Hey, so somehow I’ve had a lot more time on my hands recently, so decided to fix the issues I’ve been having with this site (database password got messed up – sorry, my bad). Also took the opportunity to upgrade to WordPress 3.3.1 – pretty! Plan to post a bit more often, but we’ll see [...]

Every several weeks for the last few months, we’ve had at work a personal trainer guy come in and give talks on various health-related topics. The last one he did was on posture. My posture isn’t bad, but I’m conscientious of it and think it could be improved (especially since I sit at a desk all day), so I attended.

I’m very good at it, you see. Not so much necessarily procrastination per se, but at doing something and then getting onto a completely different track and basically forgetting about that other pot cooking on the fire until it goes and burns down so low that its contents congeals, evolves a new life of its own, pulls itself from the pot and leaves to start a new exciting life, far away from he who created it - me, you see. I’m that person leaving stuff for so long that it evolves legs and creeps away.

So, about four weeks after I started looking for work, I accepted a job offer from Dealer.com, a high tech software company in downtown Burlington, Vermont. I will be a Java Developer there, where I’ll get a chance to work with cutting-edge Java technologies, which is right where I want to be professionally.

I just had my second Amazon interview today. It went very well, I think, based on everything from what was said, to the tone, to, well, everything. I’m really keeping my fingers crossed here! It could be a very cool thing to live and work in Seattle for a while, especially for such a well-known powerhouse as Amazon.

So I just got back from Boston yesterday. I spent a day down there doing job interviews. I was supposed to do only one, but as it so happens I had three (I had received two interesting proposals from recruiters while driving down there - go figure).

Today I had my first technical interview with Amazon.com. I think it went pretty well, although I haven’t heard back from the guy yet so I can’t say for sure.

As the subject line suggests, I passed the Basic Rider course I’ve been taking this weekend, so I now have a full endorsement from Vermont to drive motorcycles. Cool! Now all I need is a motorcycle. Vermont for the last three weeks, and perhaps longer, has been very wet.

Today I had my first real day of learning to ride a motorcycle. I signed up for this Basic Rider Course about half a year ago (they’re very popular, you need to sign up way in advance to get a slot in one of these courses). It’s a two-and-a-half day course, running Friday evening, and all day Saturday and Sunday.

So, I haven’t posted in a really long time, and to anyone who actually follows my posts, I apologize. No real excuse, except that I was getting burned out doing stuff in the Peace Corps office, and I tried to spend as little time there as possible. Mostly anytime I went there, I tried to get in and get out as quickly as I could, which left little time for posts about my goings on, which were by far and away mundane and routine towards the end of my service.

This one’s going to be short and sweet… I think, and sort of. Sweet because it’s short, not because of what happened. Because what happened was decidedly not sweet.

So, this is part three of the three part series about Peace Corps Mail Run in January 2008. Tuesday, Day 5: Tendaba to Fajara Today, woke up in Tendaba all ready for the last real day of MR. It’s the last real day of MR because tonight we’ll be back in Kombo, and I’ll probably be crashing at the Stodge, our capital-region transit house.

So, tomorrow we’re heading back up to Dakar, Senegal, to take part in WAIST, the West African Invitational Softball Tournament! Early early tomorrow morning, I’ll be leaving town with some of my PC cohorts to catch the ferry across to the north bank, then up to the border on a gele, bounce into Senegal, and then spend the next six hours cramped into a sept-place. And then I’ll get to argue with the taxi driver that’s supposed to bring us to the club we’re meeting at in Dakar in Wolof about how he hasn’t brought us to the right place, and no we’re not going to pay him more to bring us to the place we originally agreed on. sigh it is not easy.