The past two days have been my first experience working from home and I must say that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. When we make the move to Denver I’ll be doing this full time for at least a couple of months. And you know I actually was working since this post is coming so late in the day. My day is just about over though. Happy Friday!

This just in, my official job title is now “Software Quality Engineer 2.” Too bad they gave me a bunch of business cards that just say “Quality Assurance” on them. I guess I better order some new ones. In addition to the title I finally got my long awaited raise this morning. Ever since we first heard of our company’s buyout we were told that our salaries would be evaluated to make sure that they are on par with the area norm. I will say that the raise I got was more than the other two previous raises put together, but I’m still a decent amount below the average according to salary.com. I guess it’s better than nothing though. Now if I could only get out of here a little early to start the celebration! Good weekend to you all.

As bad as the weather is outside (over 100 degrees today not taking into account the humidity), I think the “weather” in our office is worse. Upon arriving at work the past couple of weeks, I would open my office door and immediately be hit with a wall of hot, still, nasty air. After leaving the door open for a little while, the air from the hall would mix and it would be comfortable at my desk. A few of us notified the administration of the problem and it was supposedly fixed yesterday.

I will admit that I didn’t have that wall of air when opening my office door this morning, so they must have done something. The problem now is that it is becoming too cold. I saw one of the members of the management team walk by, in route to his office, with a jacket on. My fingers are actually becoming numb while typing this, and the only solution I’ve found so far has been to sit on them and warm them up. Slight problem though, it’s hard to type while sitting on your hands though.

We just flipped the switch on the thermostat to “increase” from the “decrease” position. Hopefully we’ll be at a happy medium soon. If not I’ll have to consider bringing my ski gloves to work with me each day.

My apologies for the lack of updates today but we have entered “crisis mode” with one of our clients. They have a list of bugs that they want fixed and they want it done now!

Um… I’m gonna need you to go ahead and come in tomorrow. So if you could be here around 9:00, that would be great. Mm-kay? Oh, oh, and I almost forgot. Uh, I’m also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too, ‘kay? We, um, lost some people this week and uh, we need to sort of play catch-up. Thanks.

Update: It’s past 7 and I’m still here. Where’s my overtime pay??

Things have been very busy around here. Not only do we have our move to deal with, but I also have my company’s move as well. Our office isn’t physically moving anywhere but we are starting the conversion process to Harris. Yesterday we had another full staff meeting to discuss the mound of paperwork that we now have to fill out and turn in by the end of the week. We’ve got the works: W-4’s, direct deposit setup, pay schedule, confidentiality agreements, conflict of interest, substance abuse policy, etc. I’m going to need an extra day this week just to get through it all.

Last night we brought over more things in the kitchen from the apartment to the house. Now we should actually be able to eat something besides pizza for dinner. I’d love to eat pizza everyday but I think Kim is getting tired of it. That or she is becoming brainwashed, because I think she was asking about specials at Papa John’s for tonight. Welcome to the world of pizza addiction, population two.

Our office is expanding once again and eventually we will occupy all the remaining space on the third floor. Before that could happen we had to listen as some construction workers tore down the wall that used to separate where I sit now and where our future space will be. I thought once the wall was down the noise would cease, but this is not the case.

We are now forced to listen to these construction workers and their constant loud country music. I think I speak for everyone else who currently has their office door closed when I say that these guys have got to go. Occasionally after lunch they’ll mix it up and throw on some good old class rock and I’m hoping that today is one of those days. If not, I may have to watermelon crawl over there and turn down that stupid radio! I’ve heard enough about Johnny and his dad going fishing. Enough!

It’s not that I don’t like country music. It’s that I hate everything about it. :) Although I have become a little more understanding since it seems every time I’m back in Cincinnati all my family listens to is country, well that and a little O.A.R. My dad used to be hater, like me, but somehow my brother convinced him to give it a try. One thing led to another and now no family gathering is complete without some guy complaining about his wife, dog, or pickup.

We had a meeting this morning with an HR representative from our new parent company. I should have known that this meeting wasn’t going to be beneficial once I found out the representative is a graduate from Xavier (GO CATS). I was hoping to have the answers to all of my questions like how many vacation days do we get? What will my new salary be? What about holidays? Etc. Instead we got a generic overview of how the company works and what benefits they offer versus what we currently have. Basically everything that was said was pretty much a given.

Officially the acquisition is not final and won’t be for another week or two. At that point we will get some brochures and paperwork to fill out, but from the sounds of it still will not know how it truly affects us. It will not be until shortly before we merge into their benefits system that we will understand how things will be changing. At the earliest this is scheduled to happen on July 1st. Until then I guess nothing will be changing here at the office, which is both good and bad.

I’m happy with the way things currently are/were here but as I mentioned earlier I’m excited to see how certain things can be better when working for a much larger company. At the same time things could be terrible after we merge into their system and therefore I should be thankful that I get a few more months of things they way they currently are. I think I just gave myself a headache…

Things have started to slow down again, at least back to a somewhat manageable pace. Here’s a list of things that I’ve been doing recently along with some random finds:

• “My son and his girlfriend live in Kansas City. A group of 30 family and friends went out for the game on New Year’s Day. Here is one of the many shots that were taken. The whole city knows the ‘Bengals Growl’ because we sang it where ever we went! Who-Dey!” Check it out, our story is on bengals.com (second one down).
• UMRSigEp.com is now live, although I’m still waiting on content in a few places. As a reminder, I’m always looking for new and exciting website projects! Perhaps I’ll even release edpaffjr.com v2 sometime soon.
• A link to my blog has been spotted on the finance.google.com page for Harris. At least one of my fellow coworkers has already found my site. I guess I better watch what I write. :)
• TrustEdDesigns.com now points to this website. In the future I’m hoping to put up a separate page for all of my web design stuff. For now, welcome to TrustEd Designs!

One reason that work has been so busy lately is that our company has recently been acquired by Harris. It’s a case of “if you can’t beat them, join them,” since we had previously been picking away at their client list. Now we’ll have the opportunity to convert all of their broadcast clients to our software. That means busy times for us in the very near future, and it has already somewhat started.

We’ve been promised that we won’t lose our small company feel, even though we are now among 13,000+ other employees of Harris. I hope this remains to be true, but at the same time I’m pretty excited to eventually have a big company benefits package. Only time will tell, I guess.

Other links:
Lee’s Summit company will sell for $32M - Kansas City Business Journal
Harris Acquires Traffic Vendor - Broadcasting & Cable

I just sat in an hour and a half long meeting about the sales system that my company now sells. Basically, salespeople at every local television station use this software (or something similar) to sell commercial breaks to potential advertisers. It then hit me that the revenue brought in from these commercials eventually is what makes up my paycheck, since the television stations are mostly the ones who buy our software.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, I don’t think I’ve watched a commercial in months! Ever since I bought a ReplayTV box a couple of years ago, we have only watched recorded TV shows. Even when we watch the news in the morning, we watch it delayed so we can start at the beginning, which we often miss by ten minutes or more. I know there are tons of people (myself included) who are in love with DVR technology, but I hope it doesn’t catch on too much, at least not until I find myself at another job.