Dichotomy...

At long last, pictures from our honeymoon are available here. I tried to write a sentence or two about each picture so you'd know what everything was. And if you find it helpful to see where things are, here's a handy dandy map I put together.

Posted by Rev. Adam at 11:38 PM | Permalink | Comments

The good news just keeps on coming! So, as I mentioned before, my project lead is leaving for another company. This became public knowledge on Monday morning and by lunch time, I had already been asked by the program manager to take over as lead, pending customer approval. We had a meeting yesterday with our TDA about something else and then he stuck around to go over our transition plan and make sure that he's comfortable with me taking over and that we've got talent in place to fill the void Dave is leaving. I'm not 100% sure I'm ready for the responsibility I'm inheriting, but like I told my customer and manager, there's only one way to find out whether I'm up to it and I'm certainly willing to try. 6 months ago I was ready to leave myself, citing a lack of advancement opportunity and new/better responsibilities due to not having anyone under me to pass off old tasks to. 2 months ago, my restlessness was assuaged by a huge promotion (that I wasn't really expecting for abother year), and now I've gotten what essentially amounts to another (even huger) promotion (that I had said I eventually wanted 3-5 years down the road). So in a span of 6 months I've gone from feeling bored and restrained to being handed the reins of a marquee project. Now I just have to avoid running it into the ground...

Posted by Rev. Adam at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments

We have returned from Malta and had a great time. It was so nice to get away from the constant barrage of the US news media, all work responsibility, all home responsibility, driving, etc. We got a lot of exercise, ate some great food, saw some amazing things and decided we really needed another week to take it all in. Unfortunately, it's back to the grind tomorrow. We're still not quite adjusted to EDT again. We've been crashing pretty hard between 9 and 10 and then waking up around 5-6 am. Hopefully by mid-week, that will have corrected itself, but at least for tomorrow it should be easy to get to work on time! Speaking of, when I got back, I had a voice mail from Dave that he is indeed leaving for Sedna, so I'm curious to see what GD's response is and how that's going to affect me. Depending on the outcome of all that, I may be out looking for another job soon too. Anyway, that's for the next couple weeks to decide, so we'll see. In the meantime, here's a teaser photo from our trip. I haven't decided how best to annotate and upload all the photos, but I'm open to suggestions.

Posted by Rev. Adam at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments

This time (EDT I mean) next week , we'll be finishing up dinner and getting ready for bed after our first afternoon in Malta! There's a lot to get done before we leave still, but I'm starting to get really excited about all the different things to see and do. The weather looks awesome, lows in the mid-low 60s and highs in the mid-upper 70s, little chance of rain. It's not high tourist season yet, so things should still be relatively quiet. Yay vacation!

Posted by Rev. Adam at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments

Awesome. It's discoveries like this that make me cry over the fact that so few companies invest any time and resources in R&D any more. It's all rush-to-market and milke everythign for as much profit as possible while the science that makes huge leaps forwards (and can still lead to huge profits) gets shoved aside. Ever since Bell Labs spun off Lucent, it's been downhill for R&D in this country. But at least every once in a while, something really cool happens anyway.

Posted by Rev. Adam at 2:33 PM | Permalink | Comments