January 28, 2015 - or 650 Days Since My Last Post

Boy, is it ever dusty in here.

Fake football? A new job?

Wow, that's old news! Except for the fake football thing. I still play it. I just never documented any of my adventures. If you, constant reader, have learned anything about me...it's that I rarely follow through on anything I promise in this blog. I mean, it's been 650 days since my last post. Do you want to know what's happened in that time? I played golf like five times! I bought a different car! Wanda's gotten two crowns on her teeth!

Oh, we even had a baby! Yes, ol' irresponsible Nate and his wonderful, loving, responsible wife had a beautiful baby boy named Erik. He was born 5/23/14 and has been the greatest little guy anybody could ask for and Wanda and I love him more than anything.

Life has been quite different since Erik arrived. I think the two cats have been properly traumatized with his arrival but they have been slowly coming around. We've even been teaching him how to pet them gently. I'm sure when he starts crawling (so close!) and then walking he'll be terrorizing them. But for now they tolerate him and sometimes even come close to sniff him every once in a while.

And I think I'm done for now. The chasm between wanting to write and actually writing anything is vast for me. Nearly infinite. And I have no more words at the moment. I hope to have more soon. For now, enjoy this dispatch from the void!

Finis Est Principo

Do you remember all of that whining I was doing about having to go to job interviews and working with a recruiter and being rejected by most of the places I interviewed at and waiting impatiently to hear back from the one place that hadn't rejected me yet?

Well, I heard back from that place.

And they offered me a job.

.

.

.

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Hooray!

Now, as my faithful readers, you probably want to know the nitty-gritty on the whole process. I've been purposefully vague on here (if you follow me on Twitter or are my friend on Facebook you've probably seen me check-in at a few places for interviews) because I wanted to wait until I finally had a job. There was probably no good reason for that. Maybe just to build suspense for you, my faithful readers! No, not really.

Anywho...

I actually interviewed at a business a few months before I finished school. That place is Five Nines, a local managed IT services company. I interviewed there twice (first interview was 10/23/2012 and the second was 11/2/2012) with an understanding that I would be done with school in December and able to start at the beginning of the year. When that time rolled around I was told that there weren't any openings at that time in their help desk area. Bummer.

My next interview was January 28 (two days before my birthday, yay!) at the University of Nebraska Foundation for a help desk position. The interview went well and I thought it would be fun to work there. The interviewer told me that it could be a fairly lengthy wait before the second interview so I knew it would be a while before I found out. I didn't even get a second interview. I got the rejection email on February 26.

On to interview number two (of 2013, anyway). This time I met with some folks at MacPractice, a company down in the Haymarket here in Lincoln who provide practice management software for doctor's offices and support for that software. This particular position would have been in their call center providing support for the various users of their software. This interview also went pretty well but I didn't know if I necessarily wanted to work at a place like this. I've already worked in a high volume call center and didn't know if I wanted to spend more time in that kind of environment. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for being busy and having to deal with a lot of things at work. That's what work is. But, I just wasn't necessarily liking the environment or the vibe from that particular place. I'm sure it's a fine place to work, just not for me. So, I wasn't too broken up about their rejection email that arrived on February 12.

#3. This interview was with Olsson Associates on February 20. I was really impressed with them. There were four people in on the interview with me but I didn't really feel intimidated by them. I felt that I really presented myself well and had a good rapport with the interviewers. This was the company that I had the phone interview with, which was on February 27.

Are you guys with me still?

On April 2nd I got a call from Olsson Associates and they offered me a position with their company. I was slightly shocked, very relieved, and super excited to get that call! It had been such a long time that I figured they weren't going to offer the job to me and were just taking their time before they called and told me they'd chosen someone else. But, I wasn't doing too good of a job remembering (even with Wanda reminding me every so often) that this was how the job search process goes. It takes time. It's frustrating. It can be demoralizing. But you just have to keep trying. I'd also like to point out that the situation I found myself in after graduating was infinitely better than what scores of other graduates find themselves in. How, you ask?

1. I still had the same job at AdventSource that I had held while I was a student. They let me stay there while I hunted for a permanent position and were always flexible when I needed to leave for an interview. I will be eternally grateful to them for the opportunity to work and learn while I was in school.

2. My wife has a great job that she loves. We weren't in a situation where I was the only source of income. None of this school stuff would have been possible without my loving wife, Wanda. Thanks babe!

3. It only took me about three months of full job hunt mode to get a job. Some people search for much longer than this and still can't find any work. I know that I am lucky and need to be grateful for what I already have and the opportunities that are before me. Now I just need to make the most of them.

