Avian Gamers Network

So what are you guys up to? How is school/work? It has been a long time since I got an update from some of you and I am dieing to know what you are doing now.


I graduated near the end of last year, went to work the next day as a Cost Engineer for Jacobs Engineering. It has been great, frustrating, rewarding, and demanding.

Just recently I went from managing cost control for one project to managing cost control for three projects and growing. That was a jump from managing $35 million to over $500 million worth of ConocoPhillips large cap construction projects. The last two weeks have been hell for me... but I keep grinding away in hopes of raises, promotions, and that glory which seems always just out of reach.

When I get home I just want to relax and unwind. My new DVR helps with the unwinding part, now I am able to watch shows that I never had to chance to watch. Danyale and I try to play WoW on our free weekends, but family and house hunting keeps interfering with that.

Hey Cy,

I noticed you and/or Danyale in-game the other day, cycling your characters. Looking forward to seeing a little more of you guys sometime soon!

Next month, my little girl turns THREE! I can't believe that much time has passed since I drove my wife to the hospital on that dark and chilly morning. I hope the remaining 14-15 years with her at home don't go as quickly but we'll just have to make the most of them, won't we?

I'm back in school, working on a Masters in Technology Systems (concentration on Information Security). I still work for Fuji and have no desire to leave; I'm simply taking advantage of their tuition reimbursement offer (finally) and making sure I'm better prepared if any market shudders affect the medical IT world. I have a couple of ideas I'd like to explore a little more down the road but as of now they're just that, ideas. The entire degree is delivered via their Distance Learning program and all of my classes (two this semester) are and will be completed online. It's definitely a different experience but so far a good one.

As I said, I'm still with Fuji. Five years is my personal record for working with one company and I have no plans to make any changes in that area. I changed roles a couple years ago already, moving away from Project Management and into System Administration Training. I travel to customer sites (very occassionally) and to a small number of large cities to deliver education to groups of customers. The training I provide gets them up to speed in understanding the underlying technology of our system, how it works together, troubleshooting and day-to-day maintenance. I enjoy training a lot more than I even thought I would. It's very challenging; when teaching a group like this, I have to always be 'on' and ready for basically any question - at the end of an eight hour class, I'm exhausted. But to watch someone 'get it' all of a sudden is pretty cool.

Also, I manage the fleet of laptops we use in training. In our Regional classes each student has a laptop in front of them with VMware running a full and complete installation of our product, making our classes very hands-on. I make sure the VMware session is installed and running correctly and that the laptop is imaged appropriately. This part can get a little old after a while but it is pretty cool to look across my office and see shelves filled with twenty-four IBM ThinkPad T41s networked and running making their switch go blinky-blinky-blinky.

Well, it looks like I got to rambling here but thanks for posting this Cy - it's always good to reconnect with folks here every once in a while.

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Liro
"The english language is not a wedding gown, it doesn't get better the more lace you add. It is instead a thong. Less is more." From /.
I need to remind myself of this regularly.

I think everyone knows that I'm kicking it in Japan. As is also obvious from my recent activity levels, I have lots of free time. Teaching English is not particularly glamorous, and there are some times where I struggle to make 40 minutes of conversation with middle-aged women who speak elementary English, but funny moments with the kids I teach and the many rewarding and interesting conversations I have with some of my more advanced students more than make up for it. I need to fix my sleep schedule, since I work from 1PM at the earliest to 9:40 at the latest I've been on something like 3-11AM for sleep, and I'm tired all the time. I really like the town, though, and I find that with a little language ability it's easy to make Japanese friends of all ages, and that gives me a lot of opportunities to experience the culture, from dancing festivals and temple visits to barbecues and rafting.
At the moment, I'd like to work in Japan permanently, although I'm not sure if teaching English forever is the right way. I'll probably go back to grad school after teaching here for another year or two, and I have an obligation to work for the U.S. government for a few months since I received a scholarship. Gotta figure out how to do that too. I'd love to do something creative, like writing stories or manga, or some kind of video work, but I don't have any of the applicable skills, so it's just a thought at the moment.
Nice to hear about what you guys are up to, I have to respect all you people with real jobs and wives and stuff like that I guess I have a Japanese girlfriend who is 7 years older than me, still trying to figure out if that's good or bad.

