We're moving along on the job for TransAmerica, but it's slow going. I've done 18/20 of the files that were from one section, but there are still alot of the other set left to do. There were almost 50 of those I think, and I don't know how many are left to do. We're supposed to be getting another person and another copier to help finish it sometime next week, but we're still expecting it could take all the way through the week. That's fine with me, it's pretty easy money. We have monday off for the holiday too, so that's nice. We get a long weekend, then a short week next week.
Sabrina made dinner tonight, and that was good. We tried the Thai sauce we got at Trader Joe's last weekend, and it was pretty good. We had it in a chicken stir fry with a bunch of vegitables. It'd be even better with rice but we can't eat that, so we had to go without. It was good though. We rented the second Lord of the Rings movie to watch too. Sabrina and I saw it in the theater, but her parents haven't seen it. It doesn't exactly follow the books, but it is good on its own merits. It's still pretty long though. I never liked the books that much, I couldn't get into them. I always felt like I should, but I don't like the writing style at all and just can't get all the way through them. The second one is supposed to be one of the better books too, and I can never drag myself through more than half of it. I did finish it once long ago, but don't remember it at all, and I've never finished the last one at all. There are only half a dozen books that I've ever started and not finished, but that's one of them. Oh well, I can find out what happened when the next movie comes up.
Not much else new here. My database class is almost done, and the new ones start in 3 weeks or so. I'm looking forward to it, hopefully they won't be too hard, but I should learn a fair amount from it them. I still don't know if we'll be able to go up to my sister's whenever my father goes, but we'll see. It'd be nice to get together again, but Sabrina may have to work.
I got the last book for my classes this fall. It's a book on C++ programming, and its used for 3 different classes, so at least I get my money's worth. I'm looking forward to the class, I've wanted to do more C++ programming for a while, but haven't had any reason to. The book is pretty much the standard book for a college programming class, and I've wanted it for a couple years now, so I'm glad I finally have it. It'll be interesting to see how much the class I'm taking covers, if the book covers 3 courses. It is a big book, but not that big.
I started the 7 day job at TransAmerica yesterday. It's copying giant files for an audit that they are doing, or something like that. The files are pretty big, and have a bunch of staples, and paperclips, and they are in other folders, or punched and inserted into folders with big metal fasteners. We have to make exact copies of the original, including how they are clipped etc, and put back the original exactly like it was. It's a big pain to do, but it could be worse. After a year at Kinko's it isn't bad. The copiers they have are nice enough, so that helps. I can't remember what model it is, but its something like the Ricoh Aficio 1055. I know it's a Ricoh Aficio, but don't remember the exact model. I'm not sure if we'll finish the job in just 7 days, they are pretty big and it is slow going. There are only around 60 to do, but I've only done 5.5 or so I think., in 2 days. They said yesterday it might take a couple more days than they thought. I don't think they expected the files to be quite as huge as they are. Some are much smaller than others, but they still take a long time. The people are all nice though, and they have free soda in the break room, so it's a good enough job.
We went to Boston on sunday as planned. We went to a Thai restaraunt that was really good, and then to the Museum of Science. It was nice to see my sister and Gabe again, it's been quite a while. We may go up in the next weekend or so depending on how plans work out because my father will be visiting for the holiday weekend. I don't know if we'll be able to go or not though. Sabrina and I made a stop at Trader Joe's before we came home, and got a bunch of stuff. We got some atkin's friendly cookies, and gummy bears, and bars. They had brands of bars that we hadn't seen anywhere else, so we tried them out. They were ok, but not really great. We also got some Macadamia nuts, so I tried one of those today. I've never really liked nuts much, except peanuts, but we had gotten some mixed nuts from Wal-Mart and those have been fine, and included macadamias. I don't remember the last time I ate anything that tasted so nasty to me. I didn't spit it out, but it was a close thing. At least I won't waste calories eating them. :)
I didn't mention it yesterday, but Kelly called (yes, again) and wanted us to work at Moore today and tomorrow. So we got up bright and early and worked from 6:30am to 2:30pm today, and we're going to work 7-3pm or so tomorrow. It's easy money, so we don't mind, even if it does mean waking up rather early. I didn't get much sleep last night since I had to get up at 5, and hadn't been really expecting to so I had slept late yesterday, and didn't feel tired 'till after midnight. I'm getting tired now, so I'll have to go to bed fairly soon so I'm awake for work tomorrow.
I can't go to bed at the moment because we're trying out the bread machine. We got some atkins friendly bread machine mix and wanted to try it out. We got three kinds, wheat, white, and rye. We're doing the wheat tonight. I've never used a bread machine before, so it's fun to try. I've had bread from bread machines before, but I wasn't the one making it. When I lived in Ohio Debby had one and it comitted suicide. It was running and the vibrations made it walk over to the edge of the counter and fall off. It made quite a mess so they had to get a new one.
