Weekly Update 01/03/26 - 01/09/26
Hello, and welcome to my weekly update for the week of January 3, 2026 through January 9, 2026.
It’s been quite a week. I was finally back to work for the first time since October 2022.
The week is a bit of a blur to me. I’d like to
tell you all sorts of interesting things about what I did, but I just can’t
recall events in that level of detail. Much of my time was spent on onboarding:
a lot of meetings, a lot of documentation, and a lot of discussion about
company policies and how things work at EBizCharge. I met many of the people
I’ll be working with and enjoyed getting to know them. One familiar name from
the past came up as well: Tim Plotner. Tim is one of the main architects who developed
the FACTS software back when it was still owned by Software Solutions.
I spent part of the week getting a copy of the
system up and running and reacquainting myself with how FACTS works. It has its
own screen editor that relies on its own metadata rather than Providex’s NOMADS
system. Fortunately, I was able to generate a complete list of programs in the
system, and Tim helped jog my memory on how to work with the editor. He also
showed me some newer features that have been added since the last time I worked
with FACTS, which was back in 2001. I was glad to see how much I still
remembered, and I’m looking forward to the work ahead.
I also heard from the team in London. They were
sorry to hear that I wouldn’t be working with them full-time, but they remain
open to my acting as an advisor on their project.
Outside of work, I spent a good deal of time
acting as a plumber. Both of our toilets have been acting up. One sprang a leak
in the water feed line. At first, I planned to fix it myself, but I had trouble
disconnecting the feed line from the fill valve. In the process, the valve
broke, and I ended up calling a plumber. I was shocked when they quoted nearly
$1,000 to install a new fill valve.
Instead, I went to Home Depot, bought a
replacement fill valve for about $40, and installed it myself. Unfortunately,
both toilets then began refilling their tanks every minute or so. I’ve been
working through that issue by replacing the flappers in both toilets and
cleaning off residue left behind by the old ones. I thought I had resolved the
problem, but they’re still cycling, just less frequently.
So I hope you guys are all doing well, and we're
all having a good 2026!
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