First Day at Boeing!

Ok, this is going to be a HUGE post, so let me sum it up first: I am so incredibly happy/excited, this job is... well, the job itself isn't that great, but everything put together leaves me feeling like a kid at Disney.

So this morning I was supposed to report to the Boeing Badging Office at 6:30am to get a temp badge. It's about 20 miles away, and not knowing traffic or anything, I was asleep at midnight and up at 5am, out the door at 5:45, and got there just about 5 minutes early. When I got there there were a few guys I recognized, particularly two who are about my age, so I fell in with the group and we got our badges. Our PERMANENT photo-hologram-magnetic-smartchip badges, good until September of 2007. This badge will get me through any Boeing gate, although it's probably only able to open the doors at our building. Still, that should enable me to make some private driving tours of their huge assembly facility in Renton, which I plan to take the public tour of as well (I hear it's really cool, the building is one of the largest in the world). So ok, that was cool, then we had to head back north about 5 miles in rushhour traffic to get to our building on Boeing property in Bellevue.

Our building is just outside the gated facility in Bellevue, which is unfortunate, I love flashing my badge at security guards ;) It's a nondescript 3-story glass office building with some really nice rocks gardens and forested paths around it with lots of benches. The first floor has a coffee shop in it, as well as most of our offices. Everything's cubes pretty much, but they're large, and the aisleways are named after local streets so you can find your way. Second floor isn't ours, some other group moved in and took it over. Third floor is where our classroom is. The entire building is filled with posters of various Boeing aircraft and projects, everything from the Super Hornet and 777 to an Apache cut-away and Sea Launch. I already asked, it's frowned upon to steal any of the posters :(

I guess I should tell you who "we" is. We are what's known as the Enterprise Help Desk. Basically, everyone who works for or with Boeing, or buys any of Boeing's products, gets a single number to call if they need any help. That's us. We could theoretically get stuff like "I'm driving around St. Louis and I can't find my hotel!", but for the most part it's simple technical stuff. Resetting passwords, getting connected to the internet, setting up archives in Outlook, etc. There are about 70 of us in Bellevue, about 70 in Renton WA, about 80 in St. Louis, and that's it. Oh, there's also some who work remotely from Philadelphia and Huntsville, but only a handful. Those 220 people handle an average of 5,000 calls a day or over 1 million calls per year.

I could go into a *lot* of detail about the specifics of our organization, our support structure, and out job, but since it's only first day and we haven't actually DONE any of it yet, I'm gonna stop there and just tell you how today went.

We started out with introductions of our instructors and a chance to get to know one another, then we were split into teams. My team is myself and the two guys about my age that I met earlier, Roarke and Mike. They're roommates and friends of 5 years, both went to Central (where Pat went after Riddle, and where many of his friends still are). Roarke wanted to program AI, so he majored in Philosophy and minored in Comp Sci and Networking. He wisely decided he didn't want to spend the rest of his life coding, so here he is. Mike majored in Comp Sci and minored in Networking. Both very cool guys, I'm happy to be on their team. The rest of the group (all 15 of us) are about as varied as you can get. Everything from people in their 40's who have managed huge networks to people like me who have no real experience whatsoever.

After those basics, we took a tour of the building and broke for lunch. After lunch, we spent a few hours eavesdropping on some of the current UA's (Universal Analysts) taking calls. This was REALLY awesome, because we used Netmeeting to watch their desktop and listen to the phone call, so we could see and hear everything that was going on, even when they remoted into the customer's computer. Some of the problems that came up were... someone needed help making an archive in outlook, another person needed help getting their laptop tunneled into Boeing from home, yet another person needed help putting a link to a presentation file on Boeing's network into an email, and the last one we listened to was setting up an email on a new laptop. This was *really* interesting listening to the calls, we listened to 2 Analysts with very very different styles, but both gave by far the best customer service I've ever heard from a helpdesk, they were very thorough in how they helped the customer with the problem and even went beyond that scope to help with other issues, sometimes without even being asked.

After that we took a break to stretch our legs and absorb some of what we heard, and then we rounded out the day with a look at Boeing the company, what they're doing, a history of the helpdesk, our chain of command, etc.

