Things got a wee bit busier then I would have liked. I’ve been working at Tommy Bahama on the weekends, so my personal life has been practically non-existent outside of Helen and a couple other people. My work with the Ubuntu US Teams has been put on hold too because I can’t attend any GSLUG meetings to stay on top of things.
I’ve finally finished my on-campus classes. I’m currently taking CCNA classes online, so it’s a bit easier. I’m taking a quarter off while I finish up some stuff from last quarter.
To add on to that, I’ve finally handed off Circle K to some pretty capable people, I’m still there though, just serving in advisor capacity, but they’ve got a good handle on things.



That’s a really brief overview of how things have been. For some more up to date stuff, I’m leaving Tommy Bahama, I want my life back, and I don’t want to end up working in retail support for the next few years. A good chunk of the experience I have gained from there is in retail systems, and I want to be working in technology systems, or at least something that’s a bit more widespread or has more security.

I enjoyed working with the people there, I just didn’t see them, if ever. I only saw them when I came in on my own time, so that doesn’t even count. All my communication was through phone and I’ve seen less then 30 people on the weekends since I started.
So a few weeks ago I decided to start job hunting. It started out as just looking around to see what was out there, but when I realized that for only a slight variation in job duties, I could make significantly more. Plus I was really not challenged at all by the job, everything I did was incredibly mundane and basic, the tickets I got that were more interesting, I couldn’t complete due to lack of resources. And to add onto it, I’ve slowly been going into debt since I have been making barely over rent+bills.


Anyways, after interviewing for a few weeks with little results (was even interviewing with Google at one point, but the interview process was 3 months), I got a call from a staffing agency I had interviewed with a couple years ago. I chatted with them on the phone a little then came in for a quick update on things then I had an interview on Monday with Alaska Airlines, and I got the job!
I’m really excited to be working there, today was my first day and everyone I’m working with is really awesome. Everyone I work with really knows what they are doing and it felt wonderful to actually be able to speak to them without having to dumb things down, I loved it. I also didn’t have to be reserved and quiet until I got my bearings, I pretty much hit the ground running and was chatting it up with everyone within my first two hours there. So far it seems like it’s going to be a great place to work.

There’s going to be a learning curve though, they use different software for pretty much everything, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to learn it all quickly, Lisa, one of the people who works there, walked me through some of it and I understood it fairly quickly. I even got to go out in the field and do a repair on my own. My manager, Matt, seems to have a lot of confidence in me already, which feels absolutely incredible, there’s no second guessing or asking if I can handle it, when the issue came up, he just said “Let Ahmed do it, I know he can handle it.”



That’s what has been going on so far, I’m really hoping this becomes a permanent job for me, I’m currently a contractor, but I’m going to do my best to make myself known and to impress them more then ever before.



By the way, here’s a picture of my in the cockpit of a flight simulator. That’s right, I got to do a take-off and landing of a 737 jet at sea-tac airport, and then a landing at the Juno, Alaska airport.

(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

Classes started last week at BCC. So this meant that I had to get stuff ready for Circle K.

I made the mistake of waiting to get peoples schedules before planning out the meeting time. I didn’t hear back from anyone from Richard, who only said he got classes registered. So I fired off a last minute email to Rudy reserving the room at the same time as last quarter.

Luck be with me, I get a call from King after sending out an email announcing the room and time saying she and two other people can’t make it. So I end up sending out another email, in a mad scramble to figure out what was the best day for everyone. I changed the time to Tuesday and it seemed to work for most people.

At the same time I was also getting the rooms reserved for the District board meeting, yay! That was pretty simple, Rudy reserved the rooms, and I got a confirmation email about it.

Sounds easy, right? Not quite.

As soon as I got the confirmation, Nora emailed Rudy saying she never got a Project plan for it. So I went up to Student Programs to get it. She was out to lunch, so I got the paperwork from the receptionist and sit outside to fill it out. The first page makes sense, when would you like to get the room, what day, time, etc. I turn the page and suddenly it’s asking me what the budget it, what I’m spending money on, and then a timeline for getting things planned out. I’m hella confused now, as this is totally not what the meeting is for, it’s as though she thinks I’m holding an event, but it’s just a freakin’ meeting. I ignore that crap and just fill out what is relevant.

