Adjusting

Ah, there’s nothing like adjusting to a different computer. After a full year on the laptop, my body has adjusted to using different keys and operating slightly differently. Nothing major, just enough to throw me off as I adjust to using my PC again.

The laptop box should arrive this week, at which point it will be sent off for repairs. With luck, the logic board replacement will solve the problem, and won’t require them to format the hard drive. If they have to, the biggest losses will be email and photos.

Once again, I was bitten by my own backup schedule. I was literally going to perform a backup that day, and then the laptop fried itself. I’ve decided that to avoid this problem in the future, I’m going to implement a backup schedule:

1) Change my mail program to leave mail on the server, but delete it after two weeks.
2) Perform a fast and easy weekly backup consisting only of email and data files used that week. I can probably set up a crontab or something similar to automatically copy any files I’ve edited in the last week to a backup folder, which I can burn to CD and then delete.
3) Perform a more rigorous monthly backup of all my mail, photos, data files, etc.

On a more upbeat note, we had a great time in Portland. We saw Team America (I still can’t believe I took my Mom to that), played Halo at Eric and Jill’s while Jill made delicious desserts for us, and then went to brunch with the rest of the gang.

On the work front, my old boss sounded a little irritated with me still for having lost my emails (like I did it on purpose), and wasn’t any happier when I told him I would need to be funded in order to travel to Seattle for a couple weeks.

He’s trying to set up a couple weeks of work where I would go to the offices in Seattle and write documentation for them, but he didn’t realize that I don’t have a car available (Annie is babysitting most days, and can’t drive me). I did a bit of research and found out that it would take 3 hours every day for the round trip on the Sounder and taking a bus to the offices, and cost $11 per day. I’m not thrilled about that, and neither is my boss, but without a steady source of income I can’t afford to pay for that more than once or twice.

Oh well. I don’t work for him anymore, so I’m refusing to play anymore of these passive-aggressive games where he gets mad at me for completely reasonable things, and I end up apologizing. At this point, if he wants to pay me to do work, I’ll do it, but that’s as far as the relationship goes. If he wants to be upset with me, that’s really not my problem anymore. I’ll continue being as professional as I can be, and try to not let it get to me.