decision

Chicago here I come!

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Well, I finally heard from that company that flew me out for an interview.  It took 4 1/2 weeks from when I flew out there for them to get back to me with an offer.  That was a nerve wracking 4 1/2 weeks, let me tell you!  They’re sending me a packet with detailed information, but at least I know right now that the salary they offered me was 5% more than what I make now even though I just got a raise like a month ago.  Plus it looks like they would completely cover relocation!

One decision to make is whether I go back to them and ask for more money.  Everybody says you shouldn’t accept the first offer, but I never had the balls to do that.  I don’t even know how I’d go about it to be honest.  I’m looking for advice.

The other area I’m looking for advice in is neighborhoods in Chicago.  We’d like to be able to buy a house, but Chicago is as expensive as Philly, meaning we’ll probably have to settle for a condo.  Our realtor is really good about shooting down properties that we send to him (without saying anything other than “that’s not a great neighborhood”), but not too good at sending us properties to look at.  Meaning, he’s not being very helpful.

Nonetheless, things are definitely moving along.  No jobs for Sara yet, but she’s keeping her eyes peeled.

Go Pack GO

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Last week was the week of hell.

I had to give a presentation in my class on Monday and then I worked all 7 days for a total of 60 hours.  I’ve worked every weekend for the past 6 or 7 weeks.  Plus everybody’s temper is short so I’ve been yelled at a few times lately.  Seems like I can’t do anything right, although I think that’s more that everybody is stressed out.  The deadline was last Friday and I’m still not done with everything.  It has really been brutal.  I could go into more details, but frankly I’m too tired.  Also, Sara’s family is coming for Thanksgiving, which is great, but we have a lot of cleaning to do before then.

And now, the ages old debate, do I stay up late to watch the Packer’s game even though I have to get up early and it might just kill me?

Decisions, decisions.

Quick One

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I went to see the last two apartments I was going to see today and the guy didn’t show. I called him and said he tried to call me at work. I left work at 4 for our 4:30 appointment…I better have a message from him when I get into work tomorrow!!

I’m feeling accomplished because I got all the paperwork filled out for the apartment that it looks like we’re going to get (most in-depth application EVER!).

I wanted to make my decision today about the apartment…now I have to either disregard the two apartments I was going to see today or wait until Saturday to decide on an apartment which might mean the other one will be gone.

Decisions, decisions.

Yay!

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Sara weekend is almost here! I’m only working until 11 tomorrow and then leaving right from there. I’m not sure an 8 hour drive is more exciting than 8 hours of work, but somehow, no matter how boring whatever you are doing is, it’s so much better than being at work. Anyway, 8 hours is nothing to get to spend all weekend with Sara! 😀

She got the tickets to Jesus Christ Superstar!! Most people that don’t know me well don’t know of my deep seated love of showtunes…it’s not exactly one of those things you want to admit. 🙂 JCS is my favorite of all time and I know it forwards and backwards, in 3 languages. Okay maybe not, but needless to say I’m excited to see it. As much as I love it, I’ve never actually seen it on stage, just the movie. Hardest part will be refraining from singing outloud!

My favorite JCS memory…, and I were driving back from visiting Kev in NC and me and Stacy were forcing Stevie to listen to it. Now, keep in mind Stevie has no religious backround whatsoever (which will be obvious in a moment). So it was pretty quiet in the car, but I didn’t think anybody was listening all that intently to the music. All of a sudden, Stevie goes, “Is this Judas guy going to betray Jesus??” The combination of the fact that he didn’t even know who Judas was or the basic storyline and the fact that he was listening to the words so intently was just really funny at the time. Okay well I know it doesn’t sound all that funny, but me and Stacy had a good laugh over it at the time! 😛

I pansied out and didn’t make a decision about the job today. I won’t have a choice tomorrow though. I think I’m going with the job downstairs. Life changing decisions are scary! ::Yipe!::

The final went pretty good tonight. The real final was a lot easier than the practice final. Like, when does that happen??

I should go to bed, if I could just stop staring at this…

What to do, what to do

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Life decision making time! There’s a lot of back-story on this, and I don’t know how much I want to get into, but basically I had agreed to take this position working with my old Tech Lead and my old cube mate working on new PC GUI development. Those two people are probably my two best friends that I have out here, so as far as who I’d be working with it would be great. Also, the work they are doing is perfect for me. So I had agreed to take this job and then all of these shady shenanigans went down and I ended up not being able to get the job. It was basically a power struggle between my boss and the boss downstairs, with me caught in the middle. So I didn’t get the job. At that point I was just glad to be done with it, because it was getting quite ridiculous. Since that time every person higher than me in management stops by my desk like once a day each to tell me I should stay where I am. My manager has even told me that if I stayed around I could be “a big guy” on an upcoming project. Of course there’s no talk of giving me any more money, even when they were trying to keep me from leaving. Also, whenever I talk to any of the tons of people that I know that work down there, they always tell me disturbing news about budgets running out, lack of direction, etc. The program that I’m on is much more stable. Oh, and just to add one more wrinkle to the whole deal, my manager is leaving to take another position and my other best friend out here has an inside shot at the manager position. Anyway, I was glad that the decision was taken out of my hands and I didn’t have to worry about it anymore…oh wait. 😛 Now they say they have an additional head of funding and they can take me for the job after all. Sooooo…now I’m screwed. On one hand I feel like I had already decided that’s what I wanted to do and it’s the same job with the same people, so I should go do it, right? On the other hand, now that I’ve had a much closer view on the inner workings of things downstairs it seems like maybe I don’t want to go down there after all. They’re so disorganized and unstable…I’d hate to go down there and then have the funding be taken away for the project or something, and then I’m sunk. Also, the manager downstairs has apparently been fighting to get funding for me for months, so I’d kind of feel bad if I was just like, “Nevermind!” I know that shouldn’t matter in my decision, but still. For the record, I love the job I have now and the people I work with, but I just don’t know how much upcoming work there is going to be.

So anyway…I’ve got to come up with an answer by Thursday. I know both jobs would be a good fit for me and I know they both are tugging hardcore on me to go to their respective positions. ::sigh:: I just wish I didn’t have to make a decision this week, with my big presentation for class tomorrow and my final on Thursday and then driving to NC on Friday!

I’ll keep you posted. (Get it? POSTED! 😛 )