• Degree in Information Systems or related field; three to five years demonstrated experience in project management and leadership with business analysis, process modeling and application design, or the equivalent combination of education and/or relevant experience.
• Strong customer service attitude and ambition to continually improve customer service levels.
• Strong intuitive and analytical problem solving skills.
• Work well under pressure with tight deadlines and manages multiple concurrent projects; organize workload of self and team to meet changing priorities and deadlines.
• Express ideas clearly to a broad audience in both written and oral communications, including group presentations regarding product and technical information.
• Handle multiple, concurrent, complex tasks.
• Make excellent technical recommendations in the context of company business directions.
• Perform on-call and weekend support as needed.
• Advanced working knowledge of technical support, testing, systems analysis techniques and tools; IT technical environment (applications, Web, platforms, interfaces, data structures, applications, queries, and programming languages).

Sound like me? Except for the fact that I don't have my degree QUITE yet, but will next summer? Yeah it sounds like me alright, to quote a friend, "That sounds exactly like you. You're the poster boy for that job. :P"

/sigh...  I don't know where I am or where I'm going anymore.

Many experts say that those who have a life plan and write it down, 85% are happy with their lives. I'd probaby say that of those 15% those that aren't happy at least the majory are happy with the direction their life is going. Why? Because they plan.

I'm a planner. I always have been. That's why I love DeVry so much because the way it's setup it allows me to plan and track my progress easily. So why haven't I been planning my road to wieght loss? Because I just hadn't yet. So now I have. If you look on my links on the navigation bar of my blog, there should be a link to my weight loss spreadsheet.

There it is, black and white (well there's some color on the graph :-D). But the point is now I am fully planning for the future. I think my plan is realistic too. I'm planning (and counting on) losing quickly then after that I plan on losing at a slower rate. I'll update this daily and start keeping myself accountable to working out and watching my weight. As I get close to my target I *might* re-evaluate my target weight.

After seeing the continued improvement in my brother's health from losing weight, I'm getting more and more inspired to do the same. I have one advantage over him in that I have WAY less to lose. I have around 45lbs that I want to lose to get to my target weight of 215 or so. At a height of 6' even and with a decent muscle build I think 215 will be appropriate for my structure and size. I'll re-evaluate the target once I get closer but for now I'll make that my goal. I hope to lose 5 lbs and keep 5 lbs off a month for the next 9 months and that will get me to my goal. Realistically this should be more than doable if I put my mind to it. Ideally if I do keep up with it I should be able to lose faster, but for now I'll stick with that goal. If I lose faster one month, that won't change the next month's goal each month I'll lose at LEAST 5lbs and keep them off. I'll make a post at the beginning of each month to track my progress. Since the first lbs are easy to take off I'll stick with the 5 lbs goal this month since I'm starting mid month.

Now with 12 classes, 41 credits, and still a 4.0 average. Currently I'm in the middle of changing my degree program from GSP to CIS so my "standing" academically is still "Freshman" although with all honesty after completing 2 1/2 semesters and 32.5% of my total credits needed for graduation, I should technically be a "Sophomore", but heck who's counting. I still know when I'm scheduling myself for graduation.

Had a GREAT winter break and through completing 3 finals in under 24 hours was stressful, the cruise was fantastic combined with a sneezy but fun 4 day new years vacation. I'm looking forward to this coming year. It's the end of the reign of the Bushes, my car will be paid off soon, I will start saving tons of money for my house, and at some point toward the end of the year I will move in with Kerrie. If all goes well it'll be a nice prep for 2009 when I graduate and much, much more.

My first Dolphin Holiday party was on Friday and it was a blast. Sophisticated, but fun and plenty of "family belonging" with the Dolphin team. I think the slideshow was the best part of the whole evening and the awards cerimony. It was VERY well done and I'm really happy with some of the people who got awards.

Overall it was a great weekend topped off with a weather challenging weekend for Kerrie at Saturday market. The weekend ended with me doing apprently horrible on my statistics test. If I really focus hard I can still pull off an A in the class. If I get a B, oh well. I'll still have a super sexy grade point average. 15 A's so far and 1 B is not anything to scoff at.

Today went in for a CT of the small bowel. Why would I have to check in at 6:45 for an 8:00? Well that's because I had to drink 3 16 bottles of Barium! THEN I had to get prepped with a catheter so that during the CT scan they pumped a shit ton of Iodine into my blood. What does that spell? Dehydration and lots of nasty barium poop! Extra bonus, no caffeine or alcohol. Although they said if I drank 64 oz of water today I could have 1 or 2 drinks tonight.

Meh, and the company christmas party is tonight.

Even though I was at the Saturday market off and on all weekend freezing my fingers off, I had a really awesome relaxing weekend.

It all started off Wednesday night where Kerrie and I cracked open the latest Mario game, Mario Galaxy for the Wii. She loved it and I loved the nostalgic feel of Mario 64 in this game. The controls are great, the music is classic, and the whole game feels like Mario 64 v2.0. I give it an 11 on the 10 point Win scale.

