Our Final Week is Finally Here

Well, I want to offer my deepest and heartfelt congratulations to the members of Class A-107. This week is your final week and your job fair is this week. I wish all of you the best of luck in the future and hope you all get great jobs. In case you might need it, Lockheed-Martin is hiring technicians to work at home. I found the link on the DAV web page at www.dav.org. Check it out, I don't know what their pay scale is, but with your VBTC training, you should enjoy a slam dunk on this opportunity.

I want all of you to know that I'll never forget any of you. I sincerely hope each of you will keep my MSN IM address and my www.phna2@cox.net email address active. Should any of you need anything, all you ever have to do is contact me. If its within my power I will do whatever I can to assist.

At the present time, I am working hard with Robert E. Brown, our classmate, to win a few grants so that he might open his own Veterans Rehabilitation School. The work is exciting and I have been able to bring Bob out of a real funk, when he, like me, did not realize how much the VBTC meant to each of us. In the end, it therapy for Bob and myself.

I love you all, and please, please keep in touch

Merry Christmas ???

Well, it finally happened. I've been dropped from the rolls of the Veterans Business Training Center, effective at 1330 on Friday 12/22/2006. I was found not worth of further training by the Project Manager, Mr. Ken Smith. Oh well, 2007 is another year, and I won't let this deter me from finding a good paying job. To all the members of Class A-107, I wish you the best. My only wish is that the total number of students we had back in September (22) were still with us to graduate next month. There is something wrong with a group of people who have washed out more than 60% of our group. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy Holidays to all of you. I'll never forget any of you.

Paul

Whatever goes up must come down

Well, the title says it all. I made a serious mistake and forwarded a email, I should not have, to a friend of mine. My intent was to help him stay in the course and I felt that should he learn a little more about our leader, he would stay with us. My friend had a medical problem that was covered by Social Security, that was in danger of being revoked. I managed, with the help of another classmate to get a workable answer for him. My friend being naturally bitter was very upset with the leadership of VBTC. I thought by sharing this email from the Project Manager of VBTC, would boost his spirits. Little did I know that when I forwarded to the Project Manager one of his emails which contained the "staff" email. Shortly thereafter, I received an email from the Project Manager, that I had grossly erred in judgement. It did not take much to see how angry he was with me. As a result I have been assigned to the Technical Support area, where my hours have been strictly cut back. I worked a grand total of 22 hours last week, and am scheduled for 18 hours this week. On Wednesday, Dec 20th, I am due to be at the VR&E office in Roanoke, VA to sign-off on my "work plan". I just wonder what they are going to say about that plan now. Hopefully all will end well, and I'll be permitted to continue the course to its end. I am NOT a happy camper right now

Oops I've Been Reassigned!!!

Well, what a surprise, I've been reassigned to Instructor Duty with VBTC. As such, I will still continue to monitor the progress of the Proposal Efforts, and the Class Project.

Along with being upgraded to Instructor Duty comes the fact that every conversation you have with Mr. Z, the Director of Training, you pick up another project that takes 10-12 hours to do but is due tomorrow. Despite the challenge, I am enjoying it, and look forward to being a successful Instructor.

Paul

We're Working it Now

This past week has seen an incredible increase of calling to various companies to partner with us to make our Class Project a reality.

Class A-107 is to be commended on their work and don't slow down now...our fellow veterans are depending on you.

I have located a Grant Proposal that is let by the SBA specifically to foster new development in the field of education. We will be chasing this grant with the assistance of the Purple Heart Organizations Grant Department. Due to the nature of the procurement, I won't be able to post any more about this. Until we win it that is!!

Hope everyone had a great Veterans Day Holiday. Lets go Team A-107

Week of 10/30/06 thru 11/03/06

Well folks, this week we have made some progress in our Class Project. What Class Project, you say?? Sorry, it was important and I forgot to tell you about it earlier. I am the Project Manager for the Class A-107 Class Project. Our Project involves getting industry to partner with the VBTC to develop a process thqt allows hearing challanged veterans to attend and graduate from our training program. Our goal is to set up a call center environment where the caller will use the telephone and the Vet will receive some sort of Closed Captioning across his screen of what the caller is saying. In turn, if necessary what the veteran types on his keyboard will be sent to the caller as voice. Our sister class, Class A-911, is doing the same thing for blind veterans. In this regard we already have one blind veteran participating and doing extremely well. At the present time, he has a "helper" who reads the words in the classroom to him and he types the reply. Now we just have to get these folks into the main stream of this course.

This week, I have received notices that several companies are eager to enter into talks with the VBTC to accomplish this goal. I only have 4 hours a week to work on this project, so I'll publish more on Thursday.

Thanks very much for your time

Paul

I am getting this down

Well after several hours of trial and error, plus the fact that all my friends have been a great help, I've finally started to make some sense out of this blogging business. Still have some difficulty in getting photos to publish where I want them to.

I'm really busy today, in that I want to improve this blog, but at the same time, I have a commitment to help the CIC around the house this morning. We are looking for a new house, and since I've begun this school, my time to participate in this endeavor, seems to have evaporated. We would like to get the house closed on and moved before the end of November. Somehow, I don't think we'll make it.

Thats all for today, I hope all of you are in fine health and doing well.