The Blog

I haven’t worked in almost a year and I’m excited about starting back on Monday. It’s always been very enjoyable working in an IT or helpdesk environment. The team environment has usually been pretty good and the ability to learn new things is always there. IT managers are usually pretty laid back when it comes to down time, as long as you’re not breaking the rules or risking any integrity.

I’m wondering what my desk is going to look like. I’m wondering what kind of computer I’m going to have. I wonder if I’m going to have to provide my own wireless mouse. I hope not.

Going back to work is going to allow me an opportunity to get a hold on my weight and hopefully lose a bunch of it. Not working really gives someone a lot of time to graze in the kitchen and think about all the bad things there are to eat. Also, being free to go to Grandma’s house during the day opens the door to eating all the luscious treats she always has in the kitchen. Ice cream.. Ice cream is my nemesis. I will be starting a liquid protein diet as soon as it gets here, sometime early this week. I have 3.5 weeks until our vacation in Myrtle Beach so I’m going to do it until that time. If I can push myself that far, then I know I can dedicate myself to it afterwards, and do it until the end.

 Because I have a new job starting on Monday, we had to find some child care quickly. The grandparents had expressed that it would be too much for them to take care of both of them five days a week. So, we started looking elsewhere. Nannies that come to your house want at least $400 a week. Huh? For reals?

Well, I started considering daycare centers just to compare the cost and see what was available. I found that there are three kinds of daycares. The first is where one mother, with kids of her own, opens her house to other kids to just hang out, play, and watch movies and eat, until their parents come to get them. This kind of daycare is pretty cheap, probably around $100-$150 per week. The second is daycare that is an actual business that provides a larger and more creative place with screened employees. This kind is usually about $250 a week. The third kind is what I chose. Somewhat of a prep school for kids where they begin learning the fundamentals of education based on their age and abilities. I was so impressed with the curriculum, the staff, and the structure that it made the $340 per week pricetag well worth it. I know for sure that my three year old with have a blast there. She will learn structure, get potty trained, and learn how to play and get along with other children. They send home daily reports about progress and behavior, which is great, because it is very important to me to know how she interacts with other children.

I want my girls to be individuals and I don’t want them either forcing their will on others or accepting the will of others forced upon them. Mainly, I just want them to realize that they should do, or participate in, whatever they want to do, regardless of anyone else. I know how kids are, and I especially know how little girls are. We want to have friends and we want to be that special friend to someone and sometimes we are willing to do silly things just to achieve that. If she learns this at an early age, then I think her development will benefit from it.

If you are hired as an employee for a consulting firm, are you safe in thinking that they will find you a new position once your current assignment is over? I just got this job and I’m wondering what would happen if the client I am going to actually be working for ends my need at their office, would the consulting firm, my employer, find me another post or would they let me go? I’ve seen that happen with my manager at my last job but that was because the consulting firm didn’t have any other clients to assign him to.

I was just informed today, while signing my employment papers, that the contract for this position is only for 3 months with a chance for going longer, up to 6 months, with an option for the client to hire me permanently.

My secondary goal once I start working is to get involved with projects and fulfill a need where they will want to extend my contract or hopefully the Kendle company will want to hire me permanently. The only downfall is that my boss is an Ajilon contractor as well and there is no way that Kendle is going to hire me before he gets hired.

Unless he sucks, then I can take his job.

I got a job working at Kendle in downtown Cincinnati. I’m excited and I start working on Monday. I had to find daycare for my little ones and surprisingly, I was able to find something in about two hours. I never imagined how expensive daycare would be until I started checking out options. There seems to be two types, daycare that just watches your child, and daycare that teaches your child. We chose the latter more structured environment and we are definitely paying the price for it. I really think that they will like the environment and I’m looking forward to the tour I have scheduled tomorrow morning.

My new job is answering calls for a help desk, again. I’ve been torn about what kind of job to look for and accept considering I have so many years of experience. I thought that I should be looking for a project job or a network admin role, but honestly, I’ve been looking for months and nothing has been offered to me. I just don’t have any experience in those areas. I really think my career advancement will come in the form of flowing into a role while working as a help desk agent. I’ve been told that Kendle is a fantastic place to work and from what I’ve seen, everyone and the energy in the office seems very positive and happy. Hopefully we will be a great fit and they will ask me to come on permanently after my contract period is up. The contracting company I’m going through is Ajilon and as unbelievable as it sounds, they offer full benefits right from day one and they will reimburse my parking each month, up to $100. Now I just have to find the best deal on parking.

Through my years in IT, I have never seen so many old HP laptops that are just wasting away as paper weights because of expensive repairs that just aren’t worth making. I thought HP was a good brand, for printers, but when I started looking at their laptops, I realized that they are primarily big, heavy, and second rate compared to many of the other brands. Parts are easy to find though, and if you get enough of them, you can probably create one decent HP laptop out of the scraps of others.

 Recycle your computers and laptops. There are people out there that live for it.

I am very fortunate to be in a situation where our family only requires one income. While both my husband and I realize we live quite comfortably now, there are good reasons for me to start looking for work again.

