Rick Maher’s Professional Notes

Shake shake shake…

Oh. Sorry, I didn’t see you there. I was just …um… shaking up my life I guess… er… yeah.

Wednesday afternoon I woke up on a plane landing in Charlotte. Amid all the clatter about staying seated, the grabbing of luggage, and the filing off of the plane, I thought to myself, “What am I doing in Charlotte??”

The answer came to me a few minutes later as I lifted my new suitcase from the luggage carousel, “I’m shaking… shaking up my life a little”

Roughly three months ago I was starting school again. As I have done for the last 15 years. But this year it was different. This year was the last time, and I could smell it. What I definitely couldn’t smell was visiting two states I had never been to in my life before the winter break. Sure I wanted it, and planned to hit the job market scene hard, but for some reason I had very little confidence.

I thought I was bound to be a buyer for Honeywell.

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For better or worse, I received my first full time job offer yesterday.

I more or less expected this offer after my second round interview. What I didn’t expect was the quality of the offer. Actually, as I was telling my mom, I wish the offer wasn’t as good as it is. You see, I was only mildly interested in the position to begin with and was absolutely not interested in the geographic locations of this company.

It’s too bad I still haven’t heard from BigBlue who at this point is my “top choice,” but it sure is nice to see that someone wants me. Hopefully they will be one of a number.

My fortune cookie today told me “Happiness can be achieved by using your patience.”

I’m off to eat some lucky charms. Thanks for reading.

Rewarding Continuous Improvement Internship vs Fun Easy and Interesting Web Developer Position
Starring Rick Maher in a Dilemma Role
With a good half dozen interviews behind me and a good half dozen more (at least) coming up regarding job positions for post graduation in May I am suddenly being confronted with a more immediate job decision.

I have been offered an internship position with Goodrich (www.goodrich.com) where I would work as a Continuous Improvement Leader. Basically this position would focus on what I learned I loved last summer in my internship with Honeywell (www.honeywell.com), six sigma, lean enterprise, Toyota production system, 5s, kaizen, etc.

Sounds great right? They even pay pretty decently.

Unfortunately (who didn’t see this sentence coming?), leaving my current position as the Web Minister Developer is not an easy decision to act upon.
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Head on over to http://asasu.net/usg/ to view the nearly completed website of the Undergraduate Student Government. The USG is the undergraduate arm of the Associated Students of Arizona State University (ASASU).

I expect the USG site to be the most comprehensive and largest of the three branches (GPSA and PAB being the other two).

It is being powered by a number of MovableType “blogs” working more as a content managment system than an actual blog. I pulled inspiration for this design/layout from a number of sources including http://simplebits.com, http://mezzoblue.com, and even the ASASU page created by Omar in the SDMU over the summer.

Check it out and let me know what you think.