Sunday we're planning to go to Boston. I have no idea what we'll do there, but hopefully we can find something to do, and somewhere to eat that is diet-friendly. We weren't doing atkins at all while we were there, so we didn't look for anywhere to eat that worked with it at the time. It's hard to eat out at most restaurants when you can't have carbs or sugar. We've managed here ok, but I don't know what to do there. I'm sure we'll find something.
So Kelly calls this morning, and surprise surprise, the job I'm doing isn't starting thursday. Apparently the person bringing the stuff that we are supposed to be copying is flying in, and won't be in until this weekend, so we are starting monday instead. It's still supposed to be 7 days of work, and at least we're still doing it at all, but it's not exactly a surprise that things changed. They also said now that sneakers are ok, where they had said no sneakers the other day. That's good for me though, I wasn't really looking forward to wearing real shoes all day. And a polo shirt and khakis are fine, so that's much better than a dress shirt. We'll see what happens over the weekend now...
I got one of my books for my fall classes at Strayer today. I ordered two from Strayer's online bookstore, and am getting the other one from Amazon. Amazon didn't have the other 2 or I would've gotten all 3 from them. One of the two I got from the bookstore was backordered and shipped today (For my Networking class) and the one for my Business class came today. So one came today, one shipped today, and one was ordered today. Pretty weird coincidence. The business book seems to cover quite a bit of stuff. I haven't read any of it yet, but I looked through the table of contents and flipped through a bit. It seems like it'll be ok, but it'll take some getting used to to be taking a class again. The database class I'm taking now doesn't really count since it is stuff I already know for the most part, taking something new will be much harder.
We went to the new 99 Restaurant that opened in Avon today. We were pretty much the first people there, so that was sorta fun. I assume other people had been there throughout the day since they opened at 11:30am and we ate at 4:30, but we seemed to be the only ones there when we went in. It filled in some right after we got there, but at first it was just us. The food was as good as we were used to, and the service was good, so they were off to a good start. I'm pretty sure they'll do well where they are, and we'll certainly go back again.
Well, I went to Kelly to take my evaluation exams for MS Office applications today. They went pretty well, about what I expected. Actually, they were easier than I thought they would be. I think the scoring had 3 levels (that's what I was told anyway), which go from basic, to proficient, to expert. I had been told that it was hard to get the expert rating because some of the stuff is either obscure, or had to be done the way they want, rather than the way people know how to do it.
For Office exams, they rate on office 97 and also Office 2000. I scored Proficient on both Powerpoint exams, and Expert for all the Excel and Word exams. I also took the Access exam, but that seemed to be scored differently, or I read what the person wrote down wrong. I got "ME" and have no idea what that means, but I only missed 1 question out of 25, so I assume it is some form of Expert. I also took 3 exams on data entry. The first was entering data that was incorrectly formatted, and making it correct in the entry, according to the specifications given. I got Expert on that too, as well as the regular data entry (alphanumeric). I only scored Proficient on the numeric (10-key) exam, but that's pretty good considering I rarely have to do it.
In other Kelly news, almost as soon as I walked through the door coming home from taking my evaluations, a different Kelly office called and offered a very short term job for Moore Printing again. This one is just one friday/saturday, and the following 3 saturdays in september. So I'll do that, it's pretty much just stuffing envelopes. I sorta liked working at Moore when we did over the summer, its a very low stress job, and somewhat entertaining to do. Once that is over, it'll be time for the quarterly big job for Moore, so I'll probably be doing that too. Sabrina's father will be doing all the Moore stuff too, so we can go together.
About half an hour after that job, they called again with a different job. This one is just 7 days (this thursday and friday, then the following monday-friday), at TransAmerica. It's a pretty easy job too, just making copies of files all day. It's alot of copying, but after working at Kinko's for year, I'm pretty sure I can manage :) There were 2 openings for that and I got first dibs on it, so that was nice.
After all that, I went for a bike ride, for the first time in almost 2 weeks. It was a really good ride, my highest average speed so far. I was surprised after not doing it for so long. It was a really nice day and I was glad I got to go again. When I got home, I found out that Kelly had called AGAIN, but this time for Sabrina's father, offering him the second position at TransAmerica. They could've saved time and effort by just asking when they talked to me the first time :) But that's ok. So we'll both be doing that one too. It'll be slightly inconvenient for transportation, but not too bad. It just makes alot of people dropping eachother off and picking them up. It's actually better for both of us to be doing it than just one of us, as far as rides go.
Well, I went to Kelly today to do paperwork for the job I thought I was going to be doing for them, and found out that I couldn't do it. The company is located at the airport and security is really tight there. They are insisting that anyone that works for them has their own transportation because they can't have people waiting around the building for rides. And since I have no car and would be getting a ride every day, that means I couldn't do it. Oh well, something else will come up.
Monday I'm going to go back to Kelly and take some skill tests for Microsoft Office, and data entry, and stuff like that. Once that is on file I can be considered for more jobs, and better paying jobs, so that'll be good. I'm pretty sure I can get at least mid-level competence on all the office applications, and possibly expert on a few of them. We'll see how the exams go. I don't know exactly what they cover or anything so it's hard to say for sure. I'm taking my class in Access, and have gone through the whole text book, so I should do pretty well on that, and I'm pretty good with Word too. I'm not as good at advanced Excel or Powerpoint, but not bad either.
