Side out you Orc !

So today's first day at Discover went extremely well I'm glad to say. I'm part of the Incident Management team of the Business Technology department. That's a mouthful I know but the short description of what I do is, I make sure if something breaks, the right people fix it in the shortest amount of time, while recording all the details, then meeting after a resolution to come up with ways to best avoid the same problem in the future. That's the gist of it anyway. They have alot of stuff planned for down the line as far as things my department wants to take over which is good since I'm getting in on everything early and will be able to help set stuff up. (Calculating). Got my ID and my parking sticker so I'm definitely official now yay!

Couple of other highlights from the day.

The first thing someone asks me was. "Do you play volleyball?" Here's me like.. um.. what? After driving around the multiple parking lots before finally settling on the parking garage I noticed as I was hiking to the building I work in that there was both an outdoor basketball court and a volleyball net with sand and all. Apparently the different departments in the company like to be.. competitive. And I guess my department being mostly on the geeky side fail at that whole hit the ball over the net thing hehe. Much to my trainer's approval I explained that yes, I used to play vball waaaayyyy back in High School (I'm old eh?), because rather than playing basketball with the thuggish dudes, I opted to play some volleyball with the girls. Laugh if you will, but then other guys figured out.. omg.. he's a genius.. next thing you know we had MANY people playing :P

Also there were um... cheerleaders from the AFL (that football league really does exist) and they were onsite handing on free t-shirts to anyone that had a Discover credit card. I'll have you know that if I ever wear that shirt, I won't need to be worried about being shot at while hunting.. unless I go with politicians eh?

The people and the atmosphere there is way cool. It's not ohmigod ohmigod corporate since it's a fair balance between corporate HQ and well.. a college campus minus the doe eyed coeds looking for unisex bathrooms. The cafeteria was even amusing. I think that alone was bigger than my last 3 or 4 apartments put together. They had different stations that served things from Italian, Asian, Indian, Mexican, Salads, a deli and get this.. fresh Sushi.. what the.. wow.. can I live there?

Oh and the other random thing was one of my new coworkers before I left insisted on asking me if I played World of Warcraft and if so what server I play on. Apparently not only have I been drafted to play volleyball but also WoW to. Odd. Teambuilding rocks sometimes?

Ok.. I gotta help people with homework. No really I do. Of course it isn't math homework that would be silly since I'm the anti-asian and prefer writing English papers to solving equations.

I'll still probably continue to do the security gig on the side just for the extra cash. Debts to payoff are still debts and all. That and man.. I have alot of plans that won't pay for themselves. When I start working my normal shift of 3pm to 11:30pm (Tue thru Sat) in a week and a half I won't really have much freetime for anything but at least it's a way to save money. See. I should have gone into investment banking to :)

It Pays to Discover...

So I know it's been quite some time since I've actually sat down and put some effort into writing anything but that's just the way it goes at times? On the up side, great news! Last week I went on an interview at Discover (the credit card company). The offices or rather should I say.. the compound/campus for Discover is for lack of better words.. intense. The security at the gate and in the main building I was in reminded me of old Indiana Jones villians as they were all blond haired blue eyed and spoke German. The place was so grand, it sported it's own pharmacy. What the hell? A pharmacy next to the deli?? Jeez. So anyway I interviewd with to two fellows who were quite nice actually. At the end of the interview they showed me around and informed me there were 15 people total that were going for the position I was. The next day I get a call from the consulting agency I have to go through for the job and they tell me Discover would like to make an offer. Sweet! I should have played the lottery. 15 to 1 odds works for me!

So I start tomorrow and do some training for a couple of weeks on some odd schedule, then after training when I go to my normal shift I think its something like.. Tuesday thru Saturday 3pm to 11pm. Well.. that doesn't make trying to plan things difficult at all! (not dripping sarcasm). Sigh. But I'm not going to complain. It's about time I got a real job, not counting the armed security stuff I've been doing. It's an odd thing that people will get drunk and do stupid things at a public place especially when there's people standing there with weapons and a badge? Silly people.

So.. with the job only a couple things need to happen until Life Rebooted 2.0 is completed. My life must be running on an older version of Windows.. cuz man it's taking a while to reboot :)

And yes, things are still going very well with Rei and I. Who knew? :)

- Nat