We like money. We like having money. We like buying things with money. We like spending money for ourselves and other people. We like toys. We like big expensive toys. We also have debt. We have two cars with substantial loan balances, a house that may or may not return enough to us to buy a bigger, nicer pad, and a debt we owe to members of our family. A driveway that is sinking on one side is enough of a slap in the face to make anyone realize that even though you think you have money, it can be sucked away by any huge problem, like a bad transmission or, in our case, a sinking driveway.

It’s hard for me to deal with leaving the kids to go back to work. I love watching after them during the day but I think my husband has lost respect for me since I’m not working. He’s the kind that makes it clear, especially when he’s mad, that if you aren’t contributing monetarily to the household income, then you are a freeloader and can be kicked out of the house any time he feels like it. Sometimes I wonder if he realizes I’m his wife, and not some roommate. He’s got issues.

Anyway, I’ve been struggling with what kind of job I want to take. I think I’m about to be offered this job as, yet again, answering phones on a helpdesk and helping people figure out their problems. It’s the same thing I’ve been doing for the last 8 years and I told myself that I wanted to get a job more into the technical and networking side of things, since that is what I’m getting my degree in. The issue is that the pay is awesome and I’m not getting any offers for any networking jobs. What to do, what to do.

I wanted to talk to my husband about my concern for all this talk about Barack Obama’s minister, Reverend Wright, but he’s wanting to command the conversation and turn it into an anti-Hilary campaign, so I decided I would talk to my keyboard instead.

I think the sinister minister is a powerful person to the people he preaches to. I wonder if some people need a powerful person like that to help them be better people. I think Reverend Wright believes 100% in what he preaches and what he says to his congregation. This is why I’m concerned about Barack Obama’s association with that church.

I am a wife to a born and raised Christian. My in-laws are devout Christians who are truly concerned with the lack of outreach and brotherhood the people of this world have to offer. I have been witness to them, recently, trying to find another church. The most important thing they look for is a pastor who preaches what they believe in, which is the truth of the bible.  Barack Obama has been a member of Reverend Wright’s congregation for many years. Does he find truth in Reverend Wright’s sermons?

Why would someone go to a church for any other reason than to be inspired by what the pastor has to say? I am concerned that Barack Obama is now, or at one time, was inspired and in agreement, or at least condonement, of the anti-American and racist words that come out of Reverend Wrights sermons.

If I were truly opposed to or offended by statements made during a church sermon, I would leave the church. Barack Obama didn’t leave. Reverend Wright is considered his friend and spiritual advisor.

This concerns me.

As a parent I’ve always been intimidated by thought of trying to get my kids to go to bed at a certain time, let alone actually fall asleep in their own beds, rather than the family room couch. If I would have started my two year old off when she was a wee baby then I probably would have had no problem, but it is just now that I’ve realized that if I don’t get a handle on their bedtime and overall schedule, then my husband and I are going to end up splitting up. We have no evening time together because of the kids and it usually ends up with one or both of us being in a bad mood because the kids are tired, awake, and acting up.

They usually end up falling asleep in the family room and being put in their beds. That usually ends up being between 12am and 2am in the morning, because I’m a night owl and when they fall asleep, I just let them stay there until I’m ready to go upstairs for something. Charlie is already passed out on the couch by this time so he’s no help whatsoever.

Well, tonight I decided to see if I could get them to actually fall asleep in their beds.

To my surprise, with a bottle and some sitting company, both of them fell asleep within 25 minutes of entering the room. Joy took a little coaxing with a reminder that the sooner she falls asleep, the sooner she can go see her grandparents tomorrow, which she loves to do. Jessie just fell asleep in my arms after taking her bottle.

I am so excited. I am going to try to do the same starting at 7:30pm tomorrow evening. I’ll put Joy in a bath at around 6:30pm and see how it goes.

It’s great to be fought over by two different IT contracting agencies, but when a hiring company submits a need for placement to as many contracting agencies they can to ensure they get the best candidates for the job, it means that one persons resume, should it be posted on any of the major job search boards, could be contacted about a position by two, three, or four different agencies. The agencies usually ask the potential employee if their resume was submitted to the client by any other agencies before they submit the resume, but sometimes we aren’t told the names of the clients or the information given sounds different enough to make the job sound different than any other, so the answer would be ‘No’.  The candidate ends up approving resume submittal to two different agencies about the same job.  What ends up happening is two agencies contact the potential employee about the same job. Then, they start a bickering match about who gets the money for the referral. This has happened to me twice and each time one of the agencies, usually the second one that contacted me about the job, asks me why I didn’t tell them about the earlier submission by the other agencies.  Well, had I known that they were contacting me about the same job, I would have let them know but since they both reported different wages and different contract durations, then I was right to think that it was two different jobs.

 What sucks is that now I have one agency that has a bad experience involving me. The fault of this issue is the agency who has the wrong contract information. If they had the right information, then the information I received would have been remembered and I would have done my part if stopping the confusion.

This is no news in the IT contracting world. Clearly the case because now they are actually asking potential candidates about previous contact with other agencies. I assume things can get a little ugly when recruiters are trying to claim placement on a candidate who was involved with another agency.