Meanwhile I’m waiting for Nora to get back from lunch, so I wait 30 minutes and go back to check if she is there, no Nora. Wait another 30 minutes and go back, no Nora. Wait another 30 minutes, no Nora. So I’m getting a bit cranky, she then pops out of nowhere when I’m about to leave and I talk to her for a little bit, turns out that we have to pay for the room reservation on the weekend and apparently there are custodial fees, which is utter BS. I give her the paperwork and leave. Later on Rudy gets the confirmation, I forward it to Helen. Then she notices that the reservations are incorrect. Rudy did it Saturday 9am-3pm, when it should be 8am-5pm. I email Rudy, he tells me to check in with Nora. I go to Nora and get that taken care of. She gives me more paperwork for food and crap. Then I found out that they never actually got the paperwork for our re-chartering last quarter. Which I did fill out. I get another copy to fill out.

I’ve now got a funding request form to fill out along with a stupid food request form to do. Grrr!

(No Ratings Yet)

Been crazy busy this past month, work+school+Circle K=hectic. Although I have a lot more free time, I spend it working on random projects and Circle K stuff. I’m actually taking a mid-term test a day early just so I can go to a project for my club and get us some money.

I discovered a website awhile back called Silent PC Review while looking up reviews on motherboards. I’ve since then become addicted to their website, reading up on ways to silence my computer. The fan on my video card is obscenely loud (I tested this by stopping it, computer noise dropped quite a bit) as is the Power supply (I bought it while my other one is on RMA, should get back to me Wednesday). I bought a replacement fan/heatsink for the video card, and one for the CPU (It’s the stock one and doesn’t do a very good job at cooling, I got a ninja, which has the option of being passive, I’ve got a 120mm fan behind it so i think it’ll work.)

Hopefully those will get to me Wednesday so I can finally shut up my computer in one fell swoop!

(No Ratings Yet)

Well, I’ve moved out of the noisy house in bellevue at long last. I moved out to West Seattle (which seems a bit counter productive) to a small studio in the basement of an elderly couples house. It’s actually a really nice place, It’s about 2 blocks away from the ferry, I can literally walk straight down to the beach from where I live, and I can watch the sunset if I wanted to.
The couple who live in the house are really awesome people, they’re both 80 and look 60, and are still moving about. It’s fun talking to them (a couple days ago I was working on their computer when Helen came over, she came up and had tea with Ann, the woman there, while I was working on it), and it’s a nice quiet place. I think I’m actually going to enjoy living here
I spent the last week of September moving (hence the lack of posting), and got all the big things moved on the last day (that day was a big mess).
For a while my room was 80% boxes and 20% space, but I’ve now shaved that down to a 60/40 ratio. Hopefully I’ll be able to get it down to 40/60 in the next few days (I’ve got A LOT of stuff). I’m planning on donating everything I don’t use, I’m trying to hold onto less stuff I don’t use often.

Class has started and it’s been fairly uneventful. The marketing class is kinda blegh right now, the instructor isn’t really all that clear when she hands out an assignment, so I tend to get confused about what the assignment is (but I just email brandon and he usually knows what it is). The IT103 class is pretty easy, It’s all online and I have to use this software that came with the book for the assessments, and it’s painfully easy. The only big gripe I have about it is that it doesn’t run in linux, and wine is going to take some tweaking to get it running properly.

Circle K is finally starting to pick up, I got a secretary this week! So far I have Me and King as The President (we’re co-presidents), Eric as the VP, and Cecilia is the Secretary. We just need to hunt down a treasurer and then we should be good to go for a full-board. Our meeting this past week went fairly well, Eric is going to come to S3 next week which is freaking awesome (I’ve been the only member to pretty much all of the past events, it kinda sucks), We just need to work on member recruitment (I’m going to start throwing up flyer’s on Monday, I was going to do it last week but I still haven’t unpacked the printer >.<) but I’m confident that we should be able to get some more members into our club and start working on Projects, I’ve asked Eric to get in touch with the JRC and see what they’re up to. Hopefully in the next couple weeks we will be able to visit the bellevue noon club (I might end up going to the sunrisers alone since it is so early).

So that’s basically everything that has been going on, it’s picked up now that school has started and I think it’s going to be a fun year!

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

Finally got my new video card yesterday, it’s a 7800GT. Huge improvement over my 6600 that I had before. Went from player stalker at 20fps (which dropped to like 7 when I fired a gun) to 80-100, 80-90 when I raised the graphics. I grabbed the Bioshock game demo last night and played it, was pretty damn sweet; story is a bit messed up, but gameplay is pretty sweet.

