Not much going on

Well this week is almost over. Not much to write about so far. I have been training more. But at least this week they have started letting me do things, not just watch. I have next Monday off for Labor day, then starting that week the other shifts, 1st and 2nd, are starting 4 10's. So I will be getting a couple of Fridays off before moving to the 3rd shift. I am getting told that once on 3rd, I will have one more week of job shadowing, then I get tossed in the pool to play. :) I am thinking that that week will be spent getting use to the time change more than anything.

The traffic going to and from work is starting to get old. My commute is about 15 miles each way, but it can take anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes in the morning. On the way home, it has taken me 80 minutes one day. This will be one thing that I will not miss when working 3rd shift. Not much traffic at 9pm.

I have been noticing something interesting about some drivers in TX, more specifically their cars. There are some drivers that are ether using there parking brake to slow and stop, or they have disables their brake light switch. I don't see any other way that you can slow a car to a complete stop quickly without doing ether of the two things listed. Neat way to avoid calling attention to your self if you blow past a cop and need to slow down. Maybe just all of the light bulbs are just burnt out. Ya right.

Banks and big buildings

So Dave Ramsey brought up the point that only banks could afford to build big buildings. I have noticed that all of the big buildings have ether a banks name or an insurance name on it. I have seen several buildings with Chases name on it. Guess who owns my mortgage. You guessed it, Chase. I am glad I am helping them buy buildings. Slave to the lender, yes I am. :(

But on a brighter note, I am off to get ice cream.

Week three

Getting a new job is fun.
Moving is fun, in a strange sort of fun way.
Getting a new job and moving at the same time is even more fun in a strange sort of way.

You have so much stuff to do, that you don’t really have time to have fun, but you are having fun not getting to having fun…

So today I got a big envelope with some mail from Vancouver. I also got a new debit card, a bunch of stuff on my car insurance, my life insurance, my dental insurance, stuff about my new 401k and my old 401k. I have mail all over the place.

My new debit card is because I somehow crack my card in half about every 6 to 9 months. It started to crack 3 days before I left to drive down here. Not so good timing. I have been babying it until I got the new one. I also have to learn a new PIN for it because my bank is not around here to get it re-PINed. I wish I could get a debit card made out of steel. It would be a little heavy, but I but it would last longer.

I then got all the stuff for transferring my auto insurance to TX. They messed the address up and they un-enrolled me from my automatic payment, which they said they would not do. Now I have to call them on Monday. On my life insurance, they changed the address to the house address that I am staying at. First, I never wanted them to touch the life insurance part, only the auto, and I told them to never send any thing to the house address, only the mail box that I am renting. I fear that they have somehow messed up my home owners insurance as well. At lest the dental insurance stuff is only the new card and I don’t have to do anything with it.

I also got about a pound of info from both my Nautilus 401k and stuff to look at about my new 401k. I really wish I could trust the financial adviser guys out there so that I did not have to spend a bunch of time looking this stuff over. I have contacted one of the people that Dave Ramsey recommended, but I still am leery of people in this profession. It also does not help that some people have the “southern hospitality” turned on a little too thick for a cynic like me. It is only my retirement at stake!

Other fun things to do when you move, get your new license and license plates. Well maybe if they had the DMV and all the other places they make you go to open on the weekend! I am going to be lucky if I get this done this year, with all the stuff they make you do.

While I am close to the subject of cars, I am going to give you a sneak peek at my observations of Texan drivers. I will bore you with a full post about this some other time, but for now I can sum them up with this: bi-polar lemmings!

And the best part about moving, getting to miss my nieces 3rd birthday. Getting to miss all my friends. Getting to miss all my family.

Ya moving is fun…

Rain

So it has been raining for the last couple of days in San Antonio. I saw several people that I work with have the rain radar loop on one of there monitors. I asked one of them why he was watching it, and his answer was that he never gets to see rain. It always falls while he is at work (no windows) or at home while he is sleeping. He enjoys seeing rain because they don't get it that often.

Now according to Wikipedia, San Antonio gets about the same amount of rain fall per year as the Portland area. 30.3" vs. 36.3". They just get it dumped on them, buckets full at a time. I graphed it and it is just a spread out as Portland, just different times of the year.

Church shopping

On Saturday evening I went to the Bandera Road Community Church. It is a bit on the large side. But like every church I have been to so far in San Antonio, the only people that have said hello to me have been the greeters as they hand me the bulletin. Overall I liked the service. There was a good message, and I just got an overall good feeling about the place. So when the service let out, there was somewhat of a crowd of people leaving, so I just stayed put in my seat. I was sitting in an area that allowed for me to see many of the people, and they could all see me, but still no one came over to introduce them self. Once the majority of the crowd had left the sanctuary, I got up and went out in to the foyer. I wandered around for a few minutes and still no one talked to me. So I went out to my car and went home.

