The Real World

Well, BEFORE I even graduated I got a phone call from an international corporation letting me know that I got the job as their PC Technician!

Vermont Tech's job placement has been 98% within 4 months of graduation, but I never realized I would have a job this quickly!

Just to clear things up. Originally I was planning on going straight through Vermont Tech's Bachelor program for Computer Engineering Technology, but then I saw a job posting for a company that has a great reputation. I won't name the company on here because this is my personal blog, and my personal and work lives should stay separate from one another.

I was simply looking for a summer job, but instead I was offered a full-time position at a great company with great people, and great benefits as the tasty frosting on the cake. The told me that it would be in my "best interests" to not go back to college immediately after summer.

They offer full medical insurance, dental insurance, life insurance, 401k retirement plan, disability insurance, long-term disability insurance, up to 80% tuition reimbursement, mileage reimbursement (for business travel), and a few other perks. :D

Pretty awesome job! Within two months of graduating from college I have since moved into my own apartment, bought some of my own fancy furniture, live within 35 minutes of MOST of my family and friends, and only 15 minutes to work.

I am keeping an extremely detailed budget so that I can keep track of ever cent I get, and every cent I spend. My next goal is to get a new car, and that should be happening in a month or so. I just need to do a lot of research because dealers are conmen (haha), and I'll need to look into full coverage insurance. :D

Well, I REALLY should have been in bed about an hour ago, so I am going to pass out now. :)

GRADUATING ON MAY 7TH.

It's going to feel weird, but next year I will not be coming back to Vermont Tech.

I have decided that I will graduate this year with an Associate's Degree and focus primarily on seeking employment.

I want to work. I feel like I am more than ready to work, and I really want to prove myself as being a valuable part of a great company. I will probably continue my education at Vermont Tech in the future, but I am not sure how long it will be from now before that happens. I have every intention of still getting my Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering, but for now I have decided to postpone my last two years at this college.

For the most part, I love this place. There ARE some things about this place that I absolutely will not miss, but overall I have been happy with my time here.

Things have changed, and things continue to change.

Not all of these changes I necessarily agree with.

I am currently on the hunt for job openings, but I am confident that I have already found the perfect match. I won't post publicly what the perfect match is, but I really really hope that I got the job. It will be a HUGE step forward for me, and it's the opportunity I have been looking for.

I left my interview with this company and I was feeling great about how everything went. Interviews are typically about presenting yourself to a company and impressing them, in a sense, with your qualifications. This interview was different in the sense that the company impressed me. I walked into the building to what seemed like nothing but happy people.

The best part? The fact that I am 100% sure that I impressed this company for simply being who I am. I am an incredibly honest person, and this wasn't going to be any different. I believe I impressed them solely off of my own personal achievements and character.

I cannot express how much I really hope I get this job, and I am already confident that I would love working at their company. I feel like my interview was a gateway to something great, and I hope that the company will let me in.

I have been told that I have amazing work ethics, and I myself believe I do too. I believe in pulling my own weight, and I also believe in getting things done the right way. Being an RA this year has taught me countless invaluable skills, and it has also taught me that not everyone who gets the job allows themselves to learn these skills. You have to actually do the RA job in order to gain the skills from it.

What have I learned and/or refined with being an RA?

LEADERSHIP.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION.

INCIDENT REPORTING.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT.

MANAGEMENT.

TEAMWORK.

EVENT PLANNING.

INTEGRITY.

ADMINISTRATION.

It's been nothing but a HUGE learning experience that I feel has more than prepared me for the real world. I want to get out. I want to be successful now. I want to move onto a different part of my life.

I CANNOT express how excited I am for my future at this point!

I'm graduating in TWO weeks! My FIRST college degree! There will be more, but this is a great first step! I also only have 2 days left of classes this school year and barely anything to do for finals this semester... these 2 weeks are going to fly right by.

I'll miss seeing my amazing friends on a daily basis, I'll miss the college atmosphere, I'll miss my great professors, I'll miss my favorite Computer Engineering professor and his iconic sense of humor and his ability to teach everything, and I'll miss being the President of Vermont Tech's Music Club.

I'm onto new things!

WISH ME LUCK!!!

The above picture is of (most) of my college band in the Music Club during the "Morey Music Mania" event that I planned/organized for my dorm building.

YEAR #3: ALMOST OVER.

Only two weeks left of classes for this school year!!

I recently had a job interview for a job that looks like an absolute perfect match for me. After this semester, I will have my Associate's Degree in Computer Engineering Technology, so if I get this job then I am probably not going to be returning to Vermont Tech any time soon.

I plan on getting my Bachelor's Degree, but I am not sure when I am going to get it. I was originally going to jump into the Bachelor's program and finish up my last two years at Vermont Tech., but various things have come up that are making me reconsider.

I currently do not know for sure as to whether RAs next year are going to be given an option between a stipend OR a double-room-fee waiver, or if the waiver will be the only option. I can't afford to go to Vermont Tech anymore without having a job to pay for it. The loan payments increase every year, so my parents and I have to pay more money every month for every year of college. I can't live on campus as an RA if I am only getting an exemption from being charged for my room. I NEED income in order to make loan payments, and it's impossible to have a well-paying job to afford college while also being an RA. This is why my interests are being pushed away from the college. Why collect more debt when certain jobs are now available that could seriously push your career forward? That's what I am focusing on now.

