I’m sitting now in one of the air-side terminals at McCarran International, waiting to catch the first leg of my flight home.  I still have about 3 hours until we take off.  I then have about a 3 hour layover at JFK, and will arrive back at good ol’ PIT around 9 in the AM.  Not exactly my idea of a party, but hey, when the tickets are free, a little layover/overnight action is no big deal.

The trip out here to Vegas was fun.  Many things went well, a couple of things did not.   One of those things that didn’t go well was my flight out, but you’ve already heard about that. The other thing that didn’t go well was that whole ‘Poker Playing’ part of the trip.  It’s not that I didn’t get enough time in at the tables.  No, no, dear reader, the problem was the results of my many hours at the felt.  There are plenty of reasons for my poor performance, but lets just say I made some mistakes here and there, and I also have a couple of crazy bad beat stories to add to my poker experiences.

Some of the neat things included getting some good food at various places, attending  KA last night, and today’s trip out to the Hoover Dam.  My original idea was to rent a Harley for the day (as there are 2 Harley rental places in Vegas) and ride around, with the dam being one of my two wheeled destinations.  The problem with this plan though was the excessive heat that’s been hitting the area, with temperatures today reaching 115 degrees or so.  I love riding and all, but riding in 115 degree weather probably wouldn’t make for a really great time.  I also went through the obligatory Star Trek: The Experience attractions (they were in our hotel, after all), which were kinda cheesy but also sort of neat.

All in all it was a great trip, but I know that I’m going to be really happy to be home as soon as I get to my apartment. As for right now, I think it’s time to watch a DVD to kill some of this wait.

So it’s 1:30 AM on Monday morning, but this will be posted later, as
the most recent wordpress version’s post-writing page can’t be
properly displayed on my mobile browser.

I was supposed to be on the 9:35 PM flight out of JFK on JetBlue,
however, since my flight to JFK was stuck on the tarmac for an hour
and a half after landing, it became impossible for me to make the
connection.  I landed here at about 8 PM, and will be here until the
next flight to Vegas leaves at 6:55 AM.  Not exactly how I wanted the
big trip to start, but it will have to do.

My laptop battery was good for one DVD  to help pass the time, but now
is almost dead.  In another hour I’ll be able to check in and then
I’ll try to catch some sleep at the gate.

The good news is that if I can grab enough sleep between gate time and
on the plane, I won’t even have missed much effective vacation time.

_______

Update: It’s 4:10 AM now, and I’m finally past security at the JetBlue terminal.  “Check In” opened at 2:55 AM, but they didn’t open the security line until 4.  I’m in the free wifi area, and have an outlet charging up lappy.  Shortly I’ll head over to the gate, and try that whole ’sleeping in the airport’ thing.

Well, even though the Pirates are in the middle of their 15th consecutive losing season, their record with me in attendance at PNC Park has improved to 5-0. I really need to write up a proposal to their ownership… they don’t want to spend any money on their players payroll? Ok. Just pay me something like 70K a year (nothing by their standards!) and I’ll come to every home game. They’ll win every time!

The other point of interest of last night’s game was the planned “fan walkout” at the end of the 3rd inning. It was organized by fans to protest the terrible management of the team over the past several years. Organizers were hoping to get fans to stand up and leave after the 3rd inning and exit the stadium to protest. Alternately, fans could just leave for the 4th inning and hang out on the concourse, then return to their seats at the top of the 5th.

Well, the walk out happened, but it didn’t really have much of an effect. The park was only at about 26,000 in attendance last night anyway, and the extra few hundred to 1,000 or so fans who exited for the inning were barely noticeable. There was even booing when people started to walk out.

This was my first game of the year, and it was really fun. I’ll probably try to hit up a few more before the season’s end. Let’s see if the streak will live. As for right now, it’s time to pack and get ready to leave for Vegas.

So the last time I checked in, I was a little rant-y.  I go back and forth about how I feel about what I wrote and having put it up here.  For me, I think it was important to get some things out and let them come under some scrutiny from some of you, my dear readers.  I was given some helpful feedback both public and private, so I think it was helpful.  However, it doesn’t seem right to leave those words up so publicly anymore.

I guess what I would want to have out there for all to see is this:  Angela and I were together for about 14 months, and it was quite a time.  There were lots of great times, and also a couple of really bad patches in there, but all in all, it was good.  I am glad to have spent that time with her.  And while, this time around, she was the person to break it off, a couple of weeks of distance has really allowed me to see that it was right for our relationship not to continue.

