Amy J. Bennett

Extraordinary Faith for Everyday Life

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The Morning After

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So last night I didn’t get to bed until 4:30.  And as soon as I finally laid (lay?) down, I get a call with an issue.  So I get back up and find that’s something that can wait and I’m asleep by 5am.  School was canceled and Scott is off so he got up with the girls when they got up.

At 9:30, my cell phone rings and a somewhat panicked manager is on the phone.  There are problems.  And indeed, something did slip by me but it’s fixable.  I’m able to fix it within the next two hours.  At that point, I need to be on a call at 1 which now I’m finished with but working on some other things that need checked.  I also need to be around at 6pm to check some jobs that will run. I’m feeling tired but ok.  I’ve survived on less sleep than this.  They don’t call me a Work at Home MOM for nothing.

And just to continue my random streak, I’m getting ready to drink a cup of the best coffee EVER.  Thanks to  Jake and Jill for introducing us.

What I do and how I work from home

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I’ve had a few questions about what I do and what the heck WAHM means.  I figure today is as good as any to give a history of what I do for my job for those that don’t already know.

How I work from home

I graduated from Winthrop with a Computer Science degree.  I think I might have been the only female in all of my programming classes.  If not, then only one of very few.  I ended up being the president of our UPE (geekiest of geek club) and graduated with honors.

My dad is in the programming field and he got me an interview with one of his previous contracting companies.  Because of him and my three years of experience at my internship, I was hired as a programmer for a small shipping company in Charlotte.  I stayed there 6 months working on a Visual Basic application.

After that, I spent several weeks “on the bench” and then got a contract with the large bank I’m still with.  When I first started, I worked 40 hours per week and went into the office.  After I had Emma 3 years later and Scott was in academy, I simply couldn’t handle it all.  I asked to go part-time.  I worked from the office Tues-Fri 7 hours a day.

When June came and we were moved to Columbia.  I was going to quit but we were in the middle of a project and they asked me to finish the project from Columbia at home.  A few weeks went by and the project finished but the working from home thing was working out so well, I just kept doing.  We would travel back to see my parents and I would go into the office when were in town about twice a month.

A year later when we moved back, I was pregnant with Lexi and no one ever made me come into the office.  It’s now been over4 years since we’ve been back.  I now work 6 hours a day Mon-Fri, adjusting my logged-on hours to try to accommodate the kids’ schedule.

It gets tricky when there are conference calls.  I’ve been known to hide in closets, bathroom, bedrooms and the garage to try to get a quiet spot.  I’ve also sat at kids’ tables and on the floor with my laptop to try to multi-task.  It hasn’t always been easy but it’s been worth it and it’s gotten easier.

What I do

As for what I actually do when I’m filling my WAHM shoes…my job has changed over the years as technology has changed. I started out strictly as programming on a specific project with Visual Basic.  Since then, I’ve done ASP, ASP.NET, C#, Java, Oracle, SQL Server, blah, blah, blah to most of you. I’ve moved into more of a production support/technical analyst who gets to program every once in a while.  If you want to get really technical, this is what I actually do…(technical details have changed to protect the company)

I write SQL like this:

INSERT INTO FUMON.EVENT_REQS (SELECT  (SELECT ELEMENT_ID FROM FUMON.RULE_ELEMENTS
WHERE RULE_TYPE_ID = 38 AND RULE_ELEMENT_VALUE = 7 AND RULE_VALUE_DESC = ‘AGE’), EVENT_TYPE_ID, OPERATOR_CODE, CREATE_DATE ,CREATED_BY ,LAST_UPDATE_DATE ,
DELETED_FLAG, LAST_UPDATED_BY FROM FUIMON.EVENT_REQS WHERE ELEMENT_ID IN (99=0)) ;

Process XML files like this:
<AP>
<INDORORG>I</INDORORG>
<LICTYPE>A</LICTYPE>
<RESIDENT>Y</RESIDENT>
<EFFDATE>20020116</EFFDATE>
<PENDINGDATE>20020107</PENDINGDATE>
<TERMINATIONDATE>99991231</TERMINATIONDATE>
<APSTATUS>A</APSTATUS>
<LINEOFINSURANCE>NNYYNYNYNNNNN</LINEOFINSURANCE>
<CLIENTNR>9</CLIENTNR>
<CARRIERNAIC>65005</CARRIERNAIC>
<RENEWALDATE>20090101</RENEWALDATE>
<DONOTRENEW>N</DONOTRENEW>
</AP>

Create pretty pictures like this:

system

And then write all the programs to make that pretty picture happen.  It’s a very geeky, technical, detailed job but when I actually get to do what I’m supposed to do, I love it.