Some of the coolest stuff I learned today... first of all we will be getting phone calls from EVERYONE in Boeing. Including places like Phantomworks, and facilities in Texas that are so secret they can't even give us a call back number. While we get calls from everyone from office workers to the people who put the airplanes together, a fairly high percentage of our customers will be Engineers. In addition to the really cool people we'll be talking with and helping, we'll be encouraged to learn as much Boeing software as possible, even stuff like Catia that I would have learnt had I become an Engineer myself. Every day we get plenty of breaks, we only spend about 6 hours of the day on calls. Every week we get time to spend studying or researching or w/e, which we're even allowed to do while waiting for phone calls. We can also of course work on the training from home, since it's all web-based. We can also rotate through different positions within the EHD (Enterprise Help Desk) almost at will as soon as we pass the tests for them. The basic position is the UA (Universal Analyst), there's also XA's (Expedite Analysts, who provide info and look up answers to help the UA), EA's (Escalation Analysts, 2nd level Analysts who get the calls the UA's can't solve), and occasionally RA's (Research Analysts, a 2 week rotation where you do research to add info to the Knowledge Base known as BOSS). Ahh yes, BOSS. This knowledge base is the place where we can find answers to all our questions, from help with a technical problem to procedures for certain situations, it sounds like a really useful tool.

Anyway, brain is drying up, I'll get into more details of things as I get more hands-on time with them and understand them better. Suffice to say tho... this job is gonna rock, it's gonna get me where I need to go, and working at Boeing is like putting me in an all-chocolate candy store for 8 hours a day.

Stormy Video!

I grabbed a quick video of Stormy with her head stuck in a tissue box, and decided to post it on the web. I set it to music by Dean Martin, which seems to fit it well :)

link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5783931257794463399&hl=en

Hired!

Well, with 3 interviews completed and 2 yet to go I got my second job offer, and decided this was the one I was going to go for. I am now working for TEKSystems as a Help Desk I for Boeing's internal help desk. I start 4 weeks of paid training on the 25th, after that I'll be working 40 hours a week at $15/hr anywhere from 3am through 11pm depending on my shift. We get paid weekly (I love TEK) and every 6 months I'll get a $1000 completion bonus. Most importantly, both TEK and Boeing have classes and online courses that I will be able to take free of charge to prepare for taking the A+ and MCSE and Cisco and all of that stuff. In the meantime, I'm finally getting something on my resume that says "this woman is a computer technician!" I'm locked into this job for at least a year, although they'd like for me to stick around for 2. The call center up here in Seattle is new and growing rapidly, I'm in the first group of 15 to be hired, but another group will be brought in in a month, and more after that, they expect it to be up to over 100 people by the time my year is up.

As far as the work environment, it's going to be great. Even in rushour traffic it's no more than a 30 minute commute from the apartment here in Bothell. Dress code is jeans and t-shirts, so I don't need to invest a lotta $$ up front into clothes just to work at the job. The people are all my age or a little older, nobody more than 5-7 years older than myself tho. Boeing generally uses other people's software and "Boeingizes" it, for example they use MSN Messenger as their internal chat software, but it's been modified to meet their specific needs (hopefully they managed to take the annoying ads off). This means that most of the stuff I'll be supporting I'm probably already familliar with, which is excellent. For anything I don't know how to troubleshoot (we'll be supporting EVERYTHING, from pagers to PC's to plotters to networks, so there's no way I'll know it all even after training) there will be supervisors and actual desktop techs wandering up and down the aisles, available to answer any questions. Some stuff will be pretty routine, take the ticket and escalate it to a local desktop tech (since we're supporing all of Boeing, everywhere in the world), but a lot of it should be fun to figure out, and they do want us to fix as many problems as we can, whether it's something rather advanced or not. Once a week we'll sit down with a manager to review how long we spend on each call as well as how many tickets we can solve ourselves and stuff like that. Since it's all internal, really angry people on the other end of the line will be pretty rare, and Boeing has a very strict set of policies that we "have" to follow, that we can use to protect our asses and defuse the situation (by blaming policy, which we all know everyone hates). Also, of course, if anyone is angry we can just wave over one of the wandering supervisors and they'll take care of it for us. In general tho, 90% of the people working at Boeing are mature and intelligent, so I'm not too worried about anything.

Oh, one sweet little bonus! Even tho I'm not working directly for Boeing, I'll get an official Boeing email addy! Boy I can't wait to forward that along to my old Riddle friends ;)

So that's the scoop, I wish training were starting earlier, since it means I won't get my first paycheck for another two and a half weeks, but that can't be helped, and I'm just glad that I will be getting a paycheck (and a VERY pretty one) soon.