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65 min: Fastest Accepted Member in Avian History (as far as I'm aware)
ARCHITECH (Peace to GG)

Great to hear from all you guys... I've been wondering how your job was going Cyrus.

I'll give my update.

First of all, I am going to be a FATHER! I have been married for a year and have 2 wonderful step-boys, so I was already a father in a sense... but now I'm REALLY going to be a father... my wife is 3 months pregnant. Very excited about that. Don't know if it's a girl or a boy for another 4 weeks... there's pressure for a girl but we don't really care what it is.

Did a lot of traveling this summer, taking the boys to the beach and to Ohio (anyone ever heard of Zanesville? Crazy name... boring town... my mom grew up there) for a family reunion. We also went up to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I was born, raised, and colleged for a friend's wedding. Good times.

Work is going relatively well. I am a software engineer for a small company called Catalyst Technologies. We write quality assurance reporting software for health plans. The long and the short of it is that plans report their performance on certain tests, immunizations, etc. to a national association, which then publishes the numbers. Our software takes giant amounts of customer health data and calculates said numbers, as well as providing various other tools for analysis. The best thing about it is that the specifications for what plans have to report changes every year... that means we get to bill them for the software every year, and since I wrote the software... I feel pretty secure.

With that said, I really have nowhere to go in the company, and some of the politics (and politicians) are getting really frustrating so I am not sure how long I will be there... at least 1 more year but beyond that I am not sure. I joined a small company so that I could avoid the politics of a that usually come with a large corporation, and well, I'm now certain that it is unavoidable in any business setting. Ultimately, I would like to do my own consulting work and I am beginning to take steps to make that a realistic goal.

OK, back to work

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TheMole
Section 5
Section 5
Section 5
Now Playing: WoW
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Wow, this was a great idea. It's been soo long since we shared about ourselves and got to learn about each other.

Congrats on how good things are going Cyrus.

I've been taking the last year off from the Corporate world and driving limo's. It's been fun, and the money's better, but the lack of benefits is killing me. Especially with the new baby (more on that later). I mostly drive corporate mucky-mucks, and millionaires here in "The O.C.", but every once in a while I get to drive stars and athletes. (finally got to drive Rodman the other day. Pretty cool, but doesn't tip)

I now have a 7 week old son, but I am getting a divorce, so it's very bittersweet. For the most part it's pretty civil, but sometimes she gets in a mood and throws around a few threats. Fortunately she doesn't really have the leverage to keep me from seeing my son, so I'm not too concerned.

My brother, whom some of you may remember as Raqlin D'Redd, moved to Colorado a few months ago, and my Mom is following the end of this month. Which will leave me with very little family nearby. Which I really don't care much about, except for the fact that I will really miss my Bro.

Mole, Congrats on the coming package. It makes life worth living.

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"Loose with Dignity"
Robert
Second President, Avian Gamers

DDO - Cannith - AlistairItor - Rogue/Ranger (5/3) - Main
DDO - Cannith - Guijanitor - Paladin/Rogue (4/1)
DDO - Cannith - RicochetItor - Rogue (5)

My life's been pretty uneventful, but that's how I like it. A low level of shock and awe can be a good thing.

After finally being fed up with working for state gov't, I left my last job of 5 years back in February. I just couldn't take the mediocrity and petty politics of it any longer. So I decided I was due a long vacation. I took a few months off doing absolutely nothing and it was good. I started completing some IT industry certifications to make myself more marketable when I decided to return to the job market. And in the down time, I did some consulting work for Dell and HP on some datacenter projects to pay the bills. Nothing like a 2-3 day work week.

