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I’m the worst blogger in the history of the tubes.This isn’t even really a blog post, it actually started as a description of a photo on Flickr that got out of control in length and resembled a blog post more than anything else. So without further adieu, here it goes –I’ll include the photo as well to make it complete:
I’ve been doing a LOT of thinking today. Over the past couple days (starting Thursday or Friday) the huge changes my life has taken over the last month have really started to hit home. A quick look at my 365 photo set makes it quite obvious, at least for me. The Summer of 2008 will definitely go down in my own personal history book as the biggest life changing period of the early years of my life (assuming I live a long life). I feel like I’ve grown up more in the past 5-6 weeks than in years before now.
Here’s a quick recap:
- I moved out of my house in Rochester, leaving most of my furniture and other bulky possessions behind. I left Rochester about a week before I finished my studies at RIT, my final exam exam schedule worked out nicely like that (bunch of online finals).
- I graduated from RIT after 4 long years, with a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology with a minor in Psychology.
- About a week after I officially completed my university studies (for now), I left my whole family in Connecticut and went back to Rochester for a couple days to prep for the big move. I left Rochester on the 30th very late at night without even really seriously saying goodbye to my roommates…
- August 31st to September 6th I drove across the United States from Rochester, NY to Phoenix, AZ (3000 miles) with a friend I knew through various Mazda forum communities. See my photo set "trans-american zoom". One would think driving for a week would be enough to say "hey.. this is a really major life-changing event".. but it wasn’t. I made the move without even having a job here in Phoenix, but that didn’t phase me in the slightest.
- September 11th I spent the entire day (literally) interviewing at a friggin amazing company that I had done a phone and video conference interview with, and later that same day I was offered the job!
- September 24th I started my career, after over a year of having no job while I was finishing my studies.
Today I’m settled into my new career, loving every minute of it (exchange server meltdown and all). I’m working for a company that has for a handful of years in a row been named one of the top 25 medium-sized companies to work for in the nation, and it really shows in the way the company works. It’s a profitable company, expanding pretty fast, and independent (also a privately-held company), so no parent company meddling with everything. The people I work with are all amazing, every single one of them.
I think the shock of all of this will hit me again this coming weekend when I get paid for the first time and I can finally start paying my mom back for financing my trip across the country. I miss my family whenever I’m reminded just how far away I am (usually when my mom calls me because it just hit her how far away I am). I’d love to fly out for a weekend to visit, but I’d rather take that money and pay my mom back faster. My parents and sister are coming out in January to visit, so I’ll see them soon enough.
I do still need to return to Connecticut, as I barely hung out with any of my "back home friends" when I was there for a couple weeks before coming to Phoenix.
Outside of that, there’s still even more changes. Back in Rochester, outside of my roommates that I really didn’t hang out with much before moving, my social life was absorbed by my hobbies, specifically Mazdas/racing. At least a few times each month I’d be in Canada hanging out with the Toronto Protege Club. With the move comes a new car club. I definitely miss the Toronto Protege Club a lot, they’re really a top notch club that has no match. Since moving here, every weekend has meant at least one Arizona Mazda Club meet. They’re a great bunch, and I’m finally starting to remember people’s names and everything.
I also left themazdaforum.com, what was an awesome Mazda community I helped get up and running November 2007. Some childish crap went down on there and it ended with the "owner" of the site stripping me of all my administrative privileges, so I left without starting any drama and started kanseiranch.org (yes, no WWW, I don’t force that www crap like many other sites). There’s only 10 or so members on the site, and it isn’t really growing because I haven’t tried luring any of my friends from themazdaforum.com over yet. I also activated hosting on a few other domains I have.. but for most of them, still not totally sure what I’ll do with them. People have found out about the site through word of mouth. Sometimes I feel like I’m just talking to myself on there, but I can’t really expect everyone I know to follow me to each new Mazda site that I decide to call home. I do really miss all my e-friends on the old site. Hopefully I can return some day.
One thing in my life is certain –August and September 2008 went by in the blink of an eye, so I guess the old adage about time flying rings true for me.
