15 Sep 2003 (updated 15 Sep 2003 at 01:57 UTC)
»
Out of the dark and into the light - Friday morning I looked at
what I was planning to wear and found that I had dressed entirely in black.
I realized that it was not exactly appropriate. I had dressed in black
on Wednesday, the day we did have some layoffs... it was an extremely painful
day, as some incredibly talented and wonderful people had to be let go. At
this point (after a couple of previous re-orgs), there are only solid, excellent
people left, so any cuts hurt. It was VERY painful personally for me, and I'm
hopeful that those who left us can find work in a very tough economy.
But being in management means that you can't dwell on those changes long,
so I doffed the black and went for blue jeans, a white shirt and a
somewhat-Hawaiian overshirt. And I stopped by Tim Hortons for a party pack
of Timbits. It was a crappy week, but it's time to move on.
The funny thing was that in random conversations I found that several other
people had done the same exact thing Friday morning.
CISSP - So after about a week-and-a-half of debating it, I finally
pushed the Submit button and signed up for the
CISSP exam coming up in late October here
in Ottawa. I've been working with network and Internet security
issues for many, many years... but it was often never part of my formal job
description and so was only a casual mention in my resume. Before the
re-org when rumours were rampant, I had started looking around and found that many of the jobs that I would
be interested in all either required the CISSP credential, or it was at least
"preferred". While I'm quite happy where I'm at now, and do hope I can be
there for quite a long time, it's definitely a good thing to have options in
this crazy economy we're in these days.
Blogging by co-workers - Found out that
current and
former
(here,
here and
here, this last
one the new home for skud) co-workers have weblogs
over at LiveJournal. Glad
to catch up on what the others are doing. Interesting as always. ;-)
Disconnecting from the popular mind - Lori and I have decided to
cancel our cable TV... pull the plug and regain our evenings from being sucked
into the mindless drivel on TV. We'll miss the few excellent shows that are
on there... but we've finally decided to do it. Stay tuned.
Autumnal raiment - It is, indeed, that time of year. Hints of yellow
and orange tinge the edges of the trees.... the full oranges and deep reds won't be for a few more weeks, but you can tell it's coming. Amazing that it's
already that time... but what a magical time it is... I love it every year.
Enology - and a bad harvest - Well, it's not going to happen this
year. We were really looking forward to harvesting the grapes growing on the
vines in our backyard. Big, full grapes... we were hoping to either make
wine - or grape jelly - but instead we'll get nothing at all. The grapes
were looking great... and then about two weeks ago I noticed some being
eaten from the tops of the vines. I immediately blamed the pesky black
squirrels that inundate our neighborhood, but last week I saw birds
there on the top... and closer inspection found that the grapes are all
gone!
I guess if we are still here next year and the grapes grow well again, we'll
have to cover them with netting or something like that. Quite a shame, as
neighbors tell us that the previous owner was able to make wine some
years.
The Chloe Journals - The wee one passed 17 months today... we saw
a 3-month-old this morning and it was a reminder again of how much the little
one has grown. Today she's walking all over, babbling nonstop, climbing on
everything, smiling and saying "hi" to everyone she can and just generally
being the high-energy extrovert we've come to know and love! It just is
amazing to see each day.