This month of August has turned me into a horibble mean old person.  Why?  My job, and, well… my job.

This is going to be our highest grossing month in profit in probably the last 5 years, and it’s large in part to me having alot of my proposals accepted and falling into place all within this month.  I’ve been hitting alot of my clients to convert to permanent contract basis as well as having alot of my LARGE server proposals being accepted and put in this month.  All my sales cycles have suddenly come to a close and I was left with a huge pile of profitability in my lap if I could get all these projects completed this month.

And I have.  I’ve completed every single damn one of them.  I’ve put in 2 company’s servers a week, all month (that’s absolutely insane).  I’ve redisigned countless other IT infrastructures at other clients as well.  We’re talking about hard heavy hitting stuff here - I’m not fixing Joe Smith’s outlook or hooking up a wireless access point - I’m involved in very brain intensive design and implementation that really wears on your spirit… and I’ve been doing those all month.

Today I reached critical mass at the office and almost had a meltdown.  I’ve never felt such stress in my life.  I haven’t stopped working at all until about 10pm at night everynight this month.  It finally caught up to me today and I had a sit down with my boss and we kind of cleared the table and thought of better ways to manage my time.

I never ever thought I’d work this hard in my life, but I’m seriously becoming closer to a work-a-holic everyday.  I haven’t even played golf in 3 weeks because by the time I’m done working it’s dark outside and I can’t go… and on a sidenote i actually had time this afternoon to go catch at least the front nine and as I’m walking out the car, God decides to give me the middle finger and laugh as he pours the most rain we’ve had here all month.

Which reminds me, I’ve been a pretty short tempered person this past month.  I haven’t been that nice at home and Cait has certainly recognized it, but we both know how stressful it’s been for me and she understands and is just being as amazing as ever to me despite my awkward use of the computer at late hours of the night and constant spouts of inappropriate language (not around the baby though!).

And to top it all off Dominic has been sick the past few days and Cait has been sick as well, so I’ve been battling my anxiety to get home on time to watch after them as well (and deal with doctor bills).  More fuel to the fire.

I only have tomorrow and Friday left for this month.  It’s going to be the largest server install yet this month (75+ nodes, 3 servers, etc) but my boss is going to be helping me out on this one because of the stress levels I’ve reached thus far.  I’m definitely going to enjoy having him there helping.

I can’t wait for this 3 day weekend coming up.  I want to just relax, have a beer, play some golf and not. touch. a. computer.  Ok, I have to go now, a server is down at a Law office downtown.

Congratulations goes out to Tyler who landed his first job out of college, the newest Business Intelligence Consultant at iOLAP.

Coincidentally that is where Nick works - ok maybe not a coincidence.

Welcome to IT man.  Kind of funny all three of us ended up in this arena.  How’s it feel to be in Corporate America like the rest of us?

So now that all the hype has died down I feel comfortable talking about it…

I woke my son at 11:55PM EST in the middle of the week to watch it, and he really had no idea why Daddy was waking him up and putting him in his lap to watch the middle of a baseball game - and much less a baseball game that didn’t even have a team that Daddy normaly watches.

As my son who had just turned 1 year old sat in my lap, wiping his tired little eyes, I thought to myself I know he won’t remember this but I’m going to wake him up just so we can share this moment together in our lives.  We waited there patiently as he came to bat, my son yawning and me holding his hands.

And then it happened.  He hit the ball, I watched as it soared over the fence.  And you know what I felt?

Nothing.

I’m a big baseball fan - anyone can attest to that.  I thought that when that rawhide went sailing over the fence I’d either be cursing (like a lot of people out there amid the allegations) or I would be yelling for joy and the new milestone that was set, once again, in America’s favorite past-time.

Why didn’t I feel anything?  Maybe it was because I was tired from a hard working day, or maybe it was the two beers I had that calmed me down that night, or maybe - just maybe I think that Bonds never actually beat the record as an honest baseball player.  Maybe I felt ashamed my son had to watch it happen.

Wish I was waking my son up to watch you instead, Hank.