Post MCAT

Since the end of my summer semester, I have spent the vast majority of my time preparing for the MCAT.  I took it a week ago, and I should have my results in about three weeks.  In hindsight, I found it to be a fairly difficult test to prepare for because it was very much driven by passages.  I am currently working on my medical school application, and I am very much looking forward to applying and getting into school.  In the meantime, I'll be looking for a job so I can earn some money while I wait.

New job and straight As

Well, its official.  I am now a medical scribe at SSM St. Mary's Health Center in St. Louis.  I'm very excited about the chance to help people and learn a lot about the medical profession.  Basically, I will follow a doctor around and help a doctor with documentation and transcription, all the while having the chance to learn about medicine from observation.

I was also able to get straight As this semester.  I hope I have put my place in a position academically that makes me attractive to med schools.

The end of an era

This post is one I've been thinking about for a few days.  When you have something this major in life occur, you want to think about its wording and what it means to express it.  I have reached the end of an era in my life, and I'm hoping to start a new chapter that will hopefully lead me to the path God has called me to.  I have resigned my position at the school as the IT director and will be a full time IT student.

The bible says a man can not serve two masters, and I know that was the road I was attempting to walk as I completed my first half of my pre-med coursework. Up until this upcoming fall semester, I have been able to get along by taking a night classes.  This summer, I used my vacation days to go to class during the daytime.  Looking at my schedule options for this semester, the classes I needed were only offered in the day.  In the final analysis, I believe that medicine is part of my future, so I must make my commitment in that direction.  Is it risky...yes.  It is a step I've been praying about since I received my calling as I knew this day would someday come.  Here is to the hope and belief that I am on the path God has set before me.

I will still consult the school when I can.  I have nothing but love and a positive view of the district and what I was able to accomplish while I was there.  I have made several great friends, and I wish everyone the best and a great year.  Now, I'm ready to move on to the next chapter in this adventure called life.  I would ask for everyone's prayers and I undertake this journey.

Cleaning my office, the never ending odyssey

Ask me what I'm working on when I come into my office late at night (as I am now), and I'll tell them I'm trying to clean it. Now, cleaning for me is drudgery, but it does teach you a few things about yourself and the way you live your life. One thing it has taught me is to ask why we hold onto stuff that we are not going to use. I know most of use have looked at something and said, "Ya know, I'm going to keep that because I might need something like this one day..." And there it sits in your garage or attic, collecting dust. It ends up becoming this little gift to your relatives that says to them "Here, you throw this away".

Back to my office, I've essentially been making token efforts to clean it since THIS SUMMER when it was stocked full of all kinds of junk from my school's remodeling project. This brings me to the second thing I've learned from cleaning which is the fact that it is really fun to drag out boring projects. Take a look at anyone who is working on something that isn't fun, and you will probably see someone that isn't working at their maximum efficiency to get it done. Its easy to get distracted by other things or to just stop working on it altogether.

If you would like to see what I'm dealing with, have a look at some of these pictures. My office isn't that bad, is it? I'll post some pics after it is clean. If you think its messy, what do you expect out of an office you have to walk through the boys bathroom to get to? I am contractually obligated to my girlfriend to have this place cleaned up by December 6th at 6:00 PM. The time is necessary to know in order to put it off till the last minute.



Ah, my desk, where all the great ideas get written down and misplaced.



Here you see the storage/server portion of the office.



This is my primary work area where I will fix broken equipment. Notice the fatal error message in the background.



Storage area, reverse angle.

