schlagging.com

Big Bird

Posted on May 15th, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: work, random.

So, there’s a crane at the office.

No, it’s not IN the office. It’s outside, in the courtyard/arboretum. I don’t know where it came from, and I don’t know if it’s going to leave. It’s like 4 feet tall, and pretty cool looking. I wouldn’t go near it, though. That beak could take an eye out.

Anyway, I called Maricopa County Animal Control and left them a message. “Yeah, there’s a big bird here. It’s not teaching us anything about the alphabet. Instead, it’s eating our fish and chasing small mammals.”

Maybe they’ll come and take it to a lake or the zoo or something. If not, I’ll get a hunting license and we’ll pay a trip to the taxidermist and have a creepy piece of office decoration.

Pictures? Yeah, I got some:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshua_schlag/sets/72157605073965002/

3 comments.

Your Google Reader is not broken

Posted on June 20th, 2007 by Josh.
Categories: work.

That bold text and little number (1) next to schlagging.com isn’t there in error - after two months I have returned to the blogosphere!

What have I been doing all this time?

Well, in bullet list form, here it is:

• Quit my job because it sucked and was a dead end
• Became overwhelmed by the response to my resume
• Watched the Diamondbacks get their asses handed to them by the Red Sox, both in runs and in attendance
• Sorted through a couple dozen phone calls and found some jobs I was actually interested in
• Started playing Pokemon again
• Interviewed at a handful of places and landed a sweet job
• Took on a new philosophy on personal finances

Because I know some of you will ask and sometimes I get tired of telling things over and over again, I’ll elaborate a bit more. If the above was good enough for you, come back later for some posts that are less “me me me” and perhaps focus on some of those other points.

I’m not going to talk much about my last job, because though I feel I can choose the appropriate words to describe my feelings towards my last boss and the structure of the company - I don’t feel that saying those things would be professional. And I’m professional, dammit. If you really want to know, you can ask me in person.

Anyway, I had to get out, and so I did… without having a new job lined up. Now I know that’s a bad idea. You don’t have to tell me that. I’ve told friends that and they haven’t listened to me. I watched them struggle financially until they found something new. My departure just couldn’t be put off, though.

On the brighter side, once I put my resume up on Dice/Monster/CareerBuilder/Hotjobs, I got an overwhelming response. Before I knew it, I had a dozen phone calls to return and at least as many emails to reply to in the first day! The second day was more of the same. At that point, I just had to sort through the various opportunities and figure out which ones I was most interested in. Then came the interviews. About four days full of interviews with various places. Most went rather well, some didn’t. After that, I had my choices narrowed down to a few different places. As it turns out, I wasn’t experienced enough for one of the places, and I got offers from the other two. I wanted to find a place where I could develop my skills. I wanted to work somewhere I could stick around for a while and get some good experience under my belt. I feel that I’ve found that place at a small company called Technical and Business Consulting. I start next week, once they’ve completed the background check and have sufficient evidence that I am none of the following: 1) terrorist, 2) criminal, 3) drug addict, 4) MMA fighter, 5) marmot.

All in all, it sounds like a great place to work. Wish me luck!

7 comments.

Fun at work

Posted on April 6th, 2007 by Josh.
Categories: games, work, movies.

Today is Good Friday, but for those of us working at U-Haul HRIS, it feels like Christmas. Each of us got brand spanking new 24″ LDC widescreen monitor to play with. Not only will it be great to code with over 200 columns of characters in Visual Studio, it also looks really really nice.

Yes, I did some quick Photoshop work on a high-res Halo 3 screenshot. I think it’s hilarious. Click the thumbnail below to view the whole (very large) image. Note the details on the Warthog…

0 comments.

Status update

Posted on February 9th, 2007 by Josh.
Categories: work.

Some of you know what’s been going on with me the past couple of weeks. Some of you don’t.

I figure it’s about time to update everyone.

To clarify my former (yes, former) employment status, I was working as an employee of Nakoma Group as a contractor at Bank of America. About a week and a half ago, I got a call from my contact at Nakoma (they sent me the paychecks but I didn’t really talk to them much). Anyway, it was a dreaded “hey I hate making these calls but you’re being laid off” call. To be succinct: some of the higher-ups at the bank decided for budget reasons that contractors must go. So with one swift move, three hundred contractors were given a two week notice before being tossed out on the streets to fend for ourselves once again.

The crappy part is, my boss was about to move me into a permanent position that had just opened. Unfortunately for the both of us, the so-called higher-ups also decided to axe that open position. My boss even had a brand spanking new laptop coming in for me. Oh well.

Anyway, I got my ass in gear pretty quickly, and had an updated resume out on Monster/Dice/Career Builder by the next day. I then hit up Wikipedia’s list of major corporations in Phoenix and applied to every job that had to do with programming that I might be interested in.

Within a day or two, I had a couple dozen phone calls and emails to sort through. Some were from companies hiring directly. Most were from headhunters (third party recruiters). I spent hours on the phone talking with a lot of people about new possible jobs.

Finally, I had it narrowed down to a few choices, including a position as a Web Programmer/Analyst at U-Haul. As it turns out, that’s the job I took, and that’s where I sit now.

The last few days have been rather boring at the new job - they’re in the midst of server upgrades and such. I imagine things will pick up soon.

Moral of the story? I have an awesome resume and skills that are in demand. Companies like skills. I hear girls also like guys who have skills. Nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills… or in my case here at work - .NET skills, SQL Server skills, C# skills…

1 comment.

