week 9...the two month mark!

hi guys! it's almost officially 2 whole months since i've started working! whaaat! i think my posts might be less regular here on out, considering.....what the hell have i even been talking about lately? the posts have almost been like my high school posts about 'what i did for the day'............ but i'm working now.. and now, it's kinda worse because it's like..."well, i'm training, so that's it! bye!" and that's not interesting. lol. so i'll try to do every two weeks or so--if even that frequency is interesting enough. my training/shadowing lasts through the beginning of september, so i'm not going to have my first project until sometime after then. anyway, here's how the last week's been. ~Lin-chan ^.~

sunday: celebrated the sis in law's birthday a few days early, because she and her friend went off to disneyland. her friend's never been to california before (or maybe disneyland...? or she hasn't been to disney whatsoever.... i don't remember) so anyway, we went to cheesecake factory and it was teh yums. i got hibachi steak. >w< so good. (ps, i got regular mashed potatoes...can't do wasabi)

monday: had a migraine the entire day. it was super fun and i couldn't get rid of it until i got home. pretty crappy, and i didn't get much of my training module done. after i got home, chilled for like an hour, the migraine went away. what the hell man. then we drove over to teh paul's professor's house to check on his wife since no one was answering the phone for several days. prof's grandkids came to visit from out of the country, so he wanted to take them on a driving trip of the us. and his wife has arthritis and he wasn't sure if she wanted to go with him or not.... well in the end, we think she went along on the trip..because all looked well at their house. idk. it seemed empty. afterward, we went grocery shopping.

tuesday: [in a nutshell, i worked on my training module on and off the whole day.] on monday one of the other managers saw me hanging out with a few of my fellow cohorts on the opposite side of our floor, and asked me to be in a new promo video for our office. so i said sure---probably need me for diversity reasons, and women in IT, or something. according to her email, my part was at 10. 10 came and went and by lunchtime, she ran past my desk and noticed me (she didn't previously know where exactly i sat i think). she said she'd use the instant messenger to let me know when they needed me......
3 rolled around and i had a conference call with the people from our grouping thing last week. i walked over to the desks of the other people who are based in our office to see if they wanted to just get a conference room or stay at their desks. one of them told me they thought the film crew left---uhm ok that's weird. but it's cool, i honestly don't care either way---i've seen myself in hollywood productions. a video for my company...meh! lol. anyway, the other group members decided to not to fly in this week and everyone would work remotely on things.
430 rolled around, and it was go home time! no adventures in the evening aside from fun swatching this month's bite limited lab release lipstick. i'm slowly starting to like reds/oranges...but they're still really bright! i think in general, they work well for my skintone--i mean stereotypically asians in photos from all points in time basically only wore reds....so yeah! we just need to build up that comfort and confidence, lol.

wednesday: spent most of the day chugging through my training module. we had a conference call at 10 and we're all confused again...but that's ok. haha. went out to lunch at a local surfer bar, got shrimp tacos....they were teh yumz. uhm otherwise not a whole lot else.

thursday: spent most of the day working on the training module again. at 9, there was a webinar that our group was invited to. at 10, we had another conference call and the first question the project manager asked was, "did any of yall think that was worth our time?" everyone: "nope." pm: "ok, just making sure because i didn't think so either!" lol.
aside from that, one of my friends who got his paystub (i hadn't at the time) told me that he's getting the money from one of our healthy living incentives---(filling out a profile) which i also did, so that's exciting. him mentioning this prompted me to go look over that website again. there's another monetary healthy living incentive, so i did that today (watched some videos). basically, there were two "paths" for these incentives, pending on what kind of health care plan you have (hsa vs non-hsa). i have an hsa, so every year my company puts $$$ into my hsa. plus i can get the two monetary bonuses mentioned above (once yearly). plus! i can get a free fitbit (once yearly). WHAT. so i spent some of the day looking into which model i want. there are two models we can choose from, or it's a $100 discount to upgrade. so i'm leaning toward the charge, but i haven't fully decided yet. in addition, if you want to participate in this other program with your fitbit, you can sync it with the website to earn points toward amazon and itunes giftcards. free money just for walking around?? (pedometer) i think hells yes.
the other "path" for the non-hsa people doesn't sound quite as good, lol. they have two options. do two monetary incentives, or one monetary incentive plus a fitbit. feels like those guys are getting the short end of the stick. i'm getting essentially 266% more free money than them..plus a fitbit....

