Under Construction

For the past couple weeks this is what our street has looked like. Each morning as we leave for work the road is blocked by backhoes and dump trucks. They are replacing the water main in the neighborhood and so are digging everything up. They leave their equipment pared in people's yards, tearing up all the grass. It is quite a mess. They have made it through phase one but I thing they have several more weeks of work to go. What fun.

Safflowers

A couple of weeks ago I saw these really neat flowers at the store. I have never seen anything quite like them before. I thought that they would open up more but they never did. It is just the orange/yellow tops sticking out of the green bulb.

This is what I have learned about this unique flower:

Carthamus tinctorius, one the oldest cultivated plants of record. Seeds have been found in pharaohs' tombs dating back at least to 2000 B.C. and safflower has been cultivated by the ancient Chinese as an oil crop and for medicinal use. In more recent centuries the flowers have been used for yellow, orange and red dyes as well as 'saffron-like' food additives. In the U.S. in the first half of the last century saffron oil was used as a high-quality paint medium. Today the oil is a readily-available cosmetic & food additive, including its use as a cooking and salad oil.

Overnight Adirondack

In anticipation of a long car ride this winter, we decided to take Sadie and Sylvester on a little trip. This was their first car ride lasting longer than 45 minutes. Friday after work we loaded up the car and headed east. We spent the night in Saratoga Springs. It was a somewhat stressful sleep because we were constantly worrying about the dogs barking when people walked down the hotel hall.

Saturday we headed on a scenic drive through Adirondack park. This is very different than state/national parks that I am used to in the west. Other than some pretty scenery and some trails or pull offs marked along the road, it was not that different than driving down a country road with towns all along the way (commercial). There were many, many lakes and the leaves are starting to change. So it was a very pretty drive.

Several times along the way we stopped to take pictures and let the dogs sniff things out. They did pretty well with the whole trip. Once and while they would get anxious and whine wanting to get out of the back of the car but most of the time they just rested.

Job Hunt Update (Otherwise known as WooHoo!)

Since May when I finished school, I have been posting and submitting resumes. During an average week I would apply to between 20-30 jobs. I have only heard back from 4 companies in all that time. One wanted me to complete an assessment test and send it back to them. Two just sent me emails saying no thank. And the last one HIRED ME!!!

On Monday I applied for a job with Sutherland Global Services. Tuesday of the same week I received a call from them and did a prescreening interview on the phone. I guess I passed the prescreening process because at the end they wanted to schedule an interview for Wednesday at 1:00pm. The interview was a two part process. The first part was an assessment test, which took me about an hour. The second part was the actual interview, during which I met with the 3 of the 4 department heads of the division I would be working for. The interview went very well. They said they had to contact HR but that I was at the top of their list. One hour after leaving I received a call from the HR department during which they wanted to schedule a time to meet so they could present a job offer to me. On Friday I went in for that appointment and accepted the job.

So here is a little bit about what the company and what I will be doing.

Sutherland Global Services Inc is a premier customer management company with 18 years of practitioner heritage in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). Sutherland helps Fortune 1000 companies' design, build and manage their customer management operations. Sutherland's customer management operations centers are located in the USA, Canada & India. Headquartered in Rochester, New York, Sutherland's global workforce includes over 10,000 employees.

I will be a Level 1 Help Desk Analyst for the Blackboard division. It will be helpful for me to explain what blackboard is and does.

Blackboard is a company that provides educational institutions with software and hardware that help teachers and student interact with each other better. Blackboard has outsourced their technical support to Sutherland Global Services.
That is where I come in. I will be one of the people the school technical administrators call when they have issues with Blackboard. From what I have learned so far I will be working in a group of 3-4 people and our group will have 70-100 Blackboard clients assigned to it. I start on August 21st.

Gaming Away

For a long time Caleb has been wanting to build his own computer. Finally he he researched everything, got some help from Ryan, and had the money saved up to do it. All the parts arrived and he was so excited. Ryan came over and they put it all together and then had to wait and wait and wait for everything to load. All went well. A couple of little fixes and it is working like a charm. Caleb is loving how much better the effects are on his game. Plus now my computer is upgraded with the old computer parts.

The Golf Pro

So I have decieded to take up a new hobby and by the title you can tell it is golf.
Today I purchased a complete set of Walter Hagen golf clubs. It just so happens that Walter Hagen is a Rochester native.

Me with my new clubs.

Al, the guy that helped me pick out the clubs, said "Now you know you can't play in flip flops."

I talked Camberly into going to the driving range with me. Here are some photos she took of me trying out my new clubs.

My great back swing.

My great follow through.

It's a good thing you can't see the ball in the pictures because it didn't always do what it was supposed to.

Letchworth State Park

Saturday we took a drive to Letchworth State Park, also know as "the Grand Canyon of the east." It is about an hour south of Rochester. Right when we drove in there was a pull over/overlook spot with a great view of the canyon. It was very vast (although not nearly as large as the actual Grand Canyon). The biggest difference was all the greenery. Here there are trees growing all up the walls and this gives it a very different look.

At one end of the park there are three waterfalls. We walked to each of them and had fun taking lots of pictures--trying out our camera and the "lessons" from the family reunion.

On our way home we stopped at a little pizzeria in one of the towns near the park. Next time though we will plan ahead better and pack a picnic lunch because the park has tons of different sites with picnic tables. It was a fun day, made all the better by the beautiful 70 degree weather.