I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here, to tell you how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone and then I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world, without you.

Some years from now, I may look back and wish that I had written more about this period, this week, this month.

I am losing my job at AV. This was known, since October. I was offered an extension of my original date (4/15) to stay until 5/31. I took it, still holding out some hope that I would get a permanent position at the Y. After two interviews for two internal positions, and two rejections, I still had a third lead, my third-choice position.

What I didn’t know at the time I signed up for extended time, was that the third guy had pretty much made up his mind to give me the brush-off. It really did feel like he was just going through the motions, in retrospect; he was very very slow to set up any interviews, and the “interview” he finally did set up was only 20 min. each with 3 people (I heard him describe it as a “phone screen” to one of them.) Then instead of telling me “We’re not going to make you an offer,” he didn’t get back to me for a long time. I finally went to see him to ask “What’s next?” and instead of saying “I’m not going to make you an offer” he instead said “Oh, the recruiter didn’t get back to you? Well, he has information for you.” Called the recruiter, left message, left email, the next morning’s return email says to please call, I call again leave second message… all of that to find out that they’re not making me an offer. What a shitty way to treat someone, I thought. I was pretty pissed off and told my boss I was quite upset.

Now, about this time I get a call from a recruiter, asking if I am interested in something to do with sendmail (Can I get a Hell Yeah?) and would I go attend an interview at SGI? (Boo-yah!) It was only a 6-12 mo. contract, but not wanting to leave anything to chance, I wore a suit. This was a Thursday or Friday I think.

Over the weekend, I talked at length with friends D and C about spam, the risks, problems and benefits of working for oneself, and various other things. I decided after thinking things over that I didn’t really want to try starting my own business… if I really wanted to work on a cool project, I could do that without quitting my day job. Some of the ideas I have are quite interesting (well, to me anyway) but they don’t lend themselves to a business model, they lend themselves more to an open-source type of project. So, perhaps something will come of that, eventually…

After the weekend, I got a call on Tuesday, saying could I start work on Monday. Wow, exciting news! But, uh, no I can’t really start Monday, not without significant penalties, please ask the customer if he’s willing to wait another week. First day was then confirmed for Monday 4/19, and I went back to work and announced my intention to leave AV and go to SGI. Though it is a cut in pay, I’m still satisfied; it is pretty close to 10% difference, which is OK if it gets me into the subject area wherein I want to be.

Well, this week has been busy, suffice it to say that a lot of deadlines converged and between marketing people and lawyers, everything having to do with the site project got pushed to the last minute. DNS, Mail, and backup foo has to be compressed into about a one-week period: this week. So, a lot of work has been squeezed into my last four days. My last day is Thursday (*glances at watch* well, today, technically :) and the last switch-over actually occurs Friday morning early, about 24 hours from now. After this, I may be asked some questions, but for the most part it will be someone else’s deal… I will be on to the next thing, hopefully on to bigger and better things.