Certifiable

Still here! Though not for very much longer, as we are rapidly approaching the tipping point where allowing nature to take its course actually becomes less advisable, and when that moment arrives my wife will submit to the necessary ministrations which bring the baby forth and that will be that. And there is still technically enough time for it to go either way, so I’m not predicting anything too specific. I just know that while I started this week riding early, readying myself for work and commuting on in, it is surpassingly unlikely that I will finish the week the same way.

So, of course , this is the very interval in which the process gears of my singular major project at work begin to clunk forward. One of the frustrating aspects of this project is that by raising a lot of internal issues and calling attention to both our current resources and our future needs, my team and I have made others aware of various uncrossed t’s and dotless i’s which we had essentially been avoiding because we were grandfathered in a minor eternity (in IT terms, about five years) ago. So it turns out that in order for me to continue acting as webmaster, I have to be certified according to certain DoD standards. This was obviously just brought to my attention last week, and now I am scrambling to achieve said certification so that I do not inadvertently become the lone obstacle to completing the project. But the chances of moving that effort all the way across the finish line before I head out on family leave are zero-adjacent. It will have to wait until I get back, whenever that might be.

Still, I should be able to make some demonstrable inroads on the effort with the time I have remaining, and every little bit helps. And I also just found out that while I’m gone they’re going to FINALLY, configure my cubicle with access to both our networks, which means that when I resume this network transfer project there will be 100% less physically shuttling myself back and forth to separate workstations to access the respective networks. That’s assuming that they actually follow through with the plan as it was recently communicated to me. I know all too well that if I make hard and fast plans predicated on everything being a done deal when I get back, that’s all but a guarantee that the configuration will get set back or sidetracked somehow. Really I should just be grateful if upon my return I find everything where I left it and can pick up and go from there.