——-
I guess to update anyone who might read this blog (perhaps the “sol 3 south planet” page is still active, I’m not entirely sure), I am still alive. I do a big of a daily “mini-blog” on my flickr photostream (www.flickr.com/photos/clauretano) as part of the 365days of self portraits project that I’m currently 109 days into. On top of that I’m still on Facebook of course and am on LinkedIn as well (http://www.linkedin.com/in/clauretano). If I get the free time I may start blogging more regularly, but I doubt it. Between work, the AZ Mazda Club, and hiking/running every weekend I don’t have a ton of free time.
Today was the day I had my interview with Lenel Systems International. I rushed to get there on time as I was leaving a bit later than I would have liked to and didn't know what to expect with the Route 252 traffic (it was pretty bad last time). I managed to get there with 7 minutes to spare 
I checked in with the receptionist and waited in the big lobby, staring patiently at the plasma screen that just sat there with a static image on it the whole time. I scribbled a few questions to ask them that I thought up into my folio. A man came out and said "Are you the 2 o'clock interview?" I got up, shook hands with him, and he asked me if I was Mike. I said no, I was Chris, and he said something about one of his co-workers must have already started interviewing this "Mike" character. He took me into a room for the interview and I greeted the head of QA; she seemed very nice. I gave him a copy of my resume as he couldn't find his copy, and then he started in on the typical questions. After 5 – 10 minutes of that another employee came in the room and said "Who are you interviewing? I think we might have the wrong people". Yeah as it turns out there were a few 2 o'clock interviews, one in the IT department, one in the QA department.. and I don't remember what the third was for.
I got a quick tour of their IT staff room and their server farm (mmmmmm) and then we found an empty conference room for the interview. Of course as I was sitting down another person came in to interview me also. Always with the double teaming, sheesh. They talked about their network setup, asked me some questions, I asked them some questions, they talked about what the job responsibilities would be, what the chain of command is like, etc.
The interview went quickly (I don't think they really felt like talking much either haha gotta love IT people), and he told me he would give me a call either today or tomorrow letting me know what their decision was. He mentioned that they had already interviewed seven people for the position and had one more today, for a total of of course 9 including myself. I thanked them and was on my way. They had to let me out of the building, because the doors are locked on the inside and out and they use an RFID RSA crypto keyfob (totally sweet) for entry/exit.
So yeah. That was it. Oh yeah, in case anyone read my previous post about this and said "hmm Lenel sounds sorta familiar", take a look at any of the card swipe or card/keypad access panels on RITs campus. All the ones that I have seen are Lenel ones. They make that sort of thing, so of course they have the crazy model at their headquarters.
Thoroughly impressed but feeling as though I didn't wow anyone during the interview, I made my way back to the apartment with just enough time to get changed before going back to campus for Discrete Math II.
In what I believe was a first out of the three classes I have taken with Dr. Shahmohamad, we got out early.. an hour early, because we were at the end of a chapter and the first section of the next chapter was much to long to try and start in the remaining hour of class.
Back at the apartment, I noticed that I had voicemail. Sure enough, it was my interviewing asking me to give him a call back when I got the message and giving me his cell phone number. I paced around the apartment for a bit, checked my e-mail, washed my face, and basically did anything else that I could think of.
After a few minutes of that, I made the phone call. He answered, we exchanged greetings, and then he got right on with it. He extended an offer for a summer/fall co-op working at their U.S. office doing end-user support (200+ employees), installation/imaging/repair of new computers, and assisting with the planning and deployment of a new IP phone system for the entire building. He asked me if I was interested and I just blurted out "Of course I am, I'm very excited about this".
He said that they would like me to start as soon as possible, and definitely by the week of June 1st. I told him that I might need a week off right after finals to go home and see my family and take care of some things (like possibly moving into a new apartment), and he said that was ok. The week of June 1st is the week right after finals week. He said that he would have one of the PR people send off the formal offer to me in the mail, and that they would like it sent back before the end of the week if possible. sweet
And then it hit me that I probably won't be able to go to NH at all this year. That makes me really sad, especially since my mom will probably be miserable if she has to deal with my father by herself for weeks and weeks. Hopefully I'll be able to get a long weekend so that I can at least have a few days of relaxation on the beach this summer.
