Joe Pearce’s Blog

I know…yet again, long time, no post. Well, I have lots of news. First and foremost, I was made an offer by Eastman, and I accepted. The offer was fair and I had no problem accepting it. Considering the benefits package, the salary, and the fact that I have always wanted to work at Eastman, I must say that I am very pleased with everything. The drive time is a bit much. It varies from 45 minutes to over an hour according to traffic, but it is worth it. We plan to move closer sometime in the future. I can handle the drive until then. I will be working in global telecommunications and storage. I am assuming I will cover a wide variety of network and system administration tasks, which is the are of information technology I most enjoy. I also like that we work in teams. It will all be like puzzles that need to be completed. I like puzzles.

My official start state was set for January 8th, but it was moved to the 22nd due to the results of my physical. There were some problems, but I have all of it under control now. Everything looks good at this point. It seems that 6 1/2 years of college and university took its toll on my health, but luckily I am recovering nicely.

Speaking of education, I finished up this semester with a 3.33 GPA. I decided before I started graduate school that I was not going to kill myself as I did in my undergraduate work. I actually stayed out of class a few times for no legitimate reason, went to a concert on campus, and attended my extracurricular activites. From now on, I will not be killing myself on school work. I will be focusing most of my attention on the new job. I will most liley take this spring semester off so that I can fully acclimate to my new position. I will return to school in the summer or fall. I am not sure what I will do just yet.

I had a second onsite interview yesterday at Eatman. It was with the Telecommunications/Storage team. This is exactly where I would like to be. I was asked if I had a choice which area I would rather be in. I was torn. I couldn’t really make a decision. I am so passionate about UNIX/Linux, network administration, and system administration that it made it almost impossible to choose which one I like. I would like to float from one to the other. I want to learn everything they have to offer.

I was asked questions by the last interviewer about neworking. It has been so long since I worked with anything involving networking that I couldn’t answer things off of the top of my head. Plus, I was nervous. I have never been good at oral exams. If I had been asked those questions after I graduated from NSTCC I would have answered each one with confidence. Unfortunately, ETSU is so development intensive that I have purged much of the networking information out. Being trapped in the TA world for a year ruined me. I will need to drag out all of the books. Oddly enough, being a kinetic and visual learner, I can still set down at a system and configure about anything. I can’t quote commands off of the top of my head.

It is the last day of classes for me today. I have some huge projects to present tonight. Next week is finals. I can’t wait for it to be over. I have so much to do. I will post more letter.