Saturday, August 05, 2006

Relocation

So I'm considering moving closer to the main office up in Long Island. I'd have to trade down to a 1-B/R apartment instead of the 2-B/R place that I have now.

The big issue is, of course, costs. Moving to an area like LI means that instead of my living expenses being 50% of my net pay, it's going to be more like 75% of my net pay. If I could get a 10% raise that would drop back down to 68% of net for living expenses. Still more expensive but I could economize in other areas to make up for the difference.

In reality, I'd need more like a 15-20% raise to make it not such a bad deal. I'll have to talk with the CEO during my next trip and see what price he puts on having me more available at the office. Whether he's willing to slowly bump my salary another 20% in order to make that happen.

Why now?

- Because I've been considering a move for a while. Possible locations have been near Albany NY or Burlington VT or north of NYC.

- Things at the main office have changed over the years, people that I didn't like don't work there anymore. It's a lot less chaotic and I think I could actually get work done if I was there.

- Even if I moved near the main office, I'd probably still telecommute most days. Maybe dedicating only one day per week to being in the main office to do technical troubleshooting.

- I don't have a lot of ties left down here in York. And a change of scenery would be nice.

- I'm no longer dead set against moving to Long Island. It would be nice to be closer to NYC which I find to be an interesting city.

Labels: 2006

posted by Wuphon's at 11:39 PM (0 comments)

Friday, August 04, 2006

Updated my JVC impressions

After my business trip this week, which involved a lot of driving, I've changed some of my impressions of my car's new JVC deck.

Labels: 2006

posted by Wuphon's at 7:27 PM (0 comments)

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Another busy week

Shaping up to be another busy week. Put my car in the shop this morning to get both front seatbelt assemblies replaced (seatbelts were functional but not retracting properly). That required dropping it off first thing this morning, after which I walked home. Took me 2 hours to walk the 5.5 miles, which wasn't bad in all that heat. The entire repair was under warranty so I paid zero out of pocket.

Gonna miss that warranty when it expires next year. Ah well, the car's been paid off for 2 years so it's not like it's a big drain on the finances. I think I finally rolled over the 14,000 mile odometer mark on it. Might break 15k by the end of the year with all the planned business trips.

Spent some money on eBay today, bidding on Japanese music CDs. Trying to expand my collection a bit and find some new artists that I like (as well as picking up more CDs by artists that I liked before).

And Wednesday I have to leave again for another work trip. Work suddenly exploded back at the end of May and we've been going crazy trying to keep up with it all. I've been billing 30-40 hours per week instead of my usual 10-15 billable hours. Which means that work is cutting into my free time because there's still the normal sysadmin stuff to get done on a weekly basis. Billable hours isn't in my main job description, I typically just take overflow work that I try to fit in between my other duties.

After this trip, I should actually be home for 4 weeks straight. So maybe I can get some personal things finished (such as finishing Tuchola Forest!).

Oh and somewhere in all this I need to figure out how to build an N-tier java web application before the end of the year.

Labels: 2006

posted by Wuphon's at 12:19 AM (0 comments)