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.
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.