Where I don't care what others think

Advice Needed Please!!

May 14th, 2007 Posted in Life, Problems | 3 Comments »

What to do what to do. Essentially the question is this: Big company vs small school district. Where should I work?

I interviewed at MassMutual today regarding a summer internship, its a pretty neat place I must say. The interview went well, and in the end I was offered the job; which was cool. So now I have to decide what to do. I haven’t gotten any type of offer from the schools yet, but now that town meetings has hopefully approved the budget, something will happen sometime. Unfortunately things don’t happen very fast always at the schools, and in past, work hasn’t started until July 1st, a major setback because June is between May and July.

So I need some opinions, and fast!

Here are some pros and cons:

MassMutual

  • Looks good, fortune 100 company
  • Experience with business class software
  • Better payment, More hours
  • Learning something new
  • Possibly moderately repetitive work (it is an internship)
  • 30 min drive to work, and very high gas prices

Schools

  • 3 years in a row, does anyone look at loyalty anymore?
  • Broad range of experience, networking, computer setup, server related functions
  • Not so much money or not as many hours, but the feeling that someone can learn something because you did your job well
  • Freedom to explore alternate routes, “self-manage”, encouraged in depth learning of something new
  • Computer vacuuming / cleaning isn’t super exciting
  • I can ride my bike and save gas

See I don’t know, I still very much enjoy helping work with the high school computer, mostly because it makes me feel like I’m directly benefiting something, and I see the work I do is something that I am good at, and it wouldn’t be a completely easy adventure to replace me. If I could only do both…. sigh… Then again many say I should take another challenge, try something bigger and newer.

But overall, I’m confused. I am asking for your advice, what would you do it you were me? Any thoughts would be very very very sincerely appreciated.

The faster the better would be good as I’d like to have a decision by tomorrow afternoon.

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Good Afternoon

May 8th, 2007 Posted in Life | 1 Comment »

Right now I am avoiding the important stuff, packing, studying, repeat. Why? None of it is very interesting to me. Packing is very repetitious, I find it relaxing, but its still boring at points. Especially when you can’t back most of the stuff because I need to record some TV in approximately 7 minutes. I have a hard time coming up with blog titles, I always fear what I come up with is a repeat, something I’ve used before. And we simply can’t have that.

I’d like to make a few official statements regarding Facebook and Myspace, because the social networking scene is always in the news. The majority of everything would be solved if people did two things; 1) not be an idiot and 2) have some common sense. Shall we being?

Lets. The concept of social networking is great, it facilitates communication between individuals using several, seemingly dynamic mediums. Photos, comments, blogs, bulletins, messages, profiles, videos, younameittheygotit, all a dynamic medium. If you click delete, the content is gone, washed away. Or so you think. No, I’m not talking about the fact that a proprietary organization could perform data recovery to recall the “deleted” content, accessing the hosts servers and mucking everything up. I’m taking about the internet. The key is indexing, real-time indexing is incredibly difficult to achieve with the current structure of the internet, so sites are indexed at intervals and caches created. A backup was just made. As you read that last sentence a computer just visited a myspace page and made a backup of sorts. If you search for “Embarrassing Photo”, it will find it, and give you the local backup copy, you, the user are like OMG, I just deleted the picture. How do they still have it? Well you should just consider it magical, as your probably busy thinking what “Embarrassing Photos” you have online, yes.. even the very well hidden, all accessible if you know where to look. Bam, tens of thousands of websites were just backed up.

Why such a strange topic for this blog, because I’ve been bored. And when I’m bored I surf the social networking scene, reading blogs, bullitens, etc. Honestly, I don’t care what your favorite music is, what you’re currently wearing, or how many pets you have. But what I find funny is the duration of the material. Years from now people will be able to go back and read what you wrote on that survey when you were bored in Science class. Your kids, scary thought, not for me.. but someone has to have them, will be able to, with the write search strategy, find what you were doing when you were in High School / College. Oh and your kids really don’t care, but future employers are definately caring.

As for the Delete button, or even those people who clean up your internet reputation, it looks great and all. But its not really working, you could save yourself some effort and no click it.

Personally I don’t delete things, I’d much rather know whats out there, and have an accurate and fair representation of it then be surprised when someone finds something in some long lost backup.

Oh yes, and for those of you myspace users. I’m sorry to burst you little bubble, but people don’t get skinned alive, the murderer is not going to find you if you read that bulletin unless he works for myspace in which case, i doubt he would be killing people in his spare time.

