The Chris Gonyea Project

About a month ago I was reading the Sunday newspaper, as I do almost every Sunday. All was normal until I started reading the classifieds section, which is something I normally don’t do.

All the sudden I stumbled across a job posting. It was really random, but it was for a company I had looked into at one point during college, but never got a response from them when I sent my resume. Even more random, the job posting happened to be for a “Technical Support Specialist.” After reading the job description, I pretty much on the spot decided to apply just for kicks.

I hadn’t been looking for another job. Heck, I was extremely happy at my current job. However, the opportunity to work for a company that was ranked in the top 25 in the nation for small companies is something you don’t pass up. At the very worst, I was going to waste a few hours of time preparing my resume and if I was lucky, getting an interview.

A week after I sent my resume in, I got a call on my cell phone. About 4-5 days later, an interview took place that I thought went extremely well. Another 4-5 days and I was offered the job.

I couldn’t turn down the offer. Gave my two weeks notice, which is one of the hardest things to do since I worked at a company I really enjoyed working for, especially when I had to give my notice to two people I have enormous respect for.

Today I said my final goodbyes. It was hard, but very exciting at the same time. I made a lot of friends over the past few years with my co-workers and even my clients, many who have extremely interesting businesses that I was glad to learn about and in effect, help run.

Monday is the beginning of a new chapter. Instead of traveling every day, I will be in one location all the time. Instead of dealing with hundreds of clients (my now former boss and I figured we handled the IT needs for about 1000 individuals who worked for our clients), I now deal with a couple hundred co-workers for one of the most successful companies in New Hampshire.

I am extremely excited for what the future will bring. I won’t forget where I came from and who helped me reach this point.

I just bought an all-in-one printer (Canon PIXMA MP500) a few hours ago and connected it to my iMac. It installed flawlessly and works great.

One reason I bought this printer is to be able to scan documents and save them as PDFs. That way, I can easily backup all of my important documents (not to mention throwing away those that aren’t needed anymore). Not to mention, using Spotlight I can easily find what could take hours going through a drawer of folders.

A cool trick I discovered thanks to Macworld is the ability to Combine PDF files using Automator. Since I didn’t get a document feeder, this option is a lifesaver. This was my first time using Automator and it is really cool. Only thing I changed from the Macworld example was making it move the combined PDF to the desktop afterwards.