This morning, I went to The Church at Stone Oak. This is a church that Paul, the guy that was the relocater at my new job, goes to. I got there just a few minutes early. The place is not that big. A little smaller than Liberty. I picked a seat in the back, and almost immediately a guy came up and introduced him self. We talked for a few minutes. Then another person came over and introduced him self. All in all about 6 guys introduced them self to me before the service even began. The service was good. The church has an intern for the summer and it was his first time preaching in front of the church. He did a great job. After the service I went to say hi to Paul (he plays the bass in the band) and he introduced me to a few other people and then asked if I would like to go to lunch.

We went to lunch and the lead pastor happened to go to the same restaurant. While he was waiting for his food he sat with us and talked. Turns out that about half of the staff and congregation is from the Northwest. No good reason why, it is just the way things have gone for them. I think they may be adding another to their list. The only issue is they only have one service right now at 10am. This may be tough to do once I go on to the 3rd shift. But I think for now I will see how things go.

I was hoping to find a church with a group of people my age. This place has a lot of younger married with kids. The church definitely has something happening in it. I think I will stick around a bit and see what I can do to help.

Test from my phone

The best carrot cake in the world. He even has a smile on his face.

First strange bug in Texas

Here is the first strange bug I have seen in Texas. He was just out for a walk across the wall.

It is not even that strange. Come on Texas, show me what you got. Actual don't.

Finding a church

So I have been looking for a church since I found a place to stay in San Antonio. I was not having much luck and have been asking people for suggestions, as I have never had to look for a church before.

Well I was on the phone talking with Jason about this as I was driving to dinner last week. Well as I was eating my dinner I watched a lady and what looked like her son pray over their food. I was thinking to my self that I can not remember seeing a single person pray over their food since I got in to this town. Maybe I should go ask them where they go to church.

After a couple txt's back and forth with Jason about what I just saw and was thinking, I had finished my dinner and had paid and was getting ready to get up and ask them when I looked and her son had left the table. I was thinking that this was going to make this whole thing even more uncomfortable with it only being her at the table. But I got up and went over there any way.

I apologized for interrupting her dinner and I explained that I had just moved to Texas from Washington and what I had seen and was wondering where she went to church. She told me that her husband was a pastor at a church on the east side of town. I got the name from her and then her son came back to the table. She told her son what I had just told her and he asked me where I was living. I told him and he said that if he lived on this side of town he would go to another church.

So I ended up with the name of two different churches that night and another example of how God speaks loud and clear when we listen.

I have gone to one of the churches and am still going to try the other one and a couple more to see what is around.

Here is a map of some of the churches I have went to and plan on going to.

Pictures from my drive to Texas

Here are some pictures from my drive to Texas. I sort of forgot to stop and take a bunch, but here are the ones that I did take.

http://picasaweb.google.com/whiteradam/DriveToTX

Here are a couple of the good ones.

Second week in San Antonio

Well I have been in San Antonio for 16 days now. So far I have not found the heat that big of a deal. The humidity on the other hand is gross. I am glad I am not in a place with real high humidity. It is the worst in the morning before it warms up (because 75 degrees at 7am is normal?!). Once it gets up to temp the relative humidity drops and it does not feel so bad.

I just finished the new employee orientation at my new job. They run it for a total of a full week. The first Monday, then once a month all the new hires go through a continuation of the orientation. I have never worked at a place that in your first week you would meet and talk with the CEO, the chairman of the board, and the two founders. That was just the beginning. You also get to meet many of the upper management. Now when I say you get the meet them, I don't just mean you get to shake there hand and they rush off to do something else, making you feel like you mean nothing to them. They actually have a conversation with you. All of them went over their allotted time on the training schedule. They honestly and truly wanted to spend time with you and get to know you and get you to know them and the company. It was very cool.

There were 50 other new hires in the orientation with me. They had us broken up in to 6 groups so we could get to know people a little better. I got to know my group pretty will. Throughout the week there were little competitions to earn points. In the end my group got second. The competitions meant nothing, they were just for fun. There is a lot of fun that goes on here. Don't get me wrong though, there is a lot of work that gets done too. The company would not be around otherwise.

Next week I start my actual job training. From what I can tell so far I will be shadowing other engineers for a while and working my way through a training checklist.

My commute to work is a little long. On a good day so far it takes me about 30 minutes. The worst day has been 50 minutes. I am taking the most direct route so far. I have been a little afraid to start finding some short cuts to get around, in fear that I will get lost or find out that they are long cuts.

So I got my cell phone bill today. I used 898 of my 900 minutes. Not bad. Take that overage charges! :)

898 normal minutes
748 IN minutes
448 weekend minutes
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2094 minutes talked last month! I spent almost a day and a half on the phone. This is about 100% more than I normally talk. All of this on top of 883 txt messages.

First post

OK, I was inspired today by Katie and her blog. I thought, this could save me a bunch of time not having to telling the same stories over and over again to different people when they ask what have been happening. So lets see how long I keep this up before I get bored with it and stop.