Last weekend was fantastic! In fact, I have another Blogger window open already, just waiting to tell you what a wonderful, uplifting, fulfilling, exciting, exhausting weekend it was. But first I get to tell you the disappointing bits here in this post. Don't worry: it's not
all bad.
First, I drove the CRX to church Sabbath morning. When I got there, the hand-brake ratchet refused to engage. The hand-brake would work, but only as long as you sat there and held it. Fortunately, I was able to park in a spot with a slight down-hill tilt and a curb to roll against. In the afternoon I parked out on Gunner's Branch to leave one more spot open for our guests (we had 33 guests in the house at lunch time, plus the four of us), and I had to toe the wheels into the curb for safety.
Yesterday (Monday) I took the car to the local Honda dealership to have it looked at, and the polite service clerk told me it would cost nearly a hundred bucks just to give me an estimate for the repairs. (!!) I asked about buying parts, and she directed me to the parts counter, where another polite clerk informed me that the assembly I believed to be faulty came as a unit, again at a cost close to a hundred bucks. I was suddenly very unhappy with Honda. What I diagnosed as a broken spring or a missing bolt was going to cost me some serious money.
I decided to take it to a local Exxon with a garage, and here's one of the good parts: As I drove, I started playing with the hand brake, and whatever had been stuck before suddenly resumed being fully functional. Prayers of thanksgiving shot heavenward! I'm very grateful that, whatever the problem may have been, I didn't have to pay a lot to be told that nothing was actually wrong.
Vicki and I ran enough errands yesterday, and our 24-minute power nap turned into an hour and three-quarters, so that I wound up working later than nine last night. As I was getting close to finishing my eight hours for the day, my laptop screen started blinking off. I found that by tweaking the case in just the right way, putting pressure on one corner or another, I could get the screen to come back. But as my eight hours came to an end, the image on the screen turned into a solid white square, instead of windows and icons. (First silver lining: the system lasted long enough to finish the work day, pretty much to the minute.) This morning I tried to get into the system using VNC and an external monitor, but neither approach bore much fruit. I had a large number of e-mail windows open indicating messages I needed to read and reply to. If you hoped to get a reply from me over this weekend, I crave your forgiveness. Please write to me again! Long story short(er): I drove to an IBM office near Fairfax, VA, this morning, to get a loaner replacement while my laptop goes in for repairs. Second silver lining: the repair guys offered to just swap laptops with me, so I now have a new chassis, keyboard and screen, and I'm back in business once again.
Finally (I hope!): there had been word at work for the last two weeks that our project was to expect some modest trimming. As you might expect by now, because I do not have certain necessary qualifications, my name floated high enough on the "unnecessary" list that I have been selected for trimming. But there's a silver lining here too: the project will continue to keep me busy for more than a month, so I won't hit the bench until early March. If I can land a new position (in IBM or elsewhere) before then, I can avoid the bench altogether.
So, I solicit your prayers and advice. If you know someone who needs help in an area where I have skills, please let me know. I see myself as a Linux, Perl and web server guru, with experience in Java, C and C++. But I may need to see myself differently, and that's one area where your advice may be most useful to me. And I'm crazy about Apple computers and their OS X operating system. It would be very sweet to land a job that involved a Mac machine.
Of course, a dream job would let me focus on making music and being a music director.