Over the weekend me and Helen went up to B-ham to visit friends, we went and saw Ashley, then went to a party at the mint, wasn’t too interesting, we left after about 2 hours. We went back to Ashleys apartment where we were staying and played Mariokart. I got a hold of Mantis and he came over and hung out for a bit too, we had to go back to his house to grab some more controllers for the N64. Was pretty damn sweet (although I kept getting distracted while playing, and Ashleys tv is hella tiny).

As for the job search, I haven’t really given it much effort. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I shouldn’t work this coming quarter. I have to get Circle K off the ground, and the only jobs I can find are full-time and that wouldn’t work out since I’d have to have meetings during the day, a couple classes I’ll need to take are in the middle of the day 4 days a week, and I’ll have to take them eventually. Plus my current job ends in september, so I can just work till then and afterwards have my parents pay for everything (they’ve kinda been wanting to do that for awhile).

All the interviews I’ve gone to have gone fairly well, but I haven’t gotten a job offer yet (would be getting a lot if I change my monster profile to looking for full-time jobs, but I got tired of answering phone calls from recruiters about jobs in nebraska), had a couple interesting ones, one at a web host and another for a small vc. I suppose I should write up a new cover letter and send out my resume to ads on craigslist, but I don’t really have the motivation.

(No Ratings Yet)

I found out yesterday that the contract for my job is running out, and it probably won’t be renewed. My Contract will more or less end in October, so I’ve got a little less then 3 months left on my job. The chances of my contract being extended again are very slim, since the company has 3 or 4 people left to hire for the year, and they probably don’t think IT needs another one, and if they do, they’ll most likely get a Systems Engineer or something.

I’m also looking into moving to Seattle, since I currently work there and plan on going to UW next fall (however, I’m not so sure about moving to Seattle if my job ends in October and I have no idea where I’ll be working next). I’m hoping to spend no more then 700 on rent, from the looks of it I may get lucky with a place that includes utilities. There are a bunch of places available right now, but I’m currently broke after having had to pay a bunch of bills, rent, and ICON all in the same week (In other words, a little over 1,000 bucks, and I make about 1,200 a month). I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to continue going to events this pricey since they tend to screw with my budget quite a bit, plus Eric sucks at managing the bills, leaves them to pile up and then asks me to pay them all at once (I paid bills for may, then 2 weeks later I have to pay for june, he already has the one for July but is sitting on it). Richard is gone too, so the bills are even more right now. The gas bill should be a lot less though, since I shut off the heater last month as it would turn on every 15 minutes even when the house was plenty warm. But I’m looking at paying around 100 for gas, no idea what the other stuff will be yet.

I’ve started selling off stuff I don’t need, various computer parts I’ve collected over the past year I no longer use. Hopefully that’ll get me enough money to pay deposit on an apartment. I started looking last week, but I stopped since any place I would find I wouldn’t be able to have since I can’t pay for them. I’m going to wait until I have at least 800 on hand first, then I’ll start looking (probably next weekend I guess). As long as no surprise payments come up I should be able to make it though the month and have enough to move out in the end of August. Only problem with that is my current lease ends in September, so if I’m lucky, Alex will find someone to move in when I leave. I think he has  a friend who said he would move in when I left, so that should take care of things.

Classes start in September too, my dad wants me to meet with an advisor so I can make sure I’ll transfer to UW easily. I’m guessing I won’t since I’ve been working on a useless AA in Tech Support for the past year and a half that will just fulfill the stupid AA or 4 year requirement recruiters put on job listings. I’m still not 100% sure why I’m in college, BCC is total suck, starting a Circle K there sucks (gotta get time off to recruit for that damn club), hopefully I’ll get it rolling this fall.

I’m still a little clueless about what I’m doing right now, I’m working for an awesome company, I’ve got a few projects going there right now and I more or less control my schedule, when I leave it’s going to be a pain finding another job that will work for me, as I’m going to be going to college so I’ll need a part-time job.

(No Ratings Yet)

    Today me and Paul met up with Christer Edwards, who is currently in the Seattle area teaching a redhat course. He’s heavily involved in the Ubuntu community running several projects and various things (such as Ubuntu Tutorials).

