Busy Busy Busy

Wow, its been a long time. Admittedly, I have been putting it off for a bit because of the sheer number of things I wanted to post about. Em and I have done a ton of stuff in the past month. Here are some of the highlights...

• Emily Graduated - Back in early June Em graduated with her Masters. Both of our families came into town for the event and had a great time eating and celebrating. We went all over town, showed them the spectacle that is Jungle Jim's, ate lunch down town at Izzy's, cooked Chicken Piccata, almost had a heart attack (me) and packed up the family cars before they left with as much stuff as we could fit. All in all it was a crazy, fun weekend. We are all extremely proud of Em.
• Emily found out she didn't graduate, that her prof. is a moron, and fixed the situation - Em had been waiting to get her license so she called up the licensing-people and asked what the hold up was and they said that UC had never sent her final records to them. When she called UC, all the secretary could tell her was that she had received an Incomplete on one of her classes and would have to wait until August to officially graduate. As you can expect she was freaked out and pissed. When she finally got a hold of the prof. he claimed he had never received her final project via email and had sent her emails regarding it. Well, she had sent it and had never received any emails about it .... so she resent everything and he changed her grade to the A she deserved. It took another day to hear back from the Graduate school to know that she wouldn't have to wait until August, which she did, so its all fixed now. Luckily, Em found out about the mess, b/c the prof. did the same thing for several other graduating students in the class. Em contacted them all when she found out, but if she hadn't, they may not have found out in time.
• Finished up the dodge ball season - We played some of our best dodge ball, and almost beat the first place team to go to the championship game ... but just fell short.
  
• Reds game on GAIC/Sogeti - My team at work was rewarded for their good work with tickets a Reds game. When I informed Sogeti that our client had done that, I was told to buy the first couple rounds on Sogeti. Yay for free food, drink, and entertainment.
• 2 Year Review - I had my 2 year review the other day. As I was expecting, I am doing a great job, no one in Cinci wants me to move, and I didn't get the promotion I would have gotten if we were still Sark. Sogeti does their reviews on a yearly basis in December, so these half year reviews were for Sarks who would have had one in the middle of the year so that we wouldn't have to wait 18 months. As of July, I get more vacation (another week) and my salary should be adjusted. What will it be adjusted to? I would tell you if I knew. Evidently corporate is reviewing all of the salary changes and are severely backlogged.
• Finding my replacement - I have been helping interview possibly people to replace me at my current assignment the last couple weeks. Unfortunately, we don't have a ton of people available right now and even fewer with the correct skills and right level of experience. Yesterday we interviewed a promising prospect, but the client still needs to find out her billing rate and decide.
• Flew to St. Louis to interview with my next client - Early last week I had an over the phone technical interview with a client in STL. The next day my to-be boss let me know that the interview had gone well and that the client would like for me to come out for a face:face set of interviews on Friday (2 weeks ago). When he found out I wouldn't be back in town until the 1st of July, he decided to fly me out for the day. Well prices for flights 2 days out are WAY expensive, so we settled on this past Thursday. I flew out of Cinci at 6 AM, arrived in Chicago at 6:05 AM, flew to STL 7-8AM, met up with the Monsanto Account-Exec. at the airport, and started my interviews at 9am. I say interviews b/c there were 3. I point this out b/c between my last 2 clients, I have sat through a total of 1 interview. This would make 4 for this one client. There was a 25 minute tech interview followed by a 45 minute time slot for a coding exercise which took me less than 10. Finally I interviewed with a couple of the PMs I might work under and the Hiring Manager. Everything went really well and they informed me that I had gotten the job on the spot. Actually, they called the Account-Exec to let her know they wanted me out sooner if possible before she could come pick me up. :) I will give more details of what I will be doing, etc later but its nice to know that I don't have to worry about work when I get there. After the interview, we went out to lunch, filled out some paper work at the office, and flew back to Cinci arriving at 6:30pm. It was a long day.
• Packing and Working - Other than those things, Em and I have been most just packing and working. (Her packing, me working).

As anyone who reads this blog, ever, should know ... Em and I are officially moving back to STL this upcoming weekend. I will still be working and living in Cinci until mid/late July to finish things up, then we will officially be gone. The last couple weeks have been extremely busy and we are finding that moving is going to fairly bittersweet. Its surprising how much you can get used to a town in two years. We have both made friends here and have gotten used to how things work in our first home, but we are both looking forward to being closer to our families and getting a house in the near future. To everyone who has made the past couple years what it was, thanks.