Little Lucky worships Spooky. This morning I was awakened when Spooky shifted locations, curling up under my right arm. This event was immediately followed by the little orange and white girl climbing up onto my belly to lay down right next to my big boy. She not only allowed me to pet her head to tail, she even started purring, very softly.

Follow up:

I will admit to occasionally deciding to not move because I don’t want to disturb my feline friends, but this morning was not one of those. After all the naps I took yesterday, I was wide awake at 4:30, and got up to get a decent start on this wonderful March 1st.

Friday night was our quarterly all-nighter at the office, rolling out a new version of our website. I got into the office at 5pm Friday, and didn’t get home again until around 4pm Saturday. During that time, I had two bottles of 5-hour Energy, two Monster Energy drinks, three large cups of coffee and six glasses of beer. I stayed awake throughout the entire night, only watching one movie (George Lucas’ THX-1138) during the slow periods. We had a few hairy moments, where we weren’t sure if we were going to have to roll back to the previous version or not, but it all worked out in the end. Not one of the easier software releases I’ve participated in, since we didn’t come online until about 3 hours after we thought we would. And that’s after getting almost 2 hours ahead of schedule earlier on!

I have accepted a new position in the company. I’m doing pretty much the same thing, but on a new team, and with a nice raise. Last August we were ‘reorganized’, with our old Production department getting deleted. Everybody kept doing the same jobs, but reporting to something like seven new bosses, all of them out of state. I was placed on a Network Implementation team, but in the six following months, I never met my new boss, only speaking to him a total of six times on the phone. I got assigned a total of one task, a one day trip to Augusta GA to troubleshoot a problem with a new application (that turned out to not be the network after all). I kept doing my old job as Sr UNIX admin, and making up lots of tasks to keep myself busy.

After five months, one of my former teammates who had been reorganized onto a different team, accepted a position elsewhere, and I was asked if I could fill in with some of the work he was responsible for. This was followed by a request that I apply for the position when it got posted, a job interview and an offer/acceptance letter. I moved cubicles last week to sit with my new team, and although it’s not as nice a cube, I’m quite satisfied in my new digs. My cat calendar still hangs on the outside, but since the CM team is much busier, it gets quite a few more eyeballs. Today being March 1st, it becomes a month of fat Gracie.

Well, Max is reminding me that I haven’t fed the beasts yet, and although Julius would prefer it if I stayed here and rubbed his itchy head, I think I’ll enjoy a pot of coffee and a cuddle with my downstairs girls.

Happy March!