Also I won't be able to hang out with my friends from back home of course. No big deal, right? It's just a summer, right? Well sorta. I haven't really gotten to spend time with my friends back home since last summer. After I'm done with the co-op of course I'll be plopped right into the winter semester at RIT, and then the Spring semester and then oh look.. it's been two years since I have spent any appreciable amount of time at home. ha
Oh well though, I knew about the whole co-op thing before I even applied to RIT so if it wasn't something I wanted to do, I wouldn't have applied or come here. I am very excited about this co-op and hope that I'll do very well and gain a lot of experience in the field, which will nicely re-affirm that I made the right choice in changing majors again. It isn't that I don't care about my friends back home (quite the contrary) but that this is something I need to do and I can't possibly pass up an opportunity like this. More than that, I need to co-op to graduate so I would need to do it sooner or later, and I'm chosing the former.
Sorry if this post came off as bragging or gloating, but for once something really went my way so I thought it was time to celebrate.
woohoo spending money before I even have it here I come! 
I had basically resigned to the fact that I would have another free summer at home working a paltry 6 hours a week at barely over CT minimum wage (though at a job I love). It wouldn't be too bad though, as I'd get to hang out with my best friends from back home and stuff.
Well today I got a phone call with a 585 area code so I figured maybe it was the shipper that should be delivering my exhaust midpipe, but it was Lenel Systems (!). I had been tripled teamed by their staff at the job fair and handed off my Resume, and then a week or so ago I got a letter in the mail saying that they had received my resume and would contact me if I was qualified. o_O I know I am qualified, but my coursework doesn't prove that since I just transferred into this program after the fall semester.
The phone interview went well, and I have to go to their Victor, NY office on Monday (luckily I have a 4 hour break between IDM and Discrete II) for an in-person interview o_O. I'm really excited about this, because it's something I really think I'll enjoy doing full time
I'm crossing my fingers, I really hope this interview goes well. It would be VERY nice to get a little bit of the looming student loan debt paid back, and maybe a little on the side to turbo my car
So yeah, um nothing is concrete yet of course (and I'll likely forget to post about it when there's an update) but yeah I just thought I'd put that out there because I'm a bit excited.
If anyone wants to add my public calendar, my gmail address is clauretano @ [you know the rest].
If you have any public calendars up yet (mine is just my basic class schedule right now, I had other stuff to do this morning), leave a comment.
Of course, as Ryan and I were discussing earlier today, Google doesn't seem to be a big fan of integrating with things such as iCal, Outlooks, etc (one exception to this is the POP3 feature of GMail, but come on .. it's POP3, that's nothing to write home about), but they do make it almost too easy to import ANY public .ical file for publishing (and of course indexing) by Google. It'll let you import files from Outlook too (In a csv file if I recall correctly, my favorite 
).
Now Google knows precisely where I am (down to the room number, and as soon as I get precise latitude and longitude numbers for each room, they'll be able to plot me on a satellite view) at basically any time during the week. On top of that, they know what I look for on the internet, what I talk about in my e-mails, and every last word of every seemingly private conversation I have on GTalk. It makes me feel all warm inside
Update:
The company is developing software to make it possible for users to “synch” their Google Calendar with data in their Outlook software, said Mr Sjogreen. [Google Calendar Project Manager]
I got the response back about doing a concentration or minor in French so I had to completely rework my schedule around that. here’s the new one. I think the only thing that is the same is that I’m still taking Discrete Math II with Shahmohamad. I’m taking two IT Core courses (though one is a 4050/NSSA course) so that I’m that much closer to the bold line on the worksheet that signifies “ready for co-op”. The only reason I’m doing French is because Intermediate French I (the course after beginning French III) is only offered in the fall so It would be drawn out forever if I waited to take Beginning III.
You can now download videos off Google Video to your mac/windows PC (it spits out an avi), your iPod Video, or your Sony PSP. wow
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6419260689723508494
Oh and they released a video player app for windows with integrated searching (was there ever a doubt?)
http://video.google.com/playerdownload.html
Of course I haven’t tested the video player as I’m on my mac.
http://cheneygothimagun.ytmnd.com/
http://cheneysafety.ytmnd.com/
http://medievaldick.ytmnd.com/
http://cheneyindestructable.ytmnd.com/
http://cheneytoblame.ytmnd.com/
http://cheneywalrus.ytmnd.com/
http://burrvscheney.ytmnd.com/
Thank you Cheney for making me laugh.
