Kodiak's Korner

I’m looking at my blog and realizing that I haven’t posted anything since August. I am terrible about this whole blogging thing—every time I get going and I think I’m going to start blogging semi-religiously I stop after one or two posts.

A lot has changed since my last post. The most significant thing probably being that I have a new job–and it’s kind of funny how it happened.

As many of my loyal readers know (OK, nobody reads this, but what the hell, it sounds good) I was having a really rough year last year at work. With a never-ending project that changed every other minute, a horrible performance review because I could not keep up with said project, and the inability to take vacation time until the project was complete, I decided that it was time to get out. I posted my resume on Monster and a couple of other sites and, of course, got tons of recruiters offering me temporary positions in cities I’ve never seen doing jobs I’ve never done. A couple of decent prospects did emerge, though—one job with a small software company in Rochester and another at the U of R. At the same time, my department was looking for, and hired, a new manager because my old boss decided that she wanted to step out of the managerial role she was in and took over an open instructional developer position.

Unfortunately the U of R position never went anywhere. The recruiter said they were having trouble securing funding for it, and I guess it kind of fizzled. Too bad, because that one sounded really good. While I was burning up vacation time at the beginning of July (after being unceremoniously removed from the never-ending project, which a little bird (i.e. my former no-longer-a-manger boss) told me last week still isn’t finished) I got a phone interview with the small software company. It went well, but I wasn’t sure it was the right fit for me. Nonetheless they asked me for an in-person interview and I agreed. In the meantime my new boss started. I had a “get to know each other” meeting with her the day before that interview and my whole outlook on my then-current job changed.

I was never really confident that I’d like the job for which I was about to interview, so I went into the interview with my mind pretty much already made up that I wouldn’t accept an offer if they made one. I left even more convinced of that. As luck would have it, they made an offer a few days later. Although they offered me more than I was making at NTID, it wasn’t that much more and it came with a lot less benefits, so I naturally declined.

Things were going pretty well at NTID when I got a call out of the blue from a contact in RIT’s Information Technology Services department. He had just posted a job and he wanted me to take a look. I had already seen the posting but decided not to apply because my other attempts at applying for jobs in ITS went nowhere. After talking with Chris I reconsidered. After a few rounds of interviews I received an offer, which I accepted (more money, bigger responsibilities that are more in-line with my interests, plus I get to keep all the benefits I’d accumulated at NTID—why wouldn’t I).

So I am now a Senior Programmer/Analyst with ITS’s Enterprise Web Services group. I am essentially responsible for all of the software that powers our web environment—from Apache and the PHP interpreter down to the individual PHP apps that people use to maintain their sites. I also support the users by managing accounts and responding to help tickets and I will soon assume some administrative duties for RIT’s Red Dot content management system implementation. I also occasionally get to climb up to the roof of campus buildings to find ideal locations for new webcam installations. So far its going well—every day I am extremely busy and I am constantly juggling a ton of small jobs at once, but at the end of the day most of those jobs are done and I start fresh the next day.

My new workgroup is cool too—everyone is friendly and the dynamic is much different than at NTID. People joke around and prank each other all the time and people actually go out to lunch together and socialize outside of the office. It definitely lifts the stress that comes with the amount of work that there is to be done. That kind of rapport was largely missing from NTID.

So, I think I’ll stick around. Of course, Chris told me that I can leave at anytime—so long as it is after he does—so I guess I don’t get a choice in the matter!

A stupid error message I just experienced in Dreamweaver:

Driving through town earlier today I noticed a new box on one of the traffic lights near my house. The box, mounted on above the road, had three antennae coming out of it. As I continued to drive I noticed these boxes on several traffic lights in the city as well as one on a telephone pole near the intersection of South Clinton and Westfall Roads.

After a bit of research I confirmed my suspicions that these boxes are, in fact, WiFi transceivers. Evidently (though the information is difficult to find), Frontier Telephone, in connection with Monroe County and the City of Rochester has rolled out an urban WiFi network. Information is surprisingly spotty, but according to these maps (all PDFs) [Rochester], [Greece], [Pittsford]) found on News 10 NBC’s site, the network covers most of downtown and the “trendy” areas of the city (Park/East/Monroe, South Wedge), a chunk of Greece around Long Pond Road roughly stretching from Elmgrove to Mt. Read and from Ridge Road to Latta Road, and in the Monroe/Clover/French Road section of Pittsford as well as the village.

Free access is available downtown, at Pittsford Plaza, The Mall at Greece Ridge, and Ridgemont Plaza, and in much of the Village of Pittsford according to the maps. In other areas users can purchase prepaid access “cards” online for time in 1 hour, 1 day, 7 day, or 30 day blocks of continuous access time for as little as $1 a day. Existing Frontier High-Speed Internet customers can add the Wireless service to their existing service for about $10/month.

Despite the potential impact this project could have, prior to the research I did to write this post I have seen nothing about it other than speculation and long-term guesstimates. Although the news item on the county’s website fails to include a date, the original announcement appears to have been made on February 12th. At that time Channel 10 reported that the system was already functional in Pittsford and Greece and that the Rochester system should be available “within days.” Frontier apparently sunk $3 million into the project so far, and Maggie hopes to continue working with Frontier and the local municipalities to expand the service to include all Monroe County residents. As of this post the Frontier Citywide Wireless Internet site lists the airport as the only access point in New York state.

I’m curious about the service now. How’s the speed and security? If anyone has used it, let me know.

Why is it that, when I run into someone I know who is deaf while I am at the gym or out walking or whatever, I have to stop my iPod to have a conversation, but I work I can be on the phone having a spoken conversation with one person while having a second one, in sign, at the same time. It seems that the latter should be more difficult given that I have to actively pay attention to two things at once, yet I find the “background noise” of the iPod more distracting.

I saw a woolly bear today with very little black on it.  If you believe the lore, well…