Alarm clocks...

Have you ever noticed how it is so much more difficult to get out of bed to an alarm clock, than it is to get out of bed when you just wake up. Even if it is in the middle of the night, and you wake up to go pee... I don't lay there thinking... only five more minutes... I get up and go pee. So basically, the ideal alarm clock would be something that makes you need to pee. I'll think about this one and get back to you.
But really, I wake up in the morning, usually about 5:30 and think to myself, hey, I'm feeling good, I could probably get up now. But of course, what would be the point? I fall back asleep and at 7:00 my alarm goes off. Groggy and slower than a sloth, I turn the alarm off and think about how nice it would be to keep sleeping. The mentality of knowing you have to get up is just painful. Any thoughts? Agreements?
For those dedicated readers, the new job at Kroger is going well. The team is extremely different than my last team with a much more youthful spirit about them. I'm understanding the logistics of the WIN software, basically its the system that keeps the distribution centers on track with getting the proper product to the proper truck. Looking forward to getting my hands on some code and feeling useful. All in due time though, its bedtime, I'm an old man... PS, I got a new hat. I like it.

What I want to be when I grow up!

Before getting into the substance of this post, I would like to make note that I am done (at least in the development phase) with all projects relating to my current team at Kroger. I finished up my Informix 4gl program the other day, and worked up the script to execute it with options from the cronjob. It's a fine program I might say if you give me a moment to gloat. As a korn shell script the updating of the database would have taken 86 hours to run (keep in mind that the update needs to take place every 24 hours) and now that the 4gl is compiled and in place, it takes a whopping 4 minutes! The boss was happy.

Onto today's topic...
Today, I... Jason Pawlak, decided what I want to be when I grow up. I think I'm going to train seeing-eye dogs. How cool would that be, really. I was driving home from work and saw this blind lady with her dog, and two other people (who I assumed to be family) She is standing with her dog on the corner of a very busy intersection, and is calm as can be, along with her dog mirroring her lack of excitement. So many things going around, but this dog knows its purpose. Very cool indeed. Now that I'll be working normal hours at my job, I am thinking about volunteering at a humane shelter around here. More on that later though, no details yet.
No work tomorrow, meetings on Friday, then up to Blue Ash. G'night!

Kroger

Last summer, late June to be exact I was out and about interviewing for various internships, and thanks to the likes of Brian Bailey, I was able to land a job with the IS&S department of a Fortune 500 company: The Kroger Corp. Yes, it came as a surprise to myself as well... Kroger really is a Fortune 500 company.
This past Tuesday, we had our annual report meeting (I'm sure it had some more official sounding name) and basically it was all the big guys stand up on stage acting all goofy while all the associates (thousands of us) sat there wanting to hear about the yearly bonus. So there's a set bonus, then depending on how well the company did that year, you get a percent of it, this year it was about 149% (everyone was indeed a little giddy after the meeting) However, for students like myself, who could really use the bonus... well, no such luck for interns.
Here are a few interesting facts I learned at the meeting... I believe all this information was released that morning in New York... so don't go running with the thoughts of insider information.

- Kroger brought in 66 Billion Dollars over the past year (P&G brought in 68)
- Kroger made out with 1.1 Billion Dollars profit over the past year (P&G brought in around 8.8 I think)
- Kroger has 300,000 employees (P&G... who knows)
- Wal-mart is number one in the market of food sales (but only because they sacrifice service for price) Kroger at no. 2 <-- Pretty sure
- Head honchos of big corporations will do nearly anything (or so it seems) to keep the attention of their audience

I have to hand it to the guys though, it was a fairly easy going 2 hours of being squashed into a place that should have been holding about 3/4's of what it was.

I do love my job though, I am making great money while going to school full time and Kroger does everything in its power to keep me hired on. Once exams are done this week, I will be working Full-time at Kroger until late September. Then at that time I'll go back to working 15ish hours a week. I sit in my cube and program all day long... what's more fun than that??? Yeah, I know, not for everyone, but I enjoy it a lot.

I feel like these first few posts that I've been giving you are more informational on my life than entertaining. I fully expect that to change in the near future. I just want readers to have a ground base on who they're reading from, before completely blowing me off for bad grammar and awkward sentences (thanks Firefox for fixing my spelling!)

One more exam tomorrow (Digital System Design) then its St. Paddy's Day! Woot! Have a good one, and keep your stick on the ice... (we're all in this together)