Plus and minus at work

There's been some ups and downs in the first week back at work this year.

We started the year with an announcement from the CFO that the high speed Internet benefit is now canceled. Welcome to 2008 with the equivalent of about a $1,000 a year pay cut.

We did a downsizing at the end of December. Now in January most everyone left is together in a big square room full of cubicles. My new space is about the same size as I had before but no more window, and more noise including phones ringing, doorbell ringing, dogs barking (yes it's true), and more talking with more people in a smaller space. I don't mind people doing their jobs but it is different than it was before.

With fewer people there and everyone in one place we've closed off quite a bit of the office for some accounting purposes or something. As a result there's been some equipment surplussed. On the plus side I'm writing this from a Dell late model CRT monitor I got which is a good bit larger display area than my old Philips CRT. I also got a Pentium III plus some RAM as a backup to this computer which makes strange noises and gives weird error messages sometimes. I make regular backups so if this system gives out then I should be able to get back in business with a usable system.