Totally uncalled for.

Okay. Here it is- my story of employment. About 3 billion years late in coming, I know...

I don't want to rehash anything much about the whole Agape thing, because really I can't say much and its all behind me now. But it is important to appreciate the full scope of the following stories impact that I simply remind you that I was pretty miserable for a bit after I left. Agape and its people mean alot to me. And so even though I decided to "make the best of it" and I trusted God would eventually birth something from this, I had absolutely no suggestions for him. I had screwed things up pretty badly.

To compensate academically, my parents and I eventually worked out a more aggressive education plan at home. This will probably prove to be another wondrous work of Gods will; I ended up getting more organized and completing school faster as a result of leaving one. Odd.

While doing school on a Tuesday, I got a call. I picked it up and my friend Tim C. who used to go to my church was on the other line. I talked to him for a bit asking him all sorts of questions- he had just got back from Peru and was engaged, so I had a few for him) but eventually he told me "Hey, Zeke- actually, thats not the reason I called you. You remember my brother, Mike?"

I told him of course I did. I had met him on occasion and thought he was cool, but I had never really been friends or known him very well. Tim continued,

"Well, he works for a company, [AwesomeCo]- not sure if you have heard of it- doing I.T. stuff there, and there is an opening in the company right now. He thought of you and asked me if I could touch base and see if you were interested. It pays around such and such a year and is a full time job. Its in Salem. Are you interested?"

I asked him a few more questions, but of course I conceded that I was indeed interested. He gave me his brother's email address and I dropped him a line with my resume attached.

Mikes reply was short:

Sounds good man, when can you come in for an Interview? Are you free tomorrow?

Let me know. What are you looking for as far as salary is concerned?

I was dumbfounded. I talked to my parents, and then got back to Mike and set a time and day for the interview. My dad was a bit skeptical at first- he is, wisely, concerned that about me being able to finish my education. But this job's hours were 2nd shift- 3pm to 11pm- which is ideal.

After my dad was on board, which didn't take to long, he suggested that I try to make the best impression possible. We literally went to JC Penny and invested in some nice clothes, including a suit jacket and a TIE. Yeah. It was pretty funny. For the first half of the shopping trip, I just couldn't take it. It was too foreign to me- I am a WalMart-by-choice shopper. I bawk at even the most severe of sales at JC Penny's. But in the end, my dad knew it was important and he was fronting the cost. It took me awhile to get over that and the general sticker shock and actually look for something. Once we did, it still took a bit to decide what I wanted. We were looking at ties for maybe 10 minutes, having a conversation between us and the sales guy that went something like this:

Dad: "But now does this color go with that shade of blue? It doesn't clash with this, does it?"
Me: "I like this cause it really makes the colors pop. But its so clear, it almost makes the outfit look top heavy..."

Then we looked at each other and gave out a nervous laugh before I finally yelled "What are we DOING??" It was a strange but hilarious moment.

I went to the job interview and learned more. The people there were really nice and I got to know a bit more about the company and what I would do. I went in with the mentality that I had to fight to convince them of my technical ability. We ended up, however, not focusing on that very much. They seemed confident in that (for what reason I do not know) and instead talked more about the hours, what I wanted out of this job and so forth. It was good; I informed them that 3 to 11 was fine, (ideal, actually) and let them know that I was interested in this job because it would be a steady income but still give me the opportunity to learn some new things.

Days passed and I came in for another interview. Long story short, they hired me.

Now sit back and look upon this for a second- God took me out from some amazing people for awhile to deal with some things. But it left a void of fellowship and other things. Not only did he fill it, he gave me a job that makes me more money a month then I did on my own self employment all of last year. There is no way I can boast in this. I didn't even look for it. It came to me. And the people here are really great, too. Its amazing. This blessing was totally uncalled for.

So that is that. I have a full time job. But what exactly do I do you ask? The official job title is Batch Production Controller. But what does that mean?

Well, to understand this in context you have to realize what [AwesomeCo] does. [AwesomeCo] is a huge company that was actually started by [Awesome Oil Co] during a slump in the oil market, but now it has grown into a company that manages 15 TRILLION dollars of assets. Our division is a big part of that.

We're called [AwesomeCo] finance and we are an acquisition. Formally called [JustAsAwesomerCo], the founders of this company (most of who are still working here) found a great niche market- the overnight accounting for the stock market, basically. Every night, companies drop files on our servers that have all their trading information for the day. Every night, we run it through our systems- over 20 top of the line Power Edge servers and a Tandem mainframe- and spit it back out to them before the market opens so that they can trade on it. Over 90% of the securities exchange market goes through us. We are a relatively little company with a huge impact- if we went down, so would the market the next day. Because of that we have totally redundant servers in a different part of New Hampshire that will take over in the event this one goes down- complete with battery and generator backup.

Because it is imperative that this data get out every morning, there is a night shift that exists to babysit the automated system. I am training with them right now- every night, they monitor the system and check everything. We actually have a checklist where we go down a list of commands that are supposed to be run and make sure they were. If any of them are held up, we find out why. Sometimes its because the client hasn't sent us their data. Sometimes its a server glitch. Whatever it is, if it goes wrong, we have to get on the phone and get it resolved.

Right now, the department I am in supports three or so different applications. Their is the main one I told you about that does the data for most of the market, another one that is just for broker/dealers, and a brand new one which has come about because of some new regulations for the industry. The company has another program they are rolling out soon that has to get approved by all the regulating bodies. Once thats done, I'll move from the night shift to my 3 to 11 position. Right now, I'm on the 10pm to 6am shift. I'm cross training on backups and some other stuff. After a week, I'll move to the 1am to 9am position and train there. By the years end, the new program should be rolled out hopefully, and I will head up supporting it on my own shift. I'm pretty excited. Its cool stuff.

The greatest thing about it here is the environment. Everyone has been really nice and its pretty laid back. They have catered food every day for the people on the more sane shifts, and because I'm working after that they slip an extra 8 dollars a day in the salary for meals. They also have those awesome little individual serving coffee machines and a huge plethora of roasts to choose from- including such amazing flavors as blueberry and my new personal favorite of the season, pumpkin spice.

You do work here, but there is alot of in-between time when your waiting for files or stuff just isn't breaking and there isn't much to do, and thats when you get to utilize the broadband and blazing fast computers. Intel and I have had our differences in the past, but I am happy with my Pentium 4 hyperthreading system with two- count 'em, two! gigabytes of memory.

There is quite a bit more about my job that I'm sure I've left unanswered. But you get the gist. I waited for a bit to post this anyway, because I wanted to get a good feeling for what I'll be doing, but I figured if I didn't post it soon it would be pointless. If you guys have any questions though, feel free to ask them in the comments. I'll probably blog more about work in the near future.

Till next time everyone!

Edit:

Self-censored content:
My apologies to my new employer [AwesomeCo], who is amazing. Three days after I posted this, they called me because their web-crawlers flagged it for getting to close to revealing operational stuff and the company by name. They were really nice about it and simply let me know what I needed to change. All is well that ends as such.

---Z