Jack's Diary

Thanks, Cate. We'll see what the future brings. I'm leaving a lot of money on the table, but the job was not exactly for me. I decided to make the move now, with the new contract looming. It kind of forced the decision. It feels more like a taking-time-off decision rather than a retiring decision right now, tbh.
 
jackbenimble said:
It feels more like a taking-time-off decision rather than a retiring decision right now, tbh.
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& that's fine too.
 
I had an interesting conversation with the boss tonight. I kind of offered to help out part-time next year, and he was agreeable to the idea - 20 hours a week - with a raise. Sweet. This could be a kind of best-of-both worlds kind of thing. The pay beats what you get driving an uber. And the days off will be sweet. I feel better. Let's hope this all goes through.
 
jackbenimble said:
pay beats what you get driving an uber
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I am sure you can do better than that. I have often thought driving for Uber might be interesting for a while, you would get to meet a lot of interesting people. Most Uber drivers I have had really seemed to like it, they seem a much happier bunch than taxi drivers. Uber aside, good luck with your job situation, sounds like you are on a path similar to mine, but you are a few years younger and earlier in the process. Working a 20 hr week would be a great thing.

jackbenimble said:
I'm feeling a bit down. I feel like I should be doing more with my life, and here I am about to retire. It's pitch dark outside and it's not even 5 pm. It must be one of the shortest days of the year by now.
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I know its been a few days, but I hope you are feeling better. As I work into retirement and think about what to do with the rest of my life it does seem overwhelming sometimes, however working less feels pretty good right now. Maybe just going with the flow is best. I agree about the long dark nights of winter, I grew up in Florida, and some in south Louisiana, the nights are longer there in winter, but no where near so long as here in northern Utah, and I think Boston is further north than us. I spent a couple of weeks in Fairbanks in January once, I have no idea how people live in a place like that, sun only rises barely above the horizon for 2 hours and then goes back down. And the cold is almost other worldly. Get sunshine when you can, only working part time should help with that.

jackbenimble said:
I see you're an LSU fan and alum(?)
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Yes, I am an LSU fan. I am originally from Louisiana and an LSU graduate, as were both my parents, so it comes naturally. And this has been a pretty good year to be an LSU fan. I am not really a big sports fan, don't watch or follow much, but for LSU football I make an exception.

Good luck with your job and career things.
 
Fingers crossed for the part-time deal! That should leave you with time and energy to explore what you might want to do with yourself in retirement if you do go for it at some point. My dad started reducing his workload around 5 years ago (and at 71 is still working more than most people) and it´s only been a year or so that I can really see him start to relax about it and do things just because he happens to feel like doing them. So maybe it´ll just take some time?
 
Good luck with that Jack . Be careful though from one who does it , you can end up cramming full time hours into part time . But all in all it sounds very positive and best of both worlds . Good luck
 
Hey guys, thanks for all the great feedback!

Petal001 said:
Be careful though from one who does it, you can end up cramming full time hours into part time
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Yes, that's definitely my biggest concern. This is really a full-time job. I don't see any way to just make it a half-time job. Especially when P is traveling. How do you manage it?

Weight-wise, I was shocked to see I was back down to 166 this morning. I've been cutting back on eating at night, but had a couple of frozen bananas last night.
 
alligatorob said:
Most Uber drivers I have had really seemed to like it, they seem a much happier bunch than taxi drivers
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I agree with that. But, there is a lot of traffic to contend with, I would have to speed up the purchase of new car, and I'm concerned about getting into accidents. My wife doesn't want me to do a driving job for that reason as well. Not that I get into a ton of accidents, but I did get in a really stupid fender-bender a couple of summers ago.
 
LaMaria said:
My dad started reducing his workload around 5 years ago (and at 71 is still working more than most people) and it´s only been a year or so that I can really see him start to relax about it and do things just because he happens to feel like doing them. So maybe it´ll just take some time?
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Yeah, the problem is that I don't think it will really be 20 hours. They will be bringing in a couple of PMs who can take the easy stuff off my plate, but that's the stuff I'd rather keep on my plate to take the load of P. It's the hard, stressful stuff they won't be able to do.
 
