Encounter

So I was going to eventually get to doing another status update, but I wound up doing a rant about chain-emails. There’s a few things I’ve been meaning to get around to mentioning, so here they are at the top of a post.

I didn’ t get the job at KDUP, it went to a junior, who apparently was the guy who had e-mailed when I interviewed. I wonder if I was too ambitious for their liking. So far, the only thing that appears to have been done is to take down all the dead parts of the website, and replace last year’s info with a “info coming soon” page. A link to a word document containing the show listings was posted, though.

Really, I’m not as upset about this as I may seem to be. I went into this knowing that I was underqualified (at least on paper) and I’m not too surprised that I didn’t get the position.


As you may have noticed, the blog has a new style. Long time readers may notice that the style is similar to the one I had when I was still using Blogger. We’ll see if I stick with this one or not–I do like having a calendar over there to the right, though.


And as to the title of this post. This weekend, I’m going on a retreat with Campus Ministry, called “Encounter with Christ,” or Encounter for short. Several people I know have gone on this retreat in the past, all come back raving about it, so I think it will be a good weekend. There’s a bit of secrecy about this retreat, which former participants hint about, so I guess I’ll find out about it there.

There’s several other people I know going as retreatants, and a few more as part of the “Encounter Team,” the ones putting on the retreat. Not 100% certain this is a good thing, but but I’ll see how this plays out.

The one peice of advice I’ve gotten in relation to the retreat, from Cean, was to go into the retreat with no expectations, and just let whatever happens happen. I’ve heard so many things about the retreat that I’m not sure I can do this, but I sure don’t know what to expect.

If this were a few months ago, I’d promise to post about it when I got back, but lately I haven’t been posting too much, and I really don’t feel too bad about that. I’ve been keeping busy, between schoolwork, procrastination, and just generally hanging out, and I don’t necessarily have the time/energy/motivation to write to this blog.


I could write about more stuff, but I need to work on homework and study for two tests on Monday, so that I’m not super behind when I get back–I’ll be gone from 4pm Friday to 6pm Sunday.

–Nathan

Interview, Viewers

I was going to respond to Cel’s comment with a comment, but the answer grew far too large. And so we have a new post.

But first, a comment:


To my reader in the Olympia, Washington area–We’re curious to know who you are. We know how you first found my website, and that’s probably the most intriguing thing to Cean and I. Who are you? We’d like to know.

If you would, post a comment, email me (nathan AT nathanoliver.net) or otherwise get in touch with Cean or me. We’re curious.


And now, on with the story.

To be brief, the interview went well, and I expect to hear from them sometime around the end of this week as to whether I got the job. At the time I interviewed, they had no other applicants, and the guy who had done it last year had to quit because it was too much work. (The responsibilities for this position have been reduced this year.) It’s a contract position, so I’m paid for 8 hours work/month, regardless of how much work I do. Shouldn’t really be a problem, though I expect to run through the hours for a few months all in the first few weeks, getting things back in shape. At the end of the interview, they mentioned that they’d had one other person express interest in the position, so there would be a delay before they made the hiring decision.

The people doing the interview (the station manager, and the student media advisor) seemed generally impressed with my experience, although I (and I told them this) don’t have much experience with server side stuff. But (and I also pointed this out) I have no training in HTML either, and was able to (in the manager’s words, make a site that “looks professional.” At any rate, a web tech who can do some web stuff is better than having no web tech and an outdated site (as they have now).

Arrr, Me Mateys

Okay, so the title is lame. But this post is to mark my participation in International Talk Like A Pirate Day (TLAPD), for the first time ever.

I became aware of it in 2002, the first year it was publicised.I missed it in 2003, visiting a college with my dad, and managed to miss it again in 04, as I was out of town for my cousin’s wedding. Being in Villa, there’s no chance of missing out on the day.


This post will have to stand in for a much longer post that I had half written. I left it open, and FireFox crashed, taking the post with it.

In the meantime, I will mention that I (as expected) did not get the position of Peer Leader, but did browse the campus job listings (turning up “Hydro Ceramic Technician“, among others). I applied for Web Engineer at KDUP, our campus radio station, and have an interview tomorrow.

When I start thinking about the interview, I get nervous, perhaps because I’ve never done a formal interview. When I interviewed at the grocery store, not only was it not for a terribly important position to them, but I had the store owner (who I knew before I applied) pulling for me already. In fact, I was called in, even though they’d lost my application, and they spent the first few minutes trying to re-create the app, while looking for the original (which eventually turned up accidentally tucked inside someone else’s app).

