Wanted to drop everyone a quick note and say hi. I’ll try to keep things brief, but we’ll see. Anyway, the past few weeks have been somewhat of a whirlwind. After Thanksgiving, I started shopping my resume. That led to multiple phone interviews and a few face to face interviews so far. Definitely more than I was expecting for this time of year.
I had one interview with a great company last week, and am really interested in exploring it further. I have a second round interview scheduled for Friday morning, so it appears they are interested as well. I have an interview with a company all tomorrow afternoon. In order to get this interview, I had to take a personality test and an online skills assessment test. Apparently I did well enough to be brought in for the full court press.
Next week, Karen and I are flying to Chicago to interview with company up there. So, it’s been busy, and I like all three companies, so we’ll see. I’ll try to keep everyone up to date.
In other news, this week I’m finally taking some classes to finish off some training I had purchased 3 years ago. I went with a certain company to obtain my MCSE. I wasn’t terribly excited about getting it, but figured it would be a good launching point for other endeavors, maybe later getting some development certs or DBA certs. Anyway, the company kept cancelling classes, and all of them were supposedly pre-requisite. So when the class was canceled, I couldn’t take that class until the next semester, or class that was supposed to be after it until I finished the cancelled class.
As I’m now moving on, I decided I’d had enough. So I had my account rep sign me up for classes that woulndn’t necessarily help me get a certification, but would help me with round out some experience I hadn’t worked directly with in a while and might help with that next job. My other goal was to take classes that were available in the next 2 months, as I want to put this firmly behind me. My account rep relented, and I was able to score 3 classes. Tonight is my first one, and I’m taking a mid-level ASP.NET class.
Also this week, we have our annual Blue vs. Gold basketball game followed by a holiday party for work on Wednesday. The basketball game is a lot of fun, and should be pretty competitive this year. The holiday party is always a blast, with the Employee of the Year and White Elephant. Don’t know if anyone will be singing the 12 days of Pi Kapp this year or not.
Anyway, I’m sure there are other things to update you on, but I need to finish a few more things at work before I head to class. I’ll update later if I have time or think of something.
I’m intrigued. Let me know when you can talk about these companies. Or send me an email about the Chicago one. I might know somebody (you never know!).
And good luck!
if you have any free time at all in Chicago, it’d be nice to see you (and meet the Mrs.)
Let me know!
Cap – I’ll be free for a good part of the 21st (while E has his interview). The rest of the time, we might be busy with job stuff for E. But I would LOVE to meet you!
Cap, unfortunately I don’t think I’ll have time. We’re staying in Wheaton, and we fly in Wed. evening around 5:30 and go straight to dinner with the office crew. Then interviewing all day Thurs. and flying out that evening. In hind sight, I totally should have seen if I could fly out Friday morning or something so we could have hung around Thurs. night. But K is running out of PTO, and we were worried about using up too much time on this trip.
But hey, Karen has all day Thursday if you’re up for the whole awkward meeting someone I know from the internets for the first time thing. Trust me it’s fun. We met Derek and his fiance for the first time at our wedding.
Fitz, the company is a small consulting firm for a product called iMIS. I’m not sure if you know anyone there, but the company is called Computer Systems Innovations (yep, CSI).
Sure, it’s cool that the company is called CSI, but even cooler is their Q-Bert logo. Rad!