I'm here; just workish.
May. 17th, 2003 02:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tugrikFigured I'd give an update because I've not in a good while.
Life on the whole is fine. Work's busier than heck, but I'm honestly having a blast doing it. After two years at this place I'm finally in the thick of what I enjoy best about my career: enterprise-level network design. Without breaching NDA's I can say that we're doing the foundation-laying in our network to take it to something that supports literally millions of users. It's all being done in a "E-911 level of services" way: as in, something that simply can't go down. N+1 and beyond on everything. Infrastructure bliss.
The downside is of course the rest of life suffers a bit. I'm spending more and more of my time in the headspace of this layout instead of emailing, jouranalling, gameplaying or mucking. Detached from the usual hangouts, if you will. Oh, don't worry too much for me. I still only work maybe 50-55hr/week tops. (Irony point: I'm typing this from my office, as I'm in on a Saturday to take care of an off-hours upgrade) The actual time spent is tons more relaxing than the 90+hr/weeks of my dotcom past. Instead, it's the amount of time spent in the mindset that matters when it comes to how it affects my social life. This kind of concentration is good for the soul, at least for me.
My current grump is one of finances. In a way I'm lucky that I'm so tied up with the design work -- it keps me from being too upset or growly about the money situation. It's a pit I dug with my own hands and tools, so I've got nobody to blame but myself. The way out is in progress and not too difficult to reach; it's just being terribly annoying at the moment, and making for a sucky spring. To avoid boring folks with the details, the quick gloss over is this: too many vehicle payments plus vacation/trip/gadget-based creditcard irresponsibility. The equipment for the bike trips of this year and last, the replacement of the van with the new Element, and the maintanence/insurance/payments on both bikes combine to having an output/input ratio of about 95% right now. I'm lucky I'm in the pay-bracket that I am and that 5% is something that keeps me fed, clothed, and gassed up to go to work. I'm feeling pissed off at myself for being irresponsible enough to let it get to this state. It happens.
The way out involves ditching a bike and cleaning up the fiscal lifestyle -- overly much for at least a season or two. Both are in progress. The biggest issue is that it affects two major and a number of minor projects I'd hoped to be doing this year. The minor ones are just the various biking trips I'd hoped to take. Most I still can; I just need to scale back. The major projects, though, are what's making me tail-lashy for a bit: Anthrocon and Burning Man. I may have to attend one and not the other, or in worst-case, neither.
BurningMan is just something I want to return to after having missed last year. I could miss it again without really feeling burnt, but I would indeed be disappointed. The true problem is that my waffling on being able to is not affecting just me -- it's also affecting friends who want to go with me. I need to nail this one down soon. BurningMan is purely a fiscal choice: ticket, gas and food. Most of the infrastructure I already have. It's later in the season (end of August) so I have more time to make good on the money for it.
Anthrocon is about not wanting to disappoint friends. Revar and I have been invited to attend to do the photography work, just as we do at FC. The con staff, wanting us to attend, has given us free memberships, free rooms, and assistance with the pricey proposition of shipping all the photo-gear across country (well, the last part was mentioned but not confirmed. I need to get that confirmed, as that's a show-stopper issue.) The only things Revs and I need to do to attend are buy tickets, have expenses-money together, and have time off. The first two I'm having problems with, as stated above. It's going to be $640 to get me there (I take two seats, yay for airline policies vs. passenger size). The last one Revar has a problem with: Rev's job mixed in with family obligations having chewed much time-off leaves no real days free. You have to spend half a day+ flying and dinking around airports each way, so Revs will need to take at least two days off to have an enjoyable con. And even then, we are getting the rooms and such becuase we're going to be working the con. FC was two solid 8 hour days doing photowork; it was harder than we thought! AC supposedly has even more costume folks. I can forsee getting off the plane, setting up, taking pictures, breaking down, and having to go right back to the plane home. In addition I need to re-start the insurance on my camera gear. There's no way I want to ship >$5k of camera gear across the country without having it protected.
Looking at the money (on my side), time (on Revar's side) and con-responsibilities side... it's a hard sell in my mind, really. I want to do it, yes! It'd feel good to help out my friends who run Anthrocon -- and to simply see a convention on the other side of the country for the first time since 1993. Even with the long work-sessions I should have some basic time to hang out with folks. But the expense, the extra work post-con for picture processing and distribution, the cross-crountry flights I truely dread and the worries of schlepping equipment around through FedEx... they all really push back at me. About 3 times now I've come inches from telling Points and the other Anthrocon nice folks that I really can't in good faith pull this off. I'm still only equipped/skilled for local shoots that I can drive to.
If I say "No", it's a world of worry off my back. I can start saving pennies for B'Man and concentrate on the planning for late August. It will also mean that Revar won't have to worry about the extra days off or all the server-work and photo-work post-con. However I'll feel like I've truely failed my AC-running friends... and the fondly-thought-of Ruby who I've not seen in many years (she might attend AC).
If I say "Yes" it's going to take me selling off something to get the AC tickets before the prices go up and a good bit of stress until it's over and the post-processing work is done. I need to decide this week, as dragging it on undecided is the worst path to choose of them all.
