Been a while (again)

So I know I made a little promise to keep up on this as much as possible.  Sometimes I know it seems like I just might be failing in that respect, but, for my own defense, I really don’t think so.  I think taht everyone gets caught up in life.  I think it may indeed be a fact of it.

Not a whole lot has really happened.  Just ended a nice little traveling spree across the country for work,  Went to Dallas and Reno for a month, then to San Antonio.  After that just the regular at work.  One thing in particular that I’ve made a point in changing though is what I do when I get home from work.

I will admit it, I play WoW.  Or at least, I did.  Within the past week I quit the game actually.  Why?  Because of a couple of reasons.  Mainly it was becoming my life after work.  It always seemed that everything that I did extraneous to work was revolving around it somehow.  I just got tired of the feeling of guilt that came with spending all that time on it and then regretting not spending more.  It just didn’t make me happy.  So I quit.  In fact, not only did I quit, but I made it so that it would be slightly difficult for me to get back into the game.  How did I do that?  I backed up all of my essential data, formatted my hard drive and installed Linux :)

It’s kinda funny really.  I’ve been wanting to do something like this for quite some time now, but always had one reason or another to not go through with it.  I questioned myself a lot when I started the install.  There we a lot of “but…maybe” going on in my head before I did the actaul format, but once I did, it was irreversible.  For that I am glad :)

I for one am going to have to just say that I give a big hand to those involved with the development of the Ubuntu distribution.  They have really leaned up a lot of things since I last tried Ubuntu.  No issues with getting sound to work, or getting my video drivers, and last but not least, a system to automatically obtain all codecs for video/audio files!

Above all of that I am happy about this is that I am actually getting work done now.  I’ve been able to make time to do so many things that I’ve been putting off for far too long.  I currenty have a LAMP stack installed and am slowly putting together a web application for my last job which I hope to sell to them.  It’s all been very nice to see myself so concentrated on the important things again. :)

Write again when I can.

Full-time?

Everything is going really great at work.  I’ve learned a lot since starting this job which I’ve always been very excited about.  Most recently I learned (and quickly trained others) how to splice fiber optic cabling.  I honestly thinkt hat this has been one of the most valuable things that I ahve learned how to do since starting the job as it enables me to work alongside the data techs doing projects which carry slightly more imporance than simple line installations.

Also, I’ve been at the job for almost a year now (about 8 months I think), but still haven’t been bumped up to full-time status yet.  This has been a little bit depressing on my part, but nothing too severe.  I keep hearing all the time from my fellow technicians (and today from the data manager!) that they are talking about giving me a full-time position.  That honestly made me more happy than anything to hear that coming from someone a little higher up on the food chain.

What’s even more intriguing is that I looked on teh schedule today before I left ot double-check when I will be having to come in for work next week as well as what times.  I noticed that they had actually finlled int eh schedule times for people to be taking their AESOP exam.  The strange thing about it is that I was the only person not listed as being scheduled to take it.  Now, I could be overreacting and it could be a simple typo ont ehri part, but this could be that they are going to use the time where everyone else is testing for AESOP to give me my full-time test!! :P  Again a big assumption on my part, but it’s one that I hope comes true.  I really need full-time right now.  Bills are really seeming to be catching up with me and that is never fun.  It would also mean that I will be getting a guaranteed 40 hour work week so I would never have to worry about shrot checks again.  Besides just guaranteed hours I will also be getting a nice little raise as well as access to company benefits which excites me a lot :)

I’ll let you know more when I do.

Mining Manager Step 3

Well I’ve been able to make a little bit of progress with everything so far.  I still don’t have anything online yet which is a really big shame on me.  I’ve simply spent way too much time just sitting around and playing WoW really.  The progress that I have made, however, is very exciting.  So far I have been able to pick up PHP and MySQL.  Both languages have interested me very muc, and have always been something that I really wanted to jump in and play with but I just never had the chance until now.  It’s funny really.  All the time that I spent at Energy Inspectors playing around with MS Access, and now that I’m finally gone and working on something completely different I actually grab a pretty good grasp of how I should have been doing things in the first place.

I really don’t know what to much expect out of my progress over the next week, but I really want to have a demo up and online for everyone in the corp very soon.  I realy think I will easily be able to do this once I actually find the freetime to do so.  We’ll just see how everything works out.  :)

Sorry I really don’t have much to say right now.  I have work tomorrow and really need to try to go to bed a little bit earlier than I have been.

