I had my second orientation today at the Northrop Grumman, Atlanta site. My first was as a contractor (two years ago) and today as a direct employee. It’s amazing that about two years ago, I didn’t know anything about Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, nor the mega-defense contractor, Northrop Grumman – and today, I’ve joined the NGC family in their Inforamtion Systems sector. It was a long grueling day of paperwork, presentations, etc – but in the end, I think things are looking up for my career, as a self-taught web developer, and my family.

Now For a History Lesson

It started almost three years ago, when we moved from South Florida to Fairburn, Georgia. I had my opportunity to run my web development company full time. It was an interesting time (very scary), but we were doing ok for ourselves. My second child was born (Leeanne) and I couldn’t complete my projects – so I had to look for work. I did some contracting jobs and ended up being picked up by a company in California for a web development position w ith NGC. I had no idea who the players were, but I did know web development. I took the job and started working with CDC. As time went by and I started to understand the government culture, I realized how lucky fortunate, I’ve been to be placed with these organizations.

Northrop is a very big company and they look like their here to stay. I’m excited to see where this road will lead.

It’s interesting taking the transit, here in Atlanta, Georgia, US. Compared to the place I spent most of my life – South Florida. I can rely on the transit system here, which is called MARTA. It has some funny colors, but I’m guessing because there are a lot of homosexuals here – dunno. The bus and trains are scheduled to run with each other – so that you simply migrate from one vehicle to another, but the problem with that is… there are people operating these vehicles and most of the time they are not on “schedule”.

Taking the MARTA sure helps in saving some money. True; gas prices are going down, but when it was high – I only paid $13/wk to commute from home to work. My wife keeps our one car, to run errands and other things related to her graphic design business, Katina Ferguson. So; we’d fill up on gas one time during the week. So many folks complaining about how much they pay in gas; we would snicker to ourselves.

Pros and Cons for Business

One good thing is I can work my web development business, Digital Alias, while commuting. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour to get to work so, in the morning, or evening, I can get some things done. Compared to the days I had to drive to work – no good. I spent more time fighting traffic than getting any work done.

In regards to meetings, MARTA is not the way to go. You should have a car for that. Unless you live in the city or can quickly get to the train/bus station – I’d suggest you use a car. My wife and I ran into an issue with that; especially having one car. I wanted to go to some meetings, that were evening meetings. I can get to MARTA and get around to the meetings (thanks Google Maps for incorporating the transit systems in your application), but getting home was a problem. We live in the “country” part of Georgia, a little place called Fairburn. Funny thing is most native Georgians, don’t know where Fairburn is. Well; the bus would drop me off in downtown Fairburn, but I’d have to walk 45 minutes to get to my home. My wife couldn’t leave the kids, sleeping, to come pick me up – so meetings where I don’t have a ride home are meetings I can’t use MARTA for.

Not much to write about, actually. I’m on the south-bound train to Atlanta’s airport, to be picked up by my wife. I thought I’d jot down some of my thoughts about this money-saving system. I like it, just wished we lived in the city to be able to totally take advantage of it.

Yeah that’s right… this is the first time I’m ever taking vacation. I’ve been working since 15 and I never really inquired about vacation time from my employers. I even worked for a company for 3 years and never asked for vacation. I’ll ask for one or two days off to do a weekend getaway, but that’s about it.

Linux Til 4 in the Mornin’

I started out last night by doing some programming work for one of my clients. I realized I needed to create a BETA of the application I created in order to work on new features while they used the live version. My problem was their web host – AT&T Shared Web Hosting. They totally suck! This is a big company trying to get some money from their clients that don’t know any better. For the most part they can rent out some linux servers and host silly little web sites, but when it comes to web application support – they totally worthless.

Well; I started doing some work for them… and I ended up spending the rest of the night troubleshooting (and lovin’ in it) linux and Wine. I turned on my Xchat and my preset server and channels started up. One of them was the Wine channel. So; I thought I’d make an inquiry and see if anyone would answer. To my surprise someone did and they helped me understand my video drivers and some other things. It was very cool.

Because I’m continuing this post almost a week after my vacation I don’t remember the rest, but overall – I was up very late, had to go to work and then finish packing when I got home.  I slept very good when we got to Florida.

The Rest of the Vacation

We enjoyed our time, but we should have planned our vacation around the grandparents having SOME time off.  We ended up watching the kids during the day and trying to go out at night.  If anyone has two kids you know that you’re tired.  So; we didn’t go out much – we forced it and we were tired nevertheless.  The first time we went out, we kept it local, and went up the street to a cafe.  I don’t recall this cafe being so cheap in quality, but they sure were this time.  We got cheap cups for our tea and coffe (no ceramics).  The live entertainment were some old 40+ musicians.

Again the rest of the vacation was pretty much, watch the kids during the day and attempt to go out at night.  It was good to see my family and friends, but we’re gonna do it a little different next year.  The cool thing, during the vacation, is my wife’s dad rode his Vulcan from Canada, with his daughter, in three days.  So; when he got down to Florida – he took me for a ride.  It was fun.