Good luck with that, Jack. You never know- it may work out & it may not, but don't forget that you have options.
 
Hiya Jack, just came back to see some interesting news about the job/part time. I hope that works out for ya! 20 hours per week is the bomb, especially if you are allowed to work some of that remotely. I have a lot of catching up to do with your diary and sorry I can't do so right now, but I just wanted to say Hi! Thanks for checking on me!
 
Hey Mols, great to see you! Don't bother catching up - it's pretty much same ol except for the going part-time.

HR still hasn't emailed me about the new contract, though my boss has emailed them couple of times. Something about headquarters, I dunno. I should care more, but I feel like eventually it will get done. Worse case is I'm working without a contract but it's not like I won't get paid - is it?

Ughh, I have to make another invoice today. They are behind in payments, that will make 3 outstanding.

I've been floating between 166-169 lbs the past week. It could be worse.

I have started a new habit - study 100 kanji per day (just recognition). I'm using Anki, a popular flashcard program. This morning was a grind, though, because a lot of them were "new" kanji.
That means they were introduced to the official list after I had done my initial studying of kanji back in the day. I think there are a couple of hundred new ones, and the vast majority that came up this morning were in that group. It's not like they are need-to-know - they're pretty obscure - but they're in the deck so I might as well go through them. I do find it pretty relaxing, anyway. It makes me feel productive at least.

My problem is I insist on watching every single Patriots and Celtics game. The Patriots are just once a week, but the Celtics are 3-4 times a week. I don't have DVR so I can't even speed through the games. I had purchased some video recording software a while back, but it's so unreliable.

I mean the games are entertaining, but it's such a waste of time. That's one reason I moved to Europe way back when. I had no choice but to not watch them.

I'm going to compromise. I'll mute the sound and just play guitar during the games. Gotta do it.

A really good song has been coming up on my Pandora feed. It's called "Switchblade", and it was made by a trio Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Max Roach. I have always thought of Ellington as a big-band swing kind of guy, but this is pure jazz, actually a bit sour. One thing I've always liked about jazz is those slightly atonal piano chords - I don't think it's minor, definitely not major. Something about that sound gives me the warm and fuzzies if I'm in the mood for it.
 
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jackbenimble said:
I mean the games are entertaining, but it's such a waste of time. That's one reason I moved to Europe way back when. I had no choice but to not watch them.
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I am surprised you couldn't get them in Europe, it must have been a long time ago. Today I am sure you could. I was in the Philippines back in the 80s and had no trouble getting American sports, but that was probably on the US Air Force's station. I was in Mexico City once for the Superbowl, watched it in a Bar, in Spanish, not much was lost in translation, and the Mexicans got just as excited as the Americans, more than I did. I don't watch a lot of sports, but this year I am making an LSU exception.
jackbenimble said:
"Switchblade", and it was made by a trio Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Max Roach.
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Listening to it as I write, I like it! I am no musician, but I know what I like.
 
Hi Rob,

Yup, the move to Europe was back in the mid-80s. There would be no escaping sports on the internet now, that's for sure.

Glad you liked Switchblade. I read some reviews on it, and I guess there was a real tension between Ellington and Mingus, the bassist, who actually walked on the recording session at one point. I personally think the bass is a bit overdone, but Ellington's piano is sweetly dissonant.

I'm not really up to jazz, right now, though, at least not the dissonant kind. I'm kind of wishing I had just quit the job instead of going part-time. P took off on vacation yesterday, and won't be back until mid-January. He didn't check the systems he installed, and instead took off at 4 pm. I walked in this morning and there was an email with a spreadsheet listing the problem with about 15 of the ones he installed Fortunately R was around, but he was working last night at midnight on them. I was cranking on them all day, but the only headway I really made was when R figured out the conditions weren't valid for 4 of the systems and I found one was offline.