Thanksgiving and "turkey hangover day" was really great because neither of us overstuffed. I think it's the first thanksgiving where I think I might have actually had a net loss in weight instead of gaining 3-4 pounds.

Finally the cherry on the preverbial cake came when Kerrie had her best weekend of sales ever. The cold was insane, but the sales went nuts. She ended up selling around $450 in product over the weekend. Hopefully it wasn't just because of Turkeyday weekend and hopefully the slight tweaks to our merchandising has something to do with it.

Overall the whole 4 day weekend was full of win. Finding out that HILYMI has pretty much died last night didn't even spoil my weekend. I just shrugged it off, sadly I was the last to know, but oh well. At least that means the vent server is 100% for the Browncoats.

Roleplaying was one thing that was seriously missing in my opinion in World of Warcraft. For some reason it was just really hard to get into it. I could try all I wanted but it just fealt like I was regugitating 10 years of Warcraft lore. I also couldn't "connect" with my character in a fundimental way. The story seemed like I wasn't REALLY that influential in the world so it was just... kinda meh.

TR on the other hand I'm REALLY getting into the roleplay aspect of it. I've written a few pieces of fan fiction and the folks on the official site liked it so much they started up an official "blog roll" for people with an apptitude for role play blogging of their characters. So I started another LJ blog for Victeonus (http://victeonus.livejournal.com)

Now that I'm not even REMOTELY as stressed as I used to be, it seems like my brain doesn't need NEARLY as much sleep as it used to. Although now that my brain is rested, it seems like my body is starting to want more sleep. The problem is that now that the two aren't in sync I can't sleep even if my body wants to goto bed at 11:00, my mind is awake. I think it's all starting to adjust but it's interesting the toll of stress and with it gone how my body and mind are adjusting.

All I gotta say is HOLY JEZ. I spent a long time last night getting my new personal Gallery up (link is on the left http://gallery.victorlaurence.com). The EQ screenshots blew my mind. I found a lot of other screenshots I forgot about as well, like my Horizons screenshots. I still have a TON of EverQuest screenshots to get up, but other than that my Gallery is up to speed. Also Frapps is now setup properly to record video and capture good quality PNG's properly while in Tabula Rasa.

I went to update my links and LiveJournal made me update my style. Kinda pissed me off at first and then I found a decently cool style. The look is nice and represents the feel that I was going for when I first made my original style. It's a little girly, just a little too much frills, but it's alright I can deal.

I hope my readers like it.

The last 2 weeks were a downward spiral of World of Warcraft that finally led to my retirement from WoW. I'm tired of what Blizzard is doing to the game and I think they are rather quickly destroying the game. I'm tired of an easy game that's frankly boring filled with 90% morons. Not to say that's the only thing that's bugging me. Blizzard is making the game have TOOOO many options for the casual gamer which makes my vision of my guild impossible. Why would the casual gamer BOTHER raiding if there are so many new options for attaining loot? Most of all I'm quitting because my brother is done. He's burnt out, he's not enjoying the game.

I've gone back to my roots and returned to Richard Garriot, not in Ultima Online, but now Tabula Rasa. This sci-fi shooter "aims" to please and even GameSpy gave it 4 out of 5 only because the fealt it lacked polish. Well honestly it does lack polish, but so did WoW. In fact Wow wasn't even a stable game for the first 3-4 months of it's release. This game is pleasently stable, works well, is well thought out, crazy fun, and honestly I don't think I've had more fun in a game, let alone an MMMO.

Most of all I'm glad I'm not in a top end leadership position anymore. I will do my best as an officer in the new clan here in Tabula Rasa, but I've told the clan leader I can't be more than a low level officer, JUST enough involvement so I make sure the clan turns out to my liking, but not enough leadership that I'll be overwelmed again.

P.S. This userpic is the userpic I'll use for Tabula Rasa posts.

In contrast to how I was feeling last week, this week I feel great. I log into the game and I'm apprehensive expecting something dramating and.... nothing. I have fun, I enjoy the progress the guild is making. Everyone's motivated. Out first retro night went really well. Overall very exciting stuff. I completed my Psych final with 41 or something minutes left of the 3 and a half hours left. Today or tomorrow I'm going to finish my CIS final to wrap up another successful term at DeVry. Hopefully I should have secured an A in Psych and an A in CIS. Despite all the drama, I have a merger going into affect very very soon. November is going to be a crazy month.

So many lies. So much negativity. What has fealt like almost daily drama all stemming from the lies of one individual. One individual who I thought I trusted above everyone else. Someone who I listened daily as the daily pulse of the guild. A pathalogical liar on such a distinct level that some psychologists would love to study. All of this has crashed down in what's fealt like a roller coaster of emotion in the last week. Finally after enough lies all of us started sharing stories, confirming lies upon lies upon lies. First we started with obvious mundane ones, then we worked up to complicated hurtful lies. The straw that broke the camel's back was the one that damaged the character of multiple members of our guild. So many people are hurt by this that many of us drank ourselves to sleep last night. What's so horrible about it all is how long we let it continue. We didn't want to believe it at first, but eventually you break down and it's all over after that.

