Gov't Websites

So today I thought I would do a bunch of stuff. But instead I ended up spending all day trying to consolidate my student loans. Funny I only have one loan, but I needed to 'consolidate' to lock in the low rates. Apparently the rates are going to increase by 2 full percentage points. Therefore I decided to do it.

I must not have been the only one to think of this today because the website must have crashed like 10 times while I was trying to do my online application. So I got to fill out the various information a bunch of times. Not fun. After trying all afternoon I switched browsers from IE to Firefox. I was using IE because it is normally the standard. Leave it to the government to write code for a different browser. Anyway I switched to Firefox and got through the whole process in 10 minutes compared to the couple hours I wasted using IE....
Oh well I should have known better. Firefox is a better browser, and I use it for most things. I guess from now on I'll use Firefox first! If you don't use it you should.

http://www.mozilla.org

My first post

Well this is actually my second post.. But since this is new software I lost the first draft so here we go again.

This is the first (second really) post on my new blog. This blog is just going to contain random thoughts and information on what ever I've been up too. This is actually the second blog I plan to keep, but the first is anonymous and is going to contain my experiences at work. I don't want it to contain my identity because I don't want to risk getting fired if I type something I shouldn't! The author of this blog should be fairly obvious because of the URL that hosts it. LOL.

This blog is using new software that I am trying out and the id second of three upgrades to my webpage this summer. The first being new gallery software. While the final upgrade will hopefully be a forum for people to create conversation strings.

So what have I been up to. Well my student job expired two weeks after the end of the semester. Since then I went on a rafting trip in the Grand Canyon (the photo's are in the gallery) with my brother, sister, and dad. It was a blast. The other three or four weeks I have been working on my house, taking care of personal business, and just hanging around. I find it a little weird to have so little I have to do, but keep really busy anyway.

Well that's all I have to really talk about today so check back later.

Finished with National SA Training

In case you are wondering SA means Systems Analyst. This is one of the entry level jobs at the firm there are other kinds of analyst that do human capital, strategy and operations, and provide other services under similar titles. Systems Analyst generally work in two different fields: large applications such as SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft and so on, or Technology integration. We will be doing most of the grunt work for the company for the next couple of years.

Ok so now you know what I mean when I say SA.

Currently I am in flight between Orlando and Minneapolis. This trip I have a much nicer seat then when I headed to Florida. Today I finished SA School – or National Training – and next week I will start technical training on Oracle. I can’t describe in a lot of detail what we actually did in detail – it’s confidential and they do not want it all over the internet – but I can tell you that it was a business simulation. In this simulation we were put into teams to work on a typical project scenario we might face as consultants. It was some what stressful, and vary involved. It was also used to get us to start thinking about time management and what they consider to be work life balance. Meaning every night they kept us up late with social events and expected us to be on site working by 8am every morning, except today when we presented our results at 7:00am. It was a lot of work but it was also a lot of fun.

The events at night differed quite a bit. A regular part of the routine was hospitality (when adult oriented refreshments are served in the open areas of the convention area), with the exception of Wednesday night, this was held every night after a presentation by the Deans of the program; we would work on the simulation all day then get back together in a large mass of 261 analysts for a general session. On Tuesday night this hospitality also included karaoke, though I missed part of it to take a phone call I was told the group from Minneapolis represented well, singing three songs in a row. On Wednesday night we had passes to Pleasure Island a string of 5 – 8 night clubs in downtown Disney a short walk from our hotel. This was the night before our last day of strenuous work on our simulation and the night were most people cut lose to the greatest extent (some spent all day Thursday recovering too). Finally Thursday night we had a large general wrap-up and the firm provided a live entertainment musical! The musical is called The Water Coolers and the show had some riotous sketches about working in big business and office politics – this show also followed a nice formal dinner.

All of these events provided us with a chance to network with other new hires, managers, senior managers, and even a few partners. All in all it was a great time. Though, I have not slept more than a few hours since I started work. Another event that I was glad to take part in during the week was a service event. We loaded all 300 people involved in the conference onto 5 or 6 buses and went to various locations around town to do volunteer work for a day. I went to a YMCA in a needy neighborhood and helped paint, clean, and do general maintenance on the building. I was really impressed that the firm donated so much labor time and took all of the expense to move all those people to volunteer. We are told that the company is very involved in community service and it is an important aspect of the firm.

Well next week I go to vendor training in Chicago… Then who knows. I have so much planned this weekend it should be fun. I just don’t know how much I’ll get to relax!