Sunday, Aug 21st
When I got off the plane, I received a warm greeting from the driver, unusual for the Northern city atmosphere. He was a great guy and gave me a lot of insight on the area and on what he knew about Turner people (he drives around many of us due to our contract with their car service). After settling down in the hotel with the 3 bag fulls of things I had, I could not stand to spend my first night just sulking in my hotel room, so I sent an email to everyone and invited them to hang out and get to know each other (this might be my ex-RA instinct, but w/e). A few came, but I didn't meet all 25 until the next day.
Monday, Aug 22nd
Nothing too exciting happened since it was the first day. We went over basic BIM processes to get everyone on the same page. The most exciting part of the day was getting our work computers. They are top of the line Dell M6600's with 16GB of RAM and awesome graphics cards.
Tuesday, Aug 23rd
Day 2 of training started off bright and early with a trip to the corporate office in New York City. We met Jim Barrett who is the National BIM/VDC manager (aka my official boss for these 8 weeks) and someone I've read about prior to starting. After an office tour and meeting 2 Executive Vice Presidents (EVPs, aka a step down from CEO) we retreated to the basement training room. While we were there, I felt my chair slightly rocking side to side like someone was putting their foot on my chair, but when I looked back no one was touching my chair. I thought I might have been going crazy, but my fears were relieved (somewhat) to learn that it was a tremor from a 4-5 something magnitude earthquake in Washington DC about 300 miles away. Later, we went to PJs for dinner with some of the people we met and by the end of the day it had felt like I had been there 2 WEEKS not 2 days!
Wednesday, Aug 24th
Wednesday started with a not so delightful fire drill at 6:30am that ruined the fact that we were allowed to sleep in an extra 30 minutes. Oh well. When we got back to the hotel we were shocked to see Peter Davoren, the CEO, waiting on us. After introductions, he invited us to a breakfast they were having the next morning to top off a road show they were doing across the country. That night I was at the hotel bar with some of the guys and I saw one of the EVPs, so i flagged him down and invited him to have a drink with us. This led to not only great conversation, but to other people to come with him. In particular there were a lot of tech people due to the fact that they were working on a project, which I can't disclose here, that involves heavy technology. Out of this crowd was Micky Doner, the CIO. Now, for an employee such as myself working in a department full of technology, this was like a field day and I was given so much insight into the company's perspective on the future.
Thursday, Aug 25th
While sleeping, I was rudely awoken by another fire drill at 2:40am. I figured that if the Lord wanted me to go, I'd go, so I went back to sleep. I lived. The breakfast with all the EVPs, and CEO was amazing. I realize that I'll probably never get that opportunity again until much later in my career.
Friday, Aug 26th
The end of the workweek brought hype about Hurricane Irene. I was booked to fly home to Charlotte for my fantasy football draft, but decided getting back into Newark right after the hurricane would be nuts.
Saturday, Aug 27th
As the storm moved closer I was restricted to my room preparing my auction draft plan, since I had procrastinated on it as usual. My plan was to conserve money and not waste it on top 5 players like I did with WR Andre Johnson last year.
Sunday, Aug 28th
In the morning I woke up and was worried that we didn't have power. I shut off all my electronics to conserve battery life for my draft. I ended up using my work laptop to keep track of picks, iPad to see the screen, and phone to call in. I was able to make it through the entire draft and ended up with a well balanced team. Right after the draft we were ordered to change hotels to another Hilton close by that had power. My company is amazing and took care of everything. Packing up my stuff in an hour was difficult though.
Monday, Aug 29th
Nothing too big happened, but we did fall behind in training due to all the set backs in week 1. We did presentations on our first assignment which was to take a stadium from google sketch up's library and construct it in a new city.
Tuesday, Aug 30th - Thursday, Sept 1st
This week was spent learning more modeling software and working day and night on the weekly project to make sure it was good. We presented and I ended up doing really well and catching on to the software.
Friday, Sept 2nd - Monday, Sept 5th
Off to ATL I went to see Lindsay for a long Labor Day weekend. We went to a program on Friday, watched the Tigers win on Saturday, went to church, the vortex, IKEA, and Hibachi on Sunday, and bowling on Monday.
RECAP
The past 2 weeks have been awesome, and visiting Lindsay was a much needed slow down to the fast paced training. God has blessed me so much and I can't wait to see where my life goes from here. I will try and do more pictures next post, and hopefully I can finally settle down in the hotel
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Upper NJ
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