Frazzled

It has been a very busy last two days for us at work. There were some major updates to the SAP system that our customer uses and there have been no shortage of problems because of it. The nice thing is that the SAP environment is not supported directly by my company, but by a third part (a competitor) that our customer decided to use instead of us for application support. You get what you pay for.

The issues have kept me and my TL busy all of Monday and Tuesday. So far we are all caught up on our paperwork, but there is still one issue outstand and that does not count what could come up today. The good news is that we are off the next 4 days and are not on call...our group in Brazil is on call for us since we have Thanksgiving holiday Thursday and Friday.

So, what am I going to do this long weekend? Well, my wife and I are not cooking, nor are we eating a traditional holiday meal. We will be assisting a church in Dallas feed the displaced on Thursday.

On Friday, I will be working on the yard, doing the last cut of the season, trimming anything that needs it, and applying chemicals (weed-n-feed). I do not plan at looking at it again until late winter.

Saturday I will do my normal chores and most likly go geocaching. I will have to move a couple of caches that some of the other cachers think are too close to residential areas. I agree somewhat, but I think that stealth is needed in urban settings. I was able to plant, check up on, and remove both of the ones in question without any problems, but then again, I knew where they were.

Sunday will be my rest day as well as my time at church and Sunday school. There most likely will be other things as well, but I won't know until they happen.

I am looking forward to four days off. I want to clear my mind of all work related issues since I am not overly happy about the current changes that are happening.

The first is our vacation carryover is changing. Starting in 2008, any unused vacation is put into a separate bank and we have 3 years to use it. We will not be allowed to carry over more than 80 hours per year (I get 160) so we have to use it rather quickly. Why is this a problem? I work (yet again) in a department that really cannot afford to let me or my colleague (who is in the same boat, vacation wise) off for any length of time without putting major stress on the other. using the three weeks of vacation carryover in three years PLUS the vacation I normally accrue will be hard without driving my colleague insane. The same goes for him when he tries to go on vacation.

The second has to do with our on call pay. It is going away. None of us are happy about that. Now what they have done is offered to up our base pay 2% to make up for the 5% on call differential we are losing, for a net loss of 3%. Now IF we get a raise this year (we have been getting them every other year), we would be getting closer to what we had, but we would still be down at least 1%. "Raises" in my division have been 1.8 to 2% each time we get one...once every other year and we are not scheduled to get one this year.

If you couple the loss of 3% pay, the increase in our cost of the benefits, the higher co-pays, no raises, the cost of gas to get to work and not being able to telecommute...I lose a lot. Then I get to look forward to my wife quitting her parttime job so we lose even more. Best guess is that I stand to lose $1,000 a month or so (all factors together). Can you live on $1,000 a month less? I guess I need to get more clients in my PC repair gig.

Now in all fairness I know God will provide for us. He is not going to let us starve or put us out on the street. However, like most Americans, we enjoyed a quality of life that has been slowly diminishing over the past 6+ years...sometimes I get afarid that I will not be able to do my part.

Well, the morning has been quiet and I am happy for that. As long as my lunch is still in the fridge (we were given a catered lunch yesterday but I forgot and brought mine anyway...I left it here overnight), I should be in very good shape.