Plotting

Last night my boss asked me if he should fire two of his employees. I work in an office of six people. That's potentially a 33.33% staff reduction. How am I supposed to answer that question?

This morning I got a call at work from a headhunter, or as you may know them by the more politically correct term, executive recruiter. I usally don't really talk to them but this guy actually called himself a headhunter and he had a cold so his voice was all deep and forboding like James Earl Jones so I thought I would chat with him a bit. He was contacting me to see if I might be interested in a position as the assistant chief engineer of the Kansas City Southern Railroad. My duties would be to help the chief engineer with reviweing plans and estimates, and scheduling all of the various engineering projects on the railroad each year. It would be a pretty cool job and the title alone is pretty enticing. However, I wouldn't be doing railroad design work but instead reviewing the work of others, and it's the opportunity to design that is what I like about my current job situation. The position would also require moving to Kansas City, which is rather undesirable. Then there is that whole sticky work visa and green card issue. So I'm not seriously considering it at all but I think I might persue it a bit farther just to see what they really think of me. It also might help leverage my boss into getting me a little bit bigger raise during the next review cycle. That may seem a bit unethical but I feel that I've been underpaid for quite a while. Either that or I've been giving my employer more than they are paying for. Just tonight before I left I wrote a plot driver from scratch so that I could print out cross sections on a giant 3'x12' roll plot. There is something very satisfying about creating a drawing that is 12 feet long.

Amy's new Mini suffered a supercharger bypass valve failure this morning on her way to work. I'm preturbed by this since the Mini is only a month old. I'm upset. I don't want things like this to go wrong for her, espcially on a brand new car. I drove it home from the Animation Show 2005 on Saturday night and I somehow feel guilty that my overzealous acceleration onto Central Expressway somehow led to the demise of the valve. But it's a Mini; it's built to motor. Thank goodness for the warranty.