As of December 2 around 11am, my employer, laid me off. This was due to outsourcing my and another co-worker jobs to the Ukraine. Apparently they are less than 1/3 the cost of the lowest paid administrators based in the US.  While becoming unemployed may seem like something to be sad about, I can’t be happier. It isn’t a secret that I didn’t like their management style but I will miss a few of the co-workers that made working there possible for the last 4 years.

I’ve been applying at jobs like crazy. In the past I’ve used recruitment services, but have had very little luck and usually end up telling them not to contact me because they start becoming aggressive and at one point I had a recruiter schedule me for interviews in the middle of my work day (I assume to meet some sort of quota), after telling him I wouldn’t be able to make those and that if he was going to insist on going the way he was, I would cut all contact with him. Needless to say, he didn’t so I cut all communications with him. After him talking to all of the references I gave him and him wondering where I went, things soon died back down. Now that I am unemployed, there are a few recruiters helping me out, one of which is TEKsystems.  I’ve really liked how they’ve worked, they’re very considerate, knowledgeable, and most of all they appear to be getting the job done. Due to the apparent low salary my previous job gave me, TEKsystems gave me a Systems Administrator skills test, which I apparently scored in the 95 percentile in the nation. While my resume may look weak as I’ve only had one real tech job, they’ve apparently been showing employers that skill test numbers and that is exciting most of the employers. With TEKsystems alone I’ve had 3 interviews, all of which have led to scheduling second level interviews. All of the companies appear to be very excited to have me on board and honestly I’m quite happy to see all of them so excited to have me. Outside of TEKsystems, I’ve only had 2 contacts from my many many job applications. Both companies said they were interested, but because of the holidays, they wouldn’t be able to schedule any in person interview until after the first of the year.

Other than applying for jobs, I’ve been doing my normal side projects: programming, hardware hacking, and baking. I’ve been putting a lot of effort into a side project that I’ve been contracted to do. I have a set number of hours per week I am allowed to work, but since I’m unemployed I’ve asked if I can spend more time with the project so that once it is done, I can put it on my resume as well. They seemed to be okay with that and so I’ve been making some great strides with it. Hopefully I’ll be able to show it off in the coming months.

I may not have posted this in a while, but I am at another position from the last time I talked about my job. No, I didn’t get fired, just moved and shuffled around. My new team lead drives me up the wall (doesn’t everybody’s?). Here is a conversation with one of my co-workers this morning:

Co-worker: Crack smoke action of the morning: <brand> servers have an httpd rpm installed. Why is that and what does it do?
Co-worker: After digging around I reported back that it was apache, and it’s serving client websites.
Dattas: … Who asked that?
Co-worker: Our team lead.
Dattas: You’ve got to be kidding
Co-worker: #CantMakeThisUp

Now a lot of managers aren’t supposed to be technical, they are supposed to manage. However this is a team lead, he is supposed to be the guy to go to when all else has failed. For those who didn’t know what httpd or apache was, that is fine, you are not a team lead for systems administrators in a large web hosting company. The problem is that most beginning level 1 techs here know what httpd is, and yet one of the highest ranking technical persons in the company doesn’t know? He has held back major advancements in our company because he “isn’t sure” or “it hasn’t been tested enough.” A lot of the time enhancements have to be done without him knowing and then after it has been working for months you can turn around and tell him that hey, we’ve increased server efficiency by 50% by making these changes. Another major problem with my new team lead is anger management. This guy blows his top at the smallest things. He has verbally abused most, if not all of the team. This isn’t even constructive yelling, this guy personally attacks people when he blows his top.

The manager above him is more of a network guy, he is a nice guy usually, but occasionally, like everybody else, he has his bad days. I don’t blame him for having his bad days, I blame him for saying stupid things that contribute to low morale in the company. While asking him some clarification questions after receiving some orders from him, he said:

When I ask something be done I don’t want questions back

I deeply hope that everybody reading this knows how completely backwards this is. Clarification requests only help improve people being able to do their jobs. I don’t ask questions because I know the answer, I ask questions to ensure that I do what they want me to do.

Anyway, I just needed to blow off some steam. I’m sure it can always be worse.

As some of you may know, me and my wife got some pet rats over the last few months. I figured I hadn’t updated my blog in a while so why not post about my newest pets. The reason we got rats is first, my wife is allergic to most fuzzy pets. I know that she hates being allergic to fuzzy pets so we wanted to find some fuzzy animals that she wasn’t allergic to. Second was that while she is not allergic to the lizards, the lizards mainly keep to themselves and don’t seem to like to be bothered while basking or hunting for food (which apart from sleeping, is mostly what they do). After looking for a chinchilla to see if she was allergic to them, we found some rats at a petsmart by her parents house. We figured we would give rats the allergy test. After calling over the petsmart sales person, we picked this little cutie to see if she caused an allergic reaction:

Turns out that rats are hypoallergenic, perfect for people with allergies! She cuddled with and seemed to really like to be held by both my wife and myself. We took her home that day and called her Rosie. After doing a lot of research we learned that rats are very social animals and don’t do well by themselves. We felt bad for poor Rosie so we went to another petsmart who carried female rats and picked up this little cutie:

Because she was and still is white and black we called her Chessie. We got a larger cage than we had at the time and put them both in the cage. Luckily these two had no trouble getting along. We later learned that introducing rats properly and slowly is important. This was our bad, but we lucked out and Rosie and Chessie get along great. Here is a youtube video of the Rats playing on the table.

