I need some stress relief

I've been trying to keep up with all of your blogs, but have not been paying much attention to my own. Shame on me.

The last couple weeks have been kind of the same old shit, until yesterday (Monday). Late last week Bob, my boss, invited me and Tim, the DBA manager, to a meeting first thing for Monday morning to discuss organizational changes. We both got a bit paranoid, but we knew there was no way they were getting rid of us. We're the ones trying to fix the problems that they've gotten themselves into.

We speculated that Bob was going to split off another department that I had been suggesting to him for doing software deployment (blah blah blah). Well what really happened was that Bob has moved my department (SCM) and the DBA department under a different director. His name is Dave. This is not a bad move, it's just not expected. There are some good things about this, like we'll have more of Dave's ear than Bob could ever give us. I am not saying Bob was a bad manager, it's just that his department is huge, and we were not the highest priority.

I was in a meeting with Dave just last week where we discussed some of the issues we've been plagued with concerning a bunch of tools that we are implementing. One of the things that will need to be done is a test to get some numbers from other development sites around the country. Since our link between Denver and Des Moines is not up yet we decided that a test needs to be run from our Oakland office to Denver.

I was going to send one of my guys to run these tests, but then another issue with a project we have going in San Francisco came up which needs my attention. We figured I could go out and tackle 2 birds with one stone.

This also gives me a chance to finally meet a couple good blogger friends out there. Chrissie and Terry, you better be ready. I hope to know tomorrow when I will be coming out.

I have been working on a tool customization for months now that I finally got a chance to show off to a small group of people last week. It was received very well. I made a few changes due to comments from the group. On Friday of this week I am showing it to the managers. I am more than a bit nervous about it. It has taken far too long to get this in place. Our VP of engineering expressed her "unhappines" about this taking so long. I informed her back in December that we couldn't go live until we bought a lot more software licenses anyway. In one ear and out the other.

The kids have been sick for a couple weeks now. Strep, then the Flu. Luckily I have yet to be infected (knock on wood). We wanted to go skiing two weekends ago but Kevin's Flu was still keeping him down. This weekend Kevin has a music competition on Saturday and then baseball try-outs on Sunday. I need to ski!!!

This week Kevin had to choose his classes for next year. He is getting really excited about starting high school. It'll wear off, but I am excited for him as well. He is sticking with playing the trumpet. I decided to stop renting a trumpet and just buy him a nice one. Hopefully this one will hold up better. I bought a really nice one. He is also doing really well with his provate drum lessons. I sat in on a few of his lessons recently. I am very impressed.

Kevin has really impressed me this school year with keeping his grades up. I was thrilled that his semester grades for the first semester were all As and Bs. What I was really surprised at was that his grades for second semester are even better so far. I've always know he was smarter than he was showing in his grades. I'm just glad he is now getting his shit together before starting high school.

Erik is still doing well, but struggling with his writing. I am trying to work with him on this, but I have never been much of a writer either. I guess I'm still good enough to help a 3rd grader though.

Erik tries out for Little League a week after Kevin. They are both very excited about this season. Both of them have done a fair job of keeping active over the winter. If Erik keeps growing as fast as he is he'll be thinning out pretty good this summer.

To keep with my ongoing geek-fest of a life I bought myself Windows Vista Ultimate, and Office Ultimate last week. I am holding off with updating my system. At least once a year I do a total purge of my system, but I did some checking and one of my games is not working yet on Vista. So I am waiting on new video drivers to be released before I take the leap.