Jobs and Budgets

Well, I've got 3 interviews next week. One is for the Boeing Help Desk position, one is for a job in Verizon stores doing on-site tech support for their phones, and the last one is with a competitor to TEK Systems who wants to steal me away from them. The Boeing job will be around $14 or $15 per hour, giving me about $2000 per month income. The Verizon job would only be about $12 per hour, so about $1600 per month. If I find an apartment in the $750/month range (which is high for what I'm looking for), and utilities are about $125, and I spend another $350 on food and gas and entertainment (heavily weighted towards entertainment), that puts my budget at about $1225 per month. Add in some cell phone expenses, stuff for Stormy, and other misc bills or w/e at $75, that brings it up to $1300 per month.

Based on this, I can survive and even put some money away with the Verizon job. The Boeing job would allow me to put more money away for long term stuff. But in all honesty... right now I'm leaning towards the Verizon job over the Boeing one. For one thing, the Boeing job is a call center environment. Each call cannot exceed 660 seconds, blah blah blah. Also, it's a 24x7 call center, so there would be night shifts and all that not-fun. That isn't something I am at all interested in doing, and I think that very quickly I would dread going to work. The Verizon job on the other hand would be me hanging out at a Verizon retail store with one other tech, manning the customer service counter, teaching people how to change their wallpapers, troubleshooting problems, doing software upgrades, swapping out defective parts, etc. Hands-on work, and I've been in enough cell phone stores recently to see those techs in action, and they all seem to really enjoy their work. They are either busy or bored, just like retail clerks, but there's always something for them to play with. The Verizon job starts out with 2 weeks of paid training in which we get to actually diagnose and fix defective phones, after that, there are a lot of training courses available, and each one passed results in an increase in your job title as well as your pay. The classes range from technical to managerial, and all are available all the time. It sounds like a good place to start, get my hands dirty, and get some extra training. Of course, there's always the wildcard, which is KForce Staffing. I've told them where I am with TEK right now, and that my overriding priority is to get to get my hands dirty with real pc tech or w/e sorta stuff. When I go in to talk to them, hopefully they'll have a few positions I might be interested in.

Now, my schedule for next week is going to be interesting. I've got the KForce interview on Monday, which is good, they won't be expecting an answer from me right away on anything, I can just ask them to put my name in and see what happens and that'll be that. Tuesday I may have a fourth interview with a company that does beta testing of XBox games, I'm not expecting anything to come from that tho, I expect the pay will be too low for my budget. Sometime Monday or Tuesday I should get a call from the regional manager for the Verizon job to set up a face to face that week, so probably Wednesday. My interview with Boeing is scheduled for Thursday. If I don't make a definite decision while I'm at any of these interviews, then Friday will have to be decision day.

So, that's where things are at right now. You'll notice that paying off my debts isn't part of my budget. That's something I will do when I can, but it is no longer my absolute top priority. I *need* to kick back and enjoy life, and so instead of paying off that crap I'm going to reinvest that money into an annual membership to the Museum of Flight, the ability to go out to movies and dinner at restaurants, *gasp* shopping, and anything else that strikes my fancy. I know that I can't do that forever, the van's life is limited and whatnot, but I really need this, so I'm just gonna tell Murphey to f-off for a little while longer.

Personally, I'm doing... ok I guess right now. I'm still not eating much, although it has gotten better in the last 12 hours. For those of you who hadn't heard, I've lost about 10lbs and about 3% body fat in the last 4-5 days from not eating or drinking much of anything. The first 2 days I didn't eat or drink anything at all, but I've been steadily increasing how much and how often I can eat since then. It's not that I haven't been absolutely starving, but that my stomach refused to accept much food, I would begin to feel sick after just a few pieces of pasta. The cause is of course emotional/mental, but there isn't much I can do aside from just keep going until things get better. It's also very frustrating right now, since I've decided to make all these changes in my life, and yet I don't have the ability to yet. But that will change soon enough.

