29 August 2001
Last year: I have the coolest friends in the universe.
I had a frustrating day at work yesterday. I'm working on converting an application from DOS to WinCE, and I discovered a very long and complicated function that simply wouldn't convert - I had to write it all over from scratch.
Which meant that I had to do more than understand the purpose of the function - I had to deconstruct it and understand exactly what it did and how it did it. In the process, I discovered that the original code was, to say the least, terrible. It took me most of the day to deconstruct the function and re-write it.
And then I spent the last hour of the day trying to convince it that it really should compile and link. It refused stubbornly. I finally gave up and left for my hair appointment, thinking that I would come back when the appointment was over and keep plugging away. (Did I mention there's a tight deadline for this project?)
But the hair appointment took longer than I'd thought, and just as she was finishing up... I was, in fact, reaching for my glasses to put them back on when my cell phone rang. The caller ID said it was K.T.
I answered with dread in my heart - K.T. had taken her cat Sandi to the vet earlier that day for some bloodwork to determine why Sandi had lost 2/3 of her weight in the past four months. (Sandi desperately needed to lose weight, but not quite that much, and not nearly that fast). I feared the worst.
I'm not sure if the news K.T. had for me was better or worse. The recent cuts at Gateway had hit Kevin's call center - both call centers in the area have been closed, and all the employees laid off.
It put my bad day in perspective.
Kevin got a very generous severance package - for the next sixty days, he's still considered a Gateway employee, with full pay and benefits. And there's some sort of contract they gave him that if he signs it, will give him an additional thirty days of pay. They're going to have their lawyer look over the contract before they sign, which sounded like a good idea to me.
After Matt got home from playing basketball, we went down and took them out to dinner. (I can remember when I got laid off, all I wanted to do was get out of the house.) They were still a little shocky for most of the evening.
If you have a lead on any jobs, please let me know, and I'll pass it on. Location isn't a limiting factor; as much as I'd like for them to stay in the area, the job market was spread pretty thin before, and 750 new job seekers isn't going to help matters any.
So. I'm going to go get to work on my project so I can make sure to keep my job, since I'm more replaceable than ever, now.
Word of the Day:
visceral - felt in or as if in the viscera; not intellectual - instinctive; of or relating to the viscera
Currently Reading:
- nothing
Current Projects:
- drawing
- Hall stuff
- garden