Working From Home

So I am working from home now.  I had a fun experience with my desk to begin with.  I decided to go out and upgrade my desk as I would need much more desk space for my work laptop, two monitors and massive printers.  So I went ahead and bought a set, and they agreed to ship the desk to me later, about a day or so into my time working at home.  And so I temporarily set up on the dining room table.




It worked, but as you can imagine not having a dinning room table was not optimal.  Also those two brand new monitros died on me, the one on the left after 1 day, the one on the right after 7 days.  But I digress.

The desk I bought, and arranged to have it delivered to me on the Tuesday that I started working from home.  Well they delivered it on the right day.  But they missed something....


Yup the legs on the left.  The desk was supposed to have a drawer set on the left side there.  Turns out that was sold separately and they didn't tell me.  Also turns out that particular piece was discontinued.  So not only did they sell me an incomplete desk, but a discontinued incomplete desk.  I was not happy.  Long story short I ended up negotiating a trade and that following Saturday I was able to go into the store and trade my two legged desk above for a different version of the desk in the same set.  The desk I ended up with technically costs more, but doesn't have the extra filling cabinet that would have been nice.  But oh well, it has four legs
.

So this is my new teleworking lay out.  The den of my apartment is all disheveled, and I am still waiting on a couple more items that will be delivered Monday.  I'll try to post a final picture of my new at home office when I get everything set up and complete!

So that's the story of my adventures in teleworking.  So far besides the desk and monitor issues, things have worked out well.  I actually find I'm more productive on average than at work.  Not sure why yet, maybe it is just the change.  Or perhaps it is the extra hour of sleep I get every day from not having to commute into work!  Yeah that's been nice.

(Not pictured, me in my pajamas working every morning).

UPDATED:

Finally got the whole thing set up.  And I think it looks a lot better!

Tournament Spring 2013

So here will be the post where I will post the videos and pictures that I have.  First up is a video of me doing a broadsword vs. spear form in the creative paired weapons division.

There are also some videos of me sparring out there that I will try to get my hands on.

In terms of trophies I managed to do pretty well!  Specifically I got 1st in Bunkai (forms with attackers) 1st in the paired weapon form above (though there were only two sets of competitors) 2nd in Kempos, 3rd in forms, and then 1st in sparring.

Rachel got 2nd in Bunkai (I beat her :-p) 1st in Forms, Katas and sparring.  So she for sure did awesome as well.  She also performed in the instructor demo doing a katana form.  Hopefully I will be able to get my hands on that one as it was pretty awesome!

Rachel doing her Katana Form.

Rachel doing her Burpees, she did 220 in 20 minutes.

2 man weapon form... see above.

Now stay down!

And sparring!  (I'm the one with blue gloves).

For all the pictures from tournament go HERE.  As usual it allows you to purchase any photos that you like!

Update on Work

So my technology area that I examine has just changed.  I will now be working on batteries and fuel cells.  I still have some printer toner cases, but from here on out, I will be doing the batteries.  It is not horribly exciting as this is the second time that I have changed technologies, and there is always a learning curve.  But alas, there were too many people examining printer toners and as a result a lot of us had to get moved.

In better news I have been accepted into the hoteling program.  Which is the program that will allow me to work from home.  I will take the training for this in June, and at about the second week of June on I will be working from home.  

The plan when Rachel and I move (looking more like it will be Newport News, think I will still be able to get people to visit me when I live down by Virginia Beach?) to just work from home down there.  The trick is I will still probably have to drive in to DC about once every couple of weeks.  But there is a program that will allow me to move down there and not have to come into the office as often, but it is a very small number of examiners that can do that, and there is a list.  So hopefully I'll be able to do that after not too long.  But in the short term I'll still be having to drive up every couple of weeks after we move down there.

An Article

We were asked to be interviewed for an article for our kempo school.

Here it is

I haven't read it.  Because.... well I don't know probably because I"m a wimp.  But I figured I'd point you guys in the right direction.

Sequester

It is possible you haven't heard about this.  But the government is talking "sequestration" which is fancy government speak for furloughing a bunch of people because they don't know how to pass a budget.  In case you have I wanted to assure you all that neither Rachel or I will be furloughed.

Rachel is in the military so she won't be furloughed, but people at her work who are civilians might, so her work load might increase.  I work at the Patent office and so we are fee funded.  That makes us an "anomoly" and so we were exempt.  Anyways, here is hoping Congress can stop it.  I read that they might have actually passed a budget last night, so lets hope that that means that we won't have to worry about "sequestration" at all!

Promotion

So the good news is that I passed my full sig program at work.  Starting next week I will be a Primary Examiner.  What this means is that I will no longer have to have any of my work reviewed, and I will be able to allow cases on my own.  Also it comes with a 15k a year promotion!  So yeah big news!

What this means in terms of my career.... Hard to say.  If I want to advance any higher I need to go into management.  I'm not sure I want to do that in the near future.  So I will probably be staying at this level for the next few years, at least 3-4 lol.

Engagement photos

Rachel and I got some engagement photos.

Here they are.

Here are just some of the photos.  Let me know if you guys want any of them.