It was a blast meeting candidates for hire last week at the UC Davis career fair. Aside from the free food and a nice day back at the alma mater, there are some good reasons to volunteer for recruiting. I had a chance to network with some fellow analysts, who always impress me. Brian, Diana, Meghan and Mike are all great people doing interesting work. I hope to see them again soon. I had a chance to freshen up on my presentation skills and remind myself why Accenture is a great career. Lastly, I was also able to score some brownie points with colleagues by showing my enthusiasm towards the cause and willingness to volunteer some time. I recommend recruiting to all employees, and especially new analysts.

On a geekier and more personal note, I purchased an Xbox 360 somewhat on a whim last week. As much as I like to think that game play is more important than graphics, I can’t help but be amazed by what I see.

I’ll be recruiting at the UC Davis Engineering and Physical Science Career Fair this Wednesday. If you’re a past or present UCD student looking for a career, I encourage you to stop by and say hello. I’ll follow up with something insightful after the event.

I’m a system tester, which means my job is to test new functionality within our team’s functional area (naturally). With my work caught up, I asked to take on a challenging defect. Although it took most of the week to fix and much help from a veteran developer on the project, I learned a good deal about our application architecture and batch development. I’ll be fixing a related defect next week, hopefully with greater ease.

On a side note, it’s cold. Apparently Sacramento hasn’t broken any records yet for the lowest low (17 degrees in 1932) or the number of consecutive days below freezing (11 in 1990), according to this SacBee article. But I still leave the house each morning in subfreezing temperatures to find ice on my car’s windshield. What’s more, the heat in my apartment was out for about 3 days (but is fixed now, according to my roommate). Talk about bad timing. I feel like the cold can’t be justified unless we break some records in the next few days.

Recent comments by Doug and Eric compel me to post about the new Accenture Recruiters Blog. Chris Gould, Tara Hoss and Shelly Price are well versed in the ways of recruiting and can answer all your itching questions.

I thought I should follow up and say that, as part of my new year’s resolution, I started reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. In ten seconds or less, the book is about the not-so-simple answer to the question “What should we have for dinner?” I’ll let you know how it is.