I’m no longer the IT Director at Latina… because I’m now the Director of Information Technology and Digital Media! The promotion is something that had been talked about in the past, but official word got out from the Publisher/Co-President of the company on Tuesday afternoon:

It is with great pleasure that we announce Matt Fox’s promotion to Director of Information Technology & Digital Media here at Latina Media Ventures.

Matt joined Latina in June 2007 as IT Director.  While his primary responsibility was the network, all things IT here at Latina as well as IT troubleshooting, Matt soon began using his considerable talents to assist with Latina.com.  He has since been incredibly instrumental in executing our brand new re-design; beautifully so and in a very short turnaround time.

Boom.

I’ve had the chance to do a lot of really great work during my time at Latina; some of which was expected of me, some of which wasn’t (and was made painfully clear at times), and it feels great to know they’ve noticed the results. It doesn’t really mean much of a change from the work I’m already doing, but I will have a couple of people answering to me now.

There was plenty of time to think about my promotion, and some other stuff, during the train ride home on Tuesday afternoon. There was a fire in a switching tower outside of the Long Island Rail Road’s Jamaica station on Monday morning, causing a ton of train cancellations and schedule modifications all week long. I don’t know how the LIRR managed, but it turns out that they’ve been using the same switching system in the affected tower for 97 years. Considering the lack of upgrades, I guess it’s safe to assume that the majority of the $400+ I pay each month is going overtime pay for the hordes of LIRR staff working on the problem, and not proactive (and long overdue) upgrades. OK, that wasn’t fair – they do have a new system going online in 2 months, but they could at least work on keeping the “blue juice” from the toilets in the trains from getting on to the floors.

Monday was worse; The LIRR simply stated that train service would be suspended, and took a couple of hours to even explain what was going on. Luckily, my co-worker, Cameron had rented a car to finish up some personal items and offered to drive me out to the island. It worked out well – I got home and he was able to go to some of the larger chain stores out here. Sure there are Target and Home Depot locations in the city, but are they as huge as the ones out here AND conveniently located just minutes away from Taco Bell and White Castle? I got a shot of Cameron (above) posing with some buckets at the Home Depot. We have a friend named Luis. He loves the buckets. We don’t know why. We don’t ask.

As I said earlier, the extra long commute time back and forth from the city left me with plenty of time to think. It’s amazing to see just how much can happen over the course of a year.

About 12 months ago, I found out that Latina would be moving to new offices. The timing completely sucked. I was planning on taking a trip to Sweden with some friends, and the day we’d all be leaving the States happened to be the same day as the move. Needless to say, I had to skip the trip and work on getting the new office ready, prepare the network for relocation, etc. 2 months later, we were moved in to the new space and did so without any major issues. Once I had the chance to sit down and get myself settled in to the new space, I realized how unhappy I was. Work was boring the hell out of me, and there was an overwhelming amount of it to do. I had to put my side projects on hold and never seemed to have any time for myself or anyone else. Any spare time I had was used to spruce up my resume.

Around 6 months later, things were improving. I had some new, interesting, projects going on at Latina and I was able to make more time for myself. I was still pretty swamped with work, but I was much happier. Several months went by, and things were great. I went back to the drawing board on ledouche and came up with the hand-etched flasks idea. The creative juices were flowing again and it felt good. I was even taking the time, literally dropping everything, to relax and be around friends and family.

Things really were good, until I had a bad moment at work. I was having one of those days where things were piling up from all sides. Those happen to everyone now and then, and I can usually deal with them, but that day was different. I had a moment of anger and unintentionally directed it towards a good friend. I said what I said, packed my bag and left the office. One of my buddies happened to be working from home that day so I decided a walk down to his place, from 59th street down to 13th, would give me the chance to clear my head and get myself back to normal. That was about 2 months ago, and she still hasn’t talked to me since. I’ve apologized several times, and have expressed how ashamed I am of myself for what I said, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Hopefully she’ll speak to me again, someday.

Fast forward to today, and things are great. Sadly, a day doesn’t go by when I don’t think about what a dick I was a couple of months ago, but I try not to dwell. There’s the promotion, I’m busy working on ledouche, and I’m keeping a really good balance between work and my personal life. Actually, the two of them bleed in to each other quite a bit, but it works out well. Overall, my health is good, but I may have to go under the knife soon for some preventative maintenance on the guts. I’ve also been boxing, only with exercise and stress relief in mind, for the past 6 weeks and I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever decided to do. I work out with my heavy bag for about 30 minutes, and then ride my stationary bike for about an hour, 3-4 times a week. I’m feeling better, sleeping better and there’s a little extra room in those Fred Perry shirts I’ve stubbornly been wearing non-stop all summer.  On top of all of that, there’s a Suburban Legends/The Aquabats/Reel Big Fish show in November! Can it get any better? Of course it can – just add some buckets! BUCKETS!

Last week is one that I wouldn’t mind forgetting. It certainly wasn’t the worst week in the world, it was just one that felt like it would never come to an end.

I began learning how to etch metal last Saturday, for the ledouche flasks, and managed to get hit in my right eye with some sulfuric acid. The solution I was using had an extremely low concentration in it, so I was fine, but my eye was sore for most of the week. I had goggles on, but they weren’t the kind that form a seal against your face. I seriously hate wearing those, but now realize that I’m just going to have to. I’m not letting something like that happen again.

Sure, the title of this post doesn’t make a ton of sense just yet. Keep reading.

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I got the opportunity to write a tech post for latina.com last week. It was about the 2 new Palm phones set to launch on Verizon Wireless tomorrow, which weren’t even mentioned by most media outlets until a couple of days later. Most tech sites had information on the phones as well, but it was pretty sweet  for people to come up to me and say “I just read about these in the Times, didn’t this go up on our site a couple of days ago?”

The post was edited by a member of the Digital team, to make it better match the tone of the website. This makes a lot of sense since it was originally pretty dry and factual, more along the lines of what you’d see on Gizmodo or Engadget. It was nice to be able to contribute in a way outside of the norm for me, and I’m hoping I get the chance to do it again soon.

latina.com

Latina.com underwent a bit of a refresh earlier this month. Cameron Moore, Latina’s Web Developer and I, along with the guys at Limachips put a ton of work in to the project over the past few months, and it was great seeing the newly refreshed layout go up smoothly.

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