random ramblings

Read the story  gilaa
the short story is ..  if you are looking for a job / already working in the US this year but you don’t have your H-1B yet … this is bad news.. the next H-1B visas won’t be available until Fiscal Year 2009 ( starts in October 2008 ).

Tomorrow’s my last day working ..  that means I have to surrender this laptop   I’ll be computer-less for a little while since I already sold my desktop monitor too..

Today my group had a going-away lunch for me at Chilli’s.  Ryan, my coworker who’s also a black belt had sent a meeting invitation a few days ago for a "Security Review" meeting scheduled 1/2 hr before my lunch.  He wrote in the invite that he needed to brief the team on some security issue.  So around 11AM, I was cleaning my laptop files and he sent me an instant message asking if I was gonna join them for the meeting. He said "It probably doesn’t matter to you anymore but you’re still a part of the team, are you coming ?"   I wasn’t gonna ditch the meeting, I just didn’t realize the time.  So I went down to the meeting room and everyone was there.  On the wall I saw a powerpoint presentation titled "SECURITY ALERT" using the Cummins template.

He then opened his Internet Explorer and started narrating …  I saw "America’s Most Wanted" website. The page shows "FBI 10 Most Wanted" .. then I saw MY PICTURE there !!  huahahaha it was a good surprise. I absolutely had no idea !  Ryan did a good job  hehe One of our Master Black Belt commented that he had too much time to do this, he probably needs a new project to work on :p

so this is the "Brief" page:

He also prepared "The Case", "Profile", and the "Video and Photo" page.

Basically on the "The Case" he put down all of my completed projects.  Usually each six sigma project is associated with some savings ($$$) for the company, but I had 3 projects where I had zero savings, so he put that as my "crime", that I stole those money :p

And then on the picture page,  he put a picture of me & Hendrik captioned "This is believed to be a picture with a new accomplice".  He scanned the picture I put up on my cubicle wall when I was in a meeting last week.   

There’s another picture of me shoveling and it’s captioned "This is believed to be Vera burying the hidden project savings" :p  That picture was taken during one of our housing community project .

Aaaw  I really didn’t expect all that   Then my boss gave me the marble black belt plague and a REAL BLACK BELT ! yep.. like those karate black belts hehe this one has a six sigma logo on it ! The team gave me a box of chocolate.  Then we all went to lunch

I sold all of my furnitures.. yay ! The total proceeds were only $295 though because I gave away a bunch of stuffs, but it was good enough..I’m happy that I sold everything I wanted to sell..   and they money is more than enough to ship my stuffs to Austin..

So far I’ve shipped  1 luggage + 4 boxes via FedEx.  The total weight is 146 lbs hehe .. it cost me $75 .. not too bad.  FedEx home delivery is cheaper than USPS or UPS, and they’re reliable too.  4-5 day delivery.

I’m not too sure now about the reliability of USPS Media Mail. I shipped 5 boxes containing books, cds, dvds, and tons of paper (bank statements, tax records, etc). The total weight for the 5 boxes was 132 lbs :p hehe and it cost me $59.  But not sure when they will arrive..

That will be it.  So total I spent $134 for shipping 278 lbs .. Everything else will go into my car… but looking around my apartment, there’s not much left which is good. 

So I still have more than $160 left from my furniture sale .. would that be enough for gas ? hmm the 1100 miles drive to Austin should take about 3 full tanks … that should be enough … it’s just perfect then !

oh but wait..  I didn’t count Hendrik’s one way ticket to Indiana.. that’s $176 and there’s also gonna be a hotel cost .. I’m guessing around $70 ? We still don’t know where we’ll be calling it a night .. we plan to drive as far as we can on Saturday..

5 more days to go……………