Fuck.

Not two minutes after the last post, we get summoned to an emergency all staff meeting. Looks like subsequent job cuts are aimed directly at my department. The outcome of this is unknown right now, it’s all brand new information. It’s clear they intend to cut jobs out of my department though. Whether that means me remains to be seen. More as I learn of it.

At the slight risk of jinxing it, I will note that yesterday was d-day on Bowdoin’s campus. A number of people were laid off and apparantly I am not to be one of them. It seems like we were very fortunate as well, since out of the original 20-30 positions quoted as being the target number, most were handled with early retirement and voluntary staff reductions. As far as we can tell, only about 10-12 people actually lost their jobs. That’s still awful for them with the economy the way it is, but it’s only 1/3 of the worst-case scenario that was being described a month ago.

I seem to be the only person I know who is actually wishing the cold weather would come back. The recent warm spell has led to the onset of mud season, my least favorite part of the year. I can’t stand slogging through slush, not to mention trying to heave 30-40 pound shovel fulls of sludge off my driveway. Bring back the sub zero temperatures and the light fluffy snow I say, I prefer cold but dry toes to soggy damp shriveled cold toes any day. (and it does look like by the end of the week the cold will be back. Bring it on!)

Those of you who know me well know I’m a bit of a…space cadet. My short term memory is poor at best. I’ve chalked this up to the ahem fun I had when I was younger, in my crazed days. Well, recent research seems to suggest that actually it’s all tied into the blood sugar problems I had been having. Meaning I’m going to be the only one out of all of you to get smarter as I get older and I get my blood sugars under control.

Andrew turned me onto this one. More arcade games than you can shake a stick at, all playable in your browser. Great ‘I need a 5 minute break from work’ website. Don’t be put off by the website’s spartan appearance. It’s all about the content.

In the event anyone’s interested, I have:

more ebay auctions

up and running. 3 Playstation 2 games and another playstation game that turned into a collector’s item. I like getting back more than I paid for them 😉

Ebay is a great way to feed my gaming habit too, I have to say. I usually end up recouping about 80% of the purchase price for the games I get, and occasionally I even get more back than I paid for them. It’s like having a games rental service. It takes a little more work on my end but hey, anything to help offset the cost.

The money from these is going to go towards a Nintendo Gamecube so I can play the new Zelda game that’s coming out. Nintendo is having a deal starting next week where if you buy a Gamecube you get a free game with it, and you can choose from several of their best games. I’m probably going to go for Metroid though I might go for Starfox instead. Plus I have the new Zelda game pre-ordered, and Kevin owes me $50 which is going to go towards the Gamecube mario game. Have I mentioned I’m a games addict recently? 😉

Ever seen one of those ‘powers of 10’ demos where they start from earth orbit and zoom down to a couple at a picnic? Check out this one for an even grander sense of scale. Mind, you need a web browser with Java to see it. Tres cool.

Folks have been emailing and IM’ing me so I should post about this. This is what I know:

Nothing is writ in stone yet, so take everything I know with that in mind.

I have been assured my position is ok, Kevin has as well.

The rumors are that the majority of cuts are coming out of the CIS staff, and that they are meeting today with HR. Since none of our staff has been summoned to an HR meeting we are all feeling much more confident that we will still have jobs at the end of February.

Longer term things are murkier – the senior staff of the college has decided to hire a CIO to run all aspects of IT on campus, and the word is they will merge our staff into the existing CIS infrastructure at that point. The implications for me that could come out of this are unknown at this point. I would figure on it taking them at least 6 months to get a new candidate hired and acclimated to the environment here. I remain concerned about this but there’s nothing I can do and I have some time to worry about it.

So, that’s it. The condensed version is, it’s looking like I survived the layoffs though there are potentially issues in the future that could be a problem.

Sounds incredible doesn’t it? I was as surprised as anyone. I was looking into better ways to read ebooks on my laptop and stumbled across Virtualrotoscope for win32. It turns out that reading speed and comprehension is increased by reducing distractions, which include among other things the other words surrounding the one you’re trying to read. Virtualrotoscope flashes words at you extremely quickly, one word at a time. I know it doesn’t sound like it should work very well, but try it, you’ll be amazed. I’ve discoverd I can blow through a novel in only a few hours using this tool.

The bad karma continues to haunt me. Word came down from the college’s president today that we will have layoffs by the end of february, somewhere around 25-30 people. I think that’s roughly 8% of the college’s full time staff, so thats a big layoff. I have no idea yet if I will be affected, but statistics and the rumor mill indicate I will – apparantly the hardest hit will be the IT staff, which means me or my co-workers.

I’m not freaked yet – my boss likes me a lot and as far as I can tell I am generally very well regarded by the people I work for besides him, plus I have some level of seniority at this point compared to many folks, so for now I am cautiously optimistic. My biggest fear is they just decide to gut the web publishing side of things, which there is some sentiment for, and I become a casuality of that.

More as soon as I know. I’m going to go off to Belize in February and come back to no job! sheesh.