Joan Baldridge

I have a new job!

2007-07-18T17:11:19Z

To get it out of the way right now, a brand-new disclaimer!

The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy.com Software, Inc.

That's going on the profile eventually, but since I'm linking to here from one of my work training web pages, I should probably put this in the entry.

I'm all excited! I'm having all kinds of fun! We'll be playing with websites later to figure out how to use them; we're playing with the training resources and having a ball. (White and orange beach ball, to be specific.)

Been a while, eh?

2007-05-09T23:59:30Z

I went from supervising to inheriting the position of Keeper of the Interviewer Stats. I was only supposed to do that part-time, but there was a little problem. It meant hacking out a database to cover those things, because my predecessor was keeping things in a scary series of spreadsheets. (The less you know about them, the better. Trust me.) It's closer to done than it was, but there's still some work to do before it's up at full functionality.

I'm very pleased with it, though. They had a choice of asking one of their Official Developers to do it at mondo bucks an hour, or asking me to do it at my call center supervisor rate. Hmm. I'm amazed it's come out so well, and I'm amazed at how much I've learned about this thing in the process. I won't be half so afraid the next time I go to set up something like this.

Also in the middle of all this, I became senior supervisor on my team due to the rest of the team being transferred to other positions or leaving the workplace. It was chaos. After a few months I wound up in an administrative assistant position, where I push spreadsheets and do odd (sometimes very odd!) jobs for the assortment of managers who get to boss me around. :)

Training! At long last!

2006-04-08T08:35:29Z

Work has been talking about making me a supervisor who can oversee the entire process of surveying for some time now. Over the past few weeks, I've been picking up bits and pieces here and there, to supplement the training I had a year ago (and mostly forgot).

My team leader says that as soon as I've gone through a whole shift working the computer end of things, I'll be good to go running jobs. I'll still need to ask for help from time to time, but I'm a quick study and I'll be able to handle it.

Hooray!

Biplane dinosaurs!

2006-01-11T04:53:42Z

My father keeps talking about breeding chickens for scaliness and other traits, to try to go for a modern dinosaur.

Wouldn't one of these be fun to breed for? I might start with an Egyptian Fayoumis and a Black Langshan.

Progression...

2005-12-20T10:00:05Z

I seem to be building a reputation for computer know-how at work. I'm still not at all comfortable with the dialer, but I had fun building myself some funnels when I was attempting to dial X---- late that one evening. I am flattered, and no little amazed, when people turn to me with computer issues and trust me to fix them. Word has evidently trickled up to Management that I am an Internet Person; Management had me looking up some comparison things over the weekend recently. I did wind up staying a little late on Sunday to tidy everything up and send it off with ribbons on (well, not really, just not quite as untidy as it could have been, given that it was a lot of stuff hauled up from Google and Craigslist and anywhere that I thought someone looking for a job would be searching), but it was well-received.

I have been cautioned that doing well on these little projects means that more will be sent my way. That's quite all right: I could use the stirring up every now and then. Just so long as I do have the spare time in between my actual tasks as check-in. Those have grown routine enough so I could do them in my sleep (I think). (I'm not sure if I've dreamed a day at work as check-in yet, but it seems likely.) Just as long as I have enough variety that I can swap back and forth between a brain-engaging task and a mindless task, I'm fine. If I have to do brainwork and nothing but brainwork all day long, I'm fried, burnt-out, and no good to anybody. It seems paradoxical that a two-hour task gets done in two hours and fifteen minutes by alternating it with either something mindless or something completely different, but it takes three hours to do if I'm just working on it straight, but that's the way it is.

I'm very impressed with how Coy's coming along with computers. When she started monitoring, she told me quite frankly that she was the biggest idiot there was when it came to computers. And now she's teaching some of the other monitors little tricks about how to get the systems to work smoother with you! I'm glad I found a way to explain computers to her. I started out with the basics, of course.

(The basics are as follows:
1. A computer is dumb. Put legs on a computer and tell it to walk off a cliff, and it will.
2. Computers are programmed by committee. At least one committee for each program on the computer. Maybe more than that. )

Technology

2005-09-04T22:42:31Z

My palmtop has a dodgy battery. Disappointing. I'll upgrade at some point, but probably not until I'm done paying off my computer.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2005-06-04T18:57:05Z

I opted to take the day off work today so I can just relax. That sounds like a really good plan.

