Belly ache
It was the last week of June and the first week of July that we took our vacation. I can’t say it was a ‘vacation’ because it was physically and mentally taxing, but we did get to spend some really good time with the kids. We also spent an entirely too long of a time in the van, driving all over. Plans are, next time, vacation time is going to be spent with people visiting us, not the other way around. Both Jess and I are getting tired of planning around everyone elses schedules, and them getting annoyed that we can’t bend ours…anyways.
We got back from vacation, and I took half a day off that following Monday. Driving the whole way back in one day with two kids is taxing, and I was thoroughly exhausted. The same day the first day of the new half semester started as well.
The next weekend, last weekend, was drill weekend, go play army for a couple of days. I was asked saturday morning to sit in a staff meeting about the IT budget, which I’m sort of glad I did. During that meeting I was shown the spend plan, shown how it was 50k over budget, and automatically saw where we could save a ton of money. In about 8 hours, I got the budget back down to 45k in the black, then changed the orders on multiple items. Sunday at about 4pm, I got it balanced with 28k in the black, and warned that I still had to order software licenses, and that money would get spent…..I thought that I was almost done. I was told Sunday that the spend plan had to be done by Today, even though I said that coordinating with the vendors is going to take longer than that. I spent a long Monday coordinating with agencies across the US to get the software we needed. I got resolution on one package. Monday afternoon, I got a frantic call from the guy doing the ordering, saying that we were 75k back in the red with the new specifications they were given by state.
So starts part two of this story, Monday afternoon until now. First, the specifications from state did cost about $800 more per computer (times 125-150 computers), but the specs were both old and entirely more than we needed. So, I went behind States back and contacted a gov’t vendor from the computer company myself, and got the quotes I needed last night. The quotes I got from the vendor were even less than my original quote, so quite technically, that put us about 40K in the black total. Nice.
Yesterday was also my first anniversary. It was at home, and really no different than any other day, since we couldn’t find a sitter. Well, we’ll have more.
Today, the state calls and tells me that my specs are not correct, even though I asked them yesterday morning what the minimum requirements were, and they replied “No Minimum requirements”. Today however, they said my specs wouldn’t be compatible with Vista, which they plan on rolling out by Jan 1. I told them that though my specs wouldn’t be compatible for the full blown version of Vista and all the pretty little graphical enhancements, it would be perfectly compatible. I’m still awaiting replies back from them to tell me I’m wrong. The problem is, I need to have this order completely done in 2 hours, I told them 5 hours ago this and that I needed their supposed minimum requirements as soon as possible. I’m having a feeling that I’m not going to have enough time to resubmit this quote in time.
Anyways, thats just a lot of belly-aching. I told them that I should have been brought into this weeks ago, not days ago. Maybe they’ll learn. Hopefully.
