Matin

Sometimes I wish that MySpace was a little more complete. For example, yesterday I looked at my home page, and noticed that I had one less friend! Well, I wanted to know who had dumped me, but there is really no easy way to find out, unless you do a process of elimination, which is hard when you have 104 (pseudo)friends.

I started my new job yesterday, which as always is a nerve-wracking experience. I had to attend a weekly meeting, which is at 9am each monday, and it was about 2 hours long. It's basically a meeting of all the LSTs (Life Skills Technicians, which is what I am) with the behavioral psychologists and therapists, and they discuss each client (called a "consumer" in the neuro-medical world.) After all the input, then there is a scheduling session when the LSTs decide their schedules for the coming week. Of course all I could really do was listen, but they did a good job of describing to us (there is another new LST - she started yesterday too) each client and their sometimes-difficult families. Then we were basically given our gear - backpacks with locks on them, full of goodies, and our scheduling calendars. So basically I have a job now where I carry a "briefcase" and I have to keep a calendar of appointments. It may sound dumb, but I actually like that - makes me feel important, hee hee.

Of course, I had mixed feelings all the way through all this, because I also love my existing job, and since I've been there now for 2 1/2 years, I am quite established. Although the new job is strictly a "work as much or little as you want" job, technically it is more involved than that. And in the coming month or so, I have a lot of training sessions, some of which are in Marquette, so it's going to take up a lot of time. But oh well - I guess I will be "rich" now, because now I have two good-paying jobs and will be working more hours. Goodbye, nice house! Guess I'll be renovating you a little bit later.....

I found this ultra-cool site - it is a list of free utilities available on the web, with reviews, and most of them are better or easier to use than their non-free equivalents. For example, there is an Acrobat-style reader that reads pdf files that is WAY faster loading than the Adobe version. I always have dreaded looking at .pdf files because Acrobat is so slow to load, although maybe it's just my computer. There's also a cool audio editor, input on the best free anti-virus software ( I have never bought Norton, etc., and never will) and many others. Here's the address -

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm

Off to work, dammit! Have a nice day (it's very gloomy outside here, ho hum)

Douglas