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.

Today is my two year anniversary with OSi, and how do they reward me? They give me a very busy day and another night of working from home. I’m so lucky. Not only have I had to work the past two nights but I get to do it again tonight. All I’ve got to say is that my raise better come shortly. The end of year bonus that I got is not going to cover it!

Peter Gibbons: Lumbergh’s gonna have me work on Saturday. I can tell already. I’m gonna end up doin’ it, because, uh…
[nods]
Peter Gibbons: because I’m a big pussy… which is why I work at Initech to begin with.
Michael Bolton: Uh, yeah, well, I work at Initech and I don’t consider myself a pussy, OK?
Samir: Yes, I am also not a pussy.

I used my second sick day of the year today. I was up most of the night with various symptoms of a cold or flu. I took a couple of Tylenol PM’s and finally slept until around noon today. I am starting to feel much better. Hopefully I have more to write about tomorrow. I need to kick this before the weekend starts…

Last night we took Dominique and Bianca to the Big Brothers & Big Sisters Holiday Party. They had food provided by Chili’s, all sorts of games to play, a talent show, and a DJ to dance along to. I think the kids liked dancing the best, I enjoyed the free food! :)

After dropping them off later in the night, I attempted to make brownies for our work potluck lunch today. After making the batter and putting into a large pan, I read the cooking times and realized that it would depend on using a 8×8 or 9×9 pan. The pan I used must have been 13×9, so I just sort of winged it from there. They turned out to be pretty thin, but they sure do taste good!

I got a present from work yesterday as well, a new 19 inch flat panel monitor. I guess it was finally my turn to be upgraded from the bulky CRT. This just makes me wish that I had one of these at home…

I had a busy and short day of work on Friday. The company closed 4:30 so that everyone could make it out to the holiday party by 7. Everyone started off at the Buddha Bar on “Martini Corner” for drinks and appetizers. They also gave away some gifts using a raffle format. I won one of the better prizes of the night, $100 cash! Once our private party ended at 9, many of us headed across the street to the Velvet Dog, which I spent most of my winnings buying everyone’s drinks. It was a great night out with my co-workers!

I was a little slow to get up on Saturday, but by early afternoon I was ready to get some lunch. We had a slight problem though, our car was still at Martini Corner. So we caught the bus and then walked a few blocks to the car. From there we headed out on our day full of shopping. I think it’s pretty safe to say that we finished over 75% of our shopping in one day, mostly at two or three different stores. Once we were both exhausted, we headed over to Cupini’s to pick up dinner. We watched a couple of movies and ate some great food that we finally got a chance to try. I think we will definitely be heading back there sometime soon!

Sunday we had to throw on many layers of clothes and head out to Arrowhead to tailgate for the Chiefs game. We had a group of 25 people from work all heading out to the game. We partied in the lots for a couple of hours, and had a catered brunch as part of our package. The game was a good one, despite the freezing temperatures. We had to leave a little early so that I could make it to my hockey game, which we finally won. As a note for those of you coming out to KC for the Bengals and Chiefs game, it is going to be hideously cold. I’ve added these items to my list of potential items to take to the game:

• Piece of carpet to stand on
• Heated and padded seat cushion
• More socks
• Lots more alcohol (a must)

I went from my worst fantasy football week to my best. I am back on a winning streak after this weeks games. I went undefeated winning all three games fairly easily. I had the highest point total in one league and the second highest total in the other two! My current overall record is now 22-11, and I’ve clenched a playoff spot in one of the leagues.

Work has been pretty busy lately. We have finally added another employee to our QA team, so I’ve been trying to help get him up to speed with everything. It will take some time, but I think he is going to be a much better addition compared to the last employee we had. Once he gets going I will be completely taking over version control and will be back on test automation. I cannot wait to stop testing bug fixes!

Last night Kim went to some sort of purse making party with the girls (although rumor has it that Mike Pavia might have gone as well). I stayed home and started scanning more ticket stubs for my show database. Click on some of the recent shows to see the scans! Hopefully I’ll get everything scanned before the end of the year.