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Ahh, it feels good to be able to sit with my laptop and update my journal for a bit! That’s kind of a down side to such a long drive to work, I usually get home to late to focus on blogging anything. Hopefully that will change in the near future, courtesy of leaving Newnan.

Today, I slept in as it were: rolled out of bed circa 0900, where as for work I’ve been setting my alarm for 0600. Most of my time has been spent on the rather tedious subject of logistics and budgeting. It won’t be long until I know how much the regular pay cycle is going to be, but a little simple math and margining gives me a suitable ball park for plotting. The other thing that I’ve been looking at, is apartments closer to work. How I run the numbers, I also leave myself a comfortable margin!!!

Driving to work every day is around 140 miles per day across two highways and two interstates. Moving could reduce that closer to a 20-25 mile drive, which means a hell of a lot of less money spent on gas. Like 2 gal/day instead of 6 gal/day. Being able to eliminate the hike down the I-85 alone, is a net savings to be honest. Taking the Atlanta bypass, the speed limit is only 55, same as on a normal highway outside of school zones. Where as on the I-85, the speed limit is 70 at this end and drops to 65 within city limits. In actuality, people tend to go well over the speed limit out here lol. This old ford burns through gas once you start going past ~45mph; and over 60 it sucks gas like, well I won’t use that analogy here but those who know me well can guess what I would think <_<.

Geographically, if I could find something near the areas that I have outlined, it’s much less of a commute. But e.g. getting to other things, like the airsoft field or church would become a good long drive. I’d rather commute weekends than weekdays, when you combine the time and money saved with moving closer to work. When they interviewed me, they didn’t demand I/we move, they only asked if I would be willing to. Really, I don’t mind the commute, but it would be nice to still have free time left in the day when I get off work, that isn’t spent driving home lol.

As things work now, my mother is seeing 1/3 of my net income after tithing. That’s what she got out of my first weeks pay, and what she’ll get out of this pay cycle as well. Moving would rearrange that equation. Namely that money would then represent a decent months rent, and the savings out of the petrol budget could help with bills or fill in extra slack if the rents a little higher. I think it would be fair enough to my mother, that if instead of giving her a percentage of my pay cheque, I alleviated her biggest monthly bill, it would be a fair trade. She would also worry less if it’s a short drive to work, and I would be more at ease knowing my mother is taken care of, than if I was out on my own and she was at the other end of the metro area! I would also miss the dogs if I moved out :'(, and I really can’t count on my brother to lift a finger lol. Friends have been telling me for many years he should get off his arse, but I know both that ma is the only mother I’ve got, and I’m the only stooge that’s going to look after her. Maybe I’m weird, but I don’t throw people out just because I don’t “Need” them, especially family.

So in theory, between the pay from my new job and her staple income, it’s possible to pay rent, pay (and trim) bills, and still have part of my regular pay to save away in the bank (or a mayonnaise jar). That’s something I couldn’t do without my mother: have enough left to save after rent, bills, and a car. I know what it’s like to live with things tight, heck, I’m not a penny pinching S.O.B. in a family of spenders for nothing! I want to stuff away part of my income, so there’s something there for a rainy day. I’m not willing to blow every cent I make before the inks dry lol.

Yeah, I’m kind of the family freak… the one who saves money :-/.

Right now, my plan is to start calling some of the places I’ve tracked down and inquiring about details. Principally I need to know if their are any suitable units available, and how the animals would impact things. To be acceptable to me, any place of residence has to accept the dogs and the bird. Simple. Like wise a decent internet connection is required.

Hmm, maybe I can get my mother to finally throw crap out that we ain’t used in over ten years…… O.K that is probably to much to hope for, LOL!

Why after spending the work week with dynamic languages, do I feel like sitting down with C++?

If the traffic and the weather keeps up as it’s doing, I think I’m sleeping later and googling if those packets the army uses to warm your hands in gloves, are available to civilians lol. Me and this tough old ford are making it across them 70 miles like Han Solo and the Falcon pulling the Kessel run xD.

Never thought I could honestly long for that Floridian sunshine, but hey, while they’re breaking out the fur coats, they still got +20F on us here in Georgia lol.

Overslept this morning until my brain remembered the alarm clock had already gone off! Still I made it to work with plenty of time to spare. Plus I left work on time and hit the traffic jams just right, got home at a good time. In plenty of time for dinner of course :-D.

Can you really beat getting to work early and marginal traffic on the way home on a Monday?

The company I’m working for is basically doing an 8-hour work day. Since I’m in front of a code editor most of the time, there isn’t that much that can just ‘Explode’ into late hours right now, so I’ve generally been leaving a little bit late or on time, and getting there early. If I’m supposed to put in an 8 hour day, that’s what I’ll do, but I’m more concerned about getting to work early than I am about leaving on time. I don’t care much if, e.g. I’m 20 minutes late leaving work. So long as things get done!!! It’s like yeah, could get most of X wrapped up tonight… but not get off work when I am technically “Supposed to”, so I do what I can and maintain notes.