The first time I approached him about one of his most disturbing lies which ran for several months. He rationalized all of it and then cried to Robin that I had 'pegged him' unfairly as a liar. The second chance was last night when all the officers tried an intervention, but again he simply rationalized all the lies and used his "illness" as a crutch. He also called everyone liars for pointing out he was a liar, that the reasons why our stories he told us didn't match is because we were lying to each other. So for the protection of this guild, we have decided he needed to be removed from the guild.

Fact is he's manipulative in the worst way. He gains your confidence through niceities only to later abuse your trust in him. Amanda warned me of this behavior 4 months ago, I didn't believe her then, I believed him after all the lies he told about her. So many lies... so many lies.

At a certain point it's easier for you to accept CRAZY outlandish stories to be true because that's easier for the mind to accept than to believe someone would be crazy enough to make such outlandish stories about someone. It's easy to believe someone is unstable rather than believe that someone is telling stories about someone being unstable. Crazy stuff. Last night I pretty much had to drink myself to sleep over all this crap. What's worse of all is that this is the first time I've had to blatently kick someone our of our organization that didn't want to go. We knew he would continue on telling lies and not leave, several people hurt involved in his latest lies demanded he be kicked. So it was done.

At this point we are in a healing phase. We're working through all the lies he told to each other, forgiving each other for being mad at each other over falsehoods. We're breaking down the walls of mistrust and the aura of tension that was created by him every day. The amount of pain I'm feeling over this is on the level of my xwife when I finally called it quits with her. I learned nothing, hopefully going forward I'll be different. Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad. I doubt people's truths now. I doubt my own thoughts. I wonder what of my thoughts are my own? What of my thoughts are put there by the suggestions of other people? I have an internal struggle that will only be healed with time. Thankfully I have 100+ people (online and IRL) who care for me and 1 less person who will be bringing me down day to day.

Expect me to begin writing in my journal again. My head has been a mess. Maybe if I wrote I would have figured this stuff out sooner. Writing for me is very theraputic.

That's the best way I can describe it... weird. It felt like I was in a time warp conversing with people I hadn't seen in 10 year, people I vaguely remember, and people who frankly... I don't give a rats ass about anymore. Everyone was excited to see me, but how come noone kept in touch? I've kept the same email address I had since highschool that I included on my signature line in the yearbook, so why happy to see me now? Superficial much? I dunno I had a bunch of good conversations with people who are doing interesting things with their lives, but I dunno it just seemed anti-climactic. On my ride home I couldn't help but think, damn those are several house I could have been grinding Sori's levels. If I knew how it went would I go again? Probbaly so, it was interesting, but not what I expected. Although honestly I didn't have many expectations.

As of last night I am now 66 on Sori. I've completed the ring of blood and already I'm pumping out some nice DPS. My +DMG self buffed 585, group buffed 650 or so, with a +DMG totem I was a little over 700. I already have a full Imbued Netherweave set + Frozen Shadoweave made. By the time I'm 70 I should be easily over the minimum cap for Karazhan. I'm averaging a level a day to at the latest I should be 70 some time next week. I've already gone face to face with a 66 paladin who got schooled repeatedly while I was 62, a 70 rogue who almost got beat by me when I was 65 until I got my actual PVP gear on and was ready for a fight, then he high tailed it out of there.

Overall I'm loving playing Sori again and the guild is really supportive of me destroying people's faces. A lot of people have been helping me grind in one way or another. When I'm 70 the hardest thing will be the balance between PVP, PVE, and grinding gold for an epic.

Time for Sori and Flaatom to wake up again from the darkness and destroy people's faces.

I need a stress reliever and Livistos, even Livistos in PVP is not doing it. I need a character that I will enjoy relieving some stress kicking ass and taking names. Livistos even though he might be healing others who are raping face can't do it himself. In fact PVP healing doesn't relieve stress in fact it just adds to it. Right now I don't have a game or character that's stress relief. I take console gaming too seriously for it to be stress relief and I don't get stress relief out of Liv. So hopefully Soriathus can be my stress reliever.

So Soriathus will be leveled and geared/speced solely for PVP. I am even going to make Livistos less PVP and DPS speced and pick up more healing talents (yes he has PVP and DPS talents atm). Right now my DPS gear is good enough on Liv that losing those talents he should still be able to solo decently.

I can't wait to see Soriathus in level 70 and eventually PVP epics. Fear me Alliance, I'm coming for you.

Made the Dean's List for the Spring 2007 simester. Of course that's with a 4.0 of a required 3.5? Not really hard first simester of school. I also got a 4.0 the first half of the Simester for Summer 2007 and I should get another 4.0 for the second half of Summer 2007. I think that maybe after my 2nd simester things should start picking up in difficulty but right now it's brain dead easy. I'm still taking it seriously, but still, it's easy.