I also have to acknowledge that I’m still trying to come to terms with everything, and I think it’s going to be a little while before I’m feeling completely resolved.  But the main message is that this is good, it is what needed to happen, but I’m still glad to have had all of the positive experiences with Angela that I did.

All that being said, it’s clearly the time to Get the Fuck Out of Dodge.  Luckily, I’ll be doing just that on Sunday.  I’ll be headed off to Vegas with Alan, and I’m sure that will be a blast.  And now before you leap to any conclusions, you all should know I’m not exactly ‘drug and alcohol infused bender involving strippers’ type, so there’ll be none of that.  What there will be is a whole lot of time inside of the various card rooms trying to win some cash playing some solid poker.  There will also be a trip or two to Quark’s Bar.  Oh yes, there will definitely be some Trek-tastic experiences.

I’m sure my camera will be on hand, and you know I’m not going to be able to resist sharing some notable poker hands from the trip with you (sorry, non poker folks!), so there’s sure to be word from me while I’m there.

For even more fun, I’ll be heading to my first Buc’s game of the year tomorrow with a coworker and her friend.  This is probably good for the Pirates, as they’ve never lost with me in attendance.  We’ll see if the streak holds.

As for tonight, it’s Shadyhouse poker night!  The crazy thing is that this is probably the last time I’ll play there as Jeremy and Lily are moving, which means our primary venue will move as well.  Here’s to a good night at the table!

That’s it, kids.  I need to get my bike sorted out, as I’ve decided to pedal my way around tonight… another thing I’ve been doing just too little of.

Last night I participated in the final WilWheaton.Net poker tourney.  Wil has hosted these games for the last two years, from when he became a member of Team PokerStars.  Because the current conditions of online poker have changed after the passage of the UIGEA  last fall, PokerStars, it seems, has had to cut back on its endorsements.

At any rate it was a big field, with 67 players showing up to get a piece of the action.  I, with the help of a couple of horrendous suckouts, was able to hang on and finish in second place.  The Results:

All in al, it was a fun time, and it was great to see Wil at the final table of his own last tourney.  All is not lost, however, as we will be continuing the tournament, but in a slightly different form.  Wil asked me to take over hosting responsibilities, so that the game would continue.  Since it’s not his game anymore though, I was asked to change the name.  As such, I’ve set up MonkeyTourney.com to serve as the tournament’s new home on the web.  I’m being assisted in the tourney set up by Jimmy.

More information coming soon… including some insights on using Drupal vs. Joomla.

Today, for the first time this year, I got outside on the bicycle. It has even been about 2 months since I used the trainer… since before the job hunt stuff really ramped up.

I ended up doing 21.5 miles on the south side and jail trails. Overall, I have to say it was good to get back outside and on the bike. The ride, though, took more out of me than it should have, and was clearly letting me know that I’ve been way too lazy.

Since it’s pretty lame that I haven’t been riding, I need to change that. I’ll start with this modest goal. Ride at least three times a week from here on out. This should be a very reasonable starting goal.

Over the last couple of months I haven’t really been getting that much poker time in. The regular Shadyhouse Game has faltered in getting enough people on Fridays lately, and I haven’t been playing in as many sit and go’s online, either. On top of that it’s been a couple months since I’ve sat down at the cash tables. One thing I have been hitting every week, however, is The Wheatie.

Playing in the Wheatie isn’t about making huge sums of money, but it’s a fun group of folks to play with. On general, the quality of play is certainly much better than you’d get in other $10 tourneys, though there are always some who would disagree with that statement. It’s a good group of people to chat with, and, lately, I’ve been having a fair amount of success. I’ve had two double cashes in the last 2 months there, and have been making it pretty far in most weeks.

Last week, things were de-railed and at about 8 PM there was no game posted, so I went and sent in the private tourney request myself. Unfortunately, there is a 1 hour waiting period for private games, so we started about 35 minutes late, and only had a field of 22. I was doing really well, but went out in 6th place or so after I went to war with Top pair, 2nd kicker against the only guy at the table with a larger stack than mine, who had top pair top kicker. It was stupid and unnecessary, but hey, we’re all stupid sometimes, right?

For the 2nd chance we played Razz and had a massive turn out of 8 people. I managed to finish 2nd in that one. What did me in there was an absolutely CRUSHING hand when I was all in with a made seven only to be beat by a slightly better 7. Oof.. that game is a solid kick in the junk sometimes. Anyway, that left me with 4, count em FOUR, chips, so it was all in on the ante next hand and a bust. Razz is fun. I need to play more Razz.

