When I came into work tonight and checked my email I received more final information on my temporary relocation to Eagan. I will be starting out there on Monday September 18th, which means I will be leaving on Saturday September 16th to make the 600+ mile drive. I have officially received my work cell phone, a Nextel Blackberry 7510, otherwise known to everyone who has one as the company ball and chain. I have also found out where exactly I will be staying while I am out there. The company is going to put me up in a hotel for the first couple of nights, and then on the 20th I will move into a fully furnished apartment in Burnsville called Provence, this is where my co-worker and friend Rick is already located. Rick has told me that the place is really nice and when they say fully furnished, they mean it…right down to the turkey baster. Once I get out there and have a few spare moments I will take pictures of the place and post them up in the gallery. At this point I am waiting on my company laptop, which from the sounds of it I should be receiving soon, and then a company American Express card that i will use to pay for and expense my flights back home once a month. So the company really is going to be tacking really good car of me and I am very happy about that. Now I just need to start packing and planning the trip out there.

Now that the decision is final and plans are well into the last stages, I have decided to announce that I am getting a (temporary) promotion at work that will require me to relocate to Eagan Minnesota (Map). As of this writing it is not certain as to when I will be leaving as the dates have very recently changed, but I am either going to be out their on September 11 or 20, details are still being hammered out. I will be going out for at least 3 months with one trip back home per month being paid for by the company. I am really looking forward to this opportunity and hope that it helps me in furthering my career. There are a few downfalls to this trip and most are menial and just involve me missing certain events, but there is one very large one, and that is missed time with my daughter. I am hoping that she will be ok while I am gone and am certain that Tiffany will continue to tell Kylie that I love her and that I am only gone for a little while. I already plan on trying to call her and talk to her so she can at least hear my voice and know that I am thinking of her, the only problem is finding time while she is still awake, as I already know that I will have some very long days ahead of me. I am planning on bringing my camera with me and hope to find time to take some pictures to share with everyone. I will also try to continue to post on here while I am out there to keep everyone filled in on my status and what it is like out there. I am sure I will have more information to post later.

Well the power just went out here at work, first time this has ever happened on my shift in the 15+ months that I have been here. It is kind of cool, but strange at the same time. The generators kicked in just like they should, so that was real nice. The power never actually went out as we are continually running off of a UPS system, the power coming into the building first filters through that and charges those batteries. It only takes a few seconds for our generators to kick on, so all the data on our servers is fine. It was kind of nice to see our fail safe systems in work, not that I want it to happen again anytime soon though.

It is hard to believe that I have been working for Medstat for a little over a year now; I have had so much going on this past year that the time has just flown by. Sometime last month was the official one year mark, I had meant to make a post acknowledging it, but with everything else going on that didn’t happen. So more to the point, somewhere around the end of January I filled out my yearly review and submitted for my supervisor’s review, which started off the process for yearly merit raises. This morning before I left work I was happy to find out that I am in fact getting a raise. While I am not going to go into detail as to the amount of the raise, I will say that I am both happy and slightly disappointed as to the amount of it. I am happy that I received a raise in the first place, as being rewarded is always a nice feeling. However, I was slightly disappointed at the amount of the raise; this is mainly due to my own hopes and, in a way, expectations. The amount I received was consistent with what the market and industries were forecasting, I was just hoping for more. But then again who doesn’t hope for more money? All in all I am happy with my raise though, and I still very much enjoy my job.

About a week ago I was offered a full time position at my current job, as I had been working partime I naturally excepted. I was originally under the impression that I would be starting full time on 3/14/05, so imagine my surprise when my boss called me today to remind me that I am working tonight. We had a little discussion and it turns out that I am starting full time tonight and someone had forgot to inform me of this last week while my boss was on vacation. So this is pretty sweet, I get to go full time a full 2 weeks earlyer than I was anticipating. Lucky me! Now I get and extra 2 weeks of full time pay!

So today was my actual first day of work at the new job, it started out pretty shitty but kinda funny. So I woke up this morning and got ready for work and did all the normal stuff, and then left. Well it was snowing out and it took me 35 minutes to travel approxamitly 9 miles…on 94. Now there was no reason for the people in front of me to be doing 15mph in a 70mph lane, but anyway…. So I make it to work and am pulling into a parking spot doing like 1 mph and my truck will just not turn, instead it slides…..into another car. *sigh* So anyway I finally get my truck into a proper parking spot and go into work to find out its my boss’s car. Damn, what a way to start out my first day. He was cool about it though and understood. Nothing I could really have done about it, turns out it was fresh powder over a beautiful layer of black ice on a sloped parking lot at 8am before the plow came through. At least the rest of my day went well.

So today was my first day at my new job, well if you can really count it. I spent the entire day in orientation. Me and 2 other new employees sat through an 8 hour long information session. The information ranged from basic company background information to benefits explaination and everything in between. It was a complete information overload. I think there were about 7 different people who came and told us stuff and showed us around the building. My favorite part is that almost everyone of them said something to the effect of “Now I know your not going to remember all this because we are giving you so much information today…” I just think that is great. They know they are giving you way to much info to take it all in but they do it anyway. Why not just give us some information today and the rest tomorrow? I mean we could do like a half a day of orientation and a half day of “learning your job function” and then remember so much more of it. Oh well. Wednesday I actually go in and start my actuall job though not my actuall shift. Its all good, I am looking forward to it. I hope it all goes well.

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.