The good news is that it was a great learning experience. I'm going to read up on the camera system tonight (maybe). If not, definitely over the weekend.

Who the heck decides to add 20 production systems in December anyway?

On top of all that, the company is forcing everyone to take their carried over vacation this year. So nobody's is going to be in next week except me and maybe S, nor the week after.

It's going to be a looong month. Part-time, sure. At least I get to bill for my time.
 
Jack I'm sorry I never replied to your question about cramming full time work in part time hours . It's not easy . I am a pretty organised person so I manage it but it comes with lots of stress at times . I think I should work more hours and get paid for it but they don't want that. Now I do what I can when I can.

I hope your work ends up to be a happy mix for you.
 
Hi Petal,

Hmmm...yeah that's what my concern is. I told my boss that there will be plenty of times where I'll have to go over 20 hours and he didn't seem to have a problem with that. It's really a full time job, so I don't know how it's going to work.

p.s. I'm not that organized, either.

Anyway, I had a nice time last night hanging out with C. We get together every once in a while to catch a Celts game. They're good this year, and at the end of the game they put in a 7' 6" inch player named Taco Fall. The crowd went insane as they always do when they put him in.

Work shouldn't be as bad as I was thinking last week. Everyone will be on vacation. That situation I was stressing about Thursday - it turned out the engineers on site hadn't properly configured half the cameras, because the interface doesn't allow it. I was asking them how to get in the day before yesterday, and they were asking us to log in yesterday. So that part's on them for not figuring it out or raising an issue.

Also, R hung on to the RSS token needed for access, so if I want to get in, I would have to call him at home or text him for the number. Right now, I'm not planning to do anything until they get back to us.

I'm meeting an old work buddy for lunch today, then going home to catch the Patriots play Buffalo.

I'm liking my new habit of reviewing 100 kanji / day. It's just recognition, Kanji to English keyword. I want get to the point where I'm just flying through them, instead of spending several seconds on each one. It will be a few months yet.

I also need to figure out what to do about actual Japanese conversation and reading study.

I missed guitar practice yesterday. I would've done it during the game, but C called. I did do it during Wednesday's game. I just kept practicing the strumming rhythm to "Sympathy for the Devil". It's a good one to practice because it does the following:

1. It's in 16th beats so I can practice the 1 e & a count.
2. I'm also practicing tapping my foot only on the 1,2,3 and 4 counts. Not that easy.
3. There's a different pattern on each beat.
4. There a mute on the 2 beat's & and the 4ths beat's initial downstroke.

So it's a handful.

Uggh, I was 168.5 this morning, with the beer last night and the batch of cookies I wolfed down on Wednesday. Oh, yeah, gotta get to the gym.

I'm really looking forward to this part-time thing coming right up. It's a way to push back my retirement a year say. Originally it was going to be 62, but I went for the six-month contract in August and it looks like I'll get a sixth-month (hopefully) contract for this year. Although J told me Thursday it might be impacted if P backfills his other open position, so who knows? Anyway, I've already earned enough to consider I'm not retired for this year for planning purposes. I'm actually hoping it lasts a while. If the bump goes through, the rate will be pretty good. I have heard back from HR. They want to get it done by the end of the year, and my boss has been answering emails. Another lady from AP said they had cut 3 checks for me on Thursday, so that should be hitting the bank either Friday or week from Friday, depending on how the bank processes. I'm almost hoping it doesn't hit this year, which will push back the tax bill.

When I'm 65, which is about 3.75 years from now, I'll be eligible for medicare, which will considerably cut down on my outrageous monthly health bill. Wish I lived in a country where everybody gets health care. Then I can draw SS at 66 1/2.
 
Jack we pay for health care here . You can take a chance and have no cover but it's not advisable unless you have a medical card. They are pushing the retirement age further back here too so retirement doesn't look likely unless you have a fantastic pension plan or a state job. It's depressing really
 
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