Jared’s Blog

On a whim, I decided to go to a local show last night. I always like local shows because they’ve got that laid back vibe that you don’t get with a more widely kown act. On top of that it was at the Triple Rock which I like as a venue because of its size and layout. Finally, you can’t go wrong seeing 4 bands for $7.

Doors were at 5, so I showed up a little late which turned out to be perfectly on time for the first band, Death To Your King. They started their set a few minutes after I got in the door. With a name like theirs, you can guess pretty easily they’re a hardcore band. Turns out they were from someplace in WI I think. I wasn’t paying too much attention to tell you the truth. They gave a solid performance filled with excitement and passion. While I wasn’t too hot on the motivation behind the song “for all the 15 and 16 year old kids in high school go come to a show to hang out and have a good time.” The lead singer, who couldn’t be more than 20 himself spoke about the inspiration for another one of their songs and really the reason he was in the band. His father had called him one night to tell him goodbye. He was giving up on life. Among his reasons were alcoholism and poverity. He did leave his son with one piece of good advice, “Follow your dreams no matter how much you have to give up.” I paid much more attention to the rest of their set after that. I think they could have a future if they keep at it.
Grade: B

Playing second, was Cue the Doves. This was another set of new faces for me. I have to say I wasn’t much impressed. First of all, they had 3 guitarists. Which doesn’t say much, but for the type of band they were, they probably only needed 2. On top of that, they had their singer playing some kind of samples before almost every track. This wouldn’t have been so bad, except it sounded like he was using a tape recorder. At the beginning of every song he’d walk to the back of the stage, fiddle with something, some weird sound or some line from a movie would start playing, and then he’d stop it and the band would play their song. When he wasn’t doing this, he was saying a bit about the next song they were going to perform. Usually it was some bit about space, aliens, or the like. Again, not a bad thing by itself, but the guy sounded like even he thought it was cheesy. They were quite the crew, I’ll say that. After what seemed like an eternity, their set was over. Hurrah!
Grade: D+

Now the next band, Ettison Clio, I had actually bothered to check out online before the show. What interested me was that they were female fronted. Turns out they’ve got a fairly big following in MI where they’re from. I didn’t think they were bad, but I just wasn’t feeling their music. The girl could sing very well. There were times she wouldn’t even use a mic and I could still hear here ok. To put it bluntly, they didn’t fit well with the other bands and it showed. Nothing against the band, they were all really into the show. On top of that, their singer had a scratched cornea which I would imagine is very distracting and they had 2 band members quit prior to them going out on tour. Maybe on a different night I’d have enjoyed the more.
Grade: C+

The best was saved for last. Or so I thought. Nehemiah is probably the best metal band from Minneapolis today. They’re brutal as hell, they know how to put on a show, and they actually have a couple records out. If you read me often enough, you might remember I was at one of their shows back in February. That show happened to be a farewell show for 3 of their members who were going off to various corners of the country. This was the first I’d seen of the new lineup, but more on that later. They came out and played a couple songs from their new EP, Lenore. The songs sounded tight and left me wanting more. Then they ripped through a few older tracks, back to a new one, and closed with The Kings Collapse off of Lenore. That was it; 7 songs. From the headlining band. Sound a little strange? Yea, I thought so too. My guess is that with all the lineup changes, no one was really ready to play a full set. They went from 2 vocalists to 1 (which I always thought set them apart). I think the other 2 new guys were the drummer and one of the guitarists. Like I said, they probably haven’t learned all the songs yet. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt this time, but damn was it dissapointing.
Grade: C

All in all, it was a quick show which had very few high points. I have to admit I was surpised with the female turnout though. For a metal/rock show, it was very odd. I’d say it was pretty close to 50/50. I would’ve liked to have seen a more metal lineup and a few more songs from Nehemiah in particular. But, as I stated in the beginning, you can’t go wrong with 4 bands for $7.
Overall Grade: C-

Today was a good day indeed. I awoke bright and early to the ringing of my cellphone. It was the IT Director of Minnetonka schools. She called to tell me she couldn’t get in touch with any of my references. It really didn’t surprise me. SJU is out for the summer, so I wouldn’t expect the profs to be around much and the guys at NESC are terribly hard to get a hold of when they’re out on site. She also was having problems with Target. For whatever reason the contact number I gave her wasn’t working.

So I got to work, promptly sent off an email to my manager to have him call her and square things away. A short while later he informed me that it is Target’s policy to not give out any information about my employment. He could tell her I worked for Target in their call center and that he was indeed my manager, but nothing more. This did not bode well for my future employer’s opinion of me I’m sure.

I figured I’d make the best of the situation and at least try to email all my references to let them know Sue was trying to get in touch with them. Miraculously, one person was around on this pre-holiday afternoon and actually called her. I don’t know what he said, but it must’ve been good because an hour later I was being called by Minnetonka school’s HR rep offering me the job! Josh can vouch for me, I did a little dance right there.