Poor Pat tho... I don't envy his situation. He's interested in 2 girls right now, both of whom are interested in him, but beyond that everything turns into a complete mess. Girl 1, Emily, is 19 years old and graduating college in less than a year, she met him at soccer and thinks he's cute, she's got some really messed up parents, a messed up brother, and is a very driven person. Girl 2, Sylvia, is an old friend of his that he's known for about 2 years, apparently that entire time they've been interested in each other but one or both have been in relationships and thus never could do anything about it. She's got some interesting sexual preferences that he's not quite sure about, and he also doesn't know just what exactly she's looking for, whether it be a fun fling or a serious relationship or what. He says he is looking for a serious relationship, something long term, but of course at this point it's impossible to tell which if either of the girls is looking for the same thing. That's just the absolute barebones of the situation, it gets much much worse as you get into details. Personally if I were him I would probably back off for 2-3 months, just to see which girl is still interested at that point. But, he's a man of action. If he's convinced Sylvia is looking for something long-term, he'll go with her and ditch Emily, if not, then he'll have to figure out what Emily is looking for.

Personally, I think for once in his life he should stop trying to catagorize his relationship as "serious" before it's even begun. I think when you enter into a relationship, first you're just interested, then you're dating, then you're a couple, then you get serious, and then you get to thinking about a ring. I don't think you can start a relationship as a "serious" relationship. Heck, I'm not even sure what he means by "serious" sometimes... I mean, it goes without saying that if you're in a relationship with someone, then that's the only person you're in a relationship with, regardless of what stage you're in. So... since that is the case in the mind of anyone on this planet that you should even consider being in a relationship with... what's the point of slapping the "serious" label on it? Does that mean you want to start having sex right away? Does that mean you want some sort of promise like a pre-engagement sorta thing? Does it have to do with how many hours out of the day you spend together? Or is it just a safety net, because a girl in a "serious" relationship is less likely to look at/for someone other than you? Or... could it be a mental crutch, to keep you from looking at/for a girl other than her? Regardless, even if what you are looking for is a "serious" relationship, whatever that means, in order for it to work, in order for it to be valid and have any chance of success, it has to have made it through the earlier stages. The progression of a relationship is supposed to be a weeding out process, if you don't go through that process, and you try to imagine a ring on the finger of everyone you date the first time you date them, then you're not dating intelligently, and you're begging to get hurt and to hurt others more than is necessary. Our own past is a perfect example tbh. You can't just... well, that's not right, because you CAN, but you *shouldn't* just put a ring on every girl's finger to see how it fits, either mentally or emotionally. For one thing, relationships, like people, grow and change over time, sometimes they become better, sometimes worse, but you have to give it time to happen in. For another, it's like firing a gun at random inside a busy club, you're basically just taking pot shots at people, hoping one is the right one, instead of figuring out who it is you want to shoot, and then making sure that your target is that person.

Oh well, I'm sure that watching what unfolds over the next few months will be an interesting and educational experience for me, and hopefully for Pat as well.

Potential Job #1

Well, for the past week I've been in communication with TEK about a job at Boeing doing corporate tech support at a call center. I took some proficiency and typing tests last night and did "exceptionally well" on them, so I'm expecting a call this afternoon to set up an immediate interview. If all goes well, I should be near the top of the list for this job based on my test scores, and they're hiring about 60+ people total for it. It's a 2-year contract, so I'd be locked in for that long, and it's $16/hr and 40 hours a week plus every 6 months I'd get an additional $1/hr completion bonus... so about $1k every 6 months. They're looking for all shifts, but hopefully I scored high enough to have my pick. I don't know where it will be located yet, Boeing has offices all over the place, but I should be finding that out today. Downsides are that it's a call center, it's strict (each call can last no longer than 660 seconds, etc), but at least they will fully train me. If I have faith in anything, it's that if someone will show me how, I can DO anything. Exactly how I'll hold up to working at a call center environment and dealing with customers again we shall have to see, but at least they'll be corporate customers, not just random people. An additional benefit will be that hopefully I'll be able to join the Boeing Employee Credit Union, which is an exceptional financial institution.

It's kinda ironic that even tho I've been working really hard at this job hunt, it looks like I'm gonna end up getting what I'd been counting on all along, which was a job thru TEK. Oh well, I don't have it yet, and hey, maybe I'll find something for $20/hr that's not a call center ;)

Wow changes

It's been a very interesting 24 hours. Pat's got 2 new girlfriends, and I'm no longer welcome here. It hasn't been said in so many words, in fact he's emphatically said that he is not nor would he ever kick me out. But due to life changes, aka his new relationship options, the sooner I get out the better. It's too bad he never had the guts to bring any of this up with me as things developed, and I had to go behind his back to hear about it. The good news is that during our talk last night he finally managed to galvanize me into taking action. The job hunt has become a 9-5 job for me. Getting a job will be easy tho compared to finding another place to live. He is convinced I could get my own apartment, despite my credit. While no doubt there are some apartment complexes that don't run credit checks, there are the utilities to consider, I'd be very surprised if Comcast didn't turn down some people for bad credit. Oh well, we shall see. Right now my plan is to take things one at a time. First, get a job. Second, look into apartments. I'm not gonna try to do both at once.