I recently took an offer with a large law firm with offices all over the US. I'll be handling the firms IT for their Columbus, Cincinnati, and Toledo offices. I've always enjoyed being the all encompassing IT guy, from desktops to servers. I like the diversity in day to day activities and working with people face to face and not over a phone or email. I've been on a 30 day contract which has been mostly travel to the home office for trainging and a "Getting to know me" period. I'm to have an offer for permanent employment tomorrow, so we'll see what kind of dollar figures they throw at me. I hope it works out as I'm really enjoying working here. A law firm environment is truly unique, that's for sure. The downside it's my main office is downtown. I don't mind working downtown again except for the bums and the parking. The firm pays for parking in the buildings garage, but I drive a lifted F150, and parking garages aren't really kind to me. So I get to pay $100 a month for the ability to park in a flat lot near the building. Which means I'm now in the market for a 2nd car to tool around town and the state for office visits.

Other than that I've just been socializing, gaming, and enjoying life.

I just moved to the Seattle, WA area (the east-side). I'm doing a 10-month program at a school that teaches tracking, awareness, naturalism, mentoring, bird language, and survival (among many other things) - learning all of the above. I just moved into my new place, which kicks ass (and as of today, has the fast internets). I can walk out my front door and hear the coyotes howl. And then I can walk to the end of my driveway and across the street, and I'm in town.

Succinct.

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:: Orbital :: Section Three ::

Official Avian Mascot - Sock Puppet
Board of Directors - Ex-Chairman

Well, nothing too fancy going on for me. I am in the US Army and have been for 2 and a half yrs, I am stationed in Korea for 2 years now. I had my first child (boy) back in Dec 05. My wife started going into Labor around 11pm and the hospital where I am is not a great one so we all got MEDEVAC'd by blackhawk to a better facility at 330am.
I am supposed to work on Chinooks; the helicopter that looks like a flying bus with 2 big horizontal heads, but I have been shoved into the brigade mailroom for over a year now handling about 1020 peoples mail. Every now and then I touch a helicopter.
The Latest exciting thing was I went to Japan for 5 days over Labor day, Sake is good, just dont mix with tequila. I did that after the trip. I didnt see too much in Japan as it was more a family vist to see my mother-in-law. I couldnt even tell you where I went, I know I went to Tokyo for awhile beyond that I couldnt say or spell where I was.

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Former Section 7 Director

Welcome to Washington (I am from the desert over the mountains )

As for what I am doing, not much has changed for me, just working and living trying to keep up on bills until Tax time when I should be able to pay a car off and start thinking about buying a house.

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Section 6

I like this idea and found the reading very interesting. There's a lot of names I don't really recognize, but that's fine too. Nice to meet you all . Well I'm still here in sunny Iraq (pun?) and the weather is finally turning pleasant. I mean it isn't 100° by 8 am anymore. It's actually beautiful now. I have my 'net connection in my room too which allows me to play again. That's really sweet, but I had to buy 2 access accounts to allow me enough bandwidth to play. lol So if I get disconnected suddenly it could be that I reached my 1g download / week limit.
hmmm Next month I'll be traveling to eastern europe. It's a region I have always wanted to visit. Perhaps because while I was growing up the "Cold War" forbade it and I am attracted to the forbidden I won't be able to see as much as I wish, 2 weeks aren't nearly enough for that, but I'll have a good "taste" of Romania and the Ukraine. Any players from this area?
I read about you young parents wistfully. My only child, Jenifer, has grown up and moved away. She's doing very well though, so my pride for her tempers my sense of loss. I hope that I can travel back to the states on my next vacation to visit her. (I would go this time, but for tax purposes I'm avoiding a visit home)
hmmmm I sure can talk a lot lol
Have fun everyone

wow, lot's of stuff to read there guys! It's nice hearing what others are doing on the real side. I'll keep relatively short.

After a 9 Year stint in college and various jobs, I'm finally settled down in my second year of teaching. Last year I worked with kids in the computer lab with technology, now I'm doing beginning instrumental music and musical theatre ( Yes, I technically have a Music Degree ).

It's nice to hear about the kids out there, my son turned 4 in March. He's really cool, and already shows promise in the music and technology fields!
I finally got married last November, so coming up on an official 1-year anniversary (yes, she's the mother of my boy, and yes I guess I had commitment issues.... ), also got the house, pool, dog, etc...
I guess I'm living the American Life! That's me...

Take Care all...

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The Cord
Occasional Caretaker of the Horde Maelstrom Guild
Ex-Section 3 Director