I keep a note of what I need to do next time, what to do before I leave, on what I’m working on, etc. Bonus points being, that those notes are separate from my personal ones, so I can’t screw up finding them again lol.

Things seem to be pretty cushy compared to what I’ve been subject to over the years. Thanks to time spent in my mother’s business, I’m no stranger to a work day that can leave you feeling FUBAR, or that burns through time like a sieve. Want to really see your time fly, try working 0400-2000. That will shaft you; I spent several months doing that back in cica 2008. Most of the stuff with ma’s business however, was usually crammed into 4-6 hour days. From my own time on the computer @ home, I’m basically used to working on things until I pass out, so that’s closer to 20-hour days sans food/bathroom/interrupts.

Unlike home, an interrupt at work is more like an occasional knock on the door jam. It’s down right peaceful… kind of funny really. Past few months, I’ve been thinking about how tired I am of always being burned through but never having time to recharge. Regular 8-hour days seem to be rejunvinating me.

Out of all the things I’ve experienced, I never thought I could look forward to having to get up and go to work!

Seems that I’m not the only one who hated it, since this year 94.9 The Bull hasn’t been straight on Christmas music since the day after Thanksgiving. Man, I love Christmas but ahem, if I wanted to hear the songs all month, I would sing them.

*Dances with glee*

Hmm, seems that I’ve survived my first week! Started work on the 30th, and got lost as hell for about three days straight trying to find the place. Now that I know my way around, and I’m getting there early. Alarm goes off at 0500, I’m usually awake by 0400, and I try to be on the road between 0530-0630. Today the lights weren’t even on yet in Engineering when I showed up lolol. As long as I can be on the Interstate by 0700, I can get there with time to spare, and no body is picky about when I show up. It’s basically an 8-hour work day with 3-hours of driving / over 220 kilometres each day. On the upside, I’m doing about $15/day in petrol in a car that’s well below the modern norm for fuel efficency, so whatever a regular weeks pay cheque nets, fuel costs ought to be staying a float.

My first day was essentially getting up to speed. One of the guys there, Steve got me started installing the OS on my work station, introduced me to the guy responsible for setting up my access to stuff, etc. While at home I’ll usually take like a week to break in a new setup, I kept stuff on my work station pretty light. I’m there to work not customise things, besides all I really care about is a decent command line environment and having the tools needed for getting stuff done. Made sure to bring my laptop and loads of stuff on my flash drive just in case. Since it’s so far from home and moving isn’t going to happen overnight, I travel well stocked with Miles’ old backpack. That reminds me, I still need to eat the candy I stored in it xD. Since there’s no strict dress code, I’ve even gotten to keep my boots :-).

The second day, wasn’t very productive IMHO. Mostly cursing at some warts in one of the libraries being used, it’s a binding to a lib’ written in another language, so it’s not always perfect. Rest of the time was largely filling out the paper work for being hired. I can’t really complain about the paper work, since both the chef finacial officer and the woman from human resources helped me sort that stuff. Just got one thing left to do fir that, and I’ll be mapping that out over the weekend. To the library thing, all I can say is that I’m inclined to agree with my superior about it. It’s better to keep the code base more natural to the implementation language we’re using, than cuddling up to the libraries more static interface. Reading the code already in place, also shows me a few things about who I’m working with.

Being the Fraking New Guy (FNG) on deck, I’m a wee bit cautious about draconian issues. Generally I know what I’m doing well enough to figure stuff out but, eh, somewhere between programming and business its kind of easy to ruffle peoples feathers over little things and I’d rather not do that at first. So I’m trying to avoid walking into any walls so to speak. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of fixed policy about anything programming related and everything is quite laid back at the company, so I guess there’s nothing to worry about. Except getting tongue twisted explaining things lol. With my mother always telling me off whenever I’m on VoIP, I’ve gotten more used to typing all day than speaking. When Matt, my superior told me about the instant messengering system, I was happy as a clam!

Thurs/Fri were mostly spent trying to get stuff done, got a bit finished yesterday but didn’t have it ready for commit untill today, along side some other stuff. Really not sure what kind of pace is expected of me for generating results, but since I don’t have my mother interrupting me all the live long day, I’m getting more done in much less time than I’m used to doing it at home. I like it, kind of wish it was more like 10-12 hour days, so I could get more done at work lol. Doubt there are enough hours in the day to get done the amount of work I feel should be done. On my way out, I let my superior know what branch I pushed stuff out to and said I’d catch up on the remaining things tomorrow. What a curious look came when he reminded me tomorrow is Saturday xD.

