One of the big reasons I was interested in this job in the first place is now being phased out.

Oh well, I guess I’ll just add it to the pile of things to consider every day when I start thinking about how sick and tired I am of working nights.

So, it’s been a long time since I made a post about life in general. So, here goes…
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I accepted an offer to work at Werner Enterprises in Omaha as a night-shift Tier 1 PC Technician. I’ll be working 10pm-7am Sunday night-Thursday night taking support calls and repairing/replacing equipment at Werner’s headquarters facility in Southwest Omaha.

I’m really excited about this job. I got a taste for the work environment when I went in for my interview, and everybody seems pretty laid back, but focused on doing the best job they can. It will get me some real experience in enterprise PC operations. Plus, I can apply some of my transportation experience. Even the shift isn’t that bad–yes it’s a night shift, but I get a shift differential, plus it’s a TRUE night shift. I’ll be sleeping during the day when Maggie’s at work, she’ll be sleeping while I’m at work at night, and we’ll still be able to spend our evenings together.

The kicker though? Werner is a cross-platform house. Employees are allowed to choose their platform, Mac or PC. I’ll be supporting both.

I start May 5th. Wish me luck!

It’s official. Maggie has a job for spring, and we’ll be moving to Omaha in May.

Major life changes: 1. Me: 0.

Can you believe we’re at 8 weeks already?

• I have no motivation. None. Even the knowledge that I’ll be a college graduate in 8 weeks unless something horrible happens is giving me no motivation right now.
• For the first time in my life, I have no idea where I’ll be a year from now. Maggie is looking at jobs in the Des Moines area, around Minneapolis (we’re actually headed up there tonight for an interview tomorrow), in Wisconsin, and in Illinois. I’d like to stay around at least for a little while since I’ve got such a good thing going at work, but it all depends on how lucrative the offers are.
• I’m trying to wrap my head around Windows web development. It’s painful. However, it may be the only option for some things we’d like to implement at work, since the City IT department appears to be hostile to anything non-Windows. Hopefully I’ll be able to implement something using MS Visual Web Developer Express and SQL Server Express.
• Patiently sitting on my $100 Apple store credit, waiting for Leopard, hoping the Seagate 160GB notebook drives come back in stock at Newegg before then so I can snatch one up. I stupidly did not write the product key for my MSDN copy of Windows Vista on the disc, so I need to find some way to retrieve it from within Windows before I wipe/reinstall.

That’s… that’s about it.

So here’s the update.

• Done with class for the summer. 6.5 credits to go! I can smell the end.
• I must have made a good impression at work. My raise was… shall we say, better than I expected.
• In case you hadn’t noticed yet, I bought the iPhone. So ends my gadget-buying for awhile.
• Maggie and I are celebrating our first anniversary in a couple of weeks. We’re going to see Spamalot in Des Moines. It will be fun.
• My shaman is 63. Fear the leet pwnage. Ok, not really. It is fun throwing around lightning though.
• I’m still not social enough. But I’ve spent time with friends two of the past three weekends, so it’s helping.
• Did I mention I’m almost done with school?

So, it’s been an interesting couple of days.

• Had a reading quiz yesterday in Philosophy over an assignment where he really didn’t tell us how much of it to read… it was a two-day reading, and his exact instructions were “get a good start on it.” He quizzed us on stuff that was on the last five pages.
• I tried to kick down a doorjamb and rewarded myself with a (likely) broken toe. Best part is, Student Death is apparently closed today so I can’t go in to get it looked at! And since my insurance is through the university, I have to go through them to get covered, unless it’s an emergency (which, while painful, I think a broken toe doesn’t quite qualify). I’ll just tape it up and hobble on it for a couple of days, sounds like that’s what would happen anyway. Advil is my friend.
• We started moving into trailers at work yesterday. There’s actually more space in the trailers than in the old offices, it’s almost kind of nice. The layout isn’t great, but there’s definitely more space to work with. Trying to move stuff with a hobbled foot wasn’t fun, but it was nothing a little Advil and can-do attitude couldn’t fix.
• Much to my dismay, I got a letter from the University yesterday telling me that I’m not eligible for aid this SUMMER either; originally I had thought I was only on the hook for fall. I’m putting in a request for eligibility extension, but I’m not sure how it will fly.
• I think I made a friend’s day this morning. It felt really good. She’s been going through a rough time, so she deserved it.

Well, that’s the rundown… time to get ready so I can go have my advisor fill out his part of the extension form, head over to student health and see if they’re REALLY closed or if somebody forgot to turn of the phone message, and then get to work.

So, today officially begins ten months of working out of trailers while the office area is demolished and reconstructed.

It’s going to be a long year, but it will definitely be worth it when it’s all said and done.

Yay for being able to get *work* done without being interrupted by drivers and phones!

So, it’s been awhile. I guess it’s time for the mid-term update.

• Work is going well. I feel like I’ve been contributing very intelligently and doing a good job of thinking ahead and looking at the big picture (areas where sometimes I’m a bit lacking). The atmosphere at work is really exciting right now, the fruits of the change in leadership are really starting to show, in the form of the people closest to the system (us, the operations staff) getting to make more of the decisions about how the system runs. Plus, we’re expecting four brand new buses this week! (Ben, I’ll send you pictures as soon as I can get them scanned, we got a few from Orion last week on their lot before they pulled out).
• In a word, school sucks. I feel so dead-end right now. I’m beginning to realize that being a teacher probably doesn’t fit my lifestyle or personality very well. However, I’m so close to graduating that I’ll probably just keep up with it. I did some research today and found out that I could graduate in Computer Science in five semesters + 2 summers, but that would put me at a grand total of 17 semesters of college. Ouch. Not to mention that anything after this spring has to come out of my own pocket.
• Speaking of school, I was rather displeased this week to find out that, in fact, all of my French minor stuff will not cover my communication requirements as I’d originally thought, since teacher licensure requires that I specifically take Sp Cm 212. So much for my easy recital semester.
• Whether or not I do Comp Sci, I think I might just take 227 for the hell of it, since there are no prereqs and I already have a basic familiarity with some of the concepts. Especially if the work load isn’t that high… I need to find out if this is something I’m interested enough in to make that investment in or not. Problem is, next semester is it for me, and especially with the added course I wasn’t planning on taking, that could push me over the edge.
• WoW Burning Crusade looks like it might actually be out by the end of November. Woot!

Well here it is for your enjoyment.