I have no idea how I stand tomorrow. The person who held the post was a Sophomore last year, which means that I’m not too young, in their eyes, but also that he’s still around on campus. I have no idea if he applied, but if he did, he’s got an advantage over me. Still, the e-mail to schedule an appointment opened with the line “We were impressed with your application for the web tech position at KDUP.” (But that could well be a standard line used when calling people in to interview.) At any rate, I’ll find out soon enough.

Stible Buddy, right now, so I’m off.

Flaggers

As I was coming in to work this morning, there was a bit of road construction. Actually, it turned out to be a crew painting the crosswalks. I had come in about 45 minutes early in order to enter vegetables for my mom at the county fair, which occurs Thursday through Sunday. At any rate, they were painting the crosswalk of Rock Creek Drive, which I wanted to turn onto. The flagger had his sign turned to SLOW, so I began to make my right turn. About that time, I noticed that there was another car coming my way, in my lane. So I stopped, the flagger looked at me rather strangely for not stopping sooner, and then all of a sudden, looked at his sign, and spun it around to read STOP.

I had suspected that he might be wrong, because the closure was so short, and I could see the other end, where the other flagger’s sign was also on slow (I could see the Stop side), so I was going very slow, and hadn’t gotten too close. The flagger got on his radio, and I was cleared to pass through as soon as the other car was out of the way.


Speaking of the fair, I work all those days, as we will be very busy at the store, what with everyone in town. The Sunday of fair is one week before my move-in date, and consequently my last day at work.

Liquor License

As I write the introduction to this post, I am sitting in a small courtyard behind A&J, on my last break for the day. I’m on the clock until 10pm, meaning that I have three hours left to go in what has been a rather busy day.

Among other things, we have been selling a lot of alcohol in the last few days. There is a large resort/conference center/hotel in town, Skamania Lodge. It used to be Dolce Skamania Lodge, but it was recently sold by Dolce. At any rate, when the sale became final last Wednesday, the liquor license that the lodge had (required to sell any type of alcohol) became invalid, for legal reasons I don’t understand. Depending on who you ask, either they simply dropped the ball, or the new license got lost in the mail, but at any rate, they are unable to sell liquor at all. So they’re sending all their guests down to A&J to buy alcohol. The guests don’t tend to be too happy about it, but then again, the alcohol we sell is probably a bit cheaper than the prices there.

We’ve also been short staffed due to two people that have become ill, one with a back injury, the other with a head cold. And the outrigger canoes were in town this weekend, so I’ve come home from work more or less exhausted, and not done much of anything else. But my break is over now, so until later,

–Nathan

Working like Crazy

Or should I say work is crazy? Perhaps both are correct.

I had Friday off, but I worked Thursday afternoon, and had plenty to do then. I got there at 3:30, and it wasn’t too busy, but Chris mentioned that it had been all day. I started to count half cases of pop so I knew how many to get from the back room, and then got sidetracked on a courtesy call or three. I went to the back room, and discovered that Dan had just finished counting the pop as well. I’d started first, and we needed quite a bit, so we both worked on it for a while, and then he took off to catch another courtesy call. I took the cart out to the floor, and was filling the second of three displays when I got stuck on another round of courtesy calls, and then Troy, the manager, called over the intercom “Wet cleanup to the end of seven immediately.” It turns out, someone had bumped a display, and four 24-pack longnecks of Budweiser broke all over the floor. Dan did a major part in the cleanup, but I helped quite a bit, too, and helped Bobbie restack the corner of the charcoal display that had also been knocked over. By the time that was cleaned up, I hav been on for over an hour and a half.

I returned to the cart of pop, and finished all three displays, and then went on to the shelf, where the rest of the pop on the cart went. As I rounded the corner to the aisle, I realized that Chris had also decided to do pop, and had filled another cart and was working the pop. So I helped him unload his cart, and pulled a few things off the bottom of my cart that he hadn’t gotten, and then went to the back to unload my cart.

The day got better after that, and I was only on until 8:30, but the first two hours were one of the more tiring I have had in quite a while. At least I wasn’t searching the store for something to do.


And on the topic of work, the way the schedule worked out, I work the last four days of this schedule week, and the first five days of next week, so Saturday is my first of nine days in a row. To be fair, three or four of them are shorter, 5 hour days, but I will still be at work each day. I’ll be glad when I get to the next set of days off.

I didn’t sleep very well last night, so I was tired, and ended up taking a four hour nap this afternoon. Now, I’m not tired, so I’m still up.


I said that I wasn’t going to blog about work, but some things just beg to be written about. Take Saturday, for example.

I was checking, and a couple came thhrough my line and bought $7.62 in groceries. I thought that they were speaking a foreign language, but wasn’t sure until it came time to pay, when the had a rapid-fire exchange in what sounded like German. She began pulling out money (it was US currency) and got the seven okay. She seemed to be having a bit of trouble with the coins, though. There was more discussion, and she began gesturing at a machine on the till that allows you to purchase lotto tickets with your groceries. More discussion, and then she asked me what the prize was. A bit surprised, I told her what the jackpots for the two main lotteries we sell were, and then it was her turn to be confused. She said “No, the price! What’s the price?”