Anyway, tonight is another Wheatie night, so there will be poker today. But really, now that summer is here and the work load is lighter, I should try to get some more time in at the cash tables, as it was a serious revenue stream for me back in January – February. I’m also thinking about giving Full Tilt a try, too. Any one know if there’s an easy way to get funds out of PokerStars and into FT now that Neteller is dead?

It shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone that I’ve been less than prolific in my posting over recently. I had that whole “job search” thing going on, the semester was ending, and it was the beginning of the summer bringing some really nice weather. So, where to start after six weeks of radio silence? How about that stupid job hunt.

As I have mentioned through this medium before, this spring I started a job hunt. I figured that after 3 years of being a Resident Director at Pitt, I was ready to move on. As with my search three years ago, I concentrated on using the Placement portion of the ACPA (which was joint w/ NASPA this year) Convention as the main conduit for my search. I applied to about 18-21 jobs for which various schools were interviewing in Orlando¹. This resulted in me taking 12 first round interviews at the conference. I had to turn down a few interview requests from schools to which I applied, as 12 was about as many as I could take at the conference with my other obligations while there. Out of these 12 first round interviews, I ended up visiting 4 campuses.

Contrast this with my search from 3 years ago. I applied to 70-something schools, which yielded only 12 first round interviews (versus this year’s 20 – 12 ratio). Out of those 12 interviews I only received 2 invitations to campus, and ended up with a job at Pitt.

Needless to say, I was feeling really good about my search going in to the campus interviews. My ‘cone’ (the term I apply to my numbers of applications->interviews->campus visits->job offers) was much ‘wider’ then it was last time, and I was feeling really confident.

<tangent> Amarok just popped on the 1998 Rhys Fulber remix of Skinny Puppy’s “Warlock” from the Remix DysTemper album. I had mostly forgotten about that track, and how much I think it rocks. It’s a great take on Warlock. </tangent>

My campus visits were scheduled for the very last week in April and the first week of May. I visited Hofstra University, Chatham College (now University), Carnegie Mellon University, and Duke University. Each of the schools (and positions) had their high and low points, but I felt that I could be happy with any of the four positions. I left each interview feeling pretty good about how the day went, and felt that with 4 campus interviews that I felt were solid behind me, that I’d be sure to have at least one offer coming my way by the end of May.

It’s funny how things don’t always work out the way we want them to.

As of Friday afternoon, I’ve heard back from Duke, CMU, and Chatham, and found out that each of them have gone with other candidates. In 2 of the cases I was told that it came down to a decision between me and one other candidate. I’ve yet to hear from Hofstra, but seeing as how they were my first interview over one month ago, that they haven’t called to check my references, nor returned my calls requesting an update on their search, I’m pretty sure that I’m out of the running for that position, too.

All of this is a really big letdown, as I was really excited to move on from my current position for next year. After 3 years as an RD, I feel there’s very little challenge left in it for me, and it’d be nice to get past the sort of ‘life on hold’ feelings that living on campus inevitably raises for me. The positions each offered some really interesting opportunities to further my career at a time when I feel it’s important to stay challenged in order for me to keep my interest in student affairs as a career.

What now? Well, I have my current job; it hasn’t gone anywhere. Staying on at Pitt for another year has always been the fall back option. However, this week I’m going to take a look through the listings on higheredjobs.com and other similar sites to see what’s out there at this point. If I see some interesting postings, I’ll probably throw my resume in for consideration, but I don’t feel that I have the energy to start a full-on search again. The again, the thought of having to go through the whole process again next year, which would be necessary if I stay at Pitt², is not appealing either.

There’s been a whole boatload of other things going on for me lately as well, but I’ll get to those some other time.

________________

¹I was contacted by about 30 other schools requesting interviews with me, but almost universally these were RD level positions, just like my current job. The few mid-level positions for which I was contacted out of this bunch were from schools in geographic areas I had ruled out.

²Staying here for a 4th year is one thing, but doing a fifth year as an RD is simply NOT an option for me if I want to stay sane.

I’m back from “Orlando”, but more on that later.

I have decided that I must switch banks.  Why?  Because the folks at PNC Bank are unethical bloodsuckers.

This story starts out with me making a error.  I fully acknowledge that my idiocy starts the ball rolling here, but it ends with PNC being a company I no longer want to use for banking.  When paying my bills at the end of the month, I forgot to stick a – sign on one of the payments I made when entering it into my spreadsheet.  This led to me thinking that I had about $300  more in my checking account than I actually did.