All that’s left is to get some paperwork done. Just the official stuff you know. I can’t wait to get started. The last few weeks at Target will most certainly be a drag, but knowing they’ll be my last will make them easier. Not to say that Target is a bad place, but anyone who has worked in a call center knows what I’m talking about. Everything is scheduled, you are tied to your desk, and after awhile there is no challenge to anything. Goodbye to that I say!

Well after my interview last Thursday, which went as good as could be expected, I dropped by Best Buy. I’d been looking at LCD monitors for probably the last year or so now and I finally decided to take the plunge. My bounty? A 19″ Samsung 930B. Yea it did cost me about $500, but there is a mail in rebate on it (wasn’t Best Buy getting rid of them). So when it’s all said and done it cost me under $400.

It took me a good half an hour to figure out how to get it connected through DVI. My video card kept reverting back to analog for some reason. I finally figured out the settings though and it works wonderfully. No dead pixels! YAY! I’ve found having the extra desk space is somewhat nice. I think I need to rearrange/clean my desk to maximize it though. The 19″ is certainly great for coding and graphic editing. I haven’t tested the 8ms refresh rate other than playing World of Warcraft and watching a few bits of a DVD.

I’m very satisfied with my purchase and I’m sure for LAN parties in the future I’ll be even happier.

I got the crazy idea to try and catch the midnight showing last night while at work. Maybe it was all the hype, but I just didn’t care if I made it to the premier or not prior to last night. I am glad I did decide to go. Hank and I took off at about 11:30. The first theatre we went to had a line halfway through their parking lot. We decided to skip that place and try another. Luckly, the next place we visited didn’t even have a line.

We skipped the concession line which was about as long as the line for the first theatre. After taking our seats, we only had to chill for maybe 15 minutes before the show started. I thought it was funny the manager came in and told everyone to keep their lightsabers and cell phones off.

Now on to the movie itself.
***WARNING SPOILERS***
Overall, I agreed with Ebert’s rating of 3.5 stars. There was that overall feeling of evil through most of the flick and the end tied up all the loose ends from the first two movies. I found the evolution of technology to be quite impressive. I saw shades of AT-ST walkers, A-wings, X-wings, and Imperial shuttles. I remembered when I first saw the Phantom Menace thinking the vehicles and starships were too strange and didn’t fit in the Star Wars universe. But aftering seeing the final chapter, I thought things worked out nicely. Even the lightsaber battles were better. I guess when you look back, all the lightsaber battles in the original trilogy were between old Jedi. The first trilogy is about the heyday of the Jedi and it makes sense they’re going to have a different fighting style.

What could’ve used a little more work is some of the dialogue. The scene’s with Anakin and Padme were entirely too dry and predictible. I do not stray from my previous statements of Natalie Portman’s hotness though, but I digress. Anakin’s betreyal to the darkside could’ve been a little more fleshed out. It seemed like all of a sudden he’s Darth Vader. That’s another thing. Why the name? It never really gets explained. The Emperor just goes Hey you! You’re now called Darth Vader kid! and Anakin is like OK boss. I’m not too sure where this General Grievous came from either. I don’t remember him from any of the other movies. Which reminds me of another thing. Dooku! In Episode II, he’s this big bad final boss that not even Yoda can defeat. Then in this one, Anakin pretty much dominates him after a couple saber swings. I guess I’m embellishing a bit, but it could’ve been made to look like more of a fight. I noticed early on that Anakin and Obi-wan didn’t seem to so much as break a sweat during battles. It’s like they’re not giving any effort. I remember in Return of the Jedi Luke is sweating his balls off while fighting Vader.

I guess that’s enough rambling. I could probably nitpick for hours. There was a lot I very much liked about the movie and a few things I didn’t. It does put a fitting end to the saga. Unfortunately, I left the theatre still hungry for more. Yet I know this is going to be it for Star Wars.

I haven’t mentioned it here, but I’ve been on the job hunt a few months after I got my job with Target. The truth is, I really hate working in call centers. There’s no challenge for me and I get bored quickly. Of course there’s always people I find interesting and fun to work with, but being that we’re on the phone all the time, it seems like we never really get a chance to know each other. Our conversations take place between phone calls and are always cut short by the beeps of our phone. It’s sad because I would really like to get to know some of these people.

Well a couple weeks back my dear mother brought to my attention an opening for a Network Technician at the Minnetonka school district. I didn’t take much notice at first, but when I finally got a chance to check out the job description, it looked like I’d found something I was both qualified for and really had a shot at. It also pays much better than my previous job; $18-20/hr. So I put together my best resume, cover letter, and application and mailed it off. Dissapointingly, I recieved an email a few days later saying they’d already began final interviews. With that I figured I’d just have to forget about it. On with my mundane world at Target. Much to my surprise on Monday morning I recieved a phone call from the school. They were still looking for one more tech. I set up a time for a technology test with them.