Work, work, work, work

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schedule

I don’t blog about work often.  Self-preservation and all but today is a big work day.  Those 2 pages represent about 7 months of work from a group of about 10 people.  All of the stuff in that picture is what I’m helping do in a span of about 48 hours.  All the pink, I’m personally responsible for and represents probably another list of ten things to do.

I supposedly had one task at 4am this morning but got a call our vendor was running behind schedule (what’s new) so I “slept in” until 6 before I got up to check my email for updates.  I ended up staying up to do some blogging I didn’t do last night since I actually forced myself to go to sleep early.  I also had the girls to school early and was able to start working on my tasks in between.

Today is a little bit of hurry up and wait but my last task is at 2am tonight with the bulk of it happening between 6pm and 10pm.  So, I’m in for a very long work day.

Corporate Fun

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I went to the office today for a SEVEN hour meeting with a vendor which thank goodness only turned into 5 hours with free breakfast and lunch.  I didn’t have to talk too much and what I had to talk about, I knew like the back of my hand so no stress.  So I amused myself by playing a little game.  I realized this one project manager was using lots of corporate jargon so I just started writing a few phrases down.  And now I’m going to share real phrases spoken by real project managers in a really big American corporation.

we’ll take a waterfall approach
we need the learned resources
how feasible
get efficiencies from this process
based on early transition
how granular we want to get
throw the balls in the air and try to balance them

I wish I would have started from the beginning, I would have had many comic strip starters for Dilbert.

Fantastic news

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My medical insurance doesn’t start with the new company until March 1.  COBRA for the family was quoted to me at $1,100/month!!!  If you are only going to miss coverage for 60 days or less, you can opt out but then sign up and retro pay if something bad happens.  However, mine will be almost 90 days so up until this morning I thought we were going to have to pay over 3K for insurance over the next three months. 

Ouch.  That hurts even thinking of it. 

But thankfully I had Scott call the highway patrol HR office and we can opt into their cheapest state plan (around $200 a month) within 31 days from today since there was  loss of coverage and then cancel everything within 31 days after March 1.  So yay, that’s over 2K just saved.  And we still have our Health Savings Account with money in it from my high deductible plan with my old (as of tomorrow) company.

I quit

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Literally.  I turned in my resignation today to my consulting company.  It felt very, very strange to be writing that email.  And to me it was very odd that in these days, you can quit simply by a few sentences in an email.  I kept thinking I needed to hand write a letter on letterhead and mail it in and then sign about 25 papers.  And it felt weird just because I’ve never officially resigned from a company.  Sure I’ve quit other jobs but not really like this.  I worked with that company since the day I was out of college over seven years ago and it just feels like another first I’m just now having.  I don’t know. 

The good news is although I turned in my resignation, I have a very, very nice new deal awaiting me that starts in a few weeks and I’m looking forward to it.  I’ve heard from several credible sources that the company takes care of their people and it should be a pleasure to work with them.  If the numbers say anything, we’ll get along just fine.

Another Bad Monday

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What is with bad Mondays?  Today is really bad though. I caught FIL’s stomach virus but seemed to have tamed it by lunchtime with some meds.  However, I’ve only eaten some toast and I’m hungry, weak and now I have a headache on top of my stomach ache.  The girls are doing ok since I’m letting them watch a lot of TV and I hand fed both of them their lunch just so they wouldn’t be whiny because of hunger the rest of the afternoon.  Work is not good though.  Another production issue today that is causing me grief.  Today is the type of day that makes me want to quit work.

In a ray of hope, I got all the proposals today from the consulting companies and it looks favorable for me.  Just need to choose which one.