Welcome to the Monkey House

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No New Job

So apparently the company I interviewed with has rescinded the job offer based off the last entry. Odd. Oh well, maybe I dodged a bullet. I’m happy to be staying with my current company. I think I might have become jaded by the treatment I have received from my current boss. I need to fix that and show my appreciation.

That’s about all I have to say about that. On the plus side I got a ton of hits to my site based on this hullabaloo.

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New Job?

About a month ago I sent my resume to a local resort, The Great Wolf Lodge, which was looking for an IT technician. No big deal. I’ve sent a few resumes out recently just to see of there was anything interesting out there.

It’s not that there is anything wrong with my current job. I’ve been an employee of that company for 14 years. I started there when I was 17 and now I’m 31. As I’ve worked there, I have slowly moved up the ladder to where I am now a manager. But the thing is, I’m completely burned out of working there. Other than cleaning rooms at the local Holiday Inn from the age of 14 till 17, I have never really worked anywhere else.

Fast forward last weekend. The HR director at Great Wolf Lodge calls me to ask if I’m still interested in the IT position with the resort. Of course I still am! I’m told that they had a good candidate, but corporate didn’t like him for a couple reasons and they have decided to widen their search.

This Thursday I had an interview with the current IT manager. He is being promoted to the corporate office in Wisconsin. To me that seems to be a good sign for the job, that it isn’t a dead end. He appears to be a few years younger than me, which is another good sign to me.

The interview seems to go well. Apparently they are actually looking for an IT manager. There is no one that works under this IT manager. 75% of the IT manager’s job is tech support for the front desk and all the office people. The MS Exchange Server and all the accounting software is run out of the corporate office. They don’t advertise the job as being for an IT manager, because they don’t want the add answered by people that expect $90,000+ a year and a staff working under them. One positive for me was that he liked the fact that I live two blocks away from the resort, so I could get them in a hurry in case of an emergency during off hours.

The current IT manager seemed to like me and thought the interview went well. The next step was to be interviewed over the phone by the corporate office.I got a call Thursday evening that the corporate office wanted to interview me the next day. I already had plans to go down state to attend my cousin’s graduation party. I told them they could call me and I would just pull over at some point. At 10:00 am on Friday I was interviewed by the corporate office in Wisconsin while I stood in the parking lot at a McDonald’s in Cadillac, MI.

The corporate office had questions for me that allowed to expound on my experience and my thoughts about computers and IT. As soon as I hung up the phone with them I knew I had blown them away. I just had this feeling that things couldn’t be better.

Around four O’clock on Friday I got a call from the HR manager. They wanted me. The corporate office told her to make it happen. So I entered into negotiations with her. I got more money than I expect to get. The benefits for the job are good. Two weeks of vacation to start, 3 personal days, BC/BS health insurance, Delta Dental insurance, 401K with matching funds to 4%. One of the biggest pluses is that I live right next to the place! I’ll be able to ride my bike and save a lot of money on gas. They also have a couple different restaurants in the resorts that I can eat lunch in at a deeply discounted rate. Lot’s of cool extras.

I still haven’t given them a 100% thumbs up on the job offer. I still need to talk to the president of my current company. I think I owe it to them. It would take a lot for me to stay. It would take a lot more money, frankly. We will see how it goes. I’m very excited.

Here is a link the the webpage for the Great Wolf Lodge.

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The Perfect Converse All-Stars

Here is a picture of my perfectly aged and dirtied black low-top Converse All-Stars. They don’t get any better than this.

I hate white shoes and any white on shoes.

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As the Microblogging World Turns

I’m really starting to enjoy Plurk. I wasn’t sure what to think of Plurk in the beginning. It’s different than Twitter and I enjoy it for it’s differences, but also for its similarities.

For those of you unfamiliar with Plurk, it’s one of the newer entries in the microblogging landscape currently dominated by Twitter. Twitter is very barebones. It allows it’s user to post updates in the form of 140 character messages. Other users can reply to the message, adding their own thoughts. Really that’s about it.

Plurk is similar to Twitter. They maintain the same 140 character limit on messages and allow readers to reply. But Plurk goes beyond that. Plurk threads the replies to a message so readers can easily follow the conversation that is taking place between multiple users and add their own two cents. This is something that is sorely missing with Twitter. It’s hard to follow conversations. Each message and reply is basically its own separate island. Twitter’s design does nothing to foster a larger conversation.

Plurk also incorporates something they call "Karma". Karma is a score used to indicate what sort of member of the Plurk community one is. Karma is much like a plant. It starts out small, but through tending to one’s account, updating often, adding new friends, replying to others’ comments, and generally being friendly, one’s Karma score increases. The higher one’s Karma is the more option they get in regards to their account. Generally I feel they biggest advantage of a higher Karma score is for bragging rights among friends.

The biggest saving grace for Twitter has been its community. I love my friends on Twitter. I have great conversations with people and have met some really great friends. This has been where other microblog competitors, like Jaiku or Pownce, have failed for me.

For me, Plurk is different. I have a great group of friends on Plurk. Some of these people follow me on Twitter and some of them don’t. But the conversations on Plurk are different. They are more in depth. They don’t seem to be as limited as in Twitter. It’s a great community.

I’m not sure if there will be room for two or more microblog services, probably. Each of the two I primarily use offer something a little different. Twitter has its simplicity and Plurk has its ability to foster deeper conversations. For now, I plan to stick with both.

