Sorry about the late post, but I just now had the opportunity to make a post. The interview process at Eastman was great. I stayed at Meadowview and the service was excellent. I arrived around eleven that night and was in bed by midnight. I didn’t take advantage of the many offers of service while I was there, but allow me to be the first to tell you that they had it all. I did get the bell hop to carry my luggage up and then gave him a ten dollar tip for his troubles. He fixed my room up for me afterwards, got ice for me, and made sure I was ready for my stay before he left.
The next morning I left around seven thirty and arrived at Eastman around fifteen minutes until eight. I met Sallie Page at the front where she gave me a visitor’s tag and led me to a small meeting room in Eastman University. Dustin Dishner was there, as well as some Eastman employees. We had breakfast and received a small presentation about Eastman. We then went off to our five interviews.
The entire process was great, and afterwards we were treated to lunch. I feel very confident about each interview, and feel that I answered all of the questions honestly. I was straight forward and tried my best to articulate and convey what I wanted from Eastman and I also listened for what they wanted from me. As usual, tt was a learning process and at the close of each interview I was asked if I had any quesitons, and I asked what I could do to be a better interviewee. They each had very positive comments about me and also gave great advise that I have added to my interview tool bag.
No matter the result, I am very pleased with everything. All of the folks I met and the entire process was a class act. I hope all goes well and everything finalizes soon.
I will be staying at the Medowview Convention Center this Thursday night in preparation for my onsite interview at Eastman. I am excited. I look forward to this opportunity. My life has come full circle. I remember being a kid, driving through Eastman, and saying to my sister, “I will work there one day.” I will post more once the interview is complete.
Overall, I think it went well. They were inquisitive about my involvement in the community. They were also interested in my academic background. I am not sure that they were convinced that I had enough academic diveristy. We will see. They will discuss the matter and let me know. I think it would be great to be recognized.
I have been so tied up with everything that I have totally negleted the website. I will get to it eventually. For now, I guess I can tell you about the addition of a few subdomains for school projects in Software Systems Engineering and Software Project Management. I added two subdomains and setup DotProject as our project managment tool. It has worked great so far and has greatly exceeded my expectations.
The Dashiell website will be coming down soon due to lack of interest. It was an idea I had hope would catch on, but no one seemed interested, except for spammers. I was bombarded with spam and had to edit the database directly to delete all of the crap. It was ridiculous. What I don’t get is do they not understand that no one is going to click on the links they provide. People aren’t as ignorant as they once was. Most people are somewhat educated on the dangers of spam links.
Gallery is doing great. I haven’t had time to add all of the pictures I want, but I used a registry edit that will make it much easier. I can now upload pcture folders directly from my system. It is a nice feature in Windows XP.
Look forward to a great announcment sometime next week. I want to keep this under wraps so that I can surprise everyone.
I have been asked to interview for Who’s Who Among Students in Colleges and Universities. The inteview is this coming Tuesday November 14th. I applied for this a couple of weeks ago. I have applied before, but was turned down. I believe it was thanks to Mr. Bill Pine’s recommendation that I got the interview. It was a most exquisite piece of literature….about me. I am so thankful to him for all of his kind words. I hope I receive this honor. I am a Who’s Who Among Students in American Junior Colleges receipient, and this new honor would be great. It would mean that two academic institutions recognize my hard work and dedication. The following link displays some of the achievements:
 http://resume.joepearce.com
I will keep everyone posted of the outcome. Wish me luck!
Yes, it is true. I am offically no longer excited about my education. I have attempted to keep my chin up and push forward, but it has been very difficult. During this semester I have been unable to focus on any of my research interests due to spending all of my time reading for basically one class. I sheer amount of data that we have been exposed to is mind boggling. There is no way I can say that I have learned anything. Everything is so fast paced that the information just zooms by. I actually have thought about not attending this coming semester. If I find a meaningful job, I am almost sure I will not return.
 I applied for Who’s Who today again. Hopefully Mr. Pines excellent recommendation will help. It is quite possibly the most articulate and concise recommendation I have ever encountered. I definitely owe Mr. Pine a great deal of thanks. More to come later. I must go to class and study for a quiz.
It has been a while. I have been very busy with school and family stuff. Unfortunately I didn’t get the job at Edwards and Associates, but it looks like I will be working at Eastman soon. It is a longer drive, but much more money and benefits. Plus, I will be doing software engineering work as a systems analyst instead of doing Exchange 2003 stuff. Oddly enough, I have setup Exchange 2003 for a school, and run it here at home for testing purposed. I fully configured the server at Cloudland High from the install of the OS all the way up to the final Exchange implementation, yet EA stated that I didn’t have enough experience.
The interview was horrible and will go down in my worst interview experience ever list. I have been to several interviews in my life, but I have never been exposed to questions printed off of the internet. This was a first. I had been up all night the night before due to excitement. I was looking forward to working for a company so close that did so much. I had 2 hours sleep when I arose that morning and I know it influenced my ability to answer the questions she asked. Every question she asked I knew the answer to, but I couldn’t articulate it and kept bowing out with “I don’t know.” I didn’t even state, “I don’t know, but I will find out.” Ever since then, I have tried my best to schedule interviews in the evening so that if I don’t get any sleep I can at least try to nap before the interview and have a clear head. Live and Learn.
I received the call yesterday about a System Administrator position at Edwards and Associates. I am quite pleased. I have an interview at 10:00 AM with an HR person. The company speicalizes in helicopters. I think this is an exciting opportunity. Wish me luck!
Today has been more work on the house. We are complete redoing the girls room. We are adding new beds and desks. Iti s looking great so far. It is even more girly than before. I think they will be happy.
I have been working on a beta site for the Dasheill Lodge for the past few weeks. So far, it is looking good. The link is on my homepage. It is an implemetation of Drupal that I haven’t customized as of yet. So far it is working as it is. I may need to make some changes later on, but all of our needs seem to be met by the core Drupal program and some available modules. I am very pleased with it so far.
Now comes the time to let people look at it and play with it. So far we have 3 people who have signed up to use it after an email I sent to several brothers. If we do not have more interest in the site I will then stop adding to it, consider it not feasable for use, retire it, and then do a post mordem to try to evaluate why users were not interested. All who have participated in the poll seem to like it, but only 3 users have voted in the poll. I guess time will tell.
I am still working out kinks in the website. I have some more content to add and some additional content management systems to implement, but it is looking good so far. I am surprised at how long this is taking, but considering I only get an hour or so a day to work on it makes me thing I am doing very well.
I have completed setting up Gallery 2 and will start adding more pictures soon. I will then enable to link on the home page. I have decided to use have a browesable photo directory and use Gallery 2. The main reason for using Gallery 2 is so that my wife has an easy way to upload pictures to the web. Considering she was a photographer at one time, I guess it is the least I could do.
I will add more to the sight tonight. I am going to Newport now and then on to Dollywood, unless something changes. We will go get the girls some clothes after Dollywood closes. That is my day ahead.