Yeah yeah, I’m pretty mean.

April 30, 2004

Ha ha ha, that was funny. A cliffhanger. I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those on my site before. It wasn’t like a classic TV cliffhanger in the spirit of JR getting shot, Mulder stuck in the boxcar, or Picard captured and turned into a Borg, but hey, I do what I can. I’ll get to that in due time.

I tried to go jogging on Wednesday to fulfill my whole Monday-Wednesday-Friday jogging thing, but around 2:30 I decided that I wanted a short nap since I’d been getting up early to make calls for Martin, and when I woke up around when I wanted to go jogging, I was just too tired. I was stuck in that horrible place where right after you wake up from a nap you’re so tired all you want to do…is sleep more. Well, I’d already had little success from work that day, so I thought a little nap would have been great. Alas, no jogging. Eh, I went today, and hopefully I’ll keep up my schedule next week.

OK, job stuff. I briefly mentioned it earlier in the week when I talked about an opportunity that I thought would be good, but I wasn’t expecting anything to happen this quickly. I had my interview on Tuesday afternoon, and I thought it went pretty well, but I didn’t know what my chances were. Anyhow, so I got an offer from them on Thursday, and I accepted the same day.

Basically, the position involves doing software testing for a company that makes software for PDA’s. Forgive me for not mentioning the name of the specific company, but one of the agreements I came to with the CTO was that I would avoid talking about the company name in my blog so that people searching the web wouldn’t come across my website when looking for information about the company. I can live with that. So I’m doing software testing, as I understand it. I’m not really customer support in the aspect that I’m not sitting there taking calls from customers all day long, but I probably will have the opportunity to speak with customers who can’t resolve issues with either the first or second tiers of tech support. Yay! I’m not a tech support person anymore!

The pay’s good, the hours are good, and it’s doing something that I can do. The office is located in Lake Oswego, so I have to do some driving every day, but it’s not too far away. I could take the bus there, but it would take me an hour on the bus each way compared to about 20-25 minutes of driving. It’s nice to know that I CAN do that, though. In the interview they mentioned that they might be moving to downtown at some point, which would be much easier in terms of transportation, but for now, this will do.

So I’m finally employed. Well, I will be come Monday when I start. It’s casual dress, a pretty relaxed working environment, so I can be myself. One good thing is that it’s located right next to John Barleycorn’s McMenamins, like a half mile away down the road, so I can go to lunch there a lot, but I’m going to have to inquire to about whether or not it’s OK to have a pint with lunch and then go back to work. They have a strict drug and alcohol policy there, but I want to make sure I don’t do a no-no if I have a pint of Hammerhead with a Gardenburger. Not a problem. Even if they say no, I can live with that. Beer isn’t that important to me, after all.

I thinkt he most exciting thing about this, though, is that when I called my Dad and told him about the job, he talked about maybe it being time for me to move on from the Mustang and pick up a new car for myself. Well, not NEW new, but new for me. The Mustang isn’t really a commuter car, after all. It’s not too far away, but I’ll be doing it every day for awhile. And hey, new cars are always nice. I have something in mind, but it’s going to depend on a lot of things.

And so that’s where I am. I can’t specifically talk about the company, but I’m free to talk about my work experience. Should be interesting. I’ll definitely let you know.

Posted in Beer, Geekery, General