My
Bio
I said I'd get this up eventually and-here it is!
First, my name is Christopher Adam Roeszler. You may ask yourself, "Why
is he putting up his FULL name? Doesn't he know people can use that to find info
about him?" and so on. Answer: yes, I do know that. But I don't care. My
philosophy: If they really want to do something, they will. It won't matter how
much info I've withheld, they'll get it what they want anyway. Even my address
and phone number are up on my website.
Ok, with that out of the way I'll put up some basic info.
I was born in Aberdeen, SD to Dennis & Patricia Roeszler. I've also lived
in Ellendale and Forbes, ND, and Groton, SD. I sort of remember living in each
town, but not really which order. Maybe I'll ask Mom & Dad someday.
We ended up back in Aberdeen, so I pretty much consider that my home. Where I
was born and raised (the others were just vacation spots :)
I went to school at OM Tiffany for Kindergarten and 1st grade, then moved to
its sister school Howard Hedger to finish through 6th grade. After that, it was
on to Holgate Jr. High for 7th grade through Freshman year of High School. (We
liked to refer to that place is Hellgate State Penn once in a while; not really
sure why though). After that, I went and finished my school years at Central
High School. I had a blast there. I met my friend Dean there in Spanish class, Sophomore
year. He's turned out to be a great friend. I've been fortunate enough
to stay in contact with him ever since. We even roomed together in college our
first year.
Which brings me to post-graduation. I had been working for Super 8 on the
reservation line for a couple years, and was in the group sales dept at the
time. At the end of the summer, we "moved" to Fargo, ND to start
college. We were here almost a week early since we had continued with Marching
Band. That was probably the best thing I did in college.
I studied for a computer science degree, but have since temporarily
"dropped out". I met my wife to be (Michelle) during freshman year,
and since have married her and had a child with her (not in that order). Our
son's name is Alexander, but we just call him Alex. We've lived together since
March '98, and it's been totally worth it. We got married 7/24/99 (one week
after my birthday-easy to remember :) and of course had a couple spats. But
that's part of marriage.
When I was still in school, I got lucky enough to work for Information
Technology Services (ITS for short). I was supposed to do janitor style work for
work-study, but sort of convinced my way into ITS. (I had previously done
janitor work in high school part-time, so it made sense). I think ITS made a
position for me for the first year (I don't remember anyone doing it again the
next year when I came back), but the second year I got to work for Bud in Client
Services Group (CSG). I started out supporting students and setting up their
computers to connect to the Internet, whether it was to install Ethernet cards,
modems, or troubleshoot/setup software, I did it. I got pretty good with IBM
compatible stuff, but Mac just wasn't my thing. Still isn't. I want a Mac to do
multimedia stuff though, but that's just a side note :)
After a while, since students would come and go over time, I stopped
supporting the students in the Residence Halls and move on to support faculty
members in various departments. My direct supervisor then became Jeff; before it
was technically Bud, but I feel like I was sort of on my own too. Things were
setup so that we usually did most of our work without our supervisors having to
get directly involved. That's nice, because we learned how to do our jobs quite
well without being babysat :)
Anyway, when I worked for Jeff, we were assigned a task from the Architecture
to setup the lab so the student's couldn't cause significant down time anymore.
After all, these students were the ones that needed the lab to do most of their
major projects for school. Seems a bit funny that they were the ones causing the
most problems then.
Well, Jeff and I worked on setting up profiles and such with Windows NT
Server and Workstation. We figured out how to use a program provided on the
Server disc to restrict access to certain programs and features in NT. We had
things pretty well locked down with that, and Jeff did most of the other work;
installing the Operating Systems clean, installing programs, ensuring they ran,
and then creating backups of all that info so that if somehow one of the
students got past all of our precautions, that computer could be restored in no
more than 30 minutes, rather than the 4+ hours it used to take to restore one of
those machines.
I started working at a new job in August '99; Software ETC was coming back to
Fargo, and I took a big chance applying for a management position. Seriously, I
didn't have any management experience, let alone retail experience. But I got
the Assistant Store Manager position, and things went fairly well for the 1st
year. There were ups & downs, but I learned a lot of stuff working there.
Sadly though, I no longer work there. There was a dispute over something that
had happened at my store, I got blamed for it, and was let go. I'm not sure how
this will turn out in the end, but hopefully it will be all right. I'd like to
put up here everything that happened as I see it to the best of my ability, but
have a feeling that they wouldn't like that much. So for now, I'm letting it go.
If anyone from Babbage's ever reads this, let it be known that I'm taking a
"live & let live" stance. All I ask now is to be left alone and I
will do the same to them.
That brings us to the present. I'm unemployed as of right this second. I'm
looking at various job positions, and hoping to get the best one there is :)
I'll update this page again when that happens. Until then....
(ADDED 10/01)
OK. At the end of March 2001, I took a job at the Radio Shack in the Mall
here in Fargo - the very same mall were about 6 months before I had been
relieved of my duties at Software ETC. Good thing the mall doesn't get involved
in such matters. Needless to say, I was nervous about working in the same mall.
A ridiculous feeling, but it was there.
