Pre program requirements

The college sent me some paper work on Monday. The paper work is mostly for a criminal record check and immunization requirements. There was also mention of a CPR and First Aid course requirement, which I have already met.

The application for my criminal record check is in the mail and should be processed within four weeks. I was expecting the criminal record check to involve a trip to a police station. All I had to do was fill in a form and mail it in.

I'm now working on completing the immunization requirements. I have to get vaccinated for a couple of things and get blood work to confirm that I have immunity for a few other things. The Hepatitis B vaccination looks like it will be a bit of a hassle. The Hep B vaccination involves 3 shots and then a blood test to confirm immunity.

Scrubs

Breathing Through School recently wrote about scrubs and I started wondering about the scrubs that I would have to wear, when I start my clinicals in the summer of 2011. Yestrday I found out that I have to wear red scrubs, when I'm doing my clinicals. I guess I have to wear red so that I'm easy to identify in a crowd. "He did it! The guy in the red scrubs! Get him!"

No turning back now

I guess there's no turning back now. I've paid my student fees for the 2008/2009 school year.

My begging for money efforts, at the bank, have been successfull.

Hello Mrs. Banker. How are you doing? I'm going to quit my job and go back to school. Can I borrow some money? Gee thanks. Where do I sign?

One of the benefits of always paying your bills on time and not carrying a balance on any of your credit cards: A kick ass credit rating.

Proof that I'm irreplaceable at work

After hours tech support guy called my cell phone a few hours ago. I was feeling a bit snarky, so I didn't answer the phone. If he's bugging me after hours about work stuff, and it's important, he'll leave a message. If it's not important or he can actually figure it out on his own, he should hang up the phone and try to figure it out on his own! Better yet, if it's not important he shouldn't even freaking call me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The IT people at work really should be able to do things for themselves! He called back a few minutes later and left a voice mail. The Internet connection for a branch office was down and he didn't know how to contact the Internet Service Provider for that office. He knew who the Internet Service Provider was, but didn't know how to contact their tech support. I didn't know either, so I actually looked it up in our list of support contacts. Everyone in my IT department knows about that list of support contacts! After hours tech support guy has a copy of those contacts on his Blackberry. Sheesh.

My apologies for the gratuitous use of exclamation marks!

Student Line of Credit

After getting my student fees invoice yesterday, I decided to go to the bank and apply for a student line of credit. A student line of credit is different from a regular line of credit in that you only have to pay interest, while you are a full time student. With a student line of credit, you don't actually have to pay back any borrowed money until six months after finishing school. I already have a line of credit that I could use for school, but I would have to pay back principle in addition to interest if I used it.

The person at the bank had a hell of a time trying to put my application into the computer. At one point she actually said, "you don't fit into any of the boxes". Apparently most people who apply for a student line of credit still live with their parents, have their parents cosign, don't have a mortgage, haven't been working for 12 years and don't have any retirement savings...

I used to think that I would borrow some money from my retirement savings plan to pay for school. Now I'm thinking that borrowing money from the bank is a better way to go. I already borrowed money from my retirement savings plan for the down payment on my condo.

Student Fees Invoice

I received my student fees invoice yesterday. Almost a third of the amount due, isn't for tuition! In addition to tuition I also get to pay for the following:

• Technology Enhancement Fee
• Health Plan Fee
• Recreation/Athletics Fee
• Capital Development Fee
• Student Association Fee
• Student Priority Fee
• Administration Fee
• Graduation/Alumni Services Fee
• A fee for a six letter acronym. (I'm not putting the acronym on this list, because it can probably be used to identify my school - I'm still trying to remain anonymous)

The financial realities of going back to school have now fully sunk in. So much so, that I actually went to the bank today to beg for some money. I'll get into that in my next post.

I got tired of doing the math, to figure out how many days till school starts. I now have a nifty little count down counter at the top right hand corner of my blog.

Not happy enough

I got in trouble at work yesterday. Apparently, I'm not happy enough.

My boss keeps on asking me how I'm doing and it's getting annoying. When he asks me how I'm doing, sometimes he does it with an over the top kind of manic happiness that creeps me out. Yesterday I told him that, "I'm fine." and he actually told me that being fine wasn't good enough and that I can do better than that. WTF!? Am I supposed to pretend that I'm REALLY, REALLY HAPPY whenever he asks me how I'm doing? Maybe I should just be really, really happy for no reason at all. Anybody know where I can buy a do it yourself frontal lobotomy kit?

I don't need to know why

Yesterday, while I was on the train, I decided to do some writing. I found myself trying to explain, on paper, why I was changing careers. Why I was giving up a successful IT career, so that I could start over as a Respiratory Therapist. I've been trying to explain that one to people, and to myself, for quite a while. I think I may even have done a post, or two, on this blog about why I'm changing careers. I figured out something yesterday. I don't really know why I'm changing careers.

Every time I try to explain why I'm changing careers, I can't really explain it properly. Everything I say, or write, seems like a rationalization, justification or defence for what I am doing. The plain simple truth is that, I don't truly know why I'm doing this. For some reason I thought that I actually had to have a good reason. I don't have a good reason and I don't need one.

I'm doing this because I want to and because I can. I don't need to know why and neither does anyone else.

Paranoia

I've been paranoid about something going wrong. Something going wrong with my plan to go back to school.

Yesterday I logged into the college's student portal and discovered that there is now a Respiratory Therapy section on my grades page. In the past, the only thing on my grades page was the CPR/First Aid course that I took in January.

Paranoia better now.

Mostly just waiting

I've been thinking recently, that I should post something on my blog. To be perfectly honest, I don't have much to post about. I'm mostly just waiting.