Sickness

As I crossed the finish line of the Indy half marathon last year, there was a part of me that knew I could run a full marathon. I set a goal for myself then and there to run a full the very next year. I trained some, not as much as I should, signed up for the race, and with Victoria, went to Indy this last weekend. The morning of the race, I woke up in the hotel with a tickle in my throat. It was very cold at race time, and I figured the air was going to be hard to breath. At around mile marker 10, my legs started to lock up in a way I wasn't used to. I was very achy and in a lot of pain, believing I had pulled a muscle in my right upper quad. I saw Victoria around mile 12. She had this awesome sign made up to cheer me on. As she saw me, she could tell I was in a lot of pain. I had a hard time getting warm after the race. She drove my car back to Belleville and hung out with me. We had a very late dinner, and I didn't have much trouble going to sleep. The next morning, I woke up at around 5 AM and felt very strange. I decided to take my temperature, and I had a 102.6 fever. I stayed in all day (the lovely Victoria hung out with me and helped take care of me), and I stayed home from work and class on Monday as well. I went into work yesterday, went and had dinner with Victoria and her dad on Tuesday, and gave a presentation on email routing within Google apps to facilitate email archiving to a tech meeting today. Since Monday, I have been having an issue with dizziness, and I had a very strong dizzy bout today. I left work and went to the doctor. The doctor told me I had bronchitis as well as the possibility of some other secondary infections (which could be causing my dizziness). I basically was sent home from work and slept for hours upon hours on my arrival at home. I still feel a bit out of it, but I hope I'm on the road to recovery. Along with the meds, the doctor gave me this kickin' mask to help prevent the spread of whatever I have.

Tech meeting!

Once a month, the best and brightest of the St. Clair ROE area tech directors and staff get together and swap ideas, listen to presentations, ask/answer questions, and eat donuts. Of the things I do for my job, these meetings are the place where I have taken more ideas that have been implemented into my school district's tech plan.

As y0u can see from the picture, great minds are at work.

This guy was born to work for his company

I was at one of those restaurants that love business cards to the point they make them part of the table. After sliding my own card between the table and the glass (umhumm), I noticed this card. Between the company's name and the guy's name, I think it speaks for itself.

Techo supporto

I have remoted into work to fix problems that have cropped up from some of the most beautiful spots in the country. From overlooking the Golden Gate bridge to being out in the desert, if you have your computer and a means to get on the Internet (say by using your smart phone as a cell phone modem), you can do so many things from anywhere in the world using technology. Tonight I had the distinction of doing the reverse; I provided tech support to my boss who is currently on vacation in Mexico. I was able to remote into her laptop and remotely install some programs that they needed in order to do some work. (Good to see that I'm not the only one that tries to work on vacation). Was this nerdy? Yes! Will this impress women? No! (Except my boss who is a woman and probably impressed by this).

My name on a sign

Well, I had to go look at some product demos today for work. When I walked into the showroom of the company, I was presently greeted with my name on a sign. I felt like a church group at Busch Stadium.

Polish Sweater Day

Today was the Casimir Pulaski holiday, so I did not have school. Illinois is the only state in the union to observe this particular holiday, and the only reason we do is because Chicago has the second highest city population of Polish people in the world behind Warsaw, Poland. I spent the day around the house, which is different that my usual way of observing this day which is to take eleven of my freinds and go out and change a light bulb. I was proud of the fact that I fought the urge to go into work.

http://www.eiu.edu/~insight/pulaski/pulaski.htm

The right context and time to call????

I am amazed at how some people have a difficult time separating business and personal time. I received a call at 8:37PM by someone wanting to chew me out about a work related issue. Regardless of what it was, the PM after work is supposed to be my time, not the companies time. Granted, I volunteer time at times by being at the school on weekends and at night when I'm not expected to be there in order to get things done. This does not take away from the fact that other communication channels could be used to express concerns. This would also allow for "cooler heads" to prevail.

I'm opinionated about Idol

I know this isn't a first in this land, but when I watch American Idol, I have a strong opinion about what is going on and who I like. I find myself to be pretty on w/ the judges, which makes me feel like I can spot talent.

I had my tail handed to me today at work w/ some technical issues regarding our SIS provider. I know that one will not be resolved this week, but I am hoping to resolve one tomrrow. Other than that, I'm trying to make it through this week alive. There are a lot of projects going on as we speak. Busy busy

Working on my day off

I know this is going to be short, but I spent about 13 1/2 hours of my day off working on my new office at the school. It is going to be sweet. I took some before pictures, and I plan on posing both them and the after shots when I am done. I'm trying to figure out how to get a cot in my new office so I can just sleep there and not bother having to go home. :)

What a game!!!

