The Becker Home

It feels really strange not having a class to attend, no paper to write, no project to work on!! I paced the floor last night wondering what to do. Tonight, Jennifer and I went to the gym. That helped. I have a long list of things to do at home, but for now, I am just adjusting to no school work. I am still waiting for my final Literature grade to be posted, then I will have a completed transcript! (no clue what my grade will be though…Think it is a B)

Next week, I will adjust to no work!

Baby Raymond came home last Friday. It was such a surprise as Erica did not tell us. We walked in to find her holding him in her living room!! He has a heart and lung monitor and is on oxygen and has lots of doctor appointments, but he is home. It was so nice that I finally got to hold him. Isabella seems to like that he is home as well. She really likes when they put Raymond on her bed and she can lay next to him. I think Isabella will be a great big sister to him.

Ok, so I have one week of school left and two weeks for employment left. May’s Calendar is wide open!! Any cheap suggestions to fill the time

My senior project is wrapping up. My team created, with some programming help, an Article Manager plug-in to be used with WordPress for Parkland School district. This plug in allows them to upload files to a directory while capturing title, journal it came from, publishing date, and description from the user and store that info in a table within WP database. Then a page in WP will display the articles with a hyper-link to the file. A special search engine was created to search just the articles and display those meeting the search criteria. Sounds simple, but trust me, it was hard. All we have left on the project is to finish the documentation and present it to the professor. We already delivered the product to Parkland and they were very happy with it.

On Thursday, I have a LIT final exam as well as an Literary analysis paper due. At the end of that exam…. I am DONE!!!!! Finally, a B.S. degree.

I started my career counseling this week. Mack is paying for the service for me to use for 4 months. They will help write my resume, practice interviewing, teach how to search, help focus on what I want to do when I grow up, etc. Seems like it should be a great benefit to have. Hard to believe that after May 4, I will be unemployed after 23 years of loyal service. Hmmm. Bigger and Better things are to come I am sure!

I have created a new page that has my résumé. All the info is pulled from Linkedin, so I only have to edit in one place and this page is automatically updated. At the top of the this page (above the header), you can find the link. Please review and pass my info to anybody looking for employees!! There is a form at the bottom if anybody wants to contact me, I chose to use a form with spam controls instead of publishing my email address. (some spam prevention)

Erica has created a page at Caring Bridge to keep people update on Raymond’s progress. You can follow his progress by visiting http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/raymondchristopher .

I reposted this info as a sticky note so that it remains at the top of this page. This is due to many people have come to my site to find the link.

Well, the move to North Carolina is off.  Last week I was called in to HR and Volvo rescinded their offer for me to move and informed me they no longer had a position for me at all.  I was given a 60 day notice, so after May 4 I will be unemployed. 

I learned in January that my role was going to be decommissioned in May and that Volvo was reducing my team from 13 people world wide to just 3 worldwide. I had hoped for one of the 3 global positions, but I did not get it. As a result of the bad economy, Volvo has stated they could not find a new position for me, and they had to terminate my employment after 23 years of service! I was one of 11 people planning to move that was eliminated as well as 21 people in the Greensboro area.

I am sad to leave and a bit scared as I have not looked for employment in 23 years. I do have hope that something bigger and better will come my way. I will obtain my B.S. degree in Management of Information Systems in May, so that should be of some help opening a few more doors. I am still thinking about starting work on Masters this fall as I think that will also help.

It has taken me a week to absorb some of the shock. Now it is time to start looking forward. If you know of anything that may be of benefit to me, let me know. Also I am building my network on Linkedin.com, you will find a link at the top right side of my page. If you are already a member, please join my network. If your not, you should check out joining. (and then connect to me of course).