It’s been several days of that. Well, specifically, today and last Thursday and Friday.
And if you’re thinking that I’m talking about school again, you’re spot on!
Remember the Monday/Wednesday class that they rescheduled to Tuesday? They cancelled it entirely.
As of right now, I am registered in zero classes at school, which means that I cannot work there. Theoretically I’ll be signing up for a public speaking course that is required for my degree and that will nicely take care of the required three hours that I have to take to work. It leaves the question of Student Aid up in the air. I have to take nine hours to qualify for that, with the two classes that start in March at GateWay I’ll have a total of 10 hours, so I’m covered there as long as I get some sort of partnership agreement between the two schools. But this has been such a ridiculous amount of hassle that I’m really tempted to ditch the student loan, I just don’t know what to do.
The funny thing is that I wasn’t in the least bit pissed about tonight’s class being cancelled. I stopped at Dairy Queen and had a medium chocolate dipped cone in gross violation of my diet, but screw that, and read a chapter in my new David Weber book. Got home, and there was a message from the college left this afternoon informing me of the class being cancelled. Awfully considerate of them, don’t you think?
Now the best thing about my classes being cancelled? I bought both books online and thus can’t return them. I’ll probably use them to learn the products (Novell Netware Installation/Administration and Oracle 9i Database Administration). Such fun. Not as much fun as a guy who came in to the High Tech Center today – he bought his book for Photoshop online and it didn’t include the CD which he must have. He was rather put-out that we didn’t have a CD to give him. We don’t have any text books, doofus! Amazing the people we get in.
* * * * *
In other news, I’ve been doing some network work of late. I got Magic Rat’s sister’s wireless setup working on my home network and delivered it to him to give to her when she next swings by her parent’s house. It’s literally a 40 mile drive to her house, so it saves me a bit of gas.
I’ve also been working on CardiGirl’s Macs. We got all her old software and files transferred from her iMac over to her spiffy new neato-keen Mac, the one where the LCD housing has the entire computer. Quite spiff. That was last Friday, and we spent a good five hours on it. We did dinner at Lone Star whilst waiting for file transferage. I was back out Monday night to configure the Classic area and get her PhotoShop working, along with downloading new drivers for her scanner and trackball. The trackball was easy and came up immediately, the scanner not easy and we went off to Rock Fish for dinner whilst waiting for downloadage. As of right now, it looks like she’s in good shape, we have two things to iron out and I got info that will theoretically fix one of them.
* * * * *
In job news, I had an interview with a spin-off LLC of New Times called BackPage.com. They’re an ad-accumulator, sort of like Craig’s List. They need a techie and manual spam filterer, I might be the person for it. I got home from the interview and there was a message wanting me for an interview Friday with the Dept. of Education. So maybe something will break soon. These are the first in-person interviews with actual employers since at least last April. I’ve had meetings with recruiters and a couple of phone interviews, but these are the first face-to-face with people who could hire me. So we shall see what we shall see.
I also had a very good phone interview last week with a private automotive tech institute that I think I have an excellent chance of getting called for an in-person interview Friday, and I have an app in with Phoenix College which is four blocks away. Their application process is the slowest, naturally, since they’re County Gov’t. But we’ll see. The State is not as slow as many gov’t orgs, particularly as this position is a contract slot with the possibility of becoming permanent. And that job is only about 3 miles from home. For that matter, the New Times job is about five miles from home. So either would be an improvement in gas consumption, not to mention salary. The tech institute is the furthest, probably about 15 miles away, but it’s freeway all the way. And more importantly, it’s about two miles from one of my fav eating places, Chino Bandido Takee-Outee. One of the best Mexican/Cuban/Chinese places you’re likely to find. Great place to eat.
To help with Friday’s interview with the State, I downloaded a copy of Ingres II database and tried to install it on my laptop. It installed fine then barfed on the post-installation installation of more stuff. I hope I can get it running to get some rudimentary familiarity with the product. I got a tip from someone I work with that this is their core system. I’ve worked with Ingres before, but it was running on a SCO Unix box and all I was doing was using SQL Server’s Data Transformation Services to import data from it. It was a complicated job, but it worked.
Well, I’m tired. I’m going back to my book and a semi-early bed time. I’ve got a training class at 10am, so it’ll be out the door about 9:15.