I got to troubleshoot my own computer having network connectivity troubles last night. There is a very poorly placed network jack that everyone steps on or kicks; this, unfortunately, is the one that I am plugged into. I mentioned this to my immediate boss of the day; she thought it was a bad thing too, especially after I pointed out that the odd angle that the cable was plugged in to the jack was not due to the cable being loose, but to the jack being shoved at an angle into the box due to the constant unintentional abuse from feet and other items slamming into it.

Outside of work, a friend's been asking me to take a look at his machine. I must say that while there's not much I can do for it other than pray for it, I can at least clean it up, get him to back it up, and see if any other friends have an unused copy of '98 hanging around so that I can do a re-install: he's the second owner on this installation. This is rarely a good thing.

I've been gathering assorted tools on CD for use in just this sort of late-night tech support call. I'm not sure if I'll use many or any of them, but it never hurts to be prepared.

Databases and work computers

2005-05-24T20:54:50Z

Heh, I haven't updated this thing in a while.

At any rate, there was a very interesting article about relational databases and their limitations listed on slashdot, Beyond Relational Databases; I'm a little rusty on my databases, but it was a fun read.

Work's been keeping me very busy. I've been promoted to a part-time administrative position, though I still do have duties in my original position of DCR. I'm still one of the local people who knows about computers; I troubleshot a co-worker's computer suddenly going dead on Sunday. It turned out that when someone jostled the monitor, the power cable was loosened enough to make the monitor lose power. In the course of discovering this, of course, the power cable to the box was also jostled enough to dislodge its connection. So that made a multi-phase failure. By the time the monitor was back up, the computer was down. Fortunately, I'd first tested the computer's power by whacking the num lock key, so I'd known that it had started out on. (The box was hidden back on a shelf where seeing its own power indicator is difficult-to-impossible.) Fun for the whole family, and simpler than calling actual IT.

Progression

2005-01-04T10:48:25Z

Work has decided that I am very good at my job. The traditional reward for a job well-done is another job. I've been monitoring for quality assurance since July. Now, I'm training for other duties as well.

This makes me happy, of course. Monitoring is fun, but I would ideally like a position that has more involvement with computers on a daily basis. The check-in position involves tracking billable person-hours per job. It looks as if the other contender for the position may have gotten it, though.

Life and things

2004-09-07T17:52:57Z

I have been busy with work and life lately.

The red-tailed hawk (seen in puns)

2004-08-11T10:22:19Z

A group of birdwatchers were taking a hike, and saw a red-tailed hawk sitting on a fencepost. One of the party commented, "We'll be seeing another one of them shortly, on a propeller." The group variously looked at him as if he were nuts and ignored him. About fifteen minutes later, the group came to a lake. There was a small boat there with an outboard motor, and sure enough, on the propeller was a second red-tailed hawk!

The other members of the birdwatching party were astonished, and turned to the fellow who'd made the prediction. "How did you know that bird would be there?" they asked.

"Simple," he responded. "Post hawk, ergo propter hawk."

System downtime

2004-06-28T04:36:57Z

At work, the computer system is nt operational. It is annoing that I have not been trained on it, and therefore don't know how to help fix it -- not that fixing the crashed system is in my job description.

GSU meeting notes 2004 01 26

2004-03-11T23:24:26Z

We need money -- $70 left
Bake sale? We made a lot last time.
Costs $300 to put calendar together.
Summary of last meeting.
Bake sale? Car wash? Car wash in parking lot of gay-friendly population? DeVry?
When is stress week?
Whenever we have a function, I (jl_baldridge) must make fudge.
Tips for bake sale preparation -- disposable pans, pretty wrap, brownies -- candygrams?
People like to do: dance, get to know people
Discussion of catering
Debugging relationships

GSU club notes from 2004 01 05

2004-03-11T23:21:17Z

Attending: President, Treasurer, Joan
GSU Website (beta) www.geocities.com/gamma_sigma_upsilon
gamma_sigma_upsilon@yahoo.com