While I’m at it I might as well post some other fun YTMNDs I’ve come across today. Most of these aren’t funny if you aren’t a frequent YTMNDer.
http://orlysuicided.ytmnd.com/
Oh and I do realize that “ACE OF BASE” is on one of my tabs.
… of my web presence. That’s this week’s theme
As I write this I’m working on cleaning my del.icio.us account. Mostly I’m simplifying the tags (as you can see by clicking the link to my del.icio.us page, I still have a ways to go). I have spent the past 45 minutes working on it, so if anyone had seen it before you can tell it’s a huge improvement.
When I first got my del.icio.us account, I used as few tags as possible to categorize a link. At some point, I decided it would be a good idea to use in the realm of 25 tags for each link. I don’t know what I was thinking. I had tags like “game”, “games”, “gaming” or “financial”, “bank”, “banks”, “banking”.. ugh
The other thing I am going to fix is deleting accounts for blogs I no longer use, finally making the automotive section of my web site so that I can deactivate my cardomain.com account, and maybe I’ll make a new AIM screenname and start off with a blank buddy list. I’m thinking I’ll delete my myspace account (I only have one because people bitched at me, so maybe I’ll just delete the small amount of content that is there and just replace it with a link to my web site or facebook profile) and clear out and rebuild my facebook profile.
Think of it as a defragmentation of the disk that is my web presence. It is needed.
Yeah, how about you don’t use codes all over your receipt which are DSM-IV diagnosis codes. I was given a receipt because I was missing class for my emergency appointment, but there’s no way I’m going to show my professor this receipt as proof. It says right on it “Diagnosis: Psych 1(300.4), 2(300.3), 3(300.23), 4(299.80)
The DSM-IV classifies 300.4 as Dysthymic Disorder, 300.3 as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, 300.23 as General Social Phobia, and 299.80 as Aspergers Syndrome.
Yeah thanks SHC. Anyone who knows anything about Psychology can easily make the connection between those numbers and the DSM-IV manual. bah!
At least he gave me drugs. mmm
I hadn’t run the ThinkVantage Software Installer yet in 2006. I ran it today, and there was an update for the Software Installer package itself which enabled automatically grabbing software from the ThinkPad web site. WOW that makes my life so much easier. No more downloading dozens of randomly named .exe files every couple months which just extract files to c:\ThinkVantage and then going into Software Installer to run the updates myself.
It also makes me so happy that Lenovo is keeping up with the ThinkPad software updates, maybe even moreso than IBM ever did. Here’s a screenshot, and I didn’t even have half of the updates selected because well I don’t need software like the ThinkVantage Rescue and Recovery Utility installed.
Meanwhile I still feel like I’m dying. I was hoping to get to the Student Health Center to bitch at my doctor not calling me back even though I left voicemail and a handwritten letter a week ago, but then I remembered that I had a term paper to write for Data Comm, which I wrote about Bluetooth including a dissection of it’s protocol stack and profiles and such. It was a good time, and I learned that Bluetooth and the Bluetooth logo weren’t just thought up by some marketing company, they have meaning. “The name Bluetooth was born from the 10th century king of Denmark, King Harold Bluetooth who engaged in diplomacy which led warring parties to negotiate with each other. “
Wee. I think I’m going to be a bad person and leave halfway through Data Comm so that I can get to the doctor’s office before they close. I’m freakin sick of the lightning that is going on in my brain. I can see it, hear it, and even feel it. I keep momentarily losing consciousness too, this is definitely not good. :’( I don’t know if I want to go back to being medicated after being off my medication since Friday. Aside from the withdrawal effects it really isn’t that bad. I think the lessened pain of anxiety was just a placebo effect, though I’m starting to think that it actually was affecting my obsessive-compulsive habits.. which I have been diagnosed with by a real doctor, I’m not just one of the millions who claims to have OCD and bitches about it and uses it as an excuse for everything. I never used it as an excuse, I just recognized that it was a part of my personality (albeit a destructive one) that I needed to live with.
Ok, back to doing CRC generating and checking. Wee this is fun.
