The Day I Had My 4th Interview....and Scheduled my 5th one...

I went in for the 4th interview today at Olivieri. This time it was the HR interview. So it was a lot of Give me an example of this, or what would you do in this situation. Standard stuff and I did ok, not great, but good enough I'm sure. then I went in to talk to the director of finance again, and chatted with him briefly. He assured me that I was the top candidate (which I'm betting I'm the only one), and that unless the HR person thought I was bipolar, everything is a go....BUT, he asked me to come in again on Thursday for another interview with the VP of Marketing, and the VP of sales. It's more of a meet and greet, but he wants their input as well. So, I'll go in Thursday, do what I have to do, and that should be it. I should be working by the end of the month. This is the most work I've ever had to do for a job, and it's only contract! Let's hope they pay well.

The weekend was busy. On Friday I met up with Ben and Gabe and we went to go watch Thank You for Smoking. The movie is hilarious, and very entertaining. Definitely worth checking out if you're looking for smart comedy. Then we went back to Ben's house and had a game of Catan, which I managed to win, though it was much closer than I had initially thought.

Saturday is definitely an interesting story. Salazar asked me if I wanted to go out with him, Aura, and Hung to Dave and Busters. D&B is pretty expensive in my opinion and usally only good for dates and when relatives are in town, but since I wasn't driving, I was willing to tag along. We were there for all of 15 minutes before they realized that it's just an oversized and overpriced Chuck E. Cheese's. We headed over to the AMC, saw that there was nothing worth watching, and decided to go and shoot some pool. This is where things start getting fuzzy. On the way to the poolhall, we pass by Woodbine Racetrack. Someone asked if they had a casino, then someone (might have been me) said they only have slots, then someone said they had never been to the casino's in Niagara, and then someone said let's go to Niagara, and then somehow we wound up going to Niagara. It was a weird 2 minutes. An hour later we wind up at Fallsview, where we do a little gambling (I lost $10), took a look over the falls, and stuffed ourselves at the Casino Buffet (gotta make that $10 back somehow). We didn't get home until 3:30 am.

Sunday. Didn't wake up in time to go to Easter Mass. Didn't wake up in time to go work out. Didn't have time to eat breakfast. Didn't have time to even make to Ben's house for the first 2 games of Poker. by the time I woke up and got to Ben's place, it was already 6. I wasn't the only one that was late though, and everyone was up for another game. So, we had a 10 player tournament, that didn't see too many surprises. Everything seemed to work out in favour of the odds, which is good for me, cause I'm generally an odds man, and hate losing by sheer luck. In the end, I played smart, and ended up winning. Makes up for the $10 I lost at Niagara, and paid for dinner that night.

As for now, with a job almost in hand, I'm going to do my taxes, and start studying for CSC test #2. how exciting.....

The Day I Got A....4th Interview?

Honestly, I don't know what's going on with this damn company. The director of finance leaves messages in my voicemail and email asking me to call them back to set up a time to meet with HR. So, I figure that means that I've got the job, and I've got to come in to sign the contract and negotiate my salary. And then he sends me another email asking me to call him so that he can walk me through the interview with HR. So, I call him back and apparently I have to interview with HR on Monday. For what? I have no idea. what could they possibly ask me that wasn't asked in the first 3 interviews? Shouldn't HR be the first interview? Anyways, I have no idea what's going on with these guys. Do I even want this job anymore? Well, unfortunately, I've been told that beggers can't be choosers.....

The Day I Cancelled an Interview

Am I such a hot commodity, that I can start turning down interviews? Sadly no. However I did decide to skip the interview I had today because it just wasn't appealing to me. It was a 3-month mat-leave IT contract, that pays $25/hour, and would start Monday. The role is to track all hardware and software licences within infrastructure through a large Excel Macro spreadsheet and some data extraction from Access. You can see why I don't want the job. It has nothing to do with my chosen field. So, other than the pay, and the location of the job, I decided to cancel the interview. Perhaps it's absurd and optimistic, but I think I can do better.

On a side note: I just want to wish Happy Birthday to my sister Candice, and my UW buds Brent, Ken, and Carolyn. Have a good one everyone!