I start my new job as a Computer Systems Technician next Monday, the 22nd of April. 8:00 AM sharp!

Thanks for reading, everyone.

Hold That Phone

About that phone interview that I had yesterday: it was a bit exhausting.

It was supposed to last about an hour and it clocked in at about 15 minutes over that (some of that overage can be attributed to my rambling tendencies); it felt like a mash-up of all of the worst kinds of interview questions. This was an evaluation interview so the interviewer was following a specific set of questions and was typing my responses into her computer. I wasn't allowed to ask for any explanation or clarification of the questions. I was only allowed to ask for the question to be repeated. I won't go into specifics right now, but there were lots of questions followed either by "can you give an example of [particular trait and/or situation]?" or, "can you rate yourself [regarding trait] on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being high?" At one point, one of the earlier questions was repeated and I'm guessing it was probably to see if I would change my answer or be tripped up by it. I think I did okay but I know that I could have answered some of the questions better and that I rambled on a bit too much on a lot of them. I kicked myself about that after it was over and I hope that I didn't sink my chances with that company. I was told that I'd hear something from them next week so here's to hoping that it's to offer me a job and not to turn me down.

*crosses fingers*

Corn

Quick post here, before I get ready to grill my first ears of corn ever. We're having some friends over for lunch today and we're grilling hot dogs and corn on the cob. Never grilled corn before, but I know it's been done before so there's hope. Found a helpful link with some info on it: http://whatscookingamerica.net/Vegetables/GrillingCorn.htm

My first summer job was almost doing detassling. I had applied/signed-up, whatever it is kids do before they get crammed onto a hot school bus and taken out into the middle of nowhere to strip the silk tops off the corn. Instead, my future step-mom told me about a job painting the interior of apartments and some new construction. I went with that instead and never was a detassler. Oh well. Sounded like a pretty tough job. Though the pay may have been better than painting.

Goings Ons and Suchs

My, it's been quite a while since I've posted anything on here. I've been tidying up some email business and decided to dust off this blog a bit as well. I also decided to stop importing it into my Notes on Facebook. Why? Dunno, maybe I'm tired of linking everything with my Facebook page. The inevitable Facebookization of the universe. Or maybe I'm just prepping to jump ship to Google+, whenever I can scare up an invite! Took me a few minutes to figure out how to stop importing into Facebook: had to go to their help page, had to search for Notes on Facebook, took me to the first result which was the wrong one, clicked for all search results, thought I found the right one, instead it was a fan page or something for Notes which had porn on it (good move, Facebook), went back to search results, sorted by Apps, finally found the real Notes page, and was finally able to click 'Stop Importing.' Nice.

Anyway--funny thing, listening to the Dan Patrick Show, which is my favorite (and pretty much only) podcast, Dan and the Danettes were at the premier of the show Damages last night and were discussing it on today's show along with social etiquette. When someone says at an awkward point in a conversation at a party, "Anyway . . ." that's a blow-off. That person is done with you! It was funny.

Anyway . . . I'm not blowing you off, I'm just changing the subject a bit. I'm back in school now, at Union College here in good ol' Nebraska studying Information Technology. No mas at Nelnet, just felt it was time to take a crack at figuring out what I really want to do when I grow up. Hopefully I can find a job I enjoy and that pays enough. That's all anyone can ask for I suppose, right?

In an update to much much older post, I've upgraded my College Football gaming experience by a few years. I've been playing NCAA Football 11 on my Xbox 360 and have found it to be an enjoyable (and occasionally frustrating, which Wanda can attest to. I can be one of those dreaded poor-sport babies) game with solid graphics and gameplay. I'm currently spending my time crafting Nate Johnson from College View Academy into a legendary Syracuse running back in the Road to Glory feature. Before that I won five straight National Titles with Nebraska before hanging it up there. My current dynasty is with the Florida International Golden Panthers who I've improved enough to get an invite to the ACC, finally moving out of the whipping-post Sun Belt conference. Gotta love those fake sports. I'm thinking that I should probably fill up as much on fake sports as I can and gobble up all the real college football this fall that I can handle, because it's still not looking super great for there to be an NFL season this year. If I had the NFL Network (hello, Time Warner Cable and the NFL!) I could at least watch Canadian football and Arena football. Alas, I do not. So all I've got is baseball this summer. Someone suggested I should start watching soccer, but I don't know if I can get into that or not. I suppose it would be worth a shot. But that would be cutting into my fake sports time. Gotta love those priorities! No more 'gotta loves', I've already had two.

Okay, this is getting very rambly, I could go on for much longer, but I think this is as good a place as any to end for now. Anyway . . .