Between my stint at Software and Radio Shack, I was of course job-hunting. I
applied twice at Media Play to work in the hard lines department, which is
basically there section of the store that carries video games and such. I didn't
get hired, and I think part of it may have been that I had to put Software ETC
on there, and that I was forced to leave on not-so-good terms. Oh well...
I worked at Radio Shack for about 5 months. The job there is commission based
- the more you sell the better. But it's also WHAT you sell that matters. For
instance, if by some stroke of luck I actually sold $300 worth of parts in one
day, it wouldn't be as good as selling one Cell Phone. You see, we got extra
bonuses for selling new phones or upgrading phones; plus, our
dollars-per-transaction figure would look better. But that's not really
important :)
Anyway, I had a blast working there, but I wasn't earning a lot on
commission. It's not that I didn't try; there just weren't any people in the
mall. You can't sell people products if there aren't any people. So, I looked
for other employment options. I eventually started working for KVRR (Fox) TV in
Fargo. I'm still working there, and it's a blast! I have to record show to
playback later, barcode them so automation knows where to cue tapes to, encode
commercials to our video server, check the next days logs to make sure the next
operator(s) (program) schedules are right, make break tapes in case we have
server problems... and, get this - I'm actually running 2 stations while I'm
there! I'm not talking about different towers (we use 4 towers for the 'Fargo'
side as we call it to cover most of North Dakota and Western/North Western
Minnesota). We also run programming for the Duluth Superior
(Minnesota/Wisconsin) area! We send program out over 4 T-1 lines so the
audio/video quality looks good. This information goes to the transmitter there
and is broadcast from that point, as it would be normally. We also have 1 T-1
return line to monitor the station and make sure what we send out on air.
For a while, I worked both Radio Shack and Fox. But at Fox we became short
handed for a while when one operator went out for a fairly major surgery. We ran
short-handed for about 2 or 3 months I think, and during the course of that time
my availability to Radio Shack became horrid. I thought there were few customers
before, it seemed worse when all I could work was open on Wednesday and
Thursday! So I left Radio Shack on good terms. Shortly after, my friend told me
he needed help in the book department of Media Play, so I applied there (this
was the 3rd time by the way) and I got hired. I now work Media Play around 10-15
hours per week helping out my friend, doing something I enjoy, and (this is the
best part) I'm able to make use of an excellent discount by working there!
(ADDED 02/02)
So, I quit working at Media Play last month. Why? Put simply, everything
there has become too corporative. It's all about numbers - sell as many Replays,
Entertainment weekly subscriptions, Storage devices, batteries, blah blah blah
as you can. Customer service? Yeah, that's like, um, last on the list now.
This all stemmed from a lot of things, but the straw that broke the camels
back was when they pulled my lead/supervisor (also my best friend) over and gave
him his review. He was told that he wasn't doing his job, I wasn't doing mine,
and his people weren't doing there's (excluding one person [slightly handicapped
mentally] who wandered the store to get Replays, etc), and that if he didn't
improve his numbers in a set time period (one month?), his employment status
would be reviewed. The worst part was that when my supervisor tried to stick up
for us, he was shot down. He tried explaining that we tried to do our best, and
was told our best wasn't good enough.
In the end, we said to hell with them. My supervisor, myself, and one other
lead all walked - actually, the other lead gave a 2-week proper notice, but was
cut off the schedule prematurely. That's one example of how petty they are.
I'm including a copy of the letter I wrote to them ending my employment
there. Click here if you wish to read it.
It's been over a year since I've updated this, so here goes.
I'm still working at the FOX station in Fargo, and still enjoying the job. Things have updated there a bit though. We now run Duluth's station over one Fiber Optic line instead of 4 or 5 T-1 lines. We have a different engineer working at the station, one who was there before and has come back. We've changed operators for the part-time weekend shift twice since I last wrote about FOX - I really miss having Doug in town, but Tamara is OK. She's one of those icky girls though ;). I hear Doug is coming back to town soon... but I digress. This is my bio, not the news updates.
My wife and I bought a house at the end of April and moved in with some help from our parents and a couple of friends. Everything went pretty smooth, and I'm really happy to be in a house now. I was content at the apartment, but I had no idea how ready I was to move. My attitude has seriously changed in the last two weeks. I'm happier for one. I sleep better at night. Life is good all around.
I'm still playing RPG's of all kinds, and also play Yu-Gi-Oh now. I've spent a bit more money on it then I needed too, but it's nothing like how I got out of control when I played Magic: The Gathering. I like this better too; it's simpler to play. And the rules specifically state that you must be a good sport. That will be nice for tournament players. I'm also participating in PATH still (an online discussion/email group talking mostly about Piers Anthony and his books). I also have the opportunity to be a book editor of sorts. We'll see how that pans out. One of the PATH members started Mundania Press and was looking for editors. I wasn't sure what kind of proof I could show that I'd be good at it when he asked, but I asked for a chance, and I'm getting one. I think this will be great!
-Pumpkin
(This most recent update may be altered as it doesn't have the same feel as the rest of the bio. Like I said, it's been over a year and this was added 'out of necessity'. We'll see...)