After so many years of having to operate on a mentality like, “O.K. it’s the weekend…. time to cram as much work in as possible before Monday”, I find it kind of hard to not be working on the weekends… :-/. Guess I can spend it on my own projects or something. If it wasn’t supposed to be like an 8 hour work day, I would just sit and let it roll with how much I can get done and when. Habbits, whether it’s a 10 or 18 hour day, I’m used to staying at it. Although I must admit, 8 hours isn’t bad. Only real interruption is going to the bathroom and taking a lunch break; although ma would kill me if I work through those >_>, today I took a pen & pad with me, so that I could think ahead while eating. For what I’ve been doing for years, I’ve had to put up with trying to concentrate with a constant string of interupts. When your brains in the swing of things, having a massive context switch thrown at you dozens of times a day, is kind of like being hit by an eighteen wheeler. That’s one reason I love being able to sit working at the office instead of waiting on my mother hand and foot all day while trying to get crap done o/.

So far I like this job quite a lot. Out of the handful of interrested parties, this employer seemed like the best fit, and it’s finally a chance to work at something that’s more up my ally. If I survive the 90-day probational period, things ought to be good for a while. Coming home on the highway tonight, I was thanking the LORD for answered prayers. Feels almost like I’ve died and gone to heaven… nice place to work, good people, relaxed environment, and a there’s supposed to be a steady pay cheque to boot. It’s unbelievable how much I hate being idle, now I’m working. Murphy’s law has been on my ass a lot lately, yet it’s like I’ve been blessed. At least, it’s a glimpse of what life can be, and I hope it lasts for years.

And the only bad thing I can say about the job, is having to walk to the bathroom lol. You know when going down like two short hallways every now and then is the worst part of your day, there is something going right!!!

Between driving the area so much and being able to stop and map stuff out with this new cell phone, I’m even starting to learn shortcuts. Yesterday I made such good time, I was almost afraid I would be too early xD. WHere I live, if I don’t know where I’m going, I know enough that between my instincts and a compas, I can figure it out. Geeze, some of the roads around Newnan I’ve been on so much in my life, I could drive them blind.

When I get up in the morning, I head for the nearest Interstate access, get on to the I-85 N and head down to the I-285 N / W. Main strip around where work is located is more or less in between the level of newnans one, and the one over in Peachtree city. Nice spot, but confounding as all hell to find anthing until you’ve got it figured out. A few more years of commuting and I’ll probably know Duluth well. Personally, I like the Interstate system better than Georgia’s road ways; on the former the only way to get lost is to close your eyes and stop reading lol. It’s actually comforting when I make it to the I-85 S and then to the local high way. I know the area, and on the local, well, it may be terribly dark but after 10 years riding it, I not only can find my way home trivially, I also can figure out how to get to every neighboring city! The path up to Duluth, time will tell, hehehehe.

J-Day cometh….

As pleasant as being able to install driver updates through the Windows update crap has been, I must admit that being dropped into a 640x480x4 desktop shows me just how horrible the old PCs used to look.

At least on my *nix systems, I’ve only got to worry about keeping kernel + X.Org + drivers in sync >_>.

Lately my dreams have been getting worse, really not sure if I should  look forward to sleep or evade it at this point. On the upside, it beats boredom, on the down side it feels hours longer than the actual passage of time. That kind of adds up after a while, tiring.

I’m really not fond of holidays, haven’t been for a very long time, doubt that’s going to change anytime soon. As far as I’m concrened, just getting it done and over with is a good thing to me.

Really looking forward to getting started on the 30th.  In the mean time, I’ve been experimenting with something. In setting up the Windows build for Cassius, I set things up to be able to use the systems lua build (i.e. on linux) or build it as a dependency of Cassius. That’s gotten my brain cooking on making some reusable stuff out of it. Keyed in several libs so far, still need to iron a few things out, like moving header installation from premake time to prebuild time. While doing that and unrolling some loops, I also noticed a bug in some of the path.*() functions that premake uses. Seems that certain paths containing a $ need to be escaped (%$) IAW Lua’s pattern matching syntax, or you get an invalid return value :-/.

Premake was actually my main reason for learning Lua, but never had much chance to use Premake until this month. Kind of been focused on C# the last kind of months, and largely using GNU Makefiles for that stuff. My principal gripes with using C/C++, is setting up Windows builds is a bitch and for most of my own stuff, I require software that works on both. On vaguely POSIX respecting systems, it’s not that bad. One of these days I really need to work on setting up a linux or *bsd to windows cross compile.

One positive thing to come out of tinkering with a library (Cassius) for embedding programming languages. I’ve learned that Lua not only combines most of the features I like about JavaScript with a non CBF syntax, it also is a hell of a lot easier to build/embed then existing JavaScript engines o/. For how much I like the Curly Brace Family versus the irk of embedding stuff, Lua is arguably the better choice in the trade off.

Two ways that I’ve collected so many languages, one is trying to use the tool most appropriate for what I need done, the other is I’m used to juggling between languages rapidly. Whatever the problem calls for and limits implementation headaches, rather than whatever is the ‘mentally’ convienant language of the moment. That’s also some what a necessity of helping people here or there, can’t quite say, “Sorry, brains in C mode, shove your PHP up your arse”, now can I? lol.

Now if only the study of spoken languages were as trivial :-/.

Hmm, can’t sleep. Don’t really feel like coding or gaming. Hmm, maybe a deck of cards…