GSU has a videocamera.
VP and secretary resigned.
We have ~$100 in our account.
Discussed meeting times for more people to attend.
Are we really going to do the calendar?
April is gay pride month
Things for the website -- facts -- history -- bad/good
AIDS: monkey that bit a person
Community resources -- how old
Hamburger Mary's -- T3
gay Denny's
drag shows
events
echo
ionaz
Links to ionaz, echo, jabberwocky

3 types of meetings: business, general, education
When? Building open Mon-Sat
Fundraising opportunity: Valentine's day -- flowers? Candy? Bake sale? Advertise bake sale.

April -- catered meeting?

Humor: chemistry

2004-01-10T01:27:03Z

http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Chemistry/MOTM/silly/sillymols.htm

This page contains silly molecule names and other similar chemistry jokes.

Not all of the references are entirely clean-minded.

Ahh, vacation.

2003-12-22T18:11:19Z

Time for me to relax, spend some well-deserved time off with my family, and get all the computers set up.

Adam still hasn't come by with the box he said he was bringing by. Ah well.

I still have to find places to put everything. Right now, the machine I got from the phx_devry yard sale is sitting on the floor in the living room, and its monitor is partially blocking access to the kid's toy box.

I still need to see if we can do anything about J's sound card.

....?

2003-11-25T17:21:12Z

Last week, was working on the Apache lab, and could not get the virtual directory to work.

Today, I started up the red hat box, and BOOM! there it was.

More fun.

2003-11-18T16:28:47Z

So far, I have some of the happy DNS things working, and some not.

Namely, we can ping everything by name, but the canonical names aren't working for jack. Or the primary domain controller, more to the point.

Which means that on our LAN, joan.jimz in the browser comes out to be the joyful apache page, 'cause Apache's set up all happily, but www.jimz resolves to jack, because ... well ... canonical names aren't working.

OK... ONE CNAME isn't working.

OK... several things aren't working.

The primary DC can ping joan.jimz

*sigh*

DNS needed flushing.

Last night's joy with getting my Linux machine on the LAN

2003-11-12T19:47:50Z

After a little too long, and mangled pings getting back, I started singing.

"Little NIC eth0, plugged into the network
Scooping up the ping packets, and dropping them on their heads.
Dooooown came the root fairy, and she said:
'Little NIC eth0, I don't want to see you
Scooping up the ping packets, and dropping them on their heads.
I'll give you three chances...' "

Notes on COBOL

2003-11-12T19:42:22Z

X = character
S9V = numeric

Cannot manipulate edited fields via calculation.
Edited fields:
9
X
$
.
/
B

Oh! Quilt!

2003-10-18T03:20:00Z

This quilt from Astronomy Picture of the Day is lovely.

Mama used to make very pretty quilts, far more functional than this.

Security

2003-09-24T18:34:57Z

Had a lively lecture in Networking & Connectivity today. Professor Sandstrom was explaining the security on websites; before he explained it, without having read up on that specific thing, I guessed that the website would send its public key to the host, so the host could make some return communications regarding how to do the transaction, in private.

I turned out to be correct.

It seems that my taste in speculative fiction is serving me well. That, and my way for figuring out how stuff should work.

Why I can figure that out, and a first-grade homework assignment involving cutting out a bat puzzle and putting it together defeats me utterly, I'll never know.

Homework via search strings

2003-07-30T18:35:00Z

Doing my homework by running searches seems not to be working quite so well as the dead tree book format -- I got two questions wrong on the homework. Those, however, I didn't bother to look up, so perhaps it's my methodology in error.

Interesting site, with article bookmark

2003-07-30T18:25:34Z

Professor Sandstrom directed me to securityfocus.com; http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1681 is the next article in the series I've started on. I've also signed up for their beginning security mailing list.

Technology and homework

2003-07-25T15:34:47Z

The networking book came with a CD-ROM, and that has the whole book (!) in .pdf format.

This is searchable.

You can only imagine how much easier this made studying, and looking up on particular thing. My mind remembers keywords. I am a goddess at finding things via Google. Now I can do my homework the same way. Wow. I'm impressed.