Ok, so it's been a long time since I've posted anything of substance on my blog and I guess it must be time to do a post. Either that or I'm hopelessly lacking motivation to do anything else right now.
Lately the main focus for me has been my work situation. As some of you know, I took a foray into looking for a new job this spring and got an offer from a company in Springfield that I had worked with as a customer back in High School when I was working for my school district. At the time a big project of interest to me finally got approved at Dot so I stayed put for the experience. Now as that project has been delayed and mismanaged I've decided that I can't put myself on hold forever and am looking for new opportunities again. Ideally I think I would like to find a networking job in Springfield and move back to the Springfield area closer to friends and family.
Outside of work, life is kind of boring lately. I've been doing a lot of TV on DVD like NCIS, M*A*S*H and Scrubs. I have really grown to feel like Dr. Cox's character on Scrubs a lot around work. Sometimes my smart alec comments in my head take on his voice which is mildly amusing to me. The Catholic young adult group in Springfield has kind of fizzled now that I'm the only non-married member (Young adult groups shouldn't have an odd number of members!).
My main pursuit lately has been music. Monday nights I'm playing with the Lincoln Land Community College jazz band. I've been doing this for a year and a half now. It's quite challenging for me because I never really got to do jazz in high school and I'm surrounded by guys that have been doing it for years. My chops are finally close to where they were in high school and hopefully they'll continue to get better. If you're in the Springfield area, our concert for the semester is November 26th at 7:30pm at the First Christian Church. Admission is a food donation for the food bank.
Music Ministry is my other musical pursuit. I'm playing trumpet, singing tenor (I'm the only guy right now in the choir.) and still cantoring for Mass. It gives me something to do on Wednesday nights.
If anyone feels like road tripping or meeting up in random midwest cities, let me know. I'll probably be game. Time for some fall/winter adventures.
Showing posts with label update. Show all posts
Showing posts with label update. Show all posts
Friday, November 9, 2007
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Update Time
Ok so some of this some of you already know, but some of you don't so here goes. I'm guessing this won't be as long as 's update posts, but who knows.
Well the biggest thing going on right now came as a shocker to me when it started. A little bit before Christmas I got a call from an IT recruiter. I wasn't looking for a job, but I figured it can't hurt to listen to him and see what he had to say. He didn't have any jobs that I was interested in, but we did start talking about the job market in my area. One of the factoids that he gave me was that I'm currently making around $10K-$15K less than the average Network Administrator in my area. Too add insult to injury so to speak I found out that I'm not even on the low end of the bracket yet. Needless to say this opened my eyes and ears to the possibility of there being life after Dot. Realistically I'm not dissatisfied with my job itself, but some of the things that surround it make the possibility of change appealing including my current commute, location (I'd rather live in Springfield) and of course now my salary.
It's not like I don't already make a good living, but there are times where I wish I had a little more money to spend on things like a vacation or just the simple bonus of not having to worry about the correlation between pay day and bill due dates. I would also like to be able to put more away into savings, investments and my retirement account. Outside of pay distance and location are my biggest factors to consider. Right now it seems like I'm straddling between two worlds, one Quincy-centric and the other Springfield-centric. Work is in Mt. Sterling which is closer to Quincy. I live in Jacksonville which is closer to Springfield and besides church, most of the things that I do outside of work are in Springfield. This usually means that I end up driving the two hour trip from Mt. Sterling to Springfield at least twice a week if not more. It just gets to be a lot of driving. My car will be two years old in May, but I have over 47,000 miles already. It would be nice to have more time by just eliminating some of the driving.
In Dot's favor right now is that most of the projects that I proposed last fall made it into the budget this year instead of being cut. There are a lot of new technologies that I would get to learn about staying at Dot. On the flip side I recently asked my boss for the right to telework one day a week (Our programming staff gets two days a week.) and was flatly told no without any hint of room for discussion. Part of me at this point would love to find the dream job in Springfield and just cut bait on Dot, but for some reason I have a strange loyalty even with the pay and teleworking problems.
Well that sums up my job issues in a very large nutshell for now. No decisions yet, we'll see what happens.
Ok besides the work stuff, I've been keeping busy as always with Pastoral Council, Choir, Cantoring and I added Jazz band last fall. It's been fun playing with the Lincoln Land Community College Jazz Band. It's mostly community members so I wasn't the odd ball non-traditional student. I've also started taking private lessons on trumpet to try to catch up with the other trumpet players. I've been playing relatively easy music for so long that I've fallen into lots of bad habits. My teacher is working me back to proper form slowly, but surely.
Well for now I'm going to wrap this up and head to bed. Monday's are my long day because I leave home at 6:45am and don't get back until after jazz band at around 10:30pm.
Well the biggest thing going on right now came as a shocker to me when it started. A little bit before Christmas I got a call from an IT recruiter. I wasn't looking for a job, but I figured it can't hurt to listen to him and see what he had to say. He didn't have any jobs that I was interested in, but we did start talking about the job market in my area. One of the factoids that he gave me was that I'm currently making around $10K-$15K less than the average Network Administrator in my area. Too add insult to injury so to speak I found out that I'm not even on the low end of the bracket yet. Needless to say this opened my eyes and ears to the possibility of there being life after Dot. Realistically I'm not dissatisfied with my job itself, but some of the things that surround it make the possibility of change appealing including my current commute, location (I'd rather live in Springfield) and of course now my salary.
It's not like I don't already make a good living, but there are times where I wish I had a little more money to spend on things like a vacation or just the simple bonus of not having to worry about the correlation between pay day and bill due dates. I would also like to be able to put more away into savings, investments and my retirement account. Outside of pay distance and location are my biggest factors to consider. Right now it seems like I'm straddling between two worlds, one Quincy-centric and the other Springfield-centric. Work is in Mt. Sterling which is closer to Quincy. I live in Jacksonville which is closer to Springfield and besides church, most of the things that I do outside of work are in Springfield. This usually means that I end up driving the two hour trip from Mt. Sterling to Springfield at least twice a week if not more. It just gets to be a lot of driving. My car will be two years old in May, but I have over 47,000 miles already. It would be nice to have more time by just eliminating some of the driving.
In Dot's favor right now is that most of the projects that I proposed last fall made it into the budget this year instead of being cut. There are a lot of new technologies that I would get to learn about staying at Dot. On the flip side I recently asked my boss for the right to telework one day a week (Our programming staff gets two days a week.) and was flatly told no without any hint of room for discussion. Part of me at this point would love to find the dream job in Springfield and just cut bait on Dot, but for some reason I have a strange loyalty even with the pay and teleworking problems.
Well that sums up my job issues in a very large nutshell for now. No decisions yet, we'll see what happens.
Ok besides the work stuff, I've been keeping busy as always with Pastoral Council, Choir, Cantoring and I added Jazz band last fall. It's been fun playing with the Lincoln Land Community College Jazz Band. It's mostly community members so I wasn't the odd ball non-traditional student. I've also started taking private lessons on trumpet to try to catch up with the other trumpet players. I've been playing relatively easy music for so long that I've fallen into lots of bad habits. My teacher is working me back to proper form slowly, but surely.
Well for now I'm going to wrap this up and head to bed. Monday's are my long day because I leave home at 6:45am and don't get back until after jazz band at around 10:30pm.
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