Talk about a life-affirming change!! My life has changed in a dramatic way. I was offered a job at a local university, and it was all I could do to not jump for joy. Isn't it strange you your entire life can be changed in just a few, well worded sentences.

I have worked for the United States Census Bureau in Hagerstown, MD for almost 14 years, but as of December 23, 2006 I no longer work for them. In fact, during my last week at the Bureau, I have actually been released from service, so while my last official day is 12/23/06, I do not have to show up - I do not get paid, but I do not have to show, either.

I am going to miss that place allot more than I originally thought, I suppose. I was writing an email to all of my friends that listed all of my telephone numbers, email addresses, and other contact information, along with a little bit of insight as to why I left my employer of a decade and a half. As I was writing my email tears started to run down my cheeks -- and as I wrote to my friends and ex-colleagues, the tears ran faster and harder. I could not believe what was happening! I mean, I am a sensitive guy, but this was ridiculous. I never thought just how much I cared for that place. And let me tell you, it was not the best of places or the worst of places for which to work, but like every other employer, it sure had its moments!

The main reason I left was not because I was sick and tired of the petty crap that continuously went on (and yes, I was tired of it-but that was not the reason). I left because I received a job offer from the university I am attending, Mountain State University. I saw the offer from MSU as too good to pass up, so I immediately called them and accepted the offer. The money is not quite as good as at the Bureau, but the University is growing by leaps and bounds, so I figure that in several years I will be back at the same or higher rate of pay per hour. It is also important to note that our Census Office was going through some rough budget times, so my department's hours were slashed from FT to PT (anywhere from 40/week to 20/wk). Plus, my new job with MSU will be much, much more rewarding than what I did at the Census Bureau (quality control agent). I believe in my heart that I will have much more room for advancement and/or room for lateral movement.

Until I started writing that email, I did not feel even one pang of sadness in leaving, to you a phrase, "It's all good." Yet I cold not stop myself from balling like a baby. Go figure.

I will post again after my first day and telling you how it is going.

Monitor News

I received a call from my Viewsonic monitor dealer today; he returned my email and told me that he would check out several monitors to try to ascertain exactly what was happening that was causing me this much of a problem.

So far, here is what is happening; the dealer is promising me yet another monitor, as soon as he has confirmed that the newest monitor to be tested does actually pass all of the tests. I must admit that this guy is a really trustworthy, dependable person; I am certainly glad that I did decide to choose this company to purchase my LCD monitor. I would love to reveal his company's name, but until I have his permission to do so, he will receive no free publicity :)

The dealer gave me a new cable for my trouble of driving down to the store; the cable is a dual-link cable that is supposed to be a much better cable than the one that Viewsonic sends with each of their monitors. I have a suspicion that the dual-layer cable might be causing part of the problem, but I am not sure. When I go back to get another monitor, I will take the dual-layer cable with me to ensure that the cable is not causing the problem. I will keep you informed as things progress.

How this blog was finally named

As most of my readers know by now, this blog started out a very simple college assignment, one that I figured I could do during my regular browsing time, so when I created this blog it was simply named after the class I am in, Internet Essentials and the class designation IT130. So, I how and why did the blog get its current name?

I initially named the blog IT130, with a blog address of http://it130.blogspot.com. Simple, right? Only one post into the blog's life (about two days) I found that somewhere in the account creation process, the account did not get fully created, and I was only able to log in about halfway. When I tried to customize things, I was unable to do so (it took me back to finish the application). Instead of messing with this, I just started a new account, and named it IT103blog . Fortunately (or unfortunately, I have not yet really decided) I learned that I sort of liked playing the role of "blog creator" so I thought I should rename it to something more generic, but that still had personal meaning to me.

And that is where the current name comes in; General Pandemonium is personal to me not because of some Internet naming convention, or some cliche'; it is special because during the years 1988-1992 I was a bulletin board sysop in Hagerstown, MD. If you have been into computers for a long while (over 10 years) then you probably know where I am going, but if you are unclear as to what a "bbs" or a "sysop" is , then brush up on computer terminology and meet me back here.

Great to see you decided to come back! now that we are all on the same page again, I was the sysop of my own BBS ( at different times I ran two separate boards, first the The Black Hole and later , The Autocrash BBS), and the co-sysop of several boards that belonged to friends of mine throughout the Hagerstown, MD area; likewise, many of them were a co-sysop of my boards. For a good number of years, The Black Hole was run off of a Commodore 64 with a 20 meg hard drive and used Color 64 BBS software. Of course, "the 64" was never designed to use a mode of storage other than a cassette or 170K 5.25 inch floppy! Once I my computer retail store began selling the IBM-compatible hit the land of computing, I changed from a 64 to an IBM compatible, and that is when I changed the name to The Autocrash BBS, and began testing several different BBS software programs, and finally settling on TRIBBS. TRIBBS took all of the best features of the three top boards and integrated the best functionality of all three into one neat, little package. it was a joy using this software over Color 64.

Very similar the the different topics that forum have today on the Internet, all bulletin board systems had specific categories, and it was important to remain "on-topic." In fact, BBSing was the a very dominant form of communication in its heyday - companies had their own support BBS (especially the computer companies), people downloaded shareware, and just as they today today on the Internet, the BBS community was no less a place where files could be distributed; and I will leave it to your own imaginations on what kinds of files people might be interested in downloading :)

The GENERAL PANDEMONIUM category was one of my favorite categories, because as long as it was clean, people could talk about anything. this made for a pretty busy BBS, and the busier the BBS, the more people that would dial into my board. The more people dialing in, the busier the board became. Having a busy board was equal to having a really busy website --- it was all about bragging rights.

I hope that you better understand haw this board ended up with the name it now has, and at the address, http://generalpandemonium.blogspot.com.