friday: finally finished that training module and got about halfway on the next (it's an interactive one--finally!). had another 10am group call. finally heard about a project i'm on. it essentially sounds like an extension of our shadowing...so like i'm booked through october now. wow! otherwise i'm still in a weird limbo of confusion as to what's going on with our group thing. all i've been doing is studying..... in the afternoon we had a conference call with a guy that's been visiting our building all week, who handles contracts or something like that. anyway, he wanted to discuss some initiatives regarding us getting on more projects. basically for our field, there's primarily two offices that do that kind of work. ours and another in michigan. and basically our location is so new that, relatively speaking, we aren't getting put on projects frequently enough (employee utilization essentially). then after the call, we kinda hung out for a while, waiting to go home.

week eight

hi guys! it was a hectic and annoying one, but i hope you guys had a great week! ~Lin-chan ^.~

monday: spent most of the day hanging out. a couple people involved in this meeting thing came to say hi to me in the morning, and also to tell me that not everyone's flown in yet. so there was a lot of waiting. and waiting. i did end up having an extra packed lunch from last week that i was able to eat. so that worked out. and then at about 330, s and i (i will further refer to my cohort as S) decide to go to the conference room and scope things out. and that's right when they said that the meeting would be starting. so yay.
apparently our little grouping is an initiative from our company to gather and train resources (employees) for predicted 'hot areas'. mobile app development being a huge thing in today's society, with constant growth. so anyway, come to find out, the day's shindig lasts five weeks. 5. weeks. TT_TT not only that, but i didn't get to leave work at my usual time because i'm salary..not hourly....and they can do what they want. so we left around 515, and i usually go in at 8. TT's and 晚上's.

tuesday: we were supposed to have a conference call at 830, so we all arrive by 8 or so. the person ended up rescheduling to 5. like 5PM. so we dawdled around looking at some of the information said individuals sent us to try and figure out what they wanted to talk about. [and by we for the next several weeks, i mean, most of the other people in our group because they've got years of experience with what s and i have been training on.] 10 rolls around and we have a conference call with someone else. she was american. it was awesome and informative. 11:30 rolls around and we didn't have a break since 8. pretty terrible, and we take one. then by 12, one of the guys realizes s and i don't totally understand a fundamental topic and he proceeds to explain it to us. 1220: he says, "it's 1220, we should take lunch soon." and i'm sitting there, stomach grumbling........ then he proceeds to finish talking about what he was teaching us for another 15 minutes. teh paul was a nice hubhub and made me a few containers worth of lunches on monday.
we come back from lunch around 130 and do basically nothing until 4, between demoing stuff that the other people in our group made, and fighting with installing software, etc. around 4, there's a conference call for some other party regarding a demo we have. 5 rolls around and it's the worst thing ever. i have no freaking clue what these people were talking about, in part because of their accents, but also because one of them was a mouth breather and another (or the same person) was driving around and you could hear boss lady (as my great grandmother refers to it---his gps) talking in the background. it was awful. i didn't leave until 6. 8 am to 6pm of feeling like i haven't learned much or contributed to society. that is super crappy.

wednesday: we didn't really end up doing a whole lot over the course of the day. or rather, the 3 "smart" people were in their own little world, kind of showed us what was going on, and then kind of kept to themselves. and that was pretty much the whole day. really sad. the project manager did take us out to dinner, which was nice. we went to a local seafood restaurant (closer to where most of the students live) that teh paul and i rarely go to because it's in the $25 range....anyway, it was teh yums and it was enlightening about various things that have happened to people that worked for our company (and how they got terminated, etc), as well as expectations of us over the course of the next 4 weeks. and of course, there was informal, getting-to-know-you random conversation. so it was actually kinda nice. i didn't end up getting home til 845. so 8am to 845. eeek!

thursday: spent most of the morning in partial silence, mixed in with a bit of playing around with a few other programs that we installed. at 11, the 4 of us from our location had a conference call with an HR lady. so we went into a nearby conference room to listen. in the meantime, one of the people had to leave to catch his flight. at noon, we finished the call and broke for lunch. the remaining 3 out-of-town-ers decided to call it a day because their flights were pretty soon too. lunch was so nice, we walked over to the marketplace thing with the chinese restaurant and i got more chinese food. i really wanted to go to the waffle & crepe place to try them, but their line was longer. we went back to work to have lunch in the break room. afterward, i started looking over some new training material that we were sent. then at 4 i decided to leave, since i got like 1.5-2 hours extra from the past few days.

