Entries from July 2005 ↓

Since the 19th, I have been pretty much driving to work, working 7 and a half hours, driving home, eating, and then sleeping. For those mathematics, that is 9 and a half hours spent work related (driving time + work hours), 1 hour eating, 2 hours talking with Kami and Friends regarding my day at work, and then 8 hours sleeping.

Work is great! I am getting trained on a variety of topics that I will be involved in coming soon and so I am thrilled to be getting my “feet wet” or so to speak. Once the programming begins I am sure I will be even more excited as I just love the thrill and challenges programming brings. I have a lot of source code to get familiar with though, and that will probably be the biggest job of them all.

As for the personal side, Kami and I found the photographer for our wedding already. We are excited about that, as that is now another item off of our list. Unfortunately, I have not heard back from the apartment I found and so I left them a voice mail in hopes to hear the tenants did in fact move out and they will be ready for me to move into.

Yesterday evening, Kami and I had dinner with her older brother, Robert. We ate at Ruby Tuesday’s and had a very pleasant conversation regarding a majority of topics. I am really glad to see Kami and Rob getting along — as I posted in the past, Kami had a few issues with Rob and seeing them together now, you would have never known it. Rob is a good guy, I like him a lot. I never got to know him as well as the others since he lived in Montana for quite a while. We in some retrospecs think quite along the same lines, especially, regarding decisions his and Kami’s father has made — or on more occassions than one, their father’s priorities.

Rob got himself a car (he didn’t have one before hand and was just catching a ride with others). I am pleased to see he is working to ammend issues he got himself in with little or no help from others. I have nothing against seeking help from others, but I just find it all that more satisfying when you are able to do it on your own or with the people you care the most about.

Regarding the 8 inches of water in my basement apartment. The majority of my furniture is just fine. The major items that really got damaged was the base board, the doors, the carpet, and some cabinet floors. All of the furniture made it out just fine. The only portions of mine that got damaged were three very old monitors that were even given to me for free, so I have no real loses.

At this moment, I cannot think of anything else, so I will leave the weekend with that. Oh yeah! Tomorrow is Kami’s Grandmother’s birthday and so we will be over there celebrating it with her over lunch.

Today was more training over certain applications I will be using, such as, Outlook. Talk about an easy session. Following the session on Outlook, I was briefly taught how to use the AS400 and the other Mainframe terminals. I am familiar with the AS400 as I had to do work on one a while back for a client, the other Mainframes seem much like the ones found at Marathon so I have a bit of experience on them as well.

During the majority of my free time, I continued my reading of the Homeowners 2000 course so that later next week I can take that test and become certified. The objectivity is fairly easy to grasp, though I find myself reading words like “fellen” and I cannot help but think they truly mean the word “fallen”. Why on earth use a word that is not standardized in the dictionary and makes the sentence sound SO awkward. (I will try to post an example of this later)

I ended my day reading, but before that, a person from the Training and Education department came by to show me where to have all of my chair settings at, the keyboard height, and the monitor height so that my hands would not get crapped, my back would not get tight, and my eyes would be relaxed. At this time I have not done a lot of typing, so I told her I would need to get back to her later once my programming portion of the job begins.

Following work, Kami met up with me and we went and viewed an apartment in Lima, OH. It took me about 30-40 minutes to get there (which is still better than an hour drive) and the place was NICE! I was very satisfied with the location, the interior, and the exterior. They will have two openings this weekend, and I was told I get the first pick. Hopefully, I can move in right before August 1st.

This weekend has been a very wet weekend, as my basement apartment was 8 inches under water due to heavy rain fall on Saturday. The majority of Sunday was spent in ripping out carpet and moving my furniture, clothing, etc to an upstairs bedroom so when I find an apartment, I can then move it all over there.

Due the the flooding, I have not been able to do my postings, or any computer work for obvious reasons. Finally, last night we drilled a whole up through the floor to send my high speed cable line up and got everything attached upstairs. W00T, Internet is back!

Today, I started my new job with Central Insurance in Van Wert. I am a full-time employee with a TON of benefits and even more benefits start in 29 more days! I went through orientation today from the Human Resources department and orientation in the IT department will be starting tomorrow and training is to follow that. In about three weeks, I should be ready to hit the code and dive in to some of the ongoing projects (hopefully, I can play with the coding before then too, but we will see).

Right now, I am trying to decide what to invest in on my 401K plan so I can have a big and bright retirement. I called my Dad, as he has done faboluos with his selections and so he helped me plan out good growth investments that should (knock on wood) prosper during my years at Central Insurance.

It is good to be back and I am glad everything is finally situated on some level. Hopefully, I find a place soon and this weekend will be a lot of moving my stuff to a new location. Wish me luck!