I relized my mistake, and repeated that it was $7.62. She again tried counting out the coins, taking a minute to look on both sides of a nickel to see what it was worth. She had the proper change, but didn’t seem to have the value of the nickel correct, and tried to give me 32¢, but in the end, she let me pick out the appropriate coins and went on her way, studying her receipt the whole way to the door. A bit frustrating, honestly. Now I see why people from some countries get annoyed when Americans make no effort to learn the language/culture. She obviously had made quite an effort, and even that was annoying.


The high school play is coming up next weekend, on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights. My sister is in the play, and is starting to panic a bit, but she’s always been the really organized type. They’re performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It should be a good production. I’ll have to change my schedule a bit at work, as the only night that I can see it is the last night, and I only get off in enough time to be there about 25 minutes before the show, and I expect it to be standing room only by that time.


I’m still not tired, but in the interest of getting my sleep schedule back in synch, I’m going to head off to bed now.

–Nathan

Back Home, Small World

There was an AudioBlog here, but I wasn’t that impressed with it, and so I dissapeared it. 🙂 It’s still around, so if you want to hear it, let me know.

I came back from Youth and Gov today. I had a good time, all in all. I got there about 11:30 Thursday, and saw a few sessions, talked with Brionna in the Governor’s Office for quite a while, watched debate on several bills, and generally just hung out.

They were in the capitol building this year, after two years in temporary facilities. Normally, they use the Capitol, but in 2001, there was a serious earthquake, and the Capitol sustained some pretty serious damage. The 2001 session, the year before I joined, was at a college because they were still assessing the damage, but the capitol was open for the 2002 session, and we were the last to use it before they closed it for a long overdue renovation, which forced the last two sessions to use the same temporary quarters that the legislators were using–they were a bit tight on space, though. Anyway, it was good to be back in the Capitol Building.

I went up to Nathan R.’s house for the night, which worked out well. It was a bit more of a drive than I anticipated, and there was road construction by his exit, and although traffic wasn’t that bad by city standards, there were still a lot of cars to deal with, so the trip up there was a bit interesting. I made it safely, though, and Nathan and I ended up disassembling his computer and then putting it back together, and trying to install a new motherboard in between. It didn’t boot properly, but we’re not sure what was wrong, other than the computer never even displayed the BIOS on the screen. I’ve never taken a motherboard out before, so it was a learning experience. Good thing for Google, though, as we disconnected the wires to the front panel, and then realized that it wasn’t as simple as it looked to re-connect them. And they are important–they connect to things like the power button.

This morning, I discovered that it is a small world. Nathan’s next-door neighbor stopped by for a few minutes, and we discovered that he had gone to high school with man that works with my dad. Weird the way things work out like that.

I went back to Olympia today, with mainly a repeat of yesterday. The Governor’s Office was busier today, but also better organized. I watched the Governor’s press conference, and then decided to leave (it was about 3) so I wouldn’t hit the Friday night traffic too bad. I got really tired on the way home, so I pulled over, intending to take a short nap, but I couldn’t sleep at all. I got some food from a convenience store, and was not sleepy the rest of the trip home (2hrs). Traffic wasn’t bad for me, with the exception of a 2 mile stretch of Highway 14, from I-205 to 164th, which crawled at about 5-10 mph.

I’m glad I went, I got to talk to a lot of people that I remembered from previous years, and see the program continue on. It’s not as exciting when you’re not a participant, and if I’m not some sort of an advisor next year, I probably wouldn’t go. I’m hoping something can be worked out, though. I don’t know if there’s any way I could attend any of the events before the real session, though. Of course, I don’t know why I’m worrying about that before the session is even over.


When I got home, my mom had me call a man from church, who apparently is looking for someone to move a bunch of wood chips and debris left over from having two trees cut down. He wanted me to work on it, as he can’t do it all himself, so I’m going to be working on that tomorrow. I’m not sure how big of a project it is, but I guess I’ll find out when I get there.Speaking of work, I stopped by the store on my way home, and got my schedule–I start working there again Thursday. For some reason, I’m almost dreading it, although I never had that feeling when I was working there last summer. We’ll see if this continues after I actually get started. I’m currently scheduled on one freight shift, which means that I get to arrive at 5 in the morning on Monday to unload the semi and stock the shelves. And once you get set in a pattern, Troy usually sticks with it. This part, I’m really not looking forward to.

Seeing as it’s nearly 11, and I was falling asleep earlier, and I’m going to be working tomorrow, I wish you all a good night.

–Nathan