The Day I Wrote the First CSC Exam

Well, I can't say it went as well as I had hoped. After the first 40 or so questions I was flying. Felt pretty good about the questions I answered and the ones I skipped, I had narrowed down to 2 choices. But then as I got to around th 70th question I realized that I only had about 20 minutes left!!! Talk about poor time management. So, unfortunately for the last 30 questions I skimmed the through the question barely reading it, and chose the quickest answer that I could come up with. then by the time I actually finished the last question, I only had 3 minutes for the ones I skipped! So, I had to randomly start filling in any circles I left blank. So instead of being 50/50 on those questions, it became a 1 in 4 chance that I'd get it right. I went about it entirely wrong. So, it wasn't a hard exam in terms of content, but to do 100 questions in 120 minutes was a challenge that I hadn't expected. All in all, I'll probably pass (I hope), and I'll be better prepared for the second one.

On to new business. Now that the CSC is done with for the time being, I have a couple of interviews lined up. Today (Thursday) I have my second interview with olivieri foods for the Financial Analyst position. Then on Friday I have an interview with Lafarge for some Application support job. I'm also supposed to hear about an interview with Teknion for a Financial Analyst position, so I should follow up on that. Out of the 3, Teknion is the best job, cause it's an FA position with a salary of 45-50K a year. Second choice is Olivieri cause it's an FA position, but only pays about 40K a year. Third would be Lafarge, cause even though it's 52K a year, it's programming, and that's not really the direction I want to be headed. The unfortunate part is that with Lafarge, if I do well in the interview, they'll hire me on the spot on Friday so that I can start on Monday. So, I might try to push Olivieri to make an offer quickly. not that I'll even get the Lafarge job, cause it's some serious programming, and I haven't done that shit in a while. But the way he was talking, they sounded desperate, and he seems to think I'll be able to do it. Anyways, I'll do the interviews first and take it from there.

After my exam I went out to dinner with Jeff and Hien for some wings and beer. Then we went to watch Inside Man at Galaxy. The movie wasn't bad, a bit anti-climatic, but overall I like Spike Lee's movies, and though this one had a little less politics in it, this is more of a suspense type film, and it did it's job.

If only I had more time...

The Day I Posted at 01:02:03 04.05.06

I am currently in DC library here in waterloo with about a couple of hundred students. What other University do you know of has hundreds of students studying in the library at 1 am in the morning on the last day of school? I myself will probably be here until 6 or so in the morning before I head back to Jeff's for my 4-6 hours of sleep. I'm not sure if I'll have enough time to cover all the material before my exam, but I'll try my best.

I can't wait until this damn exam is over with. Then I can go out, watch a movie, grab a beer, and just hang out. It's going to be sweet!

Of course I have to go to Hamilton for my interview, but then after that I'll be able to go out again. I also got a call for another job interview for Lafarge. I don't know what kind of position they would have to offer me, but I guess I'll find out when I call them back. They're a big enough company though, so let's hope they pay big bucks!

Anyways, I'd better get back to studying. I just wanted to make this post at 1:02:03 am on April 5, 2006 cause it probably doesn't happen very often.

The Day I Came Back to Waterloo

So I'm back in Waterloo for two reasons.

a) I came to check out Jeff's art show, and
b) I came to study for my exam on Wednesday

After studying here in the library for the past few hours, I've come to a conclusion on a working hypothesis that I've had over the years.

Before I get into my hypothesis, let me first present a little of the background story. During my first year of University, I remember that there were almost no hot girls here. Even during frosh week, the historic week of hooking up, I only picked up one girl, and I didn't even bother calling her. However, as as the years went by my bretheren and I steadily saw an increase in the amount of attractive females around. What was going on? was Waterloo finally coming around?

And thus came about my hyposthesis. I hypothesized that there were two reasons for this new found plethera of fine females. Either a) More hot girls were enrolling, or b) being in Waterloo so long had lowered our standards to the point where even decent looking girls seemed hot.

Now that I've returned to waterloo after being back in toronto, I've now come to the conclusion it is indeed b) our standards had just dropped. After moving back to mississauga and working out in Toronto I've once again realized what it's like to actually be around attractive girls. With new found eyes it's painfully true that a) it's a complete sausage fest here and b) out of the 20% female population, only 2% of them might actually be attractive.

My recommendation: don't go to Waterloo! or if you must, go to waterloo but make regular visits back to Toronto or other Universities to keep your standards high. you'll thank me once you've graduated.