Today, December 22,2010 is my last day at Penn State Harrisburg. I was given more time to work here than I expected and I’m grateful for it. I don’t have another job lined up, not for lack of trying, but hopefully I won’t be unemployed long. I’m hoping with the new year brings new job postings and a new job for me.

I’ve enjoyed the past 3 years working in the Marketing office.. especially the last year working with the Web Team. I learned more from Chris and Tony in the year or so that they’ve been here than I did in the 2+ years before they got here.

I don’t want to walk away from here, but I have to. I am going to miss this place, both as a student and an employee. The people here, in all of the offices, have been great. My experience here has been great.

I think the last paragraph (with some minor adjustments) still fits as a concluding paragraph.

To close, I went back and looked at my first entry posted on March 5, 2008. Here it is 2 years and 9 months later that I’m posting my last entry. I started with the first verse of the alma mater, and I will end with the last verse -

“May no act of ours bring shame,
To one heart that loves thy name.
May our lives but swell thy fame,
Dear old State, dear old State.”

*ETA – I do have the entire Alma Mater memorized.

I’m still working, at least for a few more weeks, here on campus. I really need to get my resume out there. I knew this job wasn’t going to last forever, but I’d hoped the economy would open up a little and budgets wouldn’t be so tight, and there would be room for me.

The big project I couldn’t say anything about –  Each of the academic schools here at Penn State Harrisburg had completely redesigned websites launched simultaneously last week. They can be viewed by clicking on their respective links:

Behavioral Science
Business
Humanities
Science, Engineering, and Technology
Pubic Affairs

I think they look really good. They’re similar in design, but have differences. The navigation within each site is better, and its easier to go from a School page back out to the campus page. The web manager/other web folks did a great job. I had nothing to do with the design of the pages, I handled populating the content types with content.

Keep on the lookout for future changes to the campus site or components of the campus site. The web team has a lot of good ideas for the future of the PSH website.

To close, I went back and looked at my first entry posted on March 5, 2008. Here it is 2 years and 5 months later that I’m posting my last entry. I started with the first verse of the alma mater, and I will end with the last verse -

“May no act of ours bring shame,
To one heart that loves thy name.
May our lives but swell thy fame,
Dear old State, dear old State.”

I promise there is school-related stuff in this post, at the end.

To fill in for my lack of update this month, it has been a bad month. I’m still working, which is the great part.  The bad part started when my mom got sick the end of June. What followed was less than a week in the icu at the hospital down the street from where we live, a week in a regular room at the same hospital, 3 weeks in a rehab hospital, and 1 week and 1 day on a ventilator at a different hospital closer to the rehab hospital. Her lungs never recovered, and her heart was severely damaged.  We had to remove the vent, knowing it wouldn’t be long after that she’d be gone.

Now, I’m back to work one week later. People have asked me why I’m back so soon. The simple answer is – its better than sitting at home. My aunt and uncle are still in town, leaving tomorrow, once they’re headed back home I’ll have some things to do – but I can do those after work. I don’t feel much like cleaning, and I’m grateful I’ve had people around to help with the for the past week, but I know I’ve got a lot ahead of me.

Another thing I like about livejournal – the lj-cut tag. I could hide all of that above behind it so people could skip it if they wanted.

Now, something more relevant to the point of this particular blog. There is information hitting facebook about the Boobies Ball Masquerade party that will be held by Lion Ambassadors on October 22nd. I’m happy to see that the people taking over are excited about changing it up a little, I’m sure they will do great.

Classes start in about 2 weeks I think, its going to be weird NOT going to class. I kind of wish I was going back to class. I’ve done nothing this summer – no job hunt, no gmat, nothing. Again, I don’t feel like doing anything, but I know I have to.

Stay tuned for an update on that big web project I’ve been talking about (yet not talking about). As soon as its public knowledge, I’ll post about it.

I am working on campus, at least till the end of the summer. There is a big project that the web team is working on, that I’ve been helping with as well. Its really nice to be part of it, especially since this type of project has been in the ‘talking’ phase since I first started here 2 years ago.  It is great that this stuff is really getting done.

I have been spending my afternoons and weekends either helping my parents or playing World of Warcraft. I created a WoW journal, but I need to find the url so that I can write in it and link it somewhere.

Lets bring back something I haven’t done in a while, the Chris Brogan blog topics. I haven’t been going in order for a while, so.. picking a random topic off the list I am going to talk about Downtime – What I Do Offline to Recharge.