He’s a really awesome guy, we talked quite a bit over dinner about various aspects of the Ubuntu teams along with vi (which I’m going to be playing with ). It was quite an experience to meet an actual Ubuntu member (to become one you have to be approved by a council, read more about the process here), he’s very knowleadgable in getting an ubuntu team started up, from what he’s said about us, we’re going to need to get the loco teams approved in individual states before we can really have an ubuntu pnw loco team.

I actually really want to get a loco team started up in Washington, which I’m sure is going to take quite a bit of effort to get going considering this is going to be on a state level. Despite this, I’m rather hesitant to take the lead and go with this. I’m currently trying to get a Circle K club chartered at BCC, which isn’t going to well on my part. I just don’t seem to have the motivation required to get this going. I’ve always loved taking part in Circle K activities, but from what I can tell, I don’t want to be a circle k officer.

I’ve been working with Circle K International for around 3 years now, but it’s always been as a member, not as an officer or anywhere near that level. Now that I’m the President-elect of my club, I’m surprisingly un-motivated. I want to get it done, but I just lack the drive. Even with Helen helping me, I know it’s going to take my willingness and desire to get things done to really get this club chartered. I’ve been using work as an excuse for not having enough time. That is partly true (How am I supposed to table when I work and 8-5 job?) However I could probably work something out. It’s difficult to change things when you truly don’t want to put the effort into it.

The Ubuntu team on the other hand. It’s been me the whole time who’s been doing everything. I truly joined the Linux community back in July after moving to Linux in May. I’ve been working with them for months, enjoying every little bit of it, even sitting in #ubuntu and #kubuntu channels for several hours just helping users. I joined the Ubuntu pnw group several months back and have been working with them since. Seeing them all at linuxfest northwest was amazing. Seeing the team together then was something else, It was fantastic being able to talk to another person who not only used Linux, but believed in it too.

I think that if I were to work towards getting the Ubuntu wa team created, I’d have more success with it, since I’m more familiar with the user base I’d be recruiting from and what it would take to recruit them. I’m fairly sure it’s much more complicated then that, but I’ve got the drive to learn and work on it.

(9 votes, average: 3.56 out of 5)

Well, it’s been quite some time since I have last posted. Quite a bit has happened during my absence.

For starters, I’m finally getting CKI underway. Helen has been tons of help, we had our kick-off party at the beginning of the quarter and things have been progressing. I’ve got two VP’s, still trying to get more members, but hopefully I’ll be able to get people motivated in the next week or so.

My washer has been broken for a little over a month, and the landlord kept saying he was sending people to fix it but that we weren’t home. So I called Sears yesterday (whom he said he was using), and scheduled an appointment with them, I also had them do a search on work history for our house. lo’ and behold, no work history, so either he hadn’t been scheduling, or Sears system sucks.

I had 6 wisdom teeth removed (yes, I did just say six wisdom teeth), and I was knocked out on drugs for 2 days and then I had a steady recovery for several days. I’m more or less healthy now, my back teeth hurt occasinally, but I think that’s from the teeth moved around because of the extra space.

I’m part of a Ubuntu loco team, PNW to be precise, we tabled at Linuxfest Northwest  last weekend, it was  a massive success. We handed out around 400 ubuntu discs. I’m also their team speaker, except nobody has really taken notice (I suppose I just need to be louder?). I’m hoping to get more people involved and get some more linux awareness projects going, but CKI takes precedence over Ubuntu, so I’m going to put that off for now.

There are a few more things going on, but I’ll leave those for a later post (In other words, I don’t quite recall what they are).

(13 votes, average: 3.38 out of 5)

So, I finally got around to taking pictures of my car with an actual camera, experience them after the break.

(39 votes, average: 2.85 out of 5)

Once again I’ve been insanely busy, especially this week. District Convention for Circle K is this week, and I’m headed up a day early with Helen and co, tomorrow. I bought a new car yesterday (Dark Green 1995 Toyota Corolla DX), and then spent the night gutting my old car of the radio, back speakers, and amp (by the way annas, I hate you for snaking the cables under the freakin’ back seat, took me a hella long time to get the cables out). Today I took the title for the old car down to state farm and got my big fat check and then went and deposited it.

And this was all done around Class and School. And I’ve just now gotten time to write, so this is my brief post before a 3-4 day hiatus in Bellingham. I’ll post pictures of the car Monday.

(19 votes, average: 3 out of 5)