And if you’re thinking that I’m talking about school again, you’re spot on!
Remember the Monday/Wednesday class that they rescheduled to Tuesday? They cancelled it entirely.
As of right now, I am registered in zero classes at school, which means that I cannot work there. Theoretically I’ll be signing up for a public speaking course that is required for my degree and that will nicely take care of the required three hours that I have to take to work. It leaves the question of Student Aid up in the air. I have to take nine hours to qualify for that, with the two classes that start in March at GateWay I’ll have a total of 10 hours, so I’m covered there as long as I get some sort of partnership agreement between the two schools. But this has been such a ridiculous amount of hassle that I’m really tempted to ditch the student loan, I just don’t know what to do.
The funny thing is that I wasn’t in the least bit pissed about tonight’s class being cancelled. I stopped at Dairy Queen and had a medium chocolate dipped cone in gross violation of my diet, but screw that, and read a chapter in my new David Weber book. Got home, and there was a message from the college left this afternoon informing me of the class being cancelled. Awfully considerate of them, don’t you think?
Now the best thing about my classes being cancelled? I bought both books online and thus can’t return them. I’ll probably use them to learn the products (Novell Netware Installation/Administration and Oracle 9i Database Administration). Such fun. Not as much fun as a guy who came in to the High Tech Center today – he bought his book for Photoshop online and it didn’t include the CD which he must have. He was rather put-out that we didn’t have a CD to give him. We don’t have any text books, doofus! Amazing the people we get in.
In other news, I’ve been doing some network work of late. I got Magic Rat’s sister’s wireless setup working on my home network and delivered it to him to give to her when she next swings by her parent’s house. It’s literally a 40 mile drive to her house, so it saves me a bit of gas.
I’ve also been working on CardiGirl’s Macs. We got all her old software and files transferred from her iMac over to her spiffy new neato-keen Mac, the one where the LCD housing has the entire computer. Quite spiff. That was last Friday, and we spent a good five hours on it. We did dinner at Lone Star whilst waiting for file transferage. I was back out Monday night to configure the Classic area and get her PhotoShop working, along with downloading new drivers for her scanner and trackball. The trackball was easy and came up immediately, the scanner not easy and we went off to Rock Fish for dinner whilst waiting for downloadage. As of right now, it looks like she’s in good shape, we have two things to iron out and I got info that will theoretically fix one of them.
In job news, I had an interview with a spin-off LLC of New Times called BackPage.com. They’re an ad-accumulator, sort of like Craig’s List. They need a techie and manual spam filterer, I might be the person for it. I got home from the interview and there was a message wanting me for an interview Friday with the Dept. of Education. So maybe something will break soon. These are the first in-person interviews with actual employers since at least last April. I’ve had meetings with recruiters and a couple of phone interviews, but these are the first face-to-face with people who could hire me. So we shall see what we shall see.
I also had a very good phone interview last week with a private automotive tech institute that I think I have an excellent chance of getting called for an in-person interview Friday, and I have an app in with Phoenix College which is four blocks away. Their application process is the slowest, naturally, since they’re County Gov’t. But we’ll see. The State is not as slow as many gov’t orgs, particularly as this position is a contract slot with the possibility of becoming permanent. And that job is only about 3 miles from home. For that matter, the New Times job is about five miles from home. So either would be an improvement in gas consumption, not to mention salary. The tech institute is the furthest, probably about 15 miles away, but it’s freeway all the way. And more importantly, it’s about two miles from one of my fav eating places, Chino Bandido Takee-Outee. One of the best Mexican/Cuban/Chinese places you’re likely to find. Great place to eat.
To help with Friday’s interview with the State, I downloaded a copy of Ingres II database and tried to install it on my laptop. It installed fine then barfed on the post-installation installation of more stuff. I hope I can get it running to get some rudimentary familiarity with the product. I got a tip from someone I work with that this is their core system. I’ve worked with Ingres before, but it was running on a SCO Unix box and all I was doing was using SQL Server’s Data Transformation Services to import data from it. It was a complicated job, but it worked.
Well, I’m tired. I’m going back to my book and a semi-early bed time. I’ve got a training class at 10am, so it’ll be out the door about 9:15.