CXI Mining Manager Step 2

Well I’ve actually been able to make quite a bit of progress in making the application.  Far more progress than I though I was going to make so i’m very happy about that.  Of the 4 major pages that I needed to ensure that I got up and running, I already have teh basic functionality down pat.  The next step that I need to take is actually adding all of the minerals to the database.  After I complete that, then I will be going back and perfecting the basic form for the Order summary page to include all minerals in the general format that I want them in.  Then I will have to spend time designing the most exciting page – “Order details”.

It will be in this page that all teh key informaiton about teh order is layed out.  Most importantly, I will finally be able to test out the organization of Lots.  Specifically, attempting to develop a system wehre the page adjusts the tables based upon how many Lots the producer has decided to split his minerals into.  I think that I am definitely going to have to write a function about this though :s.

All in all I am very excited about my progress.  By the end of the weekend I really need to be setting the goal of having the entire thing up and running with exactness of how I want it to be funcitonality-wise.  Then by Monday hopefully I can upload everything to testing by the corp members.

Here’s to a great success. :)

CXI Mining Manager

As I’m sure I might have mentioned before, I try to find any time that I cna to play a game called EVE Online.  It’s a very interesting game as it is very market based.  Meaning that a lot of activity in the game can be industrial based whereby you can spend your entire time in the game just building and selling items to other players.

I have been playing for almost 2 years now.  Over half of that time has been inside of a great corporation (EVE’s equivalent to guilds in other MMOs) called complexion Industries.  It is a really great group of people who are very organized and serious about their roles in the corp.  I am personally a miner for the corp (trying to get into production, but it’s a long ways away right now due to massive amounts of ISK I will need).  Its great being aminer but there are a few drawbacks.  Namely, the corp is supposed to be a whole unit.  Meaning that divisions of the corp are supposed to be working together in everything that they do to accomplish all that needs to be done.  So far everything along those lines are great, but there is definately a lot of room for improvement.

Currently the directors of the corp are taking steps to enhance the cooperation within the corp through developing certain online tools.  About this I am actually very excited!  Mostly in part because I was unaware of it at the time, but I was already alying down groundwork in ideas for an online tool which I would be developing to better marry the abilities of the mining division with the needs of Production.

When I get home from San Antonio I will be starting to work on the site using basic template materials from existing sites.  i will be publishing a list of specs for the intended functionality of the site as soon as i get home.  I am very excited about all of this!

I will definately be keeping everyone up to date ofn my progress with everything :)

San Antonio Day 7

Well I have been in San Antonio for a week now.  I’ll be honest and say that when we first arrived I could honestly say that I wasn’t really thrilled about being here.  The hotel that they put us is is nice, but the area around it isn’t.  Not so much that it’s a bad part of town, but rather, its location is far away froma  lot of basic needs such as groceries and laundry facilities.

It’s been pretty fun here though.  We just finished installing some show that exhibits technology in education.  There are a lot of really neat displays here at the show.  None of them completely exciting, but rather a lot of just really interesting concepts that companies have taken the time to come up with the further the educational experience.

We had a big isssue with the show the last 2 days.  Most of this stemmed from the fact that a good number of the exhibitors didn’t decide to actually show up until late yesterday.  Seeing as how the show opened up this morning, this created a lot of unnecessary chaos for us.  There were a lot of trouble tickets that all came in all at once which would have been much easier to fix if the customers had shown up a day or two earlier.  I know that they were all in town for the time as I had actually run into a nmber of them around San Antonio during installation.  They just didn’t bother coming tot he convention center to mind their booths any attention.

I feel somewhat sorry for Joose out here as I really think that the trip has dragged him down the most.  For the most part the people here are nice, but they are so very inefficient in how they accomplish certain things that it has come to tick myself, Joose and Frank off a bit.

All in all though it has been a good trip.  Like i mentioned before I got to do my annual performance review with Grant, and I got a lot of positive comments from everyone that works here about how much help I’ve been.  Even got a recommendation from the lead customer service rep telling Grant that they should make room for me in the budget for full-time.

Anyhoo write again later.

