Jumping ship - UPDATED with pics

"Day One" of the IBM acquisition is coming closer and people are starting to jump ship left, right and center. Two weeks ago one of the guys in my team handed in his resignation, prompting my boss to hand over the entire company's telecoms responsibilities to yours truly. Now, I don't mind a good challenge and I quite enjoyed getting a good overview of the whole phone system even before I was chosen to take over this particular part of the IT department. It is a mighy feat though. The knowledge gap this guy leaves is HUGE. Of course, once the acquisition is complete everything will change which is the reason why he went out looking for another job in the first place. So starting Monday, I am in charge of anything to do with telecoms. Should be interesting because no way can you learn two years' worth of experience in two weeks. But I sure gave it a good try ;-)

On top of that another one in my team just landed another job so he will be leaving in two weeks too. That leaves me and another guy in our team and he's looking and interviewing too. I rest my case. My boss told me today not to worry, that I won't be left alone to carry the help desk on my own but I've worked long enough in the IT/software business to know that that's most likely what will end up happening anyway. Maybe I'm just negative because of the bad experience I've made in my old support job but let's face it - they won't hire new people to do a job that will disappear within 9-12 months. So - Maky to the rescue! LOL
I'm a bit surprised that I take everything so lightly. Either I've completely lost the plot or I'm really confident that I can
1. manage the situation and
2. trust that everything will fall into place one way or another.
So either way - challenging times ahead which are made stressful by only one thing: my final Uni project which I've yet to finish!
Talked to my supervisor and he suggested either pushing to get it done by the end of October, or defer it to next year yet again! I can't even say how much I want to get this finished now so I will attempt to do it but realistically speaking, with everyone in my team leaving and the bigtime tasks of changing the entire company's computers over to IBM's laptops, this seems almost ridiculous. On one hand I want to say "Fuck the damn job, I need to get this degree done once and for all" but on the other hand I want to be in the midst of the transition and help where I can for as long as I can. We shall see how things develop - from a selfish point of view I shouldn't give a damn about bloody IBM and just make sure I get my life sorted out.

Other people have already left and others have handed in their resignations, it's only a matter of time until whole departments will be totally gone. Of course this is happening when I've finally started making friends here and enjoying work. Oh well, I can't say that my life is boring. Oh and at least I've got a fairly good raise of about $3000/year. So at least something. Considering the fact that I'll be holding the fort I should really make a lot more money but hey, it's enough to keep me happy for a while, I can shoot for more money a few months down the road provided I still have a job by then!

On a non-working note I went to New York over the weekend and OH MY GOD, that city is totally insane!!! I can't put it any other way. Everything is so incredibly HUGE, it's crazy! I did a lot of little films which didn't come out nearly as nice as I'd have hoped with the new camera but it's better than nothing. I'm aiming to buy a really good video camera next. Anyway... New York was in a way very surreal, I can't imagine living there. Whilst London is beautiful but small and bursting with people, New York is mesmerizing but big, yet still bursting with people. There's none of that rush that you come across in London though, at least I didn't experience it. I can't forget how I used to get off the train at Waterloo station in London and my slow state of mind turned into this frantic, rushing state of mind that I wouldn't be able to get rid of until I'd gotten back to Woking. New York just isn't that rushed it seems but then again I've only seen it on the weekends so maybe weekdays it's different.
I spent a few hours on Sunday vising touristy sites such as the Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Station and Times Square (I'm obsessed with the Lehman Brother's building which has these cool screens on the outside walls where they constantly play commercials for their company and it's SO COOL!). And then I went up on the Empire State Building. WOW. I mean, WOW! The view was spectacular. Even though it wasn't exactly a sunny day, you could see for miles and miles. Truly stunning, there's just no other way to put it. It was VERY windy up there but thankfully not too busy so I spent a good hour up there, taking pictures (the 35mm kind, not digital kind), filming and just generally staring out into the distance thinking that I would ADORE working there (well, working would probably be an overstatement as there's no way I would ever get any work done with those kind of views outside my window!). I didn't have much time to see a lot more but I will be back sometime soon, that's for sure.
So, I'm sorry I have only got a few digital pictures as I wanted to save my SD card's space for little films but here's the few I took with my digital camera.
Enjoy!

8th Ave



Rockefeller Tower (well, half of it anyway... the rest didn't fit into the picture!)



Grand Central Station



Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty (to the right) from the Empire State Building