As for me, I’ll keep doing the non-deleting things. As I see it, its history, you can either write it or be written about, and as far as I’m concerned, I don’t know anyone who could write mine better than me.

KKKK, done with the serious and professionalism of that part. I’ll be heading back home tomorrow night after my CS 2 final. I’ve been packing off and on as much as I can. Less work tomorrow = better. With that comes summer work, just recently I was contacted by MassMutual, responding to a letter and resume I sent them. They’re interested in meeting with me for an interview relating to some documentation and 4GL work on some systems that I don’t remember off the top of my head (Gmail has it). I don’t know the outcome of the interview, but I’ve been thinking over a tough decision. Lets say both SHHS and MassMutual had a position for me. I would bet MassMutual would pay more than SHHS, and it would probably look better on my resume, something different.. more a business environment kinda thing. But idk, I enjoy the work I do at SHHS. Its as challenging as I want it to be, there is almost always a 30 second fix for things but I can choose to find the better way to address the problem, explore options, learn at my own pace and stuff like that. Its most likely going to come down to enjoyment and satisfaction vs experience, skills (resume stuff), money, and maybe getting a car since I’ll have to drive a lot and stuff. Hrm, wwyd? (What would you do?)

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Never Be Lonely

May 4th, 2007 Posted in Mistakes, Problems | 2 Comments »

I cannot help but be lonely tonight, for some reason I feel like I’m in a very similar mental state to where I was during the summer / early fall before my senior year. The circumstances are very similar, yes, during that summer I did not have Katie; but at this very moment I don’t have her as she is asleep in bed, or trying to fall asleep. (Tomorrow is the SATS) But regardless of where she is, she’s not with me.

This is my last weekend here at RPI for the academic year, I’ll be back in August to start my Sophmore year, but that seems very far away. When there is nothing going on for me, my time goes very slow. Prior to writing this post I found myself talking into a mirror, spinning on my chair, and checking the clock every 2 minutes.

I get this way when stuff is going on, stuff I’m not involved in. Sometimes I’m ok with not being involved, or I try to act like I’m ok with it because I want to be ok. For example if friends of mine go to a party or something that I’m not invited to or “too afraid” to attend I try to be ok with it, supportive of them on return when the fact is maybe I’m not ok with it. But thats not their problem to worry about, its mine and I don’t want to press it onto others.

Tonight, just about all of my “acquaintances” are at an RPI TV / Student Senate movie night watching Casino Royale. Yes, I’d like to see that movie and I know I won’t be able to watch it with Katie, its not her kinda movie. I’m not there because of a few factors, I don’t like to do things I don’t know what going on, or I can’t pretend to know. I’d much rather observe one of these so called “movie nights” before stumbling in on one myself. Sure, the facebook photos are a valid start, but they’re not very descriptive of whats going on. Secondly, I feel like I shouldn’t go, part of the Brian isn’t part of the social aspects motives I have. I do work, thats what I’m good at and enjoy doing most of the time. I don’t party, tell many jokes, or socialize with others often. After I’ve figured out how to work, say like my senior year in High School, maybe I can try to do that, but as a freshmen in college I know I should stay on the work, even Friday night at 10:55pm when there really isn’t work to be done. Sometimes I wish I was different, but then I just remember who I am. Thirdly, I know if I were to go, some people would be mad at me for “ditching” them. I really don’t like the word ditching, as it implies running away from someone waiting for you or something. But that would cause problems, and I don’t like problems. Few people know what its like to be like this so often, I haven’t had “good times” to come close to balance it, when I close my eyes and remember there are no good memories of times to look up to and dream about; thats something to be very thankful for.

In the normal day I would go to sleep and wake up early, because in the mornings I can be someone. There aren’t many people awake early on a weekend, but there are always plenty of people staying up late. As for why I’m not going to bed, I’m fearing tomorrow. It will likely be a bad day. People will be mad at me for working and doing things when thats all I have most of the time. Others have “friends” they can talk to, work on projects with, socialize with. Yes, I have an intricate understanding of the situations, people and all, but that doesn’t mean I’m not jealous. When push comes to shove, someone will notice you’ve been knocked over. When push comes to shove me, its like the lone domino.

I’m going to bed I guess, I’ll pretend the pillow cares. Rinse, Lather, Repeat.. bah, how about Sleep, Awake, Repeat.

((A historical note, I think this blog’s tone and word choice is much like most of my older blogs, I’ll think about any potential significance later))

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