Mike Oren.com

Yeah, so I kind of dropped the ball on keeping everything updated. It was a busy end of the semester, what with research and class projects and interviews. I maintained my 4.0 GPA, but I'm still in the process of finding a job (having trouble finding something that really fits my interests, and I've been honest with companies when the position they are interviewing me for is not one I'm interested in). I did find out about a position with Motorola doing haptic and sound design that seemed interesting, but I only just applied for that one. I've also been talking with Salesforce.com about a usability analyst position, and I'm waiting to hear back from them about the next steps (the holiday kind of slowed things down a bit). In addition, I've been speaking with another professor here about staying on at Iowa State as a PhD student on his project--he had wanted somebody for the spring, but my current professor needs me to stay on his project, so I'm not sure if I've lost the opportunity to move to that other project later or not. In general, I'm keeping my options open as, for me, it's more important to find something that I'll enjoy and be happy with than it is to just get "a job" and work from paycheck to paycheck.

The holidays were also fairly busy, with the first two weeks spent helping out around the house and running various errands for holiday preparation and such. The third week was a bit more relaxed with some time, and I was actually able to play the Wii (I got 2 new games for Christmas--Lego Star Wars and Battalion Wars 2) for a couple of days before returning to Iowa to caucus for Obama (I had just enough time on my return to Ames to have dinner before heading to my caucus location). Obama, of course, won my precinct (and the state), and I have volunteered to serve as a delegate at the county caucus in March (in hopes of potentially moving on to the national convention--although there are 2 more layers after the county before I can get one of the national convention seats). I'm pretty excited about his win in Iowa, although there's still a long road ahead. It'd be nice to have a moderate President for a change willing to work with both parties as opposed to simply pushing a partisan agenda.

Over break I had also looked at a sheltie with Danielle--she's been wanting a dog for a good 5 years now and she now sort of has the money to buy one and while she's living at home her parents had told her she could get a dog and keep it there. Unfortunately, after I made the appointment to look at the sheltie (Danielle had requested I make the appointment for her), we found out that her parents were only ok with her getting an American cocker spaniel. It was a really awesome dog though, and I had wanted to adopt it myself and even purchased the basic supplies so I could care for it, but then I found out that while pets are allowed at my apartment the deposit and monthly fee were double what I had thought they were, so I had to abandon my plans to adopt him.

That's all for updates right now. I have a lot I could give, but I should be spending my time working on a journal article, working on my thesis, etc.