- March 16, 2009 -

Time seems to fly by- work seems to be going good; today Jesse showed me the process for making, switching and sending backup tapes to the record center for our offsite backup. I think if we only had a year or two without anything else to do could we ever get caught up with everything we really need to get done. Last week I decommissioned Old Penguin which was a backup for our file server and Old Bacon our spam filter, which have both been replaced by newer and much more powerful servers, and I took the drives from Penguin and put them in Bacon and created Vishnu, a new 1.2 terabyte storage server for the Microfilm Lab to use. In other work news last we heard they were working on a layoff plan to let go some of the staff due to the state financial crisis; this week I heard in the news that either the State House or Senate passed a measure to reduce state employee pay, but it was rejected by the other body; I'd certainly be for this.... It's much better than laying off people- and the economy will just worsen if more and more people are out of work.

I've kinda been stuck on the buying of a house... Talk of layoffs and reducing pay and the like temper me from getting into a large expense. People reassure me that I'm probably one of the last they'd get rid of... even still, things are out of the hands of everyone in the agency- I could be making less by July if that is the route the Legislature decides- It's what I'd do if I were them, and it is a sacrafice I'm willing to make, but since it's all an unknown I've just been holding back and saving. I have put more money into stocks.... I got so trashed in the last couple years- especially last year, but with prices so low now it seems like a good time to invest.

Bah, my taxes are all screwed up. This year instead of using my normal tax lady I did them myself with a tax program... answer a lot of questions, and it does it for you... It all came out pretty much identical to last year, but they came back with a check for a lesser amount with more forms to fill out in order to figure out if I owe a fine. So now.... Tax lady, here I come! I'm sure this will probably cost me more than the normal. I'll just be happy not to have to worry about it.