At work, I am online and at home I spend a lot of time online.. but there are things I like to do that do not require an internet connection – or even a computer. I enjoy reading, cross stitching, swimming (and now that its summer I can probably combine those at some point), and just hanging out on the sofa and watching tv.

I hadn’t really thought of any of those things I do offline as “downtime” because I’m not doing those things because the internet is down – I just do them because I like to and to take a break from the routine. But, this past tuesday I was chatting with a friend on the phone (omg.. PHONE conversation, VOICE conversation.. I KNOW! shock!) because our server for world of warcraft was offline for maintenance. I was working on a stitching project I had started over a month ago, its not getting anywhere fast because I was working on it in between things. We were laughing at how just the night before we were playing the game, chatting about what we were going to do to fill 24 hours of time that our server would be offline. Of course, part of the conversation had to do with the coming expansion and some changes we know are coming and others that we’d like to see but probably wont.

I’m not sure when, but definitely by the end of the summer, I won’t be updating this blog anymore. I am no longer a student, and I won’t be again until I take the GMAT and get myself into the Graduate school here.. at which point, I’d gladly start up again. I am, however going to continue with my other blogs. I am going to make a better effort to update my livejournal more often. At some point before I completely make the switch and post the link in a very last blog, I will do mirror posts.. just in case I’ve got repeat visitors. The nice thing about my personal livejournal is that I’ve got comments enabled.

Party was fun, LOTS of food. And I do mean LOTS! We ate leftovers for almost a week. I think mom threw out the last bits of whatever was starting to look yucky yesterday. I still have a good 2 gallons of ice cream. I did go to State College and buy a 3 gallon tub.. of Vanilla. But its the best plain vanilla ice cream ever. I also bought a half gallon of Peachy Paterno – which is gone. I love the stuff. I shoulda gotten a 3 gallon tub of that.

I posted pictures to my facebook.  Click the picture.

I’ll still be working on campus this summer. I’m glad they’ve decided to keep me at least through the summer. I haven’t been looking for jobs or putting resumes out, I was spending the majority of my time on projects for my classes.  It seems to have paid off. I had to wait forever (at least it felt that way) but grades are in, this is my best semester ever – 3 A-’s and 1 B. The B, in IST 421 (Integration) was surprising, I really thought I’d get a C. I had a mid-to high C after the midterm. We had the second half of a project and the final (which was take-home open note..), I guess I did really well on those. No complaints here.

My grades!

Graduation is in just about 2 weeks. This past weekend I helped my mom make meatballs to freeze for the party. Its one thing that could be done ahead of time. She’s been ordering party stuff like plates and napkins, streamers, balloons, and other penn state-y stuff. I still need to go to Party City to get other stuff, I’ll do that this weekend. All the food is covered, most of the paper goods are covered, so I’m going to get some of the decorations. It is my graduation after all.

Speaking of graduation, so many people are coming out of the woodwork to come to the ceremony. I thought people would come by the party, but I hadn’t thought so many people would be coming early to the actual ceremony. My uncle from Kansas is coming with my aunt, and one of my cousins, and.. whatever you call the daughter of a cousin.. a second cousin once removed? I don’t know. Both of my cousins were going to come, but the one has something else to do that day. My cousin Amy’s fiancée was going to come as well, but he has a performance with his choir that day. Still, the thought was there. They’re all going to get up early and go to the ceremony. I’m not surprised that my uncle will be there, he has been at all of my graduations back to 8th grade. My family from Harrisburg, they have called and most are coming to the ceremony. My best friend from Philly, Chrissy.. she has no choice (sort of) I am picking her up on Thursday. My mom counts about 23 people. This is surprising.

I also got another surprise, a friend of mine from Philly who I grew up with, is driving up on Saturday for the party. She is bringing her daughter, and another girl we’ve been friends with and her son. It will be nice to see them.

Its going to be a good time. I really can’t wait. I will be so glad to finally have a degree. Although it is weird to not have any assignments to work on. I keep wanting to open up an assignment or something, like I need to submit something to someone, but its all done. YAY!

Tonight I have another project to turn in/present with a group. That is not nearly as long as the one yesterday.  Once that is done I have no more projects to do!! The rest of the week is fairly easy. Tomorrow (wednesday) I have one class in the morning, we will probably finish watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.. and probably talk about it. I have no classes on Thursday. And Friday morning in my english class we’ll be reviewing for the final. And then that is all. WOO!

Next week I have 2 finals, both on tuesday. One at 2pm and the other at 6pm, and that is ALLLL!! WOOOO!!

Graduation in less than 3 weeks.