That’s right. August 1

At work, this is the start of the company’s new fiscal year.

Happy FY03!

For those of you who are still confused, companys will often start their fiscal years off-cycle from the calendar year. In my case, instead of tracking the company’s budget from January 1 to December 31, it tracks its budget from August 1 to July 31.

When you look at our peak season, and revenue periods, this makes more sense.

But regardless, the new fiscal year always brings my Annul raise, and a new budget to spend.
The other side of the coin, I now have more performance objectives to fulfill before next year comes.

This week was a down week in terms of my job, as there was pressure on several fronts of a particular product that I support.

The toughest thing about my job is that I am a single technical point of contact for this particualr product. And that means that I have to evaluate all things that happen to this product, to assure its technical integrity.

So I have to contend with Developers who want to add new features, on the fly, becuase they are cool.
I have to contend with Marketing, who wants to promote features of this product that do not exist.
And I have to contend with Technical Support who has to deal with all the problems that are created or ignored by the developers.

So to help the world understand, I’ve summarized this whole complex equasion into one value: Money
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Ah, the Persieds.

I celebrate this day more then my own Birthday (“Sarge” can attest to that.)

Every August 11 and 12, the Earth passes through the tail of the Swift-Tuttle comet, and a very reliable meteor shower occurs.

I spent the morning of the 13th enjoying the last vestiges of said shower. I attempt to go every year with moderate success.

The best part is, I know this GREAT spot to star watch outside the Tucson City Limits (relatively low desert wildlife, but close enough to Civilization that the guests I bring along don’t get the screaming heebie-jeebies.)

The meteor count was low. But what we did see, was worth the trip.

Next year, I’ll take a group out on the 11th, it will be much more better-er.

One more time!

Here are the search results for JeremyGilby.com. These are the top 20 search strings used in the various search engines which found JeremyGilby.com, for the month of July.

Some make some sense, this month, some just boggle the mind.
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I guess I can find entertainment wherever I want.

Some doom has come down the pike. The Cubicle Jungle wants to put an iMac on my desk.

An iMac? I work for a living, I don’t play well with simple Macintoshes with an operating system more shallow then some former president’s morals.

I’m a geek! Not a userfriendly case!

Anyways, I need to make room on my desk for this “thing” so I asked my boss what model we were getting.
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Ugh.

I’m writing this update from a MAC.

I feel dirty.

The training itself is well done, the material is alright.

But Mac OS X. Yeah, they claim its UNIX, but I don’t know what Apple is smoking. It’s Mac with a more robust back end.

A Command Line does not a UNIX machine make.

More to come.

Mac Training Day 2 of 3

Odd thing.

I’ve heard horror stories about Windows users who were “converted” to Macintosh, and never looked back.

Deep down inside, I feared that even I (The Enemy of Macintosh Computers around the world) would have some kind of change of heart.

Nope. Not a chance.

Yeah, its cool that OS X has a Unix Backend (it isn’t the greatest back end, but its nothing like the previous Mac OSes (ie. < 9 )). But DAMN, how much fluff does a user need?
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Mac Training: Day 3 of 3
Ah, the fun of being a geek.

I write this entry from a second Macintosh Aquarium on our Cubicle Jungle Network, actually, this is from my co-worker Marshall’s training station.

You see, I’m logged in, from MY computer, using HIS account, to access this webbased form from his computer’s resources.

All from the command line.

Just wait till he finds out.
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Well, Mac training is officially over.

The spoils of ths encounter number in the few:

• A Certificate, certifying that Jeremy R. Gilby completed training in MAC OS X Basics Administration
  (OxyMoron, yes?)
• A Mac OS 10.1 Desk Lamp on my Desk.
• Oh yes, and an entirely unsnazzy Apple Training pen that will probably run out of ink tommorow.
• And a Discount to become Certifiable (or is that Certified?) in Mac OS X

Yay.

Whatever shall I do to achieve this level of excellence again?

I think the saddest part to this story is, everyone at work thinks I like Macintosh now.

They could not be more wrong.