Today is my last day at Tommy Bahama. I’ve been training my replacement this weekend for Glen, he’s a pretty capable guy. I showed him how to work everything, where all the shares were, and all that Jazz. He’s a net admin during the week, from the sound of things he’s just looking to save up.

I’m glad to finally be done with this place, My life has pretty much been at a stand still since I haven’t been able to really do anything with Helen since I started working here, during the week she is in class, on the weekend I’ve been at work. Next weekend we’re going to go to a Drive-in theatre to watch Ironman, which is going to be tons of fun for us! I’ll at long last be able to sleep in, and have a day off (haven’t had one at all this month).

I’m currently sitting at the desk behind the new guy with my laptop, apparently he didn’t quite comprehend what I meant be 15-20 calls max over the weekend :p

Oh, and we had an ice cream social on Friday at Alaska Air, was awesome.

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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)

This has begun to get irritating.

The Pudget Sound blood center just called me 3 times within an hour. I didn’t recognize the number so i ignored it the first two times, expecting them to leave a message. They didn’t so the third time I figured it was important and answered it.

I pick up the phone and they say they’re from the blood center. I do my usual answer and say that I’m not there and take their number.

I’m in class for fucks sake, Call once and leave a message! I’ve actually been turned off from donating because they constantly harass me with these phone calls. I like getting calls from them, but they are way too aggressive.

(2 votes, average: 2.5 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’ve decided to bite the bullet and work a help desk position. I really wanted to a job where I could get my hands dirty working with servers/networking/some sort of administrative work. However, it looks like everything that is that is full-time or in some oddly placed location.

Right now I just need to work through college and get my stupid AA. As soon as I have that out of the way I’ll be able to focus better on finding a job, for now I’ve begun applying to tier 1 jobs that are strictly help desk. Although I’m not going for the call center jobs, those just suck. The campuspoint site seems to have a few good IT jobs. I applied to a couple that were pretty appealing, although they show up as full-time (at the firststep interview one of the managers said I should still apply for it, since it was a position he was in charge of). Just applied to another that may just work, although it’s a short 2 month job :/

I guess I’ll poke at craigslist a little more and hope I get lucky. Another week and I’ll start looking for an apartment.

(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)

The Theme configuration is almost finished. The contacts plugin is being a little wacky so I need to email the author about it.

In other news, work has been going fairly well. Chris is over in Europe covering for the IT guy who’s on vacation. I’ve gotten a few projects at work now. I did an upgrade of the antivirus server today and yesterday, didn’t really have any major issues with it. I’m working on the test domain, going to hammer our a few servers for it tomorrow, the domain controller is more or less setup, just need to tweak dhcp a little.

The inventory project I’ve been working on is taking a hell of a long time. Logged about 14 hours working on the storage room, we have way too much stuff in there (will update with more info later, a little hungry right now).

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)