After I pay my bills, I generally transfer all but a little bit of spending money out of the checking account and into the savings account.  I mainly did this to keep my money safe, as this way if someone got my debit card or account info or something, there’d just be a small amount of loss to deal with.  I suppose it’s also to get that killer interest in my savings account.. that whole 1% per year PNC ‘generously’ gives me.   But as it turns out transferring the money doesn’t do anything to make it safer.

PNC has this brilliant “overdraft protection” policy.  And by “overdraft protection” policy, I mean “and excuse to be fuckers and steal your money” policy.  When ever something goes over your account balance they thoughtfully transfer money from your savings account into your checking account to cover it, and only take $10 of your money for their trouble.  I suppose this might make sense for checks.  But it makes no sense when it comes to check card purchases and of all things ATM withdrawals.   Rather than decline your purchase with the check card, they just happily let it go through, and charge you $10 bucks.  No warning in any way.  Rather than tell you that there’s no money in your account when using ONE OF THEIR OWN ATMs, the machine just happily whirs away, giving you the requested cash, while taking out $10 bucks on the back end with out letting you know.  It’s their OWN ATM for fuck’s sake…  I can’t imagine going to a teller and trying to withdraw money and NOT have them tell you that you’re overdrawn, but this is some how OK if you’re using an ATM??

So when I logged into my account today, I noticed about 4 or 5 of these fees and got really angry.  I used PNC ATMs 3 times during this period, and not once did they let me know I was overdrawn.  I used my card multiple times, and they just happily approved the transactions without batting an eye.

I called their customer ’service’ line and tried to reason with them, spoke with a call center manager, and told them I’d happily pay one overdraft fee, as this did start with my error, but that their failure to notify me of this and allow me to continue to withdraw money through their own ATM would cost them my business unless they refunded the other fees.  They flatly refused. The woman even went so far as telling me that I was lying because there’s no way their ATM didn’t tell me about the overdraft.  I asked why I would have kept using it, without taking 4 seconds to make an online transfer from savings, if it had warned me.   So, to them my business is less valuable than the 30 – 40 dollars they stole from me though their outdated and non-optional overdraft “protection” “service”.

Up until now I had always like PNC Bank, too.  What I realize now is that I didn’t like them because of anything they were really doing to keep me happy.  It’s just that they were mostly inoffensive and had a good online banking system with a good user interface.    It’s not that they were particularly great in anyway.  They just didn’t bother me.  Now, though, I’m bothered.

The plan is to take my business elsewhere.  I’m thinking that one of them new-fangled internet banks might be the way to go.  They are still FDIC ensured, many have good ATM arrangements so that you don’t get screwed with lots of fees, and most of them offer at LEAST 3% interest on savings.. and some up to 5%, compared to the 1% I’m getting at PNC, or the .8% I’d get at National City.

So any ideas?  Does anyone have experience with some of these online banks?

"Move in and secure the objective"¹

So it’s just about that time. Tomorrow morning I leave for Orlando… well, actually Kissimmee, FL². At any rate, I attend the ACPA conference every year, and go for the professional development opportunities, as well as the chance to see friends who are scattered far and wide. This year, however, my big focus is the job search.

I have 9 (first round) interviews currently scheduled. I’ll probably pick up a few more while I’m down there, as well as some invitations for second interviews at the conference. As I mentioned, I’m not naming specific schools or positions publicly. I will however tell you some of the regions where these schools are:

Pittsburgh (yes, Pittsburgh schools are interviewing me … in ‘Orlando’.)
Erie, PA
Northern California
Chicago
Rhode Island
New York City

I anticipate hearing about interviews at a couple of Southern California schools as well.

When I looked back at my posts from the 2004 job hunt, it looks like I only had about 11 or 12 first round interviews that year. Considering I was going for reslife positions having had no previous reslife experience, I feel better about what I have set up for this year. I may be at the bottom end of the experience spectrum that some of these schools are looking for, but I have 3 very solid years here in Pitt, and an awful lot to communicate in an interview.

Also, these 9 interviews came from about 22 applications vs. the 60-70 I put in in 2004. Lets hope that my advancement rate to the next phase of interviews is as improved as it has been for the application process this year.

Here we go…

___________________________
¹This is what I called my 2004 Pre-con post, and I got a good job, so I’m calling this post that as well.

²This is something that really pisses me off about conferences. Kissimmee is actually 20 miles south of Orlando, not in the city at all. When the conference was in ‘Nashville’ it was actually in this compound about 20 miles outside of the actual city. At least last year when we went to Indianopolis the convention center was right in the city. Same as Philly in 2004. What’s the point of having a convention in a major city if it’s not actually in the stupid city. I want to be able to walk to things. I want options for food. I want stuff. Not some isolated conference compound. Idiots.