Checking In!

What's up Everyone:

Just writing a checkup on this blog. This past week was really slow. I had worked on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday but it was dead. It was cool because I got a chance to sleep in a bit and left early. No one was here at the center. Spent too much time chillin. It's driving me crazy. However this is about to change in 2008. I got a lot of plans. I'm going to do different things and go other places. First thing, I want to go to DC in a next month. One of my unit members is leaving to another country and I want to visit her before she goes. Not sure if she is going to make the retreat in March so I would like to visit her. I plan on loosing a few lbs. When I come to retreat I want to fill different. When I head back home sometime next year, I want to look different. My mom is coming out here in May. That will be great to see year. I think the next two months are going to be very critical for me because I will spend that time deciding if I want to stay here in New Windsor or not for another year in BVS. The ideal thing for me to do is stay. I am leaning on staying, however there are a lot of thing that need to happen before I make that decision. I love being here. No question. Fact of the matter is I spend too much time here chillin and not being to kick it with people around my age. Thats takes a big toll. Now I wouldn't mind it so much as if I was a regular employee here making money that will allow me to go to DC anytime or New York or wherever. But this is not the case. When I get $60 a month as a stipend, its hard to go anywhere. However I believe 2008 is going to change because I'm trying to work on that issue there. Anyway I guess I will talk later on. Peace!

JCI
BVSer, Unit 275
Informtion Services
COB General Board

Pic of the Day!

Me, Mara Huber (left), and her sister Lydia (right)

One Snowy Day

IT HAS BEEN A WHILE!

Hey Everyone:

Sorry it’s been a while since the last time I wrote. I guess I just haven’t been feeling up to writing in more than a couple of weeks. But that’s all going to change in ’08 because I am going to come up with something big and unusual for everyone back home. You’ll know about that the starting of January. Anyway, lets get you all caught up with what’s going on. First of all, the last couple of weeks of work have been interesting. Some days were good and some were just draining. The draining days consist of working on the same dam issue for two or three days straight. I am the type of tech that likes to get things done as soon as possible so I can move on to another issue. My goal was to have just about everything on my list done before the Christmas and New Year’s break because I don’t want to have to think about what I didn’t do or should do. I believed I did just that. I have been here at my project of Information Services at the Brethren Service Center for 4 months now and to me it has been great up to this point. I look forward to the next 8 months because I will get to do more things and learn a lot more tech things.
A couple of weeks ago, there was a specific day that I should have written in my blog. This was the day it snowed here in New Windsor. To me this was a special day because I have never seen it snowed before. This was a first for me. I have been to the snow, but not when it was snowing. I loved it 100%. I wished it snowed here all winter long but I might have to go to other areas to see that. People here say that my love for snow is that I don’t have to drive in it. Perhaps their right but that doesn’t take away my love for snow. This past summer here in New Windsor, because of the humidity was so high, everyday I was like, “I wished it would snow.” Got my wish and it was great. We got a few inches of show. Visiting kids here would take out their snow boards and go snow boarding. That was cool. Anyway, I am glad it snowed at least one day and I am hoping for more days of snow this winter.
Well it is Christmas today and this is the first Christmas that I spent time away from my family. It was interesting to think that I would actually have a good day. Yesterday for Christmas Eve, I spent time with Joan McGrath our Human Resources lady, and her husband. We went to dinner at the Olive Garden and after that we went to her church. This was a Lutheran church and was a long service than I am used to. Brethren services are usually an hour. This was an hour and 45 minutes. They had communion with bread and wine. Brethren usually drink grapefruit juice but they served up real wine which surprised me. After the service, we went to a local hospital and served up some food to people that had to work or were waiting in the waiting room on Christmas Eve. We did that for about an hour and a half. Wasn't many people so we left early. Got home to around midnight. Today, I just watched a couple of DVD's and watched two basketball games. It was the first basketball games I have seen all season since I only get a few channels and not the normal basketball channels. It was cool. I personally want to thank each and everybody that sent cards to me. I have never received this many Christmas cards before. What can I say, people got love for BVSers. And I got love for each and everyone who sent one to me. I thought that was great and I am touched.
The new year is upon us and 2008 I believe is going to be busy year and also an interesting year for me. I got a lot going on and its going to be a lot to write about. Look forward to it. Keep a look out for the 2007 Year in Review coming up in a week. The best year for me in a long long time. One Love; Peace!

JCI
BVSer, Unit 275
Information Services

Week without Francie!

This week in IS, Francie decided to go on vacation for a week and Wolfgang and I held down the post. I thought that this is an interesting week because it made me realize that I can someday run my own IS department. However as long as I am posted here in New Windsor working in the Blue Ridge building with Francie, I wouldn't want to to this job without her. In the mean time, this week went pretty smooth. I worked on the Director of the BSC's new laptop, the fastest laptop I have ever worked on. I started it on Monday and finished on Tuesday. Then a new PC came in for the director of Hospitality and Public Information. I am still working on this PC because there were issues that came up and I need to see if Francie can help me out. There were a few calls that I had to take care of. A employee's printer keeps getting paper jams and other times were because the Internet was slow. Man, the Internet was so slow this week, it seemed slower than dial-up. I had to call Michael, our ISP administrator to come in and see what seemed to be the problem. As of matter of fact, I had to call him not once but twice. Once on Monday and the other time on Thursday. Then on Friday, Francie called me up during the evening and let me know that she was in the office and couldn't log on to the network at what so ever. Michael had to come out Friday and stayed a couple of hours to see if he can fix the issue. The issue is still not solved yet because he had to take down the Becker building wireless Internet down. He decided to leave it down all weekend to see what is going on and see if he can find the issue that we are having. So for the first time since I have arrived in the Becker building, I have no Internet for the whole weekend. It sucks a little bit, however if I really needed to get on I can always go to another building and log on. Which makes it not really that bad. Other than the Internet going up and down, not much else has been going on this week, I burned a few more movies this week and started to write a lot more. I have a couple more blogs up so I can organize my thoughts throughout the whole time in BVS and even after I leave BVS, I will still continue to write. For some reason, now I have a passion of writing. It really does help me out, and I also enjoy hearing that my friends and family back home are enjoying reading my blog. Makes me feel really good and that people haven't forgotten that I moved over here on the east coast for the time being. A big “Thank You” to the people that logged online and read it.

Anyway, check me out on other blogs to come. Peace!

JCI
BVSer, Unit 275
Information Services
Church of the Brethren General Board