From what I’d learned on the phone, the test was 90 min long. I couldn’t possibly imagine what was going to take me 90 min. Being that I know my way around computers better than anything else in the world I figured I’d whiz through it in like half an hour. No offense to any who doesn’t know computers, but I always seem to get either way underestimated when it comes to my skils. Either that or I’m some kind of technology guru (when in fact I don’t know all that much). Part of me was saying there was nothing they could throw at me that I couldn’t handle. The other part was fearing the worst.

I woke up at the ass crack of dawn on Thursday and made it to the school a good 45 min early. I didn’t know how bad traffic would be on I494, but it turned out to be not bad at all. So I ended up sitting in my car in the rain for awhile, but it was a good chance to just collect my thoughts and listen to some music.

I strolled in right on time and met Robyn, the HR lady. She took me to a small conference room with a laptop set up. After explaining that the test was just a Word file in which I was supposed to answer all the questions, my mind was a bit more at ease. I managed to rip through the first 14 questions without much trouble. I made sure to give concise yet complete answers. The final question turned out to be a doozy. It basically laid out a scenario where there were 7 tasks to accomplish and I had to give a summary of how I’d handle the issues. What it boiled down to was prioritizing. I took the basic premise that problems affecting the largest groups of people should be handled first. The only thing that might take precedence would be something I knew I could handle quickly or work around and come back to. I’ll try to remember the problem.

You are to arrive at the middle school by 7:30AM and here is your list of tasks:

1. A single teacher is getting an error writing to the disk when using a math program (permissions problem)
2. The school lunch program which runs over a wireless connection is having problems contacting the central server
3. One person is having Microsoft Word crash
4. A switch is erroring and the Network admin wants you to look at the error lights on the switch and call them back to her
5. Microsoft Outlook is crashing when opening jpeg or gif attachments on a single computer
6. An admin’s report is printing in gibberish and she needs it to present to a group of parents at a 10AM meeting

You get on site and are immediately stopped by the media paraprofessional. She tells you there is a class in the computer lab and they are having problems with a Flash site.

I solved the problem like this. The switch I called in first. I figured the network admin could get the information she needed and work on it from there without my assistance. While this is only affecting one person at this time, if the switch goes down, it could potentionally affect many more.

Second, I said I would maybe stop by the admin’s office and try to print their report to a different printer. Chances are this would at least temporarily solve their problem. I would also possibly try moving the document to another computer and printing it to yet another printer. If neither of those worked, I’d have to put the problem on the back burner until I could come back to it.

Simiarly, I thought of stopping by the computer lab since the class in the lab would only be there a short time. The problem might be the site itself and unfixable. Or it could be a small problem with how the students are accessing it. If I wasn’t able to fix it right away, this too would have to be shelved until I could come back to it. With Flash sites usually it’s usually a matter of installing or updating the program to get it working. This is a pretty simple process and provided the students had the rights to do it, I could maybe show them the fix and get them up and running

I also made sure to note that I realized these problems may be worth skipping since they had the potential to be dragged into larger programs. I’ve been in these situations before and once you step into a room everyone seems to want to take care of their little problems first. It’s very easy to get wrapped up with a bunch of little jobs in no time at all. Before you know it, the day is over and you’ve accomplished less than half of what you set out to do.

Moving on… I decided the cafeteria would be next on my list. It would probably take the most time to fix since wireless networking was involved. Wireless can be pretty tempermental. Sometimes it just doesn’t work (usually an interference issue) and you have to do a lot of moving antennas and what not. I also figured I might have a shot a fixing the issue before lunch which would be ideal. If all else failed, I might think abour running a long ethernet cable if it was an option.

The three remaining problems I thought were fairly equal. Each of them was a single person being affected and all of them had the potential to go as far as reinstalling software (or worse, the operating system). For these I laid out basic troublshooting steps. Start from the cause of the problem and work your way up. Troubleshoot the problem file, then the program, then the operating sytem, and so on.

Well, they gave me a call back today and said I scored “very high” on the test. It really made me feel good. I’m totally stoked for my interview next Thursday and I can’t wait to show them how much I want the job. I am meeting with Robyn, the Technical Coordinator, and an assistant superintendant who oversees the IT department. I’m sure I’ll have no trouble with it. And if they can see half the enthusiasm I have toward this job and in the field as a whole, I think they’ll hire me.

Well, as promised, my site is back in action. I actually didn’t have that hard of a time figuring out how to fix things. Just a few changes and it worked out ok. Now the trouble is my new site. I don’t know if I’ve posted the link directly, but it’s located here. Check it out. Make comments here. Thanks!