I woke up this morning at 6:20 – forty minutes before my wake up call. Not bad for having gone to bed at 2:00 and having barely gotten any sleep the night before. I was very proud of myself. I got right out of bed, showered, shaved (beard and head,) packed and was out of the hotel right at 8:00. Plenty of time to get out to Warren, New Jersey where my interview was this morning.
The sun was bright and shining and it was a truly beautiful day. It was almost forty miles from Easton, Pennsylvania where I was staying in the hotel to Warren. I thought that traffic would be awful and that it would take forever but almost all of the trip was very lightly trafficed and the trip was great. I was in Warren quite a bit before 9:00. Interview was at 10:00.
I ended up spending a lot of my spare time driving around looking for the address that I had been given. It turned out that the address doesn’t really exist at all and that I actually had to be on a different road than I was told. But fortunately the directions got me close enough that I was able to find the place without any additional help anyway. I was into the parking garage by 9:30 and had some time to kill.
I met my consulting firm contact at 9:45 and he got me signed in and past security. I went up to the interview at 10:00. I had three separate interviews by noon. Then I was done and able to head out of town. The facility sits directly on US 78 and I was right back onto the highway in no time at all. I called in to the consulting firm and gave them the overview of how it went and headed for home.
The state of New Jersey provides Google with awesome satellite photos of the entire state. It is really handy. I guess of any state it makes the most sense for New Jersey to do it since they are our most densely populated state. Here is the satellite photo of the building that I was interviewing in. On the left is the parking garage and on the right is the actual office building. That is Building B. If you zoom out just a tiny bit you can see that that building actually sites directly on the side of the on ramp to US78. It doesn’t get any handier than that.
So how did it go? I know that everyone is wondering that. Well, it is an interview. It is impossible to tell how well it went. It didn’t go horribly. That much I know. I felt pretty good about the whole thing. Dominica and I are really not thinking much about me getting this position. It is very unlikely and I haven’t been job hunting so it isn’t like we are dependant on it in any way. In fact we aren’t really convinced that we even want it. Sure the money would be great but there are a lot of factors. The interview did reinforce the fact, though, that this is a massively enterprise environment and there is a lot of great educational opportunity to be had.
It only took half an hour before I was back into Pennsylvania. It was a great day for traveling. I called around and let everyone know how the interview had gone. I stopped at the Delaware Water Gap rest station on US78 just as you enter Pennsylvania and headed for New York. I grapped a quick lunch at the one service center on the turnpike headed north so that I wouldn’t have to make a major stop and get off of the highway again until I got to Geneseo. It took only five and a half hours for me to go from Warren to Geneseo and that included two bathroom stops, one lunch stop and at least fifteen minutes lost because I missed a turn and had to figure out how to get back onto the highway going the direction that I wanted to go. So I figure that the drive itself is only about five hours flat. Not bad at all. At least when there isn’t any traffic. I hit almost none the entire way.
It is really positive that the commute to and from Warren is only five hours. We had been assuming that it was more like seven hours. Seven hours would make the job a lot more prohibitive. It would mean driving home on a Friday night just to go straight to bed. But five hours means that the drive itself would not be completely exhausting and that there would be time left to do things once I got back. It I left Warren at 5:00 on a Friday evening I could easily beat Dominica home from work.
I was home at 5:30 and dad was over shortly thereafter to drop off Oreo. Oreo was very excited that I was home and gave me lots of kisses. He really hates me being away. If I end up getting this job, which I won’t, it will be really tough dealing with him. Dominica has started looking into doggie day care options because he can’t possibly be left home alone all day.
Dad and I did dinner at the Omega. We didn’t hang out too long. I was pretty tired between just having had so much to do and not having gotten very much sleep the last several days. I really needed to just get home and relax for a little while.
Dominica’s USB powered desktop aquarium finally arrived today. I ordered it for her so that I could give it to her for Christmas and it only just arrived today. How ridiculous is that? She will be very excited to finally have that. She told everyone at work that she was getting one and I don’t think that they believe her anymore.