In October, I mentioned that I had changed jobs and at the time I was more than a little apprehensive about this change. I'm not one to welcome change, especially when it involves leaving a stable and steady job that I had enjoyed for a little over four years.

As with all change, it was the unknown which brought about the apprehension. That unknown has been slowly replaced by things which both challenge and excite me. I make it a point to tell my former co-workers that they really should follow me to my new employer as it is by far the best place that I've worked.

Change, come again it has.

I've made a career jump from Web Technologist to Systems Administrator. It's not that big of jump as I did a lot of System Administration to support my Web Technologist needs but now I'll be doing even more. I spent day one doing paperwork and despite the fact that most paperwork is boring and mundane I was completely energized by the people around me.

The feeling you get when surrounded by a bunch of people who share similar interests and brain capacity is pure awesomeness.

I'm not one to toot my own horn so to speak. I don't go around claiming to know it all. I usually try to stay out of the spotlight.

I'm a behind the scenes, under the radar kind of guy. I know what I'm capable of and I do, on rare occasions, challenge myself to do more than that. This is one of those occasions.

In recent months I've been working with a really smart group of people on a project called NOWCastSA (http://www.nowcastsa.com/). In the beginning I was more of an indirect observer but I've recently become a co-conspirator or technical mentor if you will.

A few weeks ago one of my co-workers finally got around to catching up on my twitter and blog nonsense. He made sure to point out several flaws which I've yet to address including this one which I am now addressing.

What is AIH? AIH is Adventures In Homeschooling.

Hard to imagine that it's been 10 weeks since we started this experiment. We started doing some remedial review with them this last week as a result of some difficulty they were having with the reading we were doing. So far, it's been going quite well. We continue to have difficulty with keeping my son on task but he is improving.

Consider this one of those "Yet more reasons why I love X!" where X equals Drupal.

I am presently swamped with work both at work and at home. This is both good and bad. It's good because I hate being trapped with nothing to do. I can find things to do at home should there ever come a time when I'm less than swamped but that time has yet to appear on the horizon. But being at work with nothing to do is just plain awful.

The last four weeks have flown by. The kids are continuing to progress with minimal hickups. It looks like we may need to go back a grade for some of the reading comprehension but not sure yet.

So far so good.

On July 29, 2009 I was recognized for my work on a project. I've been asked several times over exactly what it is that I did to receive such an honor. Here is my feeble attempt at doing so...

The original process:

Step 1 : Generate two forms in an electronic format. Transmit these forms via email to all persons responsible for completing them. (~100 recipients)

Step 2 : Recipients of the forms complete them and then return them either via email, fax, or internal snail mail. Each form is 2 pages long. (~400 total pages)

We've established a baseline of second grade for all three of the little monsters.

For the youngest this is right at the level where she should be for some things.  It is apparent that this is a challenge for her but not too much of one.

The last three weeks have gone by in a blur.  Between the switch to summer hours for my real job and my insomnia returning with a vengeance it has been far more than an adventure.

We've covered a lot of ground since then and have established a clearer baseline for what the kids need to learn and highlighted those areas where we need to apply some extra work to help with the process.