San Antonio

Well my work has gone up and sent me somewhere far away from home again.  This time to the (somehow) wonderful city of San Antonio.  I have been here for almost a week now.  Currently wrapping up on the installation of some show for educators.  It’s been something of a boring trip.  The only thing that has really happened worth mentioning would be that I got to see gma.  Our schedules just happened to overlap as she was planning on taking a trip down here to San Antonio for a bit with Callie to visit Tyler and his new baby (which wil be getting its baby blessing today at church).  Because of work I didn’t get to attend.

I am very excited to be here though for a couple of reasons.  I got to have my annual review done over the phone with my supervisor, Grant.  It was a VERY positive and reinforcing discussion that I had with him concerning my performance within the company thus far.  I only hope that I get full-time soon enough.  I am also beginning to write a rough draft of the ideas that I will be forwarding to Bob Sutton as far as improvements to his program AESOP which we use to track orders at work.

As usualy I am very concerned about my money right now.  Troy, my roomate, made something of an “oops” with his rent money.  He owed one of his friends a god chunk of change stemming from an auto breakdown while they were trying to get out to Kansas City.  Ths month I am going to have t be chucking out a lot of money for the rent on the apartment which does kinda suck.  I had a couple things that I would have really liked to have been able to take care of, but now it looks like I am going to have t push them back even further.  It’s good in a way though I guess.  July is supposed to be a slow month so getting that little bit of money payed back to me around the 16th is really going to help me out a lot.

Just got an email from Aunt Leeanne.  Apparently Joey is going to get married sometime in August.  Yikes!! i guess i better get moving on that front or get left wayyyyy beind :P

 

Miami Day 1-4

Sorry I didn’t get back to this sooner.  We got to our Hotel a little after 8PM on Saturday (no thanks to a 2 hour delay in Charlotte, NC), and among the many things completely wrong with the hotel the internet is very difficult to connect to.  In fact, during the course of typing this it will probably drop out on me.

So we landed, adn had no problem getting our luggage.  We were expecting someone from work to come and pick us up so we called to let Tim (GM at the Miami Beach Convention Center from our company), and he told us that “picking us up” was never in the plans and advised us to take a shuttle.  Haven’t even been in town for an hour and we’re already short $60 on the shuttle ride to the hotel.

Ah the hotel….  Although I can never remember the name of the place this has got to be the worst hotel I have ever stayed in.  The funny thing, is that everyone’s rooms has their own unique set of things wrong with them.  Firstly, Elbert’s room has no fridge and no running water in the shower.  Joose’s first room which he was put in had severe mold in the bathroom (health-risk anyone?) and he has been moved a total of 2 times since arriving because of that same reason.  The list just goes on.

We showed up at work at 8:30am on Sunday (Day #2) and got our first chance to meet Tim.  We also met the few other managers for our company at the Center which all gave us a rundown of what we would be doing while there.  What we were going to be doing for the next few days wasn’t so much challenging/unique as how we had to do it.  Unlike the Las Vegas Convention Center where all of our drop lines come from cat-walks in the show hall, here everything came out of floor pockets.  I’m not talking about flip up a little metal plate and poof! you have an array of nicely organized and decently clean set of switches and phone blocks.  Oh no!  The floor pockets which were there were hundreds of (all spaced about 25-30 feet apart) were covered by large 200-some pound iron plates.  The real treat about lifting them wasn’t so much their weight but what was to be found under them.  More than once I would put my hand down and get ready to lift it to have several LARGE cockroaches scurry out of the hole from fright (even found a snake in one of the holes which was veeeerrryyy interesting to see!….poor Steven had the joy of finding that one :P )  Our first whole day was spent pre-placing lines into switches located in the pits and testing ports of the switches to make sure all were functional.

After work was very nice though.  Got our first chance to just take some time and walk around South Beach Miami.  We were really excited to find out how close our hotel was to the beach (turn the corner and its under 100ft away!!)  Now friends, what I’m about to say is true:  They don’t make em’ ugly in Miami :)  I think I’ll just leave it at that :P

The quick rundown:

Day 3 Monday:  Spent all day at work.  Ran over 600 lines which is effin amazing!   Monday night I tried to go to bed as soon as I got off work and actually fell asleep for a few hours.  Got woke up when a few guys starting screaming at each other in the hallway.  I really didn’t think anything of it and didn’t complain.  Just tried to fall asleep through it.  Then I heard the name of one of our guys (Trenton), and knowing how stupid he is I figured he had pissed off some dudes and from the sound of it, it was getting ugly so I immediately got up, put some clothes on, and was ready to bail his ass out of all that.  Stepped into the hallway to find it was both Trenton and Derrick (the 2 new-hires that were brought along for god knows what reason) who were arguing.  This really pissed me off for several obvious reasons (A)I was sleepy B)it makes the company look bad. C) I was sleepy)  I broke it up really quick though.  Just started shoving each one back into their rooms and telling them that if they didn’t go in and shut the door they wouldn’t have a job when we got back home.

