It's hard to describe my feelings today. I'm overjoyed to be back at work again, happy to be earning my existence once more, but I'm still not feeling right.

You heard correctly. I am working again. Through a convoluted set of circumstances, I've finally been offered a decent contract. I'm working for a major sporting goods company who will be hereafter aliased here with the clever name of The Sporting Stuff Company.

(I've learned from various sources that you should never name your place of work directly in your journal. It seems they might consider any harsh words or venting as 'slander' or some such nonsense. Crazy, huh? Anyway, from now on, the places I work for and the people I work with have their names changed to protect my own hide.

I've got a couple different hats here. I'll be doing all of the straight HTML building of their new corporate site, as well as overseeing the regular content production on their e-Commerce site. Weird schedule though. Three days a week on the investor site, two days on content. I don't start content until the first of November and the investor site should be complete mid-December, so I'm only working three days a week currently, and will only be pulling two days after the investor's site is done.

Two days a week will not be enough to survive on, by any means - three days barely equals my payments from my Employment Insurance. But it does mean I have more time to come up with other contracts.

Speaking of other contracts, I spent the last month and a half building a promotional site for a fellow running for alderman in our recent civic elections. The lucky bastard actually won, and now it looks like I may be able to make Big Bucks doing his official Aldermanic site. Woo hoo!

Anyway. Back on track. I'm on the second day of my new employment, it's late afternoon, and I'm FINALLY getting the tools I need to do my job.

When I arrived, all I had was a PC, which had the content management tool I'll be using in November. However, I did not yet have a network id and password, or a workstation id and password. Which meant I couldn't use the PC.

I was also missing the Mac I was to use for site development. No one was entirely sure where it was.

My neighbor Christine logged me in using her id, so I could at least have Internet access. Of course, I had no email, so I couldn't even communicate properly.

I had no access card for entry, but I wasn't too worried about that. At least, I wasn't until the end of the day, when I discovered that all the doors lock at five, and you need a card to get out. Or I can just hit the large green emergency exit button. Which not only opens the door, but also sends alarms throughout the building.

I got a lot of "preliminary research and planning" done yesterday.

Today started to pick up. I had full access and email by noon. My Mac showed up (A Titanium PowerBook G4 running OS X - go ahead and drool Joel). My access card should be here any minute. I did have to fight for about three hours to get the Mac connected to the network -- there doesn't seem to be a single IT person in the building with any Mac experience, which meant I had to do it by myself.

By the end of the afternoon, I was even able to begin building a working mockup of the final design. Yay!

To kind of catch up a bit from my last entry, after Grandpa passed away, we stayed for a couple more days, and then drove back home. I hated leaving Grandma, but we had to get home before Tricia's gall bladder operation. My uncle Steve and his family were nearby though, and Grandma has hundreds of friends.

Dad flew back a couple weeks later for the memorial service. Apparently there were about 150 to 200 people there. I like that.

Grandma is one of my most faithful readers, so I'm just going to take this opportunity to send her my love. You're still coming out for Christmas, right?

this isn't any lana lang that i remember...

The fall TV season is well into swing, and we've been stupefied by the huge amount of good quality stuff there is to watch. One thing that surprised me was last night's premiere of 'Smallville', the WB's re-vamping of the Superman story, showing what it is like to grow up with powers beyond that of mortal man. If the show stays as edgy as the premiere, it will be neat.

One big disappointment so far is Survivor: Africa. There seems to be something missing from this one. The people are much the same, the contests, etc... We think it's that we haven't seen them really reacting to their environment on any emotional level. The contestants on the first two shows seemed lost and bewildered by the strange environment, but these guys seem to be taking everything a bit too much in stride. Whether this is just because those scenes have been edited out, or because they did too much research before the trip began I don't know. But it still seems shallow. More shallow than normal, anyway.

One Year ago: Free movies, where I blather on about the perks of my old job and what I liked about 'Pay it Forward'.

Mom Rating: 5 out of 5. Hey, I'm working, aren't I?

Never forget

Dangerous Mind

Take me home, big fella