It’s been a month…
For those of you who’ve been wondering where I disappeared to, I’ll dispense with the low-down…
About six months ago, the company I work for decided to try and get into the government contract arena for eVoting certification. See, we have some very bright people working there and for such a small company we’ve written most of the software quality assurance book at this point, so it’s natural to want to expand upon what you know so well.
So we set about getting certified by NVLAP, the National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program run by NIST, where we got to demonstrate that we really do know what we’re talking about, along with several other labs around the US… Well, we won. Only two labs actually passed certification; us and our chief competitor.
So our voting certification system went online, we hired about a dozen new people, and got settled in for some nice, juicy government contracts.
Be careful what you wish for – you might just get it…
The last 30 days have consisted of Government projects. I’m currently working on a project for the state of Arizona and a project for the state of Colorado will be starting this week as well – so I’m currently very busy.
This resulted in a big move in the company as well. We needed more space so we bought the other half of the top floor of the building we’re in and so ZeZe and I had to wire that all up for network and security cameras, which was a lot of work.
Due to everyone moving around it was decided to move all of the company’s server and network gear into a central server room, so there was a lot of re-configuration and adjustment required for that as well, which was a lot of work.
My boss, basically the CIO, moved on to another company with one week of notice – so systems needed to be handed off, projects transferred, network and physical security adjusted, and I took over the position; a lot of work here too.
ZeZe’s kidneys have finally failed, so there have been many trips to, and stays in, a hospital downtown, dialysis stuff to figure out, and a lot of missed work (understandably) – so I’ve had to pick that up as well.
For the last month I’ve essentially been three employees, averaged nearly 60 hours a week, and had to provide what little support I can for ZeZe…
I’m exhausted.
Add to this the fact that all of these things happened just weeks before the vacation I scheduled months ago was due to happen – so I’ve cancelled most of that… But, there is an interesting story here as well.
See, the CFO is worried that I’ll quit, or get sick, or something, as I don’t do the stress thing real well… I’ve been hospitalized over this job twice already and I currently take medication to work there.
So the current plan is that he is going to fly me out to California the Friday Blizzcon starts, supply the rental car and the hotel, and fly me back Monday morning – so while it’s not the week long vacation I was needing, it’s at least not costing me the tickets I bought in advance and screwing up the vacations of three other people involved.
There is more, but I have to head back to work. I’ll post more as I get the opportunity.