Monthly Archives: January 2005

Employment

Posted on by

Today I official accepted a position with Medstat. The position was actually offered and verbally accepted on Wednesday the 26th, and then yesterday, Thursday the 27th I received the formal offer via UPS, but seeing as I received it after normal business hours I had to wait until today to formally accept.

Below is some information about Medstat that I took directly off their website.

Medstat is a healthcare information company that provides market intelligence and benchmark databases, decision support solutions, and research services for managing the cost and quality of healthcare. The company applies these capabilities to improve policy and management decision making for many of the nation’s leading employers, government agencies, health plans, hospitals and provider networks, and pharmaceutical companies. Medstat is a business within the Thomson Corporation (www.thomson.com). With 2003 revenues of $7.6 billion, Thomson is a global leader in providing integrated information solutions to business and professional customers.

I will be working in their data warehouse as a Computer Operator. What does that mean exactly? Well some of my responsabilities will include:

    Proactively monitoring service level of hardware, software, and network infrastructure.
    Diagnose cause of interruptions or malfunctions an resolve problems.
    Monitor system backups to ensure successful completion and resolve or report failures.

These tasks amongs others will make up my day to day activities. I am looking forward to this and am also looking forward to the possabilities this position presents for carreer advancement and educational advancement. I will be starting February 7th, so until then I am still technically unemployed, but at least now I can enjoy my unemployment with the knowledge that the end of it is near.

Posted in Job

Top 99 Most Desirable Woman of 2005

Posted on by

Today AskMen.com released there list of the Top 99 Most Desirable Women of 2005. I have had the great pleasure to look through this list, and while I may not agree with the list in its entirety, I must say it is rather nice. Not only does the list display an image (in some cases as many as 4) and rank of the Desirable Woman, it also tells why this person is famous. Personally I found this to be particularly helpful because I had not heard of some of these woman before (I don’t watch much TV). It also tells why she is desirable and also gives the womans ranking score (determined by averaging AskMen.com Desirability Score and a prevoted Reader Desirability Score), it also displays their rank (if any) on the previous list. It also appears that AskMen.com has a link to a complete feature on each one of the featured women.

Plymouth Ice Show

Posted on by

Last night I had the opportunity to go to the Plymouth Ice Sculpture show. Having never gone to an Ice Sculpture display I was looking forward to it. In spite of the sub-zero temperatures and an ice cold wind that cut through all layers of clothing, I had a good time.

The displays were simultaneously more than I expected and less that what I expected. Allow me to explain. Some of the sculptures were very detailed and intricate, which were more than I expected, and others were just pain staking-ly simple. Now I know carving ice is hard and I also know that I could probably not have done even the simplest among them. So why then am I disappointed in the simple ones? Well its not so much that they were simple, I liked the “simple” ones, the ones I didn’t like were the ones that were simply a company’s name engraved in the ice like some kind of name plate.

Anyway, if you would like to view the pictures that I took of some of the Ice Sculptures just click here.

“What You’ll Wish You’d Known”

Posted on by

I have this tendancy to read my friends sites on almost a daily basis, and one that I particularly enjoy reading is Joe’s. Joe is a person that I hold in very high regard, for numerous reasons. More often than not Joe has some interesting thought about something he has read or done, and just as often it is about something that I end up thinking “Wow, that is really cool” or “Dang, that is worth reading up on.”

One such instance occured the other day when Joe had a quote up on his site from a speech entitled “What You’ll Wish You’d Known”. Between the quote that Joe had placed on his site and the comments he made about it, I just knew I had to read this article.

I have read it, and all I can say is “Wow.” This speech is powerfully full of great points. I have a feeling that if someone had said these things to me when I was 16 I would have done things differently, and the least of it would have been the way I focused on classes, both high school and college.

Yep….I’m Going to Hell…

Posted on by

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers) Very Low
Level 1 – Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers) Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful) Extreme
Level 3 (Gluttonous) High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious) Very High
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy) High
Level 6 – The City of Dis (Heretics) High
Level 7 (Violent) High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers) Very High
Level 9 – Cocytus (Treacherous) High

Take the Dante’s Inferno Test

Possible Employment Continued…

Posted on by

So after my 3 hour long interview this afternoon I came home to relax and unwined. I was informed that after my interview at approxamitly 2:30 the 3 people whom interviewed me would then get together with a member of human resources to have a “debreifing.” I figured that after they had this little meeting to discuss what they thought of me during their own hour long session that it would then be a few days before I heard anything. So imagine my surprise when at 2:43 my phone rings and on the other end is the head recruiting officer for the company. He informs me that he has just come from the debreifing and is sending me a link to take an online “personality profile exam” and that I should take it when I have approxamitly an hour and a half of uninterupted time to complete it, and then inform him when it was done. I can only assume that their desire for me to take this exam is an indication that they like how my interview went and this is their “next step” in the process. Well neadless to say I took the exam and approxamitly 2 hours later I phoned the recruiter to inform him I had finished. I now sit and wait patiently (as patiently as I can anyway) to hear back, although I really don’t expect to hear anything before Monday. *shrug*

Posted in Job

Possible Employment

Posted on by

Well I have been unemployed now since Nov., 30 2004, and today I had my first interview. The interview was for a Computer Operaters position with Medstat, which is a provider of healthcare information databases and decision support software. This was the longest interview I have ever been to, as it was 3 hours long. It was also strictly a behavioral based interview, this was also a first for me. Though I am purposfully not getting my hopes up, as I would not want to be let down, I am fairly optamistic about the interview. I think it went relatively well and I know I was honest and forthcoming in it. Time will tell as to the results. However, this is a Computer Operators position….BOFH anyone? hehehe

Posted in Job

Theme Switcher

Posted on by

I implemented a theme switcher which will allow the reader to choose which theme they would like to view the site as. This option can be found with the rest of the page navigation options off to either side. It is important to note that not all themes have the same options, as such some themes may have things that others do not, such as the calendar. In any event should I create or get new themes they will automatically appear in the list and you will be able to pick them. As of right now most of the themes have the selection as a list, with the exception of I think one which uses a dropdown selection box. Should I acquire a numerous amount of themes, which is possible, I may opt to go back and make them all dropdown selection boxes to conserve space. Only time will tell. In any case I hope this feature is enjoyed by all, as I enjoyed putting it in.

Theme Modification

Posted on by

Well I made some modifications to the theme of the site, as can be seen. I call this my Moose theme. It is really just a slight modification of the Kubrick theme (default theme), mainly just changing the images. I am planning on making some other image modifications to possible give myself some other “custom” themes, but odds are that they will al be based of of Kubrick as I really like this layout style.

I have also managed to get the Calendar option to work off to the right as well. I really like this feature as it allows the reader to see on what days posts were placed, and as such an easy way to tell if there have been new posts since their last visit.

Site upgrade

Posted on by

Well I am proud to say that I finally got the new version of Word Press to work, thus allowing for the change in the site layout and theme. Special thanks to Steve for this one. I am sure the theme will be changing over the next few days as I find new ones that I like and update the page. In the mean time I will also be looking into customizing the content of my page. This is sweet!