Anyway, what really set me off and got me pissed off enough to do all this was when he was finally honest with me about how disappointed he's been since I got up here. He's very much like a mirror of me, and I've been disappointed as hell too, but I've been feeling too helpless to do anything about it. I don't think the concept of helpless even has a word in his vocabulary, and it really pissed me off that I've screwed up so badly, yet again, and that everyone can see it. I hate where I am in life, but everything I've lost *I've* lost. I've done it all to myself, and I cna't even put into words how that makes me feel. But the important thing is for me to use this anger for now to get up on my feet... I hope I never forget how badly it stung to see him sitting there looking disappointed saying "You know what REALLY got me?"

So yea, that's the update so far, I don't think I've eaten or drank anything in about 24 hours now so I'm going to go see if anything looks good.

Things I would do/see if I could visit Chambersburg again

For some strange reason the other night I was up for 2 hours thinking about visiting C-burg again, so I decided to write down the things that I think I'd want to see and do if I did have the chance to go back for a visit.

I'd fly into Hagerstown, and stop at Mikey's for some ice cream and good waffle cones before heading north the usual route. I'd get off and take our usual backroads to the neighborhood, driving around and seeing what, if anything, has changed. After that I'd head into town, making sure to smell the bakery and stop for a whoopie pie. I'd head over towards CAMS and CASHS, just to look, and then hopefully find my way to the Butcher Shoppe for a whiff of their intoxicating odor. Head out Rt 30 towards Caledonia, drive past Pop-Pop's (and Fritzy's) old house, then go for a hike in the woods, and a swing on the swings. Head back into town, head up towards Faust and Chambersburg Airport to watch the sky divers, then back into town past Wilson College and Corpus Christi. Park behind the old store building, walk over to the gas station for a hot dog, stroll up to the library and then back in towards the square. Past the square to Olympia for some candy, then back to the car and back towards the old house on my 2nd favorite backroad ever. Through New Franklin and out to Twin Kiss to relax, then towards Pop-Pop's and Uncle Don's houses to drive by and look. After all that's out of the way, all I'd have left to do is absorb as much of that small-town vibe as possible, so back roads driving, walks in the woods, wading in streams, and hanging out at pilot's lounges would be the order of the day. Other things I'd like to cram in would be a visit to Lost Acres to see the Stearman, eating lunch at the Long Johns with the ducks behind it, stops in as many used book stores as possible, or whatever else sparks a few memories. I could probably get enough done in a weekend trip to be satisfied, at least for a couple more years. I wonder what plane tickets from Seattle to Hagerstown run? *ironic smile*

I really miss how slow things were back then, ever since Chambersburg I've been living in cities, or at least newer towns, and it's a totally different speed. Tonight Pat's taking me out for some ice cream from a little family owned dairy, it's very good stuff, but it's lacking anywhere to eat the ice cream like Twin Kiss had. I'll try to find somewhere for us to go tho, I don't want to just grab the ice cream and hop back in the car.

Good news, Bad news, Good news, Bad news, Good news, Good news...

Good news: David's chest x-ray was clear, he doesn't have TB, and neither do I.
Bad news: Pat has finally found his name on the list of layoffs at SafeCo, today is his last day (it's unbelievable how absolutely stupid that company is being...)
Good news: Pat has already interviewed for a really good position with a cruise ship company and stands a good chance of getting it
Bad news: the USPS project with TEK that I was counting on isn't happening
Good news: TEK found a tech support job for Boeing that looks good, and is throwing my name in for lots of other positions as well, I've given them a deadline of Sep. 20th to have me working at a permanent job, or else I'm just gonna grab a retail job here in Woodinville (or anything that I find outside of TEK, if I find something better). I figure by the 20th college will be back in session which will mean lots of jobs available.
Good news: Windows Vista RC1 is finally out! I should have my hands on a copy by next week