Work has begun or has it?

I've been in Japan for about a month now. I am enjoying the culture, but not so much the weather. It is a little too hot and humid for me. Anyway, I have been going to work for about three weeks now. Unfortunately, I have received little training and still know little about what sort of jobs I will be working on in the future. I spent some time this week setting up a server to run my company's software and got the idea to automate some of the steps with a script. I started working on that today and it is taking me much longer than anticipated. However, as I have nothing else to work on, except reading software manuals in Japanese, it is a nice change of pace.

Hopefully, my trainer will have some free time or I will be given some assignments I am currently capable of handling soon. I think I will enjoy working for Daifuku and learning about the industry. I just have a lot to learn and it is a little bit tougher in a different language.

Heading to Japan

Well, I know approximately when I am heading to Japan. I am going to start working on June 1st. Unfortunately, I will be leaving my wife for a couple of months as she wraps up the rest of our business in America. I am really excited to get going, but it also means I need to pick up the preparations and try to clear out our apartment a little more. I don't want my wife to be stuck with too much stuff to handle. I will be heading up to Spokane to visit my family and drop off some stuff for them to hang on to while we are gone. I will leave Thursday the 20th for Spokane and sometime the next week, I will be going to Japan. Crazy stuff.

Finals Week Descends

Today is the first day of finals. I usually try to finish as many of my finals as I can on the finals, but I figure I will do them tomorrow since I have to be on campus by 7 am. My first scheduled final is on Saturday at 7 am. This seems very wrong to me and not just because I like to sleep in on my Saturdays. I don't have a choice, however, because I am presenting my final project and taking the final. I figured I may as well just have one day of finals and get the rest done on Saturday as well. Plus I need to get some more hours at work.

On the positive side, I am not really worried about any of my finals. That could be bad since that means I have no incentive to study. I will just have to force myself I guess. And on the very bright side, I will be graduated in a week. Hooray. I will be able to spend some time with most of my family and not have to worry about homework potentially ever again.

Last Day of Class

Welcome to the last day of class. Full of ignored reviews and panic to finish all my projects. I am glad that everything is wrapping up. I have jokingly declared that today is my last day of learning. This is definitely not true, as I will be started a new job in a few months in Japan. I will be very busy learning, or relearning, Japanese and understanding my job functions. As far as school goes, however, after today all I have to worry about are finals. Which will be amazing.

Next Thursday and Friday will be graduation. Most of my family will be coming down to congratulate me and my older brother, who is also graduating. Hopefully the weather stays nice for the next few weeks so we can enjoy the time we have together. Once I move to Japan, I won't see them very often.

I've Got a Job!

Even though I have been concentrating on PhD schools, I thought I would try to keep my options open and told my old boss at Daifuku that I would be graduating soon and asked if he had anything available. I didn't really think it would work at but I thought it would be silly not to try. Well, last week they offered me a job and I accepted. I will be heading to Japan with my wife as soon as I get my work visa. We are both pretty excited to go to Japan. My initial plan is to work there for three to five years, but we will see how things go. I am on a yearly contract with them and I can potentially work for other offices around the world. It will be a really good opportunity and I get to live in Japan again. I guess doing that internship four years ago has totally paid off.

Feeling Better or Did I Miss a Week of School?

I didn't miss a week of school. I wish I had though. I would have probably recovered from my illness faster. Quick recap of last week. Talked about more windows scripting components in my infrastructure class. My team worked on our report over the weekend and turned in the hard copy today. There is a lot of information for even so small a project. I took the test for security on Friday, the line at the Testing Center was pretty long. I'll have to remember that next time I need to take a test. We had a lab on port scanning. Today we began discussing other types of security threats. No class for Manec on Tuesday. On Thursday, we talked about trade policy, specifically tariffs. My group has decided to not do a 25 minute presentation, but instead write a paper about Russia that will need to be who knows how long. Oh well. It will probably require less collaboration than a presentation. For Japanese, we practiced the play. On Thursday, the room was locked and no one could find the key so we practiced outside. I am getting pretty comfortable with my lines. Which is good since the play is in like two weeks. For MBA 512, we had two other teams present on their cases and both of them brought Wiis. I need to work on my Mario Kart skills.

Today I registered for classes for next semester. Well, most of them at least. One of the required classes was already full. I've sent an email to our program coordinator to try and get some help with that. Anyway, I'm glad that I am mostly over my illness. It is so much easier to be productive when you just want to rest all the time.

October 14th, 2009

Today I slept in. Whenever my wife goes into work late, I seem to follow along. We had orange rolls for breakfast. It was pretty nice. I was late to class and couldn't find a parking spot, so I parked in the A lot. In class, we talked about WMI and how it is used and how it works with Powershell and I didn't really pay attention. I was trying to get a better record for minesweeper on my VM. I moved my car and got a good spot right in front of the Tanner building. I then went to the lounge resigned to waiting for my next class without lunch, when out of nowhere someone told me KPMG was having their de-stress activity. Went up the stairs and had some Subway for lunch.

Went to the next class where we reviewed the material for the test which will be in like two weeks. Kind of weird to review so early but what can you do. I pretty much stopped paying attention in this class and played Mahjong Titans. Now I am at work trying to figure out how to test a new piece of software coming my way next week and chatting with one of my old coworkers that knows more than I what I should be doing. It has been helpful to chat and get an idea of what they have done before.

Tomorrow I am going to take my Manec test and present in my change management class. It will be an interesting day and I will be glad for the weekend. At least two good things will happen this weekend: my nephew Samuel's birthday party and bad movie night. Hooray!