I REALLY hope I get this job. I am confident that it will be a great experience, and it would be a huge step forward for me.

I'm also kinda getting sick of the college atmosphere. I have been here for 3 years now. Do I really want to be here for the next 2 years on top of that? I mean, I love being here, but 5 years is a long time. I feel like I have been here long enough, and amazing opportunities are now coming up for me that I would be foolish to NOT act on.

I am ready. I want to have a great job with great people, and I want to be doing things that I have always loved doing. I am confident that the interviews I had went incredibly well, and I should be hearing back from this company within the next week as to whether or not I got the job. I would likely be starting immediately after this school year ends... which would be great because I really want to work this summer.

The picture above is of a guitar tuner that I have been making with my Arduino board. The Arduino board is a programmable microcontroller that you can pretty much program to do whatever you want so long as all the other hardware is there. I programmed my board so that it has two buttons. One button goes to the next note in the standard scale, and the other button goes to the previous note. Each of these notes have a distinct frequency for their sound. To generate the frequency through the output pin, I have a formula within my program that calculates how long the signal must be HIGH and how long the signal must be LOW. It then takes this signal and outputs it through a transducer (which in this case is a speaker). It's a really cool project, and I have enjoyed making it!

I had to adjust my tuner (basically, I had to tune it with a professional tuner) because the commands within the software I wrote happen to produce extra delays on my Arduino board. These delays effect the output of my sound, so to fine-tune my guitar tuner I had to compensate for the difference. The notes, on average, ended up being roughly 8.67 Hz lower than they were supposed to be. I just added 8.67 to all of the programmed frequencies, and currently its most accurate not is an A5.

Well, I can't believe this year has gone by so quickly. I'm extremely excited, nervous, and hopeful, about getting a special phone call next week from a company that I would REALLY love to work for. It will be crazy not coming back to campus next year, but it is all for the best of reasons, and if I get this job then I am going to be incredibly excited for where things are headed. :D

Back From San Francisco!

Well, my trip to San Francisco was absolutely amazing!!

My first-and-second-ever flights took place on Wednesday morning through to Wednesday night. We left the airport in Burlington, landed a couple hours later in Chicago, and then several hours later in San Francisco. On my second flight I had to give into my hunger and I actually coughed up $9 for an (obviously overpriced) turkey sandwich. It tasted great, but it definitely wasn't worth $9. It's just the airline business taking advantage of people who have to pack light and can't make room for extra food.

My first plane trip was a REALLY cool experience. Lauri, the awesome career services counselor for Vermont Tech., kept checking in on my to make sure I wasn't too nervous about the flight, but I was having a pretty awesome time watching the land below us disappear as we approached the clouds. I knew that the plane had to go fast in order to take off, but it is one thing "knowing" something from common sense, and another when you actually experience it first-hand. Our first plane was a tiny plane that you could barely stand up in. It had two rows of seats on one side, and a single row of seats on the other. There were so few people on the plane that my friends and I were pretty much free to sit wherever we wanted to.

I got some awesome video footage of the first plane taking off, and some awesome footage of the plane landing in Chicago. The famous airport in Chicago was the coolest one I saw during the whole trip. It had a brontosaurus skeleton, fancy ceilings with flashing neon lights, and several other really cool things that cannot be described with just word.

When we landed in San Francisco and checked into our hotel, a lot of my friends were starving. We ended up walking around the streets of San Francisco to get a feel for the place and get comfortable, but then we were absolutely surprised by the crazy amounts of homeless people. We sat in Subway... probably a block a way from our hotel, and while we were eating our sandwiches some crazy/old homeless guy with a big white beard was outside of the shop and he was making these growling and grunting noises. We probably saw 13 homeless people on Wednesday night alone... maybe even more. It's because the city is relatively warm throughout the whole year, so people can actually survive living outside. It's not like Vermont where we have our crazy Nor-easter snowstorms that can even make living inside a house difficult.

Thursday we spent the day taking an amazing tour of Google's 500,000 sq. ft. campus in Palo Alto, California... otherwise known as the famous Silicon Valley. Google has everything... free massage parlors, dining areas/cafeterias, swimming pools, gym memberships, laundry rooms, outdoor sports, Google bikes, and even reserved parking for pregnant women. Their entrance lobby even had two gigantic Android phones that were fully-functional! My friends were playing some of the games that use the touch screen controls, and it seemed to work amazingly well.

After leaving Google, we then headed over to Apple. A somewhat recent Vermont Tech grad from the Computer Engineering Major (who was also a Morey RA at one point), is now the Project Manager for two security teams at Apple! On Mac OSX, when you are asked for your password, his team helps write all of the code that controls that functionality. It was cool meeting him because he is one of my professor's old roommates, and he was also in the same major that I am now, AND he was once a Morey Hall RA like I am now. It's just cool for me to see someone who is doing so well, and knowing that I am at least kind of on the same track as he once was.

