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That's an impressive stitement. Engineering in college can be tough, numerical and just a bit dull at times. Stick with it because you can do all sorts of fun things afterwards. Half the fun of engineering is solving problems and coming up with ideas. How do we take what we already know works, to solve a new an interesting problem?
In related good news, I got moved up to full time worked there last week. Which meant that after 4 years, including a 1 year internship and another year and a bit on part-time work, I've been able to sign off the dole at last.
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Great news
05-03-2015, 09:18 PM
Excellent news BA - (having written your handle that way, I am going to avoid any "I pity da school remarks...except for this one.)
It sounds like an exciting step in a new direction! Best of luck.
Shayne
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Quote:robkelk wrote:
More excellent news! I hope you'll enjoy your studies, BA.
Thank, I fully intend to!
Quote:Dartz wrote:
That's an impressive stitement. Engineering in college can be tough, numerical and just a bit dull at times. Stick with it because you can do all sorts of fun things afterwards. Half the fun of engineering is solving problems and coming up with ideas. How do we take what we already know works, to solve a new an interesting problem?
This is exactly what I'm looking forward to. The only thing I'm apprehensive about is Calculus 1. The VA Rep said that the schools like to use it as a litmus test to see if new science and engineering students were really going to be able to hack it. But I'm pretty good with numbers, so long as I remember to carry the odd digit over. :p
Quote:Rev Dark wrote:
Excellent news BA - (having written your handle that way, I am going to avoid any "I pity da school remarks...except for this one.)
It sounds like an exciting step in a new direction! Best of luck.
Shayne
Snrk! Don't tempt me, else I'll become like Paul Stevens in The Manhattan Project. (Minus the whole builds a nuclear bomb bit. I'll just build a reactor instead. ~_^ )
Quote:Dartz wrote:
In related good news, I got moved up to full time worked there last week. Which meant that after 4 years, including a 1 year internship and another year and a bit on part-time work, I've been able to sign off the dole at last.
That's awesome, Dartz! Maybe now we can look forward to you being able to make more visits here on this side of the pond in the future. 
(Seriously, come on over here during the Winter. It'll feel like autumn or spring to you, only without as much rain.)
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Quote:Just for clarity's sake, what will you be doing at the new job?
Assuming nothing changes, I'll be working on websites for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Despite that, I'm not an employee of the state, but of a huge consulting firm who's been handling these sites for years.
And might I note, Irony strikes again? Shortly after I finished all the paperwork for the new job this morning, I started writing emails to all the recruiters and HR departments to ask them to withdraw my applications. I sent off one such to the little Business Process Management firm in Lawrenceville that I interviewed at more than a month ago, and which had not responded to any of my emails in the ensuing weeks. And five minutes later I found an offer letter from them in my email junk folder. Argh. If they'd given me a heads-up of any sort that I was still in the running, I would have checked with them on Friday before agreeing to anything with the place I did. Oh well.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Welp, tomorrow is day one of the new job. Wish me luck.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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At the new job. My manager's not here yet, no one knows where my computer is, and I have a teleconference orientation in 25 minutes. I am told this is a typical Monday.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
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Bob Schroeck Wrote:At the new job. My manager's not here yet, no one knows where my computer is, and I have a teleconference orientation in 25 minutes. I am told this is a typical Monday. I do hope you don't have to find your computer every Monday...
--
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Quote:Bob Schroeck wrote:
At the new job. My manager's not here yet, no one knows where my computer is, and I have a teleconference orientation in 25 minutes. I am told this is a typical Monday.
Ahhhh, the bureaucracy....
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Ah well, the first week is always hectic.
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As it turns out, somehow my computer was never properly requisitioned. It might take until the end of the week to show up. In the mean time I'm making do with a laptop from home, a tiny underpowered HP that I got from my old employer when it was discarded.
Lots of good folks. The group I'm in includes anime and SF fans; we had a brief but wide-ranging discussion of favorite works over lunch my first day. And my lead is named for a ST:TOS character -- she informed me of it herself (Rayna from "Requiem for Methuselah").
Lots of good benefits -- more than I can make use of, honestly. One really cool one -- they add half my pre-hire experience to my years with the company to determine my vacation accrual -- so I get vacation there as though I'd been with them 12 or 13 years already.
I'm undergoing some intense training. That's very much the hectic part of it, ordnance.
The commute sucks. 45 minutes on paper, an hour-plus in practice. The parking also sucks -- the building has none of its own that we have access to (the office is is in a NJ state office building, provided by the state, and the lot is reserved for state police and other government functionaries), and we must make do with the parking garage a block away at about $10 a day.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Quote:Bob Schroeck wrote:
The commute sucks. 45 minutes on paper, an hour-plus in practice. The parking also sucks -- the building has none of its own that we have access to (the office is is in a NJ state office building, provided by the state, and the lot is reserved for state police and other government functionaries), and we must make do with the parking garage a block away at about $10 a day.
Do they have a monthly rate? Because 200 bucks a month for parking is insane..even if they provide valet parking.
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Yeesh. That, or take a train if there happens to be one that runs there.
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Quote:Bob Schroeck wrote:
And my lead is named for a ST:TOS character -- she informed me of it herself (Rayna from "Requiem for Methuselah").