Well, I picked a dozy of a hockey game to go to. The Blackhawks beat the Blues 2-1 in overtime at the Scott Trade center tonight. I ended up buying a $135 ticket for $90 off the street. During the game, I saw what may have been the best save I have ever seen. Not only that, but I was directly in line behind the shooter, so I saw the whole thing at as good of an angle as you could have possibly wanted. In the end, the Blackhawks first goal came on a monster one-timer, and the winning goal came on a great play by the guy who is probably my favorite Blackhawk: Marty Havlet. In addition, Huet the goalie played outstanding and received the first star award (Marty H. was given the third star). If the Maginot Line would have had Frenchman Huet manning it, the Germans would have not stood a chance!

Here is a link to the game recap.

http://blackhawks.nhl.com/team/app/?service=page&page=Recap&seas=20082009&gtype=2&gnum=669

You can also click on a link on the right side of the page that says 700k for the video highlights.

The picture at the end of this post were taken from my seat, which should give you an idea at what nice seats they are. Ironically, a co-worker and her husband were sitting two rows in font of me...small world.

After the game, I came back to work to check the progress of some of the changes. All worked as hoped except for one small issue which I am working on correcting as I type. I should get out of here around 11:50 tonight, and I'll probably come in sometime tomorrow evening. I'm going to go to church, then lunch, and then probably my gym tomorrow. Since we don't have school on Monday, I plan on doing the majority of the office cleaning on that day.

Saturday Work and Hockey

Today, I knew I was going to come into work and work on the Room 7 computer lab. The lab has had a problem with duplicate SIDs since the last reimaged caused by the master image being a member of the domain when it was imaged...rookie mistake I know. It has given me an opportunity to provide the master image with new updates, including a fix that should make the firefox bookmark import engine not appear when a new profile is created. The image is currently being uploaded as I type. I will deploy it to all computers as soon as I can.

There was a girls basketball tournment today. Emge beat some poor school by 50 something points. If a beating like that had occured on the street, someone would have called the cops.

I'm off to the hockey game to watch the Chicago Blackhawks take on the St. Louis Blues as soon as I get out of here. It should be a great game. The Illini lost today :(, but it was a tough road contest to Michigan St.

Long Day

I will be finishing up what will be a close to a 16 hour shift in a few minutes. I was incredibly productive today, replacing a server hard drive, rebuilding a mirror, had a meeting w/ my boss, bought some things for the school, reimaged two computer labs, and reset all students to the new group policy plans. I also installed the new tvs and marked some things for recycling and worked on the website.

I'm tired and I think I'm going to go home to bed now.

Computer Job

I am happy to say that I am satisfied with my implementation of group policy for the students. I had the chance to test the policy with a full group of students in a lab at the same time, and it went off w/0 a hitch. After the labs are reimaged this weekend, I will fully implement the policy. I have a meeting w/ my boss tomorrow to go over the status of the IT world at the school, and I'm looking forward to talking about my progress.

I worked for a co-worker at their house tonight installing a home network in a server closet they had constructed. In addition, I installed some advanced content filtering software and I secured their wireless network. I have already been asked back to work on some more computer and electronic related projects.

A better afternoon

I have had a better afternoon than I have morning. I did eat two small tacos and some cookies for lunch. I've also made some progress on the profile issue as the computers are now logging in much quicker. The issue I'm having now relates to getting the correct printer to show up between the two labs. Time will tell if I can get this to work.

No School Today

I got a call this morning saying there was no school due to ice on the roads. I'm excited by this because I will now have time to finish putting away clothes, work more on the group policy for labs, and get a nice workout in at the lodge. I also have to mail off a certain belated wedding gift to my cousin.

Back to work

Well, I was back at work today. I am the IT director for Harmony School District #175. I was very busy today with expected issues after such a long vacation, but I am happy to say that it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I am currently working on two issues that I can't quite figure out. One deals with Group Policies not being applied when using roaming profiles, and the other issue relates to possible corruption in a MySQL database that controls my imaging solution. I have posted a forum question on the SQL issue, and I am continuing to research the group policy issue. I also ordered a part I needed, and I replaced a defective UPS.