New gig at USDA

Here I am at another new job. Basically as I said before, it pays too much to turn down, so I took it. The first week was interesting. They placed me in a temporary office. In this office was a guy who is Milton from the movie Office Space. Below are pictures of my office-mate and Milton. But that only tells part of the story, the guy sounds just like him too.... (Milton on the left, office-mate on the right)


I don't mean to rag on him, he is a nice enough guy, but that blue shirt he is wearing, he's had it on all week. I thought maybe he had 5 of them, but there was a stain on it one day, and the same stain was there the next day.
Then there is my other office mate. Older black lady. She rides around in a scooter. I thought maybe she had a handicap, but no. She's just fat.
They both moved out on Friday (planned move), and I'm in the office by myself now.

Cross traffic

Lately I've been posting over on my Facebook account. I'll try to do some cross-posting here to even things out. But with Facebook it doesn't feel so much like being in a vacuum.

Job update

When last we left our job candidate he had opportunities with 4-5 potential employers. This is what came out of the wash:
It all happened the week I went on vacation.
Andrews AFB (GDIT) – They made me an offer and raised the amount a little. But they also knocked my job title down a peg.

Library of Congress (ManTech) – They called me as I was pulling into Myrtle Beach. They really low balled me on the money. Basically they asked if I would make a lateral move. I told them to make their best offer, it wasn’t good.

USDA (Geneses10) - On the evening of 8/14 I received an offer from the company. It’s a grotesque amount of money, but may not last longer then 6 months.

Census (Convergenz) - I told them my price and they were going to try to get it.

Company in Arizona - They called me right after I received the offer letter. They were messing around trying to say I need to rework my resume to emphasize specific experience with that would apply to the job. At this point I told them to remove me from consideration.

So what happen was…
I thought of this the whole time I was on vacation and decided to go for the money. I accepted the job at USDA. When I left GAO it was really hard. I liked the people there and the job itself was pretty easy. But right now I can use the dough. So here I am at USDA.
One good thing is that a lot of people said that if my job situation changes, I would be welcome back to GAO with open arms.

Finally an update...vacation

So I haven't posted on here in over a month, sorry. I'll bring you up to speed on some of the various things that I had discussed before and new stuff.

So last we left our adventure...
I was getting ready for a road trip with the family in Myrtle Beach.
I should start this with the cast of characters:

Me - Your host





Teri - Wife of host





Rebecca (Becca, Bec) - Daughter and The cutest little girl in the world!





Cindy - Sister, wife of Kurt Jr, mother of Candice, Kurt III, and JR





Candice - Niece, mother of Tabitha





Kurt Jr. - Brother-in-Law, father of Kurt III





Kurt III - Nephew





Tabitha (Tabby) - Great Niece





C&C is the whole group with Cindy and Candice.

Chris - Friend

Thursday evening: On the way home from the train station I stopped by Cindy's house to get some of her luggage, golf clubs, and beer and potato chips for JR and Mary (my sister).

Teri, Becca, and I FINALLY got on the road after I harvested the garden. I was hoping to leave around 4:00, but we ended up leaving around 6:00. We head to Roanoke Rapids (RR) and spend the night.

Friday: C&C meet us in RR, kind of early actually. The plan was to take a quick visit of Teri's kin. But they blew us off. This really irked Teri (and me). But on the road to MB.

From 2008-08-18

Once in MB we got to the hotel, but couldn't check in until 3:00. So I went and got some pizza from Hungry Howies, one of the better pizza's I've had. Well, C&C didn't think much of it, but I didn't know this as I went and got drinks, but they eat a lot of it anyway. But then we were hanging around, and LK was playing with Bec. He was raising her up over his head, and hit her into the ceiling fan. And I yelled at him! Cindy didn't like me yelling at him. But ya hurt my kid, and I'm gonna yell at ya (at least). I think this set a bad tone for the evening. Anyway I wanted to go to dinner at my favorite restaurant down there (Drunken Jacks). We went, but it was crowded, C&C couldn't take waiting 2 hours. I tried to explain that it wasn't that big of a deal, but no. So we went to the restaurant next door, which we had an hour wait. Kurt Jr was felling pretty sick. He could barely eat anything. Teri and I felt kind of bad for him. Other then Kurt feeling sick, it went fine, and back to the hotel.

Saturday: My birthday! BFD. Baby gets up by 6:30 no matter what. We know this. So we got up and went to breakfast. I wasn't keen about the hotel's breakfast, so we went out. On the way back, we stopped for golf. But when we went out on the course, no babies allowed due to bad golfers. We went back to the hotel. On the way we picked up breakfast for Cindy. Teri offered to make soup for Kurt Jr. Cindy told us he and III went to the Go-Kart track. He wasn't real sick, he took cold pills and drank 3 beers on an empty stomach. Cindy said she would watch Bec while we golfed.
Back to golf. We started at the driving range. I made sure we stretched out before playing. But I threw my back out while on the driving range. I didn't think it was too bad, so we went ahead and played 9 holes of Par 3. Wrong! It was a mess! I rested up the rest of the day until we went to Charleston for the Springsteen concert (remember, that's the whole point of this trip). The show was really good! And the venue was nice.

Back to MB. C&C had taken Bec to the Dixie Stampede, and both really had a good time! Rebecca really enjoyed all the stuff that was going on!

Sunday: Back wasn't any better, Teri got the phone book and called Chiropractors until she found one that would see us. And we found one. It helped a good bit. JR (Sam Jr) arrived and got his beer and your crap. We did get out to the beach, but Bec didn't think much of it, or the pool.

From 2008-08-18

We did have dinner at Drunken Jacks, but Cindy was in a mood where nothing was good, tough shit, it's some of the best food around! Back to the hotel to pack.

From 2008-08-18

Monday: Ride back. The decided that they wanted to have breakfast at IHOP. It took us north, and they kept going north. This was a stupid way to go, but we finally got to 40, then 95. We gave passed the kid off in Petersburgh, VA. We had the Tom-Tom and meet a friend of mine, Chris, at the Richmond train station. We stopped off for dinner.
When we left the TomTom told us to make a turn. The first turn was for 95 south, I knew we didn't want to go in that direction, so I took the north exit. This is where Teri had a mini-meltdown. "Why don't you listen to it! You are so stupid! Why do we even have it if you aren't going to listen to it!!" Well when it showed that we were going the right direction, she apologized. I got a kick out of her meltdown.
When we got to the train station, Chris had met some dude on the train going to the show. The guy had flown in from California and needed a ride from the train station to the arena. We gave him a ride.

From 2008-08-18

The show in Richmond was phenomenal! One of the best of the tour to that time! In hind sight, I should have taken the whole week off and followed the tour to the end in KC. These were just AWESOME shows. We got home late early Tuesday morning without incident.

Tuesday: I went to my normal chiropractor. He worked on me and I'm feeling fine now. Teri did bail out of going to the Hershey show and I ended up selling her ticket. The show in Hershey was also excellent, but not quite as good as the other two. But it's splitting hairs with the difference too.

Wednesday: Dropped the van off to have some work done, and went back to work myself. End of vacation.