friday: the day was pretty much nothing. i worked on my training from thursday, but pretty much i didn't get too far because a bunch of people kept coming by our desks to talk to us and kill time.......otherwise, nothing really exciting happened.

notd: formula x wondrous

hi guys! this mini was included in the goodie bag at sunday's beauty before brunch event at sephora. it's formula x sheer strength nail color in wondrous. i used 2 coats with hairspray and highheels' diy "gel" mani. ~Lin-chan ^.~

aromaleigh cosmetics haul swatches

hi guys! i made an order with aromaleigh cosmetics in july and got a tooooon of pigments. so, here is what i gots, and i hope you enjoy! ~Lin-chan ^.~

[all pigments are swatched over wet n wild fergie take on the day eye primer]

from july's haul post:

aromaleigh cosmetics: ok, so after courtney (phyrra) posted this amazingness, i had to try. yall know i'm not a pigment girl, but these were too beautiful. so i got: theodora (full size), this is my design (sampler) set, sample baggies of krampus & hydra, and a mini jar of phylira. she also threw in a few freebies in sample baggies (including one blush) and a mini jar of shadow (grazie mille). swatches to come later, because holy &!@#$^ that's a ton of baggies!

photo with size comparisons; plus freebies

this is my design set

pigments ordered

theodora, philyra, hydra, krampus

this is my design set

bone arena, chrysalis, veneer, persuasion, lapse

unorthodox, woof, apiary, antler velvet, perception

ripper, lure, abattoir, cygnus, starling

murder tie, feast, reckoning, gotcha, bellissima

phoenix, ikebana, folie a deux, survive, tattler

entrapment, ravenstag, sublime, lucid, craquelure

freebies

odette, pyroclastic flow, nanette, bast, grazie mille, pharmakon (blush)

are you guys proud of me? i actually made a video so you can see the sparkle in action! (clips filmed on iPhone 6 and used iMovie app.)

week 7

hi guys, we're already approaching the two month mark! eeeeeeep! ~Lin-chan ^.~

so we got teh paul a new car! w00000t w000t. it's a 2015 mazda3 i sport. so niceeeeee. also, sorry this post is late. i forgot that i didn't finish and publish the post when i intended to.

monday: we didn't end up getting back to our apartment until late sunday night, so i didn't have time to make lunch, and i ordered from a local italian cafe that i've never eaten at before. it was good. i got the hot pastrami sandwich. othwerwise, it was same ol same ol. the lady that gave us the challenges to work on met with us in the morning to make sure we had the software working properly and give us other tips on how to learn what we're working on. otherwise, it was another sleepy hard to concentrate day at work. after i got home, we went and ran errands.

tuesday: errand running went late, so i didn't have time to make lunch again...... so we went to the nearby mexican restaurant again. yuuuum. i actually got steak chimichangas...which were kinda lame in my opinion, definitely those fish tacos are better.. work was again, another day of not being able to concentrate, and making a teeny tiny bit of progress.

wednesday: so....same ol same ol again.....? and by that i mean lazy sleepy at work and that's not a good thing....... eventually i got to the point where my eyes couldn't focus on the computer anymore without wigging out...so i started to go back over all of my notes from my modules and highlight important topics, etc. lunch was pretty uneventful, i brought something and then to get a lil exercise, we went to the grocery store a few blocks away.

thursday: ...is there anything new to report? not really. brought my lunch and took a walk to the grocery store again for a snack.

friday: not much change. we did get some excitement. last week, i failed to mention that we *might* have our first project assignment. and after some digging, we (the other guy on my training path and i) think we know what it is, and that company hasn't fully signed the contract with ours yet. so we're not sure if we will get it or not. anyway, our manager came by to tell us that the other people that will be working on this potential project will be flying to our location (since half are from our office, half are elsewhere) to meet us and do training together next week. so at least i've got something new to look forward to!

after work, we went to a local brewery with some work people because they give free tours on fridays and saturdays. and i've never toured a brewery before, so that was enlightening and interesting. afterward, they all had a few drinks, and the brewery had a few games so we played cards against humanity. that was sooo much fun. we've played apples to apples, but teh paul's family is a good ol christian group of people...so we've never had an opportunity to play cards against humanity with anyone. and it was so bad, but so much fun.