Add me:

• Plurk = http://plurk.com/redeemByURL?from_uid=12344&check=-2072844589&s=1
• Twitter = http://twitter.com/jasonwert

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My Five Favorite Podcasts

• Buzz Out Loud
• Windows Weekly
• This Week In Tech
• The Tony Kornheiser Show
• The Tech Guy

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Windows Vista: As good and bad as you’ve heard

I’ve got a new blog post up on the Record-Eagle website. It’s entitled "Windows Vista: As good and bad as you’ve heard". Check it out.

I’m pretty excited about the blog. The webmaster of the Record-Eagle.com sent all the bloggers a copy of the site’s Google Analytics for the month of May. One of my post had the most page views. Pretty cool.

I’m trying to build up a following for my column/blog, with hopes that it evolves into more writing (paid) or I.T. opportunities. Regardless, it’s great just to have your work read.

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Call me "manny"

Spending the day babysitting my niece, Molly. Kris left this morning to fly up to Edmonton and then drive back with my mom to Michigan. Since I already had the day off, I’m filling in for Kris and watching Molly.

Molly is around 19 month old and at the age where she is a lot of fun. This morning we went out to breakfast. She ate two scrambled eggs, a sausage link and a piece of toast; more than I ate!

Now she’s taking a nap. The weather is nice right now, sunny and warm. When she wakes up maybe we will go for a walk or to a park.

She just woke up, better get going.

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Zunes, iPods, and Sandisks Oh My!

I’ve gone through a lot of mp3 players in 6-7 years. I started out with a couple different players made my Creative. I liked them. The first was a Creative Nomad, which had a full size laptop drive in it. The thing was huge, but I upgraded it so that it held 60GB of music. This player was old and finally died.

Next I went with a smaller Creative player, which held 6GB of music. It was lighter, but I had repeated problems with the headphone jack. I had bought the extended warranty from Best Buy, so I was able to replace the player. I went through three of these players before I just gave up on Creative.

The next player I bought was a used 3rd generation iPod. It was 40GB. Pretty nice. The display was just grayscale, so no video, but it played music well. After a year I had to replace the battery. It was no problem. About a year later the hard drive died. Time to move onto something else.

The next mp3 player I bought was a Sadisk Sansa, The player held 8GB of music. The player was a nice size, but had some problems. First of all, I had gotten use to using iTunes to manage my music and podcasts. The music management part wasn’t a big problem, but the podcast part was. I have yet to find an alternative to iTunes (or the Zune Marketplace) for downloading and syncing podcasts to an MP3 player that I like. The other problem I had with the Sansa is that it doesn’t play video. I wanted to watch vlogcasts.

I found a great deal on a Microsoft Zune, so I bought that with hopes that it would address the problems I had with the Sandisk Sansa. It did. It was a 30GB player which displayed video and also had a podcast/music manager which worked well. But, the Zune created new problems. It was bigger and bulkier. I wanted a player that would slide easily into my pocket. It also has extremely restrictive copy protection. You can not copy any data to a Zune using Linux or a Macintosh. It’s Windows only, and I like to use Linux at times. Sorry Zune, you had to go.

So, earlier this year I went back to ebay and found a good deal on an 8GB second generation iPod Nano. It was in great shape and pretty small. It got me back into iTunes. Everything looked good. Except for one thing. I made a mistake. It didn’t play video. Damn it! I used the Nano for a little while, but looked for my next player.

A week or two ago, I found a 30GB 5.5 generation iPod on ebay. The price was right. The player was pretty new and it plays video. The screen was a little scratched, but I buffed a lot of them out. For the price I paid, it was worth it.

I also fine that 30GB is just about right. 8GB is a little small, bit 60GB seems excessive. 30GB just seems right for the amount of podcasts, music and video I want to carry with me.

So far I am happy with my "new" iPod, but knowing my track record I make no promises how long I will use it. I sold the Zune to a friend and I gave my dad the Nano. It’s his first iPod.

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Add Me!

This weekend I joined the micro-blogging community Plurk. Plurk is a new community that is akin to Twitter. Users make small, 140 character posts.

What is different with Plurk is that the posts go into an interface that is setup like a timeline. Followers need only to click a Plurk entry to read other users’ replies to that post or to add their own.

Plurk is an interesting spin on the micro-blog concept. I’m still feeling my way around it and have yet to decide what I think of it. I do think they need to release an API so users can update Plurk via a client like Twhirl.

Add me on Plurk and any other community I belong to. Here is a list of the places I can be found.

http://flickr.com/photos/jasonwerten/

http://twitter.com/jasonwert

http://www.myspace.com/jasonwert

http://plurk.com/redeemByURL?from_uid=12344&check=-2072844589&s=1

http://pownce.com/jasonwert/

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=598489087

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More Go-Juice for the Moto

I love my Motorola Q. I bought it used off of eBay for a decent price and since I’ve had it I can’t believe I made it so long without a smartphone. I use it far more for Twitter, web surfing, and text messaging than I do for voice calls.

There is only one complaint I have. The battery just sucked. On average it only lasted between 8-12 hours maximum. That’s not very impressive. To be fair, the phone was used and I have no clue how old or used this battery was. But as I searched the internet, the lack of battery time is a common problem. 

Last week I ordered a new battery off of eBay. The original battery was 1100 mAh and I bought an extended battery that is 1650 mAh. The difference is amazing! Right now I haven’t charged my battery in 29 hours and the power meter shows just under half charged.

If you have a Motorola Q, get on eBay and buy one of these suckers. They sell them at Best Buy also, but they charge about $50 for the battery. I got this battery off eBay for about $24 shipped and it’s an Motorola OEM battery.