New job

As some of you that follow my blog have inferred from my posts, I have a new job. I started with alwaysBEthere, Inc. as Director of Technology. alwaysBEthere was a client of mine for several years, and I was offered a full time job. Switching from a contractor (I was a contractor for over 5 1/2 years) to an employee again wasn't that hard for me. As part of joining the company, I made it a requirement that I be able to work for home, so that part didn't change. The company is headquartered in Minneapolis with a small office here in San Diego. So while I have the option of going into our office, I only do it now and again; I find that I can get much more work done at home without having to commute.

So what do I do? I don't have much of a clue on a day to day basis! I handle all kinds of requests ranging from our internal IT to working on projects that could affects customers. Now that I'm six months into it, I feel like I'm finally getting a handle on part of my job.

What will the next six months bring? I don't know. Do I have any regrets about not being self employed anymore? Not really. I didn't become self-employed out of choice, but out of necessity (the last company I was with didn't have any work for me and frankly, I was bored, so we parted on good terms). I stayed a contractor because I was doing well and didn't think I could find a job with as much flexibility as I had. I like what I'm doing and it presents much different challenges from when I was self-employed. As long as I'm challenged and feel like I'm accomplishing something, I think I'll be happy.

Paperless 1.0 Shipped

Mariner Paperless (the new name for ReceiptWallet) 1.0 shipped last week! I'm quite happy to see ReceiptWallet moving forward. While this 1.0 version of Paperless has mostly cosmetic changes, I'm sure that more changes will be coming soon.

There is so much that can be done, I just didn't have enough time to dedicate to it.

Congratulations, Mariner!

My wife, the plumber

On Friday, I decided to work on our irrigation system as I had a few more things to finish up since our main plumbing problem of last month. While I was finishing the plumbing, I decided to replace the fill valve for our pool with an electronically controlled, sprinkler valve. I already had an anti-siphon device, so I just needed the valve. The old valve leaked and I had to manually remember to shut it off.

I went to unscrew the old valve and as I was doing it, the valve started turning where it shouldn't. I then realized that I had a problem. Oh no, another call to a plumber. I called my dad and he said to call my brother-in-law who had tools to do plumbing work. My brother-in-law, Chris, came over and tried to solder a cap in the line. Chris is an attorney, not a plumber, so he did his best. Unfortunately his work didn't hold and I was all set to call a plumber when my wife, Janessa, said that she wanted to take a crack at it. She does jewelry work and has soldered before. We left her alone and she soldered away. When I came back, she had finished the first joint and then started on the second joint. She finished, when tested it and bingo, it worked!

The only reason I hesitated in letting her take a crack at it in the first place is that she had never worked with plumbing or pipes before. However, soldering is soldering. I shouldn't have doubted her skills. Janessa might reject her soldering as now I can task her with tricky household maintenance work :-).

New Math

I've gotten a bit fed up with our local paper in that the content is decreasing very rapidly (the quality of the content was always questionable). We decided today that we'd goto Sunday only if it was significantly cheaper. I called and was told that Sunday only was $9/month; we currently pay $11.25/month for every day. I said that I wanted to cancel, so the lady on the phone said that we could get Friday-Sunday for $6/month. Hmmm, so for $3 less per month, we get 2 more days than Sunday alone? I don't get it, but decided we'll go for it for awhile.

Our dog will probably be bummed about this as he gets the paper every morning. We'll just have to throw one out there for him to bring back.