Today's my birthday. We're going out for dinner, but otherwise don't have any plans. Sabrina is working until 4:30, and we'll probably go to Outback for dinner when she gets home. Too bad we're still on the atkin's diet, we can't get a big appetizer and dessert, but that's ok, the food is good.
In other news, I may have a long-term job through Kelly Services. They called today and had a position at Allstate that could last a year or more. It seems like it'll be fairly easy, it's at one of their warehouse fascilities apparently, going through boxes of files and finding out what is being kept and what isn't, and entering the current stuff into the computer. I'll find out in the morning more details about it, assuming that I do get the job. It's fairly likely I will, but you never know with Kelly, sometimes things change day to day.
The only other news is that I finally got a CT driver's license. The picture came out really good for a change. It didn't take long either, which is always a nice surprise from the DMV. My old one was still from WI, and expired on my birthday, so I had to get a new one. It's good for 7 years, so hopefully I won't have to do it again any time soon.
Here's a picture from Eastport. It was taken at a scenic turnoff that has public boat access. It also has some picnic tables and a small dock. We stopped and took a few pictures on the way to see the bald eagles. View image
We're back from our trip to Maine, and have been for a little while now. We had a good time. We didn't leave CT until almost 2pm, so we got a pretty late start. We stopped a couple times, but not for long. I don't remember when we got there, but it was pretty late. When we got there, we went to the hotel and checked in. We were staying at the Country Inn at the Mall. We've stayed there before, and always like it. They have a good free continental breakfast, but with our diet we couldn't take advantage of it this time. You can get a 10% discount for asking for the Internet Discount, so that's nice too.
After we checked in we went to see my father. We had chicken and salad and at around talking after. It wasn't a very long visit since we got there so late, but it was nice. We only got to see him the one night because he was going to see my sister the next night.
The next day we went to the Bangor State Fair. We didn't do any rides, and didn't get to eat the fun food, so it wasn't as exciting as it sometimes is, but that's ok. We saw the exhibits and walked around. We did eat some sausage and peppers, which were good. And I won a stuffed dog playing one of the games, so that was a bonus. I didn't think I'd win at all, so it was a surprise to me. I thought Sabrina was ahead of me, but apparently not.
We also went to the City Forest which was right next to the hotel. It's a new set of nature trails that go around a bog out by the Bangor Mall. It was really nice. They have a new boardwalk that hadn't even had its grand opening yet when we went. We've got a bunch of pictures from it (mostly of the signs along the way). I got a sunburn on my neck because it was very sunny, but otherwise it was really nice.
We went to Eastport too, to see my mother. We were there much longer, but didn't really do a whole lot except sit around and enjoy the scenery. It was nice to go though, and we got to see my mother's new house. She has a view of the ocean again, from several parts of the house. The downstairs of the house is really open, it's basically just 2 huge rooms, so that's nice too. It was cool to go see the eagles nearby too. There are 3 mated pairs that live about half an hour away, right off a major road. It's strange to see them in their nests on giant poles right off the road. There's a little viewing platform to watch from with a free telescope, so you can see pretty well. I don't really need to repeat everything that we did there I suppose, you can read about it on Sabrina's blog.
The trip back was pretty quick. We ended up staying at the hotel in Bangor the night before we left. I was planning to just come back to CT from Eastport, but it's a really long drive, and it was supposed to be bad weather. We went to Bangor the night before so that we could get an earlier start the next day. We had also wanted to stop at the newSuper Walmart to get a few things for the trip back. They had some low carb icecream and we wanted to try it. We haven't seen it anywhere else, and it was pretty cheap. We got vanilla and chocolate with almonds, and both were really good. It's really good for the Atkin's diet if you are on it.
So now we're home, and Sabrina's back at work. I turned in my midterm for my class at Strayer before we left, and got 100% on it. So far I have a 100 average for the class. It's pretty easy, so far. We'll see how it goes in the fall when I take 3 classes. I'm a week ahead in the class right now, and have been trying to stay a little ahead. I assume the rest of the class will be much like it has been. There have been a few problems because I'm using a newer version of Access than the class is for, but I've figured out what was different. So far so good.
As you can see, I now have my own domain: http://www.uberbroc.com.
Sabrina has wanted her own domain for a little while now, so she can host her own blog, rather than using blogger, and also wants to be able to sell her crafts at some point, and finally registered brinab.com a couple days ago. I've always thought it would be interesting to have my own too, so I wanted my own as well. It was fairly easy for Sabrina to pick brinab.com, but I had a harder time with mine.
Finally, I settled on UberBroc.com.
Exciting isn't it? The name comes from the fact that I have gone out to eat many times, only to be told that they had no broccoli. So now I've got a place where I'll never run out. Too bad I can't bring it with me everywhere I go.