Apparently the whole signing session business went through, the director of the laboratory signed my conversion package, followed by several state senators, the president, and the secretary general of the united nations. So I now have all of the signatures I need.

Does that mean I am converted to staff as of this morning? No, it doesn't.

As far as I can tell, all that happened as a direct result of the signature this morning was a bit got flipped in our Oracle Enterprise Database-O-Rama, indicating that HR is now free to talk to me about how to proceed. We have to negotiate a salary, etc. Unfortunately, the general consensus around here about any operation that relies on the Oracle system to function is that it is doomed to failure. Or at least likely to drag on forever since no one seems to know how to get data into or out of Oracle, and it is constantly down.

My orders at this time are to wait for someone from HR to contact me, and it was indicated that I shouldn't hold my breath.

All-in-all, very good news... though for the time being there's no real change in my status.