Working on Saturday

Posted on January 6th, 2007 by Josh.
Categories: work, music, sports.

I’m in the office. It’s Saturday. Around noon. B-Mann is watching football in HD at my apartment. I’d really like to be watching the International Bowl. (Why?)

I don’t really have much to complain about, I guess. I probably could have avoided being here right now, by working a little extra earlier in the week (or even last week). I just get really annoyed by things sometimes. Being in a big empty office building by yourself isn’t exactly enjoyable.

And I forgot my iPod at home. Thank God for The Edge 103.9’s streaming audio.

Edit: I left work after maybe an hour, because as it turned out, the specs we were given were wrong and nothing could be done until they were corrected. Also, I caught the end of the International Bowl, and the end result is that I lost Bowlorama 2007 to Danny. Oh well.

0 comments.

I have a career goal!

Posted on December 8th, 2006 by Josh.
Categories: beer, work.

I should have learned this back in my 2003 Naval Research Intern stint: I hate sitting at a desk in a cube hour after hour, day after day.

I love computers, and I love working with them - but I think in the longrun it needs to be more of a secondary aspect in my career.

So, upon realizing that, I put some thought into what I really want to end up doing with my life. I decided that it would be amazing to have my own brewery/restaurant. I love beer. I love making people happy and feeling like I’m making a positive impact. I want to learn anything and everything about brewing beer, and one day I will have my own brewing company and it will be my daily work.

It won’t happen overnight, and I have to start somewhere. And so, after discussing this with Matt, I came upon the Coopers Micro Brewery Kit. I want it. But I’ll have to wait until after Christmas and after my insurance bills and all that stuff. Unless someone wants to get it for me for Christmas. Hmmm… anyone? In addition to that, I’d like to try brewing some of the other types (which they sell kits for). Notably, I’m interested in IPA (India Pale Ale) and wheat beer - those happen to be two of my favorites.

I figure I can play around with a kit like this for a little bit, and eventually get creative and buy ingredients on my own and start the path to my ultimate goal.

Now I’m really thirsty for a beer. You can guess the first thing I’ll do when I get home.

3 comments.

Autumn is here

Posted on September 22nd, 2005 by Josh.
Categories: work, tv.

I just read Gretchen’s blog, wherein she was mocking the word ‘autumn.’ I think it is an outrage that such a fine word be disregarded by the common public. Autumn. Ah, screw it.. who uses that word anymore, really?

Today I finished a three day introductory course to SAS programming. If you don’t know (and really, I don’t expect anyone to know), SAS is computer language aimed at generating reports on large volumes of data. I also just got a book about Crystal Reports, which is the same sort of thing - but it is nicely integrated into the .NET platform.. and since I’m working on a web-based app, that’s good for me. Raise your hands if any of that is interesting to you? Nobody? Yeah, I thought so.

In other news..

This past weekend and the immediate days following were tough for me. Lots of what I would’ve hoped would be needless drama. Left with a crappy situation. But one that I believe will be for the better. I’m not going to detail it for the world to know, but things are going to be all right, I’m sure.

In yet other news..

I’m sick of sitting at the computer. I’ve been doing it all day. I’m going to go work out. Then it’s O.C. time (season 3 has been subpar, by the way). Then… laundry, or something. Again, how many hands are raised? Yep, thought so.

4 comments.

Cell phone-tastic

Posted on September 13th, 2005 by Josh.
Categories: work.

One of the more annoying things is sitting in a cubicle while everyone in your vicinity is in meetings.. and most of these people have left their cell phones on. Therefore, you just keep hearing a wide array of ringtones that you’d be perfectly happy never hearing again, and can’t do anything about (sans running around shutting them all off, which seems like a waste of time and effort).

I’m hoping my work life doesn’t turn into a real-life Dilbert cartoon.

0 comments.

Free bread!

Posted on August 19th, 2005 by Josh.
Categories: work, random.

Thirsty Thursday was a blast, as always. I woke up this morning around six in need of water or juice, and all I could find in the fridge was Diet Mountain Dew. That might’ve been a mistake, as the caffeine kept me awake. So instead of sticking around to hit up the all-you-can-eat stir fry with Chris, I just made the drive back home.

Drinking that Mountain Dew also reaffirmed the fact that I hate diet soda. Soda’s bad for you regardless, so why bother drinking the stuff that tastes like crap when you do have a soda? That fake sweetener taste is just disgusting..

Anyway, driving through Tucson last night and this morning made me realize that I don’t entirely hate the town. I don’t want to live there again, but the time spent there was good and there are a ton of great memories.

I’ll always miss campus. I’ll miss Chipotle and The Fat Greek down on University. In a sick and twisted way I’ll miss walking down the halls of Gould-Simpson at all hours of the night/morning as we studied and worked on big projects. I’ll miss late drunk nights sophomore year as we stumbled over to the nearest Betos. I’ll miss Nicos. I’ll miss crashing on friends’ couches (actually.. no I won’t).

I could probably go on for a while, but point being - I’ll miss my college days. But I’m about to start a new chapter in my life, as I start my new job on Monday. I’ve been ready to do this for a while now, and I’m excited. Let’s see how this goes..

2 comments.

I’m a working man now..

Posted on August 12th, 2005 by Josh.
Categories: work.

Had my big interview at Bank of America today in downtown Phoenix. It went pretty well. So well, in fact, that I received a call this afternoon telling me I got the job!

I have the next week to get things organized up here - i.e. finish unpacking, do laundry, buy more stuff for the apartment, find a gym, etc. I am so excited. w00t!

1 comment.

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