JamesonRobert.com

First day at work with a shaved head. It was an awesome day. I got lots of different reactions, all good. Here’s a rundown of some of the interesting ones:

• Did you lose a bet?
• I was afraid to say anything in case you had cancer or something.
• Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean!
• I’m just gonna call you from now on… who was that guy from Austin Powers? (Dr. Evil)
• Who’s the new employee?
• So what statement are you trying to make with this?
• What happened?
• Does your mother know yet? (She doesn’t… I’m surprising her this Mother’s Day!)
• Whoa. *Blank stare*

Most everybody told me that they liked it. Got one comment that it made me look older, more mature. I definitely can appreciate that, as I’ve always looked much younger than I am.

When my roommate saw it tonight, he just said, “Why?”. I said, “Why not?”.

Overall, I’m happy with how the day went. I got a major ego boost. I feel much more confident. Lots less anxiety.

The shaving I did last night was with my electric razor. I bought some manual razors and some shaving gel on the way home tonight, and had trouble getting the shave any closer. I’m so used to an electric… Maybe I’ll see if I can find an electric razor made for head shaving. I’d like to get it smooth if I can, so I can run my hand over it. Right now it’s all really short stubble, and you can really only run your hand one way.

Something I love about my job… the grounds have a ton of geese wandering around all the time. When I got out of my car this morning there was one about 5 feet from me. Pics below, click the small to make big.

I finally made it back to work. I’m feeling a bit better, and I got my blood work back from the doctor. All clear. Apparently my blood is “Perfect”. No colesteral problems, nothing wrong with my thyroid, so I just had a nasty flu.

On a side note… I’ve put Windows 2000 back on my gaming PC. I’ve got a dual-boot setup going now. Linux has about 200GB of HD space, Windows has the other 40GB. I put Winblows back on the system for two reasons.

1. Windows has much better gaming support. I’ve been using Cedega for my Linux gaming needs for a few months now, and I guess I’m a little tired waiting for better DirectX 9 support. Playing Guild Wars under Cedega, I can’t do any antialiasing or postprocessing effects because I have to run the game with DirectX 8.
2. I couldn’t get my new bluetooth headset and USB webcam to work the way I’d like them to in Linux. It’s a bit easier to get bluetooth working in Windows, and recording video from a webcam in Linux takes a bit more work than I’d like to devote right now.

I’m still using Linux for everything else… web browsing, audio/video stuff, CD/DVD recording, and programming when I have the time. Now that I’m not using Cedega anymore, I can stop my subscription and save $5 a month.

I should be able to post a video of my juggling tomorrow. I would make the vid tonight, but Heroes is on, and that gets my devotion tonight.

Came home sick from work today. I’ve got the flu. I stopped by Walgreens on the way home and picked up some TheraFlu. Hopefully I’ll feel good enough to work tomorrow.

The good news is, I finished orientation at work before heading home.

Update 02-13-07: Still sick today. We’ll see how tomorrow goes.

Today wasn’t too bad. It snowed, which has been a love-hate thing for me lately. Love, because I like snow. Reminds me of Christmas, and I like the way the trees look all covered in white. Hate, because I work an hour away from home and people in southern Wisconsin / northern Illinois forget how to drive in the snow every time it snows.

Today when I left work, I had trouble stopping for the first stop sign. The road was just a little slick. Tapped the person in front of me. Now here’s the nice part - we both got out of our cars, made sure the other wasn’t hurt and the cars weren’t scratched or anything, then we said goodbye and went our separate ways! Looks like there are still some nice people left in the world.

I’ve been working at this job for about 9 months now as a temp. Data Entry. They’ve finally hired me on full time. I started a week ago. I was supposed to have new employee orientation today. Would’ve had it when I started, but I’m one of two people with my job, and the other was starting the same day. Couldn’t let the extra work build up, so only one of us could go to orientation last week. I tried to go to orientation today, but got pulled out after an hour and a half because someone was home sick. So now I have to do the rest of orientation next week.

The worst part is, when I got to my desk to start working, I couldn’t log in. My windows login had expired. The IT department where I work is incredibly slow, so I didn’t even have a working login by the time I left for home. I had to work all day on another computer under my bosses login. From what I hear, it could take up to 5 days to get my login back. I don’t understand why it should take so long. They really need to hire more people in IT. God knows they hire enough elsewhere in the company. Seems like every other day I’m seeing a new email announcement of a new hire or promotion.