I was up until about 2:30AM this morning, trying to get some stuff done for work so I could sleep in until 11:00AM and go to the office at noon. This plan went well, until about 9:00AM.

For some reason or another, the city decided to send out a large, articulated payloader with forks instead of a bucket, to push back the <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_barrier">k-rails at the end of 18th street. There are 5 or 6 of these rails, and they happen to be right outside my bedroom window.

Now, this wouldn't be such a bad thing, because I do live in a bit of a loud neighborhood - what with the Arni's distribution center and the freight rail - but this had an incredibly irritating twist to it: The payloader's back-up siren sounded just like an alarm clock, and it would sound for 3 "beeps" about every 2 minutes.

Why can I never get more than 8 hours of sleep, even when I try?!

Well, it's apparently "later", finally.

Part of the deal with Touch Support being acquired by The Planet is that some of the staff will be asked to relocate. I guess the reason is that they want the better talent at their core, working along side the existing staff. Having been the lead guy to maintain and further develop the systems used at Touch Support, and with my past and present experience working with PHP and MySQL, everyone has the belief that I will be among the first groups to be moved to Texas.

Am I nervous about it? Heck yeah, I am! I've only been living on my own for a little over a year now, and it's only been 30 minutes to an hour from any family. Now, I'll be 16 hours from any family, though it's only about 2½ hours from Houston to Indianapolis by airplane.

Am I excited? I really don't know for certain yet. I'm supposed to be going to see the area down there later this week, which may change my mind. One thing I am looking forward to is the storms they get down that way. We haven't had much around here since I was about 10, so it'll be a nice change.

Will I be better off, career-wise? A little to begin with, what with the better benefits package and such. There are many more open doors within the larger organization, and I think I will do better as a programmer with someone else shouting out the orders. I have never been much for a self-directed individual, as it's hard to stay focused. I think that someone else leading the projects, or at least working along side me to keep me on course, will allow me to show my skills much better.

I'll most definitely miss my friends and family around here, should the time come that I move. I'll also miss that opportunity to just run home every other weekend to see the parents, or to run to either sister's for the weekend (though I've not been to the older sister's hardly any, yet). I'm sure there will be many more chances for me to actually take a weekend off, as I'll (hopefully) not be the only one capable of working with any one product.

There are some points of our employment agreement that I'm going to have to hash out with our "district manager", or whatever his title may be. Aside from that, though, it's just going to be a matter of getting everything in line administratively and financially.

I'm quite curious what it will take to get everything moved. I'm sure I can squeeze nearly everything into rubbermaid containers, with the exception of a few things like my shelf, TV's, computers, and some furniture. I haven't quite figured out how to transport my firearms yet, but I hope to hash that out over the next few weeks, just so I know fully what to expect.

I'll try to take my camera along when I take the 2-day trip to Houston, just to share what I may be dealing with. I'll be sure to share those pictures either on my gallery or in my Facebook photo albums.