Friday was the day that we went to the 2011 Game Developer's Conference! We got to see developer's and designers work on technologies for the newest games right on the show floor. We watched as someone from AMD (as in the former ATi) mold a human face using a modeling program. I also got to see Crysis 2 being played in 3D and it looked pretty damn good. I ended up walking around the whole show floor several times, but it was cool being there because you have to be either a college student, or in the game industry as a developer etc, or with the press in order to go to this event.

Overall this trip was an absolutely amazing experience. California is such an beautiful state (in the right neighborhoods). We went down to Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39 where you get a great view of both the Golden Gate Bridge AND of Alcatraz. We topped our trip off by eating dinner and having some drinks at the Hard Rock Cafe right in San Francsico. I had a Long Island Iced Tea (one of my favorite drinks)... it was mixed to perfection, and I was even allowed to keep the fancy glass that the drink came in.

I will never forget this trip, and I can never thank Lauri or Vermont Tech enough for making it possible. I went to California with some amazing friends of mine! Google! Apple! GDC! Pier 39! What more could I ask for?!

I can tell you right now though... we got back to Vermont and we were experiencing a crazy blizzard. I could feel the cold air a lot more than I ever used to because I had gotten used to it being about 76 degrees in San Francisco. It's too bad it is sooo f#cking cold here! Haha

SAN FRANCISCO IN SIX DAYS!!!! :D

It is incredibly hard to believe, but six days from now I will be getting on plane (for the first time in my life), AND I will be heading out to San Francisco!! I am incredibly excited for this trip, and I know that it is going to be an amazing time. I never once thought that I would ever be able to go to GDC because it is restricted to college students, game developers, and the press. Most people do not know what the Game Developer's Conference is, so then I have to explain to them that it is one of the two largest gaming events that take place in the world on a yearly basis.

HUGE gaming corporations go to these conferences. ALL of the major businesses show up annually. Companies like Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, IBM, Google, Insomniac Games, Ubisoft, EA, and most of the gaming companies that you can probably think about... including a Minecraft booth this year!! :D (Minecraft is an incredibly addicting computer game... in case you don't already know... in which case you need to find out what I am talking about lol)

Well, I gotta turn in for the night! My RA duty for the night is now over since it is well past 12:00 am, so I should probably pass out soon. I have no problem with just letting these days go by because...


SAN FRANCISCO IN SIX DAYS!!!! SAN FRANCISCO!!!! OMFG!!! WOO HOOOOO!!!! GAME DEVELOPER'S CONFERENCE!!!!!!!! HELLLZZZZ YEAH!!!! :D

^ excited. :D

Better Thoughts & San Francisco in One Month!

The majority of my life I have been a calm, collected, and level-headed individual. I do a whole lot of thinking, I have a lot of consideration for various things, and a lot of respect for many people. I have been told in the past that I do a great job of seeing things for how they are, that I am great friend, and that 99% of the time I don't let anything cloud my judgment.

With that said, there still are times that this kinda falls apart for me, but I am still learning things in life. When I get extremely stressed out... I begin to lose my "cool." It's a natural thing for people, but this should hopefully provide a better understanding about my previous post.

I don't believe that I should delete my last post though because this is, in fact, my personal blog. While I don't post things that are too insanely personal on here, I still wrote it and it was important to me at the time.

I am glad to say though that I am back on track. I'm not letting the things that were bothering me before bother me anymore. I know what I care about, I know what I want in life, and I am not going to let anyone or any thing get in the way of that.

Know what else is great? Vermont Tech is taking me to San Francisco in less than a month for the Game Developer's Conference!!! It's going to be such an awesome time, and as of now I haven't been any further out of New England than New York City, so it is definitely a time that I will never forget!

I have a lot to look forward to. I really do. I just need to stop focusing on things that are out of my control, and accept the fact that not everyone is willing to put in the same amount of effort as I am when it comes to one doing their job. I guess I am okay with that now... it sucks when I have to clean up after others, but their bad work habits aren't exactly going to do anything to help them out in the future.

Looking forward to GDC 2011!!!

Also, another very important date: Next week will mark my girlfriend and I's second month together! We will be spending plenty of time together next weekend since after this week VTC has a week-long vacation. :D

This Semester is Going to Kick Ass! :D

First off, I have an amazing schedule this semester! I have Wednesdays and Fridays off completely (with the exception of RA duty on Wednesday night, but still... no classes), and on Mondays I only have a System Admin lab! :D

My schedule and two upcoming events are shown above. :D

This semester is also going to kick ass because I have nothing but awesome professors this time around. Such a huge turnaround from last semester when it seemed like nobody knew what they were doing. I even have one professor who people claim to be the best instructor they have ever had and this guy is teaching half of my course. :D

Well, this update is a short one, but that's really all I have for now. I am not sure when I will post again, but hopefully it won't be too-too long from now.

UPDATE:
I just updated my schedule on the blog's right-side pane and I noticed that for my previous schedule I forgot to change "Spring 2010" to "Fall 2010." Of course now it is the proper "Spring 2011."