Life on the whole is fine. Work's busier than heck, but I'm honestly having a blast doing it. After two years at this place I'm finally in the thick of what I enjoy best about my career: enterprise-level network design. Without breaching NDA's I can say that we're doing the foundation-laying in our network to take it to something that supports literally millions of users. It's all being done in a "E-911 level of services" way: as in, something that simply can't go down. N+1 and beyond on everything. Infrastructure bliss.
The downside is of course the rest of life suffers a bit. I'm spending more and more of my time in the headspace of this layout instead of emailing, jouranalling, gameplaying or mucking. Detached from the usual hangouts, if you will. Oh, don't worry too much for me. I still only work maybe 50-55hr/week tops. (Irony point: I'm typing this from my office, as I'm in on a Saturday to take care of an off-hours upgrade) The actual time spent is tons more relaxing than the 90+hr/weeks of my dotcom past. Instead, it's the amount of time spent in the mindset that matters when it comes to how it affects my social life. This kind of concentration is good for the soul, at least for me.
My current grump is one of finances. In a way I'm lucky that I'm so tied up with the design work -- it keps me from being too upset or growly about the money situation. It's a pit I dug with my own hands and tools, so I've got nobody to blame but myself. The way out is in progress and not too difficult to reach; it's just being terribly annoying at the moment, and making for a sucky spring. To avoid boring folks with the details, the quick gloss over is this: too many vehicle payments plus vacation/trip/gadget-based creditcard irresponsibility. The equipment for the bike trips of this year and last, the replacement of the van with the new Element, and the maintanence/insurance/payments on both bikes combine to having an output/input ratio of about 95% right now. I'm lucky I'm in the pay-bracket that I am and that 5% is something that keeps me fed, clothed, and gassed up to go to work. I'm feeling pissed off at myself for being irresponsible enough to let it get to this state. It happens.
The way out involves ditching a bike and cleaning up the fiscal lifestyle -- overly much for at least a season or two. Both are in progress. The biggest issue is that it affects two major and a number of minor projects I'd hoped to be doing this year. The minor ones are just the various biking trips I'd hoped to take. Most I still can; I just need to scale back. The major projects, though, are what's making me tail-lashy for a bit: Anthrocon and Burning Man. I may have to attend one and not the other, or in worst-case, neither.
BurningMan is just something I want to return to after having missed last year. I could miss it again without really feeling burnt, but I would indeed be disappointed. The true problem is that my waffling on being able to is not affecting just me -- it's also affecting friends who want to go with me. I need to nail this one down soon. BurningMan is purely a fiscal choice: ticket, gas and food. Most of the infrastructure I already have. It's later in the season (end of August) so I have more time to make good on the money for it.
Anthrocon is about not wanting to disappoint friends. Revar and I have been invited to attend to do the photography work, just as we do at FC. The con staff, wanting us to attend, has given us free memberships, free rooms, and assistance with the pricey proposition of shipping all the photo-gear across country (well, the last part was mentioned but not confirmed. I need to get that confirmed, as that's a show-stopper issue.) The only things Revs and I need to do to attend are buy tickets, have expenses-money together, and have time off. The first two I'm having problems with, as stated above. It's going to be $640 to get me there (I take two seats, yay for airline policies vs. passenger size). The last one Revar has a problem with: Rev's job mixed in with family obligations having chewed much time-off leaves no real days free. You have to spend half a day+ flying and dinking around airports each way, so Revs will need to take at least two days off to have an enjoyable con. And even then, we are getting the rooms and such becuase we're going to be working the con. FC was two solid 8 hour days doing photowork; it was harder than we thought! AC supposedly has even more costume folks. I can forsee getting off the plane, setting up, taking pictures, breaking down, and having to go right back to the plane home. In addition I need to re-start the insurance on my camera gear. There's no way I want to ship >$5k of camera gear across the country without having it protected.
Looking at the money (on my side), time (on Revar's side) and con-responsibilities side... it's a hard sell in my mind, really. I want to do it, yes! It'd feel good to help out my friends who run Anthrocon -- and to simply see a convention on the other side of the country for the first time since 1993. Even with the long work-sessions I should have some basic time to hang out with folks. But the expense, the extra work post-con for picture processing and distribution, the cross-crountry flights I truely dread and the worries of schlepping equipment around through FedEx... they all really push back at me. About 3 times now I've come inches from telling Points and the other Anthrocon nice folks that I really can't in good faith pull this off. I'm still only equipped/skilled for local shoots that I can drive to.
If I say "No", it's a world of worry off my back. I can start saving pennies for B'Man and concentrate on the planning for late August. It will also mean that Revar won't have to worry about the extra days off or all the server-work and photo-work post-con. However I'll feel like I've truely failed my AC-running friends... and the fondly-thought-of Ruby who I've not seen in many years (she might attend AC).
If I say "Yes" it's going to take me selling off something to get the AC tickets before the prices go up and a good bit of stress until it's over and the post-processing work is done. I need to decide this week, as dragging it on undecided is the worst path to choose of them all.
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no subject
Date: 2003-05-17 03:50 pm (UTC)(No pressure or anything! Hee!)
no subject
Date: 2003-05-17 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-05-18 12:01 am (UTC)No worries from this end.