dad going to Shad Landing on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

It wasn't as cold as we were expecting. It was quite nice, actually.

Unfortunately, the day still sucked. The fish weren't cooperating. At the end of the day (fished from 9 to 4, I think) we had each caught 1 fish. Me? A small white perch. Him? A small yellow perch.

Whee.

Christian's gone from the office now. It's a lot quieter, actually.

Bob put in his two weeks and yesterday was his last day too.

It's amazing to watch, really. Gross mismanagement coming back with a vengeance. Out of 11 technicians (7 UNIX, 4 Windows), 4 people have left. Three of them from the Windows side!

The company is not doing too well, and if our management continues to ignore the issues with it's employees, it's going to collapse from the inside.

Speaking of which, I started looking as well. Checked out a company a few miles from where I live and they gave me a call back. They were looking for a Perl Programmer and I thought I could fit the bill. I spoke with the president of the company (a small [54 employee] web catalog company) who forwarded my information on to his Director of IT. Had a conversation with him earlier this week too. He told me straight out that he didn't think I knew enough Perl for the position, particularly for the amount of money I was asking for, so, he asked me to take an online test.

So, I take the test. The stupid thing doesn't tell me how I did - it just sends off the results to the requester. So, I emailed the guy and asked him how I did.

My results? Atrocious. 19 wrong out of 40. He sent me an example of one I got wrong and I should have gotten it right. On the bright side, though, he did say I fared better on the exam than he expected and he would rate me as a lower mid-level programmer.

Great.

So, I've got that crap to deal with. I'd love to see the results of the test so I'd know where to work on with my programming skills. Oh, well. Maybe I can find another exam online I can take.

S. and I go on vacation tomorrow, then on to Washington, DC. We're going to be staying at the Carlyle Suites near Dupont Circle. Next Thursday we go to my parents' house on the way home, then Saturday is a party at S.'s friend, M.'s, house.

I wish to hell we were going to Cancun or Cozumel, but, beggars can't be choosers.

Stupid hurricanes.