Just waiting for my tuition invoice to show up. Just waiting for school to start. Just waiting for my summer job to finish up.

102 days until school starts.

Summer job looking better

The budget just got approved at work, so I should be pretty busy until school starts.  It looks like I'll be working more hours every week, which means a bit more money for the going back to school fund.  I've also got some reasonably interesting and challenging things to work on, which will hopefully make it easier to ignore the things about work that I don't like.

Usually if I'm crazy busy, and am doing something that's considered important, everyone just leaves me alone and just lets me do what needs to be done.

School starts in 112 days.

References

Over the years I have been asked if I can be used as a reference, when someone is looking for a job. I have never refused. People who ask, always seem to know that I think well of them.

Yesterday evening I heard my cell phone ringing and couldn't find the damn thing, before it went to voice mail. When I listened to the voice mail I discovered that it was someone asking me if I could be used as a reference during a job search.

I couldn't believe it. The arrogant, condescending, unhelpful guy, who was always taking fake sick days, was asking me to act as a reference! This is the guy who got fired a few weeks ago from my current work place. I was stunned and also more than a little bit pissed off. What planet is this guy living on? I can't be a reference for that guy. I don't really have anything nice to say about the guy and if the person doing a reference check starts fishing for "problems" there will be many for us to talk about. I know the guy too well and can't give him a good reference. I would have to lie like crazy to be a good reference. What the hell was he thinking when he called me?

I'm just not going to call him back. If I ever end up talking to him, despite my best efforts not to, I will just tell him that I'm not comfortable being a reference for him. If he asks me why, then I'll have to tear into him.

My summer job

I now have a summer job. It's going to be over at the end of August and then I can be a full time unemployed student! My summer job is a lot like my other job, because technically it's the same job. Now that my job is just a "summer job", it's a lot less unlikeable. My summer job is kind of a joke and that's OK because it's just a summer job...

Stress Management

Back in the beginning of February the college sent me a letter congratulating me on my acceptance to the Respiratory Therapy program. Along with the letter was a confirmation form that I had to send back to the college. The form indicated my intention to start the program in September. There was a May 1st deadline associated with the form, so I've been getting a little bit stressed by the fact that the college didn't send me anything acknowledging that they had received the form. Did they get the form? Did I get screwed by Canada Post or some kind of a clerical error at the college.

I sent the Registrar an email on Sunday asking for a confirmation of my status. This afternoon, l still hadn't received a response to that email, so I went to the college to find out what my status was.

What a relief. Everything's fine. I am confirmed and I was given a status of confirmed on February 25th. This has been bugging me for quite a while, I should have enquired about it a lot sooner.

Here comes the sun

OK. I don't think it's going to snow again. That was a long hard winter.

Some signs of spring, and the fast approaching summer, in my neighbourhood:

Damn college kids :-)

Oops

Yesterday at 4AM, I decided to get some work done. I decided to apply some patches to a couple of servers, at work, that needed some patching. Unfortunately I accidentally logged into our mail server and started patching it. One of the patches required a reboot, so I did the reboot. Actually I tried to do a reboot. It didn't work out so well.

The server didn't come back up. I was in a different city and couldn't go in to take care of that fact. After 45 min of desperate hoping, I decided that I had to get someone to go into the office to see what's going on. I called a coworker who lives close to work and got him to go into the office to see what was up with the server not coming back up.

When he got to the server he gave me a call and told me that the server was stuck in a part of the POST (Power On Self Test). There was a message at the bottom of the screen that contained the phrase "...press F2 to continue." I hate that. When you reboot a server it should just boot up normally. It shouldn't ask you any stupid "are you sure" questions. My coworker pressed F2 and then the server came back up.

Unfortunately, after the server came back up it wasn't accepting mail from the Internet. After about an hour of testing and coaxing, I finally got the damn thing to behave the way it's supposed to.

Oops. Doing something on the wrong server is a bad thing. Rebooting the wrong server and then not having it come back up, on its own, is an even worse bad thing.

I hate computers.

I say that at work a lot. People think I'm joking.

I know what's wrong (with everything)

I just had a revelation. I know what's wrong (with everything). Smooth talking weasels. If somethings seriously messed up and "that's just the way it is" there's a smooth talking weasel someplace, who's responsible.

If a smooth talking weasel suffers from some sort of "unfortunate incident" and I'm somehow responsible for it, I'm wondering if I can use something that I would like to call "the smooth talking weasel defence".

Me: "Your honour, I had something to do with that unfortunate incident. He was a smooth talking weasel and he had it coming."

The judge: "OK. You're free to go."

Me: "Do you validate parking?"

Very stupid and funny

Very stupid. Maybe I shouldn't find this funny, but I do.

Arterial Blood Gas Sampling

I was talking about donating blood today, so I started thinking about Arterial Blood Gas Sampling and the fact that that will be part of my job as an RT. This is a video about taking an Arterial Blood Gas Sample.

I don't have to

Why are all my coworkers demoralized at work, when I'm not? I've been trying to figure that out for a while now. I tried to convince myself that "I don't care", but that's not really the case. If I find myself unemployed, between now and September, that definitely would be a financial hardship. A financial hardship, that would be best avoided. I also have a great deal 0f sympathy for my coworkers who are becoming increasingly demoralized and almost despondent, about their workplace, so "I don't care" isn't exactly honest.

I woke up yesterday morning with one thought on my mind. I DON'T HAVE TO.

I don't have to have a job. I don't have to put up with any crap at work. I don't have to get pissed off at work or about work. I can get by. I can dig a little bit deeper into my retirement savings and get by. I don't have to quit my job because I can stick it out for a few more months and save some more money for school.