After living with two rats for a few months, we started talking to other rat owners and got to know even more about rats and their behaviors. We started making toys out of tissue boxes, toilet paper tubes, paper towel tubes and cardboard boxes that I got from work. Having rats is great, they are smart, they are fun to have.

Recently my wife has been contacted by a rat owner who claimed he did 3 months of research before getting his pet rats. I somehow think this is a lie because it seemed like he would freak out over the dumbest things. For instance he had jewelery on, and rats happen to like shiny things. He called at least once saying that they were biting and trying to take his jewelry. He would also very harshly verbally abuse his rats. If that didn’t bother me enough he also lets his cat free roam around the house. His rats are in his living room where the cat can watch, attack and do whatever it pleases while he is at work. All of these factors and more made for a poor living situation for his rats and one of the rats started attacking another out of fear. It got really bad and the rat that was being attacked had large scars on her ears. After talking with him for a while, we finally convinced him to let us rescue at least one of his rats. He unfortunately had 3 and refused to allow us to help rescue any rat except for the one who was so afraid it was attacking the other rat in it’s cage. He had named the attacking rat Balthazar, so when we rescued the poor girl we renamed her Zara:

We need to get some better pictures of her now since she is much less afraid of everything and is being slowly, over several weeks, introduced to our rats. It is taking a lot of patience and a lot of understanding with this little girl. When we got her she would bite us, and bite just about anything she could get her mouth on. While it is not weird for rats to nibble on things to try to see what they taste like, Zara’s bites were hard and she didn’t have the curiosity that our other rats do. After showing her who was alpha (me) and allowing her to get more acclimated to our presence and her environment, she has calmed down considerably. She hasn’t bitten anybody in a while and she seems really interested in playing with Rosie and Chessie. Introductions with Zara are going slowly. Rosie and Chessie seem to want to hang out and play with Zara, but Zara still seems to be a little afraid of them. Last night we put Zara in Rosie and Chessie’s cage while we put Rosie and Chessie in Zara’s cage. They all snuffled around each others cages, tasted everything, left their own scent. After a few hours we put them back into their own cages and they repeated the process. We will continue doing this for about a week before we allow them to sniff each other in person. After a week of allowing them to sniff and play with each other on a clean bed or the kitchen counter (and continuing the cage swap), if all goes well, we should be able to put them in the same cage safely.

What I am most excited about though is we are getting two little girls (quite little, they will be only 6 weeks old when we get them on 1/28/2010). We are not sure if we want to keep the names the rattery gave them or give them new ones (I’m all for giving them new ones) Here is Lybian, the Black Dumbo:

And here is Sinai, the Russian Blue Burmese:

They are both very sweet and very cute! Currently they are only about as long as my finger, including their tail! We will take more pictures of all of our rats as time permits.

• made chocolate chip cookies, sand they came out pretty good for once! http://twitpic.com/2f3owl #
• @hobbesdawg usually mine do too, (except my peanutbutter ones) but luckily these ones were fine! Quite tasty as well! in reply to hobbesdawg #
• @overzen I think you have the animals mixed up there ;) in reply to overzen #
• thought this was pretty clever: http://bit.ly/9ZYMEB #
• @hobbesdawg I thought 50 was over the hill? Thats when me and my siblings made a graveyard cake for my father. in reply to hobbesdawg #
• @hobbesdawg *shrugs* I dunno, I just know we didn't call my dad over the hill until he was 50 in reply to hobbesdawg #
• @TibertheOtter Oracle is being a jerk about things, so I thought I'd re-tweet some anti-orcale propaganda. in reply to TibertheOtter #
• @TibertheOtter Thats because you don't know Oracle database commands silly otter in reply to TibertheOtter #
• absolutely loves it when @MikaHatter cooks. #
• @Manson06 bacon and alfredo pasta in reply to Manson06 #
• @hobbesdawg too bad the delete function doesn't delete twitter program's cache. *takes a screenshot of the deleted tweets* in reply to hobbesdawg #
• @LycanDID This is very true in reply to LycanDID #
• @hobbesdawg because some people don't see it, so you are somewhat safe Don't worry, I took the screenshot for my own enjoyment hehe in reply to hobbesdawg #
• @bollythewolf bug with twitter at the moment in reply to bollythewolf #
• @Digital_Dragon Why? in reply to Digital_Dragon #
• @Manson06 must be a mac problem, linux and windows are fine with it. in reply to Manson06 #
• @moondog13 good luck! in reply to moondog13 #
• @Manson06 I like how your statement shows how little you know about the web and development in general. in reply to Manson06 #
• thinks that if it takes 4 firemen to lift you into the ambulance, you should be put on a court ordered/government ordered diet. #
• is going to be out of cellphone coverage this weekend. Have a good weekend all! #
• @TibertheOtter what parts?! Tell us! in reply to TibertheOtter #

• feels like so much white trash for putting miracle whip on his wonder bread x.x #
• @LycanDID sorry, Motorola can go suck an egg for being part of the open handset alliance and they are locking down their "open handsets" in reply to LycanDID #
• @hobbesdawg @LycanDID its like buying a car with the hood welded shut, and you car shuts off if you manage to get the hood open. Retarded. in reply to hobbesdawg #
• @AtariOtter Nope… samsung's galaxy s line is awesome, they open sourced everything, including drivers. HTC open sources their stuff too. in reply to AtariOtter #
• does not enjoy being stuck on a loud datacenter floor for multiple hours. #
• @hobbesdawg naw not new position, just am setting up two entire clouds and it takes a long time. in reply to hobbesdawg #
• likes this video of an otter and a rock: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5usIxO_beYw #