Day 4 Tuesday:  Spent all day at work again.  Finished off the remaining 500 lines and now just started to go abck and test everything.  FINALLY got the internet to work at the hotel hence my actually being able to write this.

Miami Day 0

Its currently about 11:42PM on the 14th of March.  In about 5 hours Troy will be giving me a ride to the airport to catch a flight to Miami, FL!

The Backstory:

The company that I’m now working for (Smart City) provides telecom services to exhibitors of Tradeshows all across the US.  They only have a relatively small pool of technicians (such as myself) to pull all all of the necessary work.  In some cases, when work is slow in one convention center but heavy in another, workers will be transferred to the busiest center to help ease the workload.  I, along 5 other techs from the Las Vegas Convention Center have been chosen to do just that.

We’re supposed to be in Miami by around 7pm ET and begin working on the upcoming show(s) on Sunday.  So far we’re all a little in the dark as far as what shows we’ll be working on or even how we’re supposed to be getting to work in the first place once we get there.  I aim to repost everyday to fill in with those small details of how everything is working out and maybe even a little bit of the fun I’m hoping to have while I’m out there.  I’ve never been farther east than Tennessee, and have definitely never seen an ocean before so this is certainly go down in my memory as a first for a lot of things.

I’ve spent a little over an hour trying to figure out what to pack which was certainly odd for me.  Usually when I go somewhere I just throw in random clothes and be happy with it.  This time was a little bit different because I had to take me tools along with me in a separate bag and i figure that if I was going to be taking another bag that I might as well go all out with it.

Besides just this blog, one of my friends (Julius aka JOOSE) is going to be bringing a video camera with him so hopefully I’ll get to spend a little bit of time manning the lens.

My New Life

I feel kinda bad because I know that I haven’t really been able to write for a long time now.  Its now near the middle of February.  Not much is happening but there are quite a few things going on if that makes any sense.  Soonest two things that are worth mentioning would be that tomorrw the 15th I should be getting both my Tax returns for this last year back as well as (hopefully) get my laptop sold to Branti which is a guy that I’m now working with at my new job.

I guess that I better back up a little bit and explain my new job first:  The company is called Smart City Networks.  They provide telecom services to conventions all across the US.  Currently I am working as a Network Technician for them.  I handle nearly every aspect of the installation and de-installation of network and telephone lines for exhibitors at shows that come to town.  So far I really like the job.  Its giving me a lot of really good experience and most of the people are fantastic to work with.  Currently only a “part-time” employee but I’m still working on average over 45 hours per week if that makes any sense.   Supposedly they are going to see about possibly filling a few open positions for “full-time” technicians before the end of the month which I am very excited about.  I really do hope that I am high on the list for considered candidates as I could really use the bump in pay.

I ahve been working there since early November and have had the opportunity to see some really cool things.  The first really big show that I worked on was CES 2008 which was VERY exciting to see.  Other than just getting front row seats to the shows that come to the Convention Center I’ve had a few other forms of excitement.  The biggest thing was I was at work about a month ago and hurt my back.  I was up in the catwalk pulling cable up from the ground floor.  The cable was very heavy but not too much for me to handle until one of the lines I was pulling snagged.  It jerked me downwards and caused me to pull a few muscles in my lower back.  I actually got rushed to the nearst hospital via ambulance that evening.  It was very painful.  I couldn’t bend over or sit down for several hours after that, and even then (with the aid of some very strong pain killers mind you) it was still very painful.  Right now I don’t even notice anything as its fully healed and I’m back to normal, but that is something I certainly don’t want to do again.

Finally getting back on my feet a little bit as far as money goes.  I don’t make as much as I did at my last job so I’m having to watch myself a lot more as far as spending money but I’m making it.  After this month, I’m actually planning on being able to start putting a good chunk of change back into my brokerage account with TD Ameritrade which i am very excited about.