OK, it’s been too long since I posted but things have been hectic. I don’t get time to sit down and write posts nearly as often as I’d like simply because life is too busy to believe.

I do intend to post the second part of my trip report real soon, but I do have some updates on life in general that I need to put in.

First, well I need to say that one reason for being so buy is that I’m changing jobs. Yes… again. Basically, I started this job I have right now 18 months ago or thereabouts with the hopes that it would become something which it ultimately didn’t. I took a step backward in my career to take this position, and really would’ve liked it to turn into something more (like I was promised). However, because of staffing issues (we went from a 12 person team to a 4 person team during that 18 months) and management changes, the ability to move back into an engineering / architecture role never materialized. I still feel that there’s potential in the environment I work in, but I can’t keep my career on hold forever. As a result, I have a new opportunity which has presented itself, and I am pursuing it.

So, my last day is Friday and I start the new job Monday. I’ll post an update next week with more info on that.

Other news? Well, my grandmother passed away in January right as I was about to post Part 2 of my trip report. As a result of her passing, I decided to take the time to fly back for the funeral. I’m glad I did. It was good to see the family again, and I think it helped others in the family deal with her passing that I was willing to spend the time and money to hop on a plane at a moment’s notice and fly back to Belfast. I found a flight out of Chicago via Newark that flew directly into Belfast International on Continental Airlines. That worked out great in the end; I drove to Chicago, parked my car for a week and flew out.

Now, as soon as I returned to the US, I drove home and had problems with my car. I’ll keep it short and sweet; I blew the head gasket somewhere between Chicago and Litchfield, IL. Yes, I killed my BMW. Well, not killed it… but wounded it such that I could no longer drive it… so I parked it until I could afford to fix it. Within days of returning, I also had to fly back to Newark for a Disaster Recovery exercise for work. Yes, that was a pretty hectic time for me 🙂

Jump into February. Well, that entire month was sort of strange. I don’t know really if it was because of all the family stuff, but I did find myself unhappy with my job. Certainly, the funeral didn’t help my mood and I had been unhappy for a while, but I guess everything that happened just triggered my desire to leave into high gear. However, I didn’t go seeking opportunities… they sought me. February ended up being really hectic because of this and dealing with fixing up the minivan that had been parked in my garage for six months (since we never really used it) so that Rebekah had transportation while my BMW was parked.

Once we dealt with all that, we were already into mid March. I had the offer in-hand for my new job and am right now on notice at my current job.

Last Tuesday, I got my BMW into the shop. A head-gasket job on a BMW is not that big a deal; there’s only one of them since it’s an inline 6 and not a V-6. It’s labor-intensive though. It was also recommended to me that I get the valve-train checked and returned to factory specs since the whole thing would be off the car anyway. A little extra cost, but effectively gives me a complete top-end rebuild on my car. With a bit of luck, that means that the engine is good for a while once complete, and worth the little extra in my opinion. At the moment I still don’t have my car back, but I talked with them in the last few days and things are looking good for me to get my car back this week.

So, pretty much up-to-date. Yesterday was my birthday… yeah… I’m an old man of 35 now. Heh… don’t really feel any older, guess it’s because I’ve been on-call a lot for work lately and am just worn out and feeling old ALL THE TIME  😯

I had a pretty low-key birthday all things considered. I haven’t slept much lately with all that’s been going on, so last night I actually did the unthinkable, crawled into bed early and took sleeping pills. That’s pretty much an update of what I’ve been up to 🙂

So now I have only a couple of days left at my job. I really don’t know what the future holds for me now, but I do hope (still) to update this site more  🙄

Hope this message finds you well… and more soon I hope.