I'm reminded, not that there's a real resemblance in the situation, of the time I worked with a woman who shared a name with one of the Star Trek production crew's better-known members: Dorothy Fontana. She was quite proud of it, and when I didn't have cable and thus couldn't watch the Deep Space Nine finale, she recorded a copy for me. She was a big Babylon 5 fan, too.
Bummer about the parking. I echo ordnance11's and Black Aeronaut's suggestions. Or maybe there's someone you can car-pool with.
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IIRC, Bob's already carpooling, and he's the driver.
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Yes, there is a monthly rate, and I'm getting it starting tomorrow; it's about 50% of the per-day rate.
I'm not carpooling anymore, Rob -- BMS laid Peg off at the end of November, and she's still enjoying her severance and COBRA for another four months. If things for her were still as they were in November, the commute would actually be an improvement, cutting my total morning drive time by nearly half. Unfortunately, I'm leaving much later and hitting more traffic than we did when Peg went into her job at 7 AM -- I'm seriously considering getting up at least half an hour earlier, much as I hate the idea, to try to avoid some of that.
The train's not much of an option. I still have to play for parking -- only the really expensive kind right by the train station, plus pay for the train, and the Trenton station is too far away from the office building for anything but a cab ride.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Quote:Bob Schroeck wrote:
Yes, there is a monthly rate, and I'm getting it starting tomorrow; it's about 50% of the per-day rate.
$5 a day. Your still talking about 100 bucks a month!? That's still price gouging, IMO. I pay 35.00 a month, and I consider it an act of banditry. I grant you it can be deducted from your taxes, but still..
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Oh, I forgot to mention that I can expense it and the company will pay for it. Haven't gotten far enough through the HR stuff to get to applying for a company credit card yet.
-- Bob
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ordnance11 Wrote:Quote:Bob Schroeck wrote:Yes, there is a monthly rate, and I'm getting it starting tomorrow; it's about 50% of the per-day rate.
$5 a day. Your still talking about 100 bucks a month!? That's still price gouging, IMO. I pay 35.00 a month, and I consider it an act of banditry. I grant you it can be deducted from your taxes, but still.. I pay $90/month for parking, and consider myself lucky to find something that low in a large city.
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Quote:robkelk wrote:
Quote:ordnance11 wrote:
Quote:Bob Schroeck wrote:Yes, there is a monthly rate, and I'm getting it starting tomorrow; it's about 50% of the per-day rate.
$5 a day. Your still talking about 100 bucks a month!? That's still price gouging, IMO. I pay 35.00 a month, and I consider it an act of banditry. I grant you it can be deducted from your taxes, but still..
I pay $90/month for parking, and consider myself lucky to find something that low in a large city.
Yes, but do you get reimbursed for it? We were told to forgot about reimbursement.
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ordnance11 Wrote:Quote:robkelk wrote:Quote:ordnance11 wrote:Bob Schroeck wrote:Yes, there is a monthly rate, and I'm getting it starting tomorrow; it's about 50% of the per-day rate.
$5 a day. Your still talking about 100 bucks a month!? That's still price gouging, IMO. I pay 35.00 a month, and I consider it an act of banditry. I grant you it can be deducted from your taxes, but still..
I pay $90/month for parking, and consider myself lucky to find something that low in a large city.Yes, but do you get reimbursed for it? We were told to forgot about reimbursement.
Reimbursed? For parking? That would make it a taxable benefit, and I'd have to pay more every April...
No, I'm not reimbursed for parking.
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Quote:Bob Schroeck wrote:
The train's not much of an option. I still have to play for parking -- only the really expensive kind right by the train station, plus pay for the train, and the Trenton station is too far away from the office building for anything but a cab ride.
... And this is why big cities fail at public transportation.
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Quote:Black Aeronaut wrote:
Quote:Bob Schroeck wrote:
The train's not much of an option. I still have to play for parking -- only the really expensive kind right by the train station, plus pay for the train, and the Trenton station is too far away from the office building for anything but a cab ride.
... And this is why big cities fail at public transportation.
Not all of them. Take any big city in Germany.
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Quote:ordnance11 wrote:
Quote:Black Aeronaut wrote:
Quote:Bob Schroeck wrote:
The train's not much of an option. I still have to play for parking -- only the really expensive kind right by the train station, plus pay for the train, and the Trenton station is too far away from the office building for anything but a cab ride.
... And this is why big cities fail at public transportation.
Not all of them. Take any big city in Germany.
we did, at least half of them anyway
that said, i've seen public transportation done right, but generally you have to be dealing with a city that has at least had a major rebuild/expansion in the last 50-75 years to find anything like it. DFW has a nice setup, but not perfect
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ordnance11 Wrote:Black Aeronaut Wrote:Bob Schroeck Wrote:The train's not much of an option. I still have to play for parking -- only the really expensive kind right by the train station, plus pay for the train, and the Trenton station is too far away from the office building for anything but a cab ride. ... And this is why big cities fail at public transportation. Not all of them. Take any big city in Germany. Ottawa's working on it ... we're finally building an MRT line (which they insist on calling a LRT line but refuse to run at-grade), and one of the first stops to be opened will be at the inter-city train station.
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I'm really starting to hate the commute home. I'm figuring out a quicker way to work in the morning, but in the evenings, I've yet to beat an hour.
At least I finally have my parking card and my company-issue computer.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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