UnrealisticExpectations 3.0

…Under Heaven.

Turn, turn, turn.

Yeah, well…  There’s been this long whirlwind of stuff in life these past few years.  These things all range from dramatic depression and dramatic anxiety to dramatic discontent and dramatic dissatisfaction to dramatic, intense thanks for all that is mine / ours.

I’m pretty sure most of you don’t really know what I “do”, and I am pretty pumped about what I’m about to be “doing”, so I want to share.

When we re-launched TehSoapbox, I was contracting doing some “Information Architecture”.  To be honest, life was very, very scary for my family for a couple of years; I had been laid off (canned, fired, axed, RIF’d, let go, lied to, whatever) for about 6 months and found a largely under-paying, under-fulfilling job.  I spent 9 months commuting 50 minutes via train to downtown Chicago, then walking 4-5 city blocks to catch the El for another half hour or so to the far north side of the city.  Return home the same way, hours of daylight seen per day was minimal, at best.

It was pathetic, and sad, but we were pregnant and hemorraging cash and it kept us alive.  Sort of.

Then, I got a contract to redesign an airline’s Internet Booking Engine.  It was a 3 months to Full Time contract and a really big deal for us, plus it was good money at the time.

The first day I started the contract I found out that I was not needed the next day AND that this was basically a 4-6 week project.

Fun times.  I’ve yet to forget the pricks at the “recruiting firm” that placed me there and lied to me just to get me in the door.  Oh, they admitted that they don’t always have jobs when they post for people, they just try to cast a net and get some resumes.  It’s something to consider when your family’s income and livelihood is at stake.

I scrambled for the next 6 or so months and then landed at a mobile phone manufacturer where you’ll now see a lot of feature designs that I was involved in to some extent showing up in phones that people carry around.  Kind of cool; I worked on some rather unique stuff that was a lot of fun.

I left there in November of last year; I was a Lead, but I was bored and I was busy maybe 50% of the time and still gloriously underpaid.

I joined a new company in November with the promise of having much, much to do, only to start and find out that November-December-January are hideously slow and that–even though I was told I was needed to start asap–I left the other position with some key, kick-ass training and a rather substantial bonus (it’s estimated, at least) laying in the wings.  I could have waited and had a nice big fat pay-for-my-patio-and-a-lot-of-hookers-donuts-and-blow paycheck, too.

March has rolled around and I’ve been so bored that…  I’m bored outta my gourd.  It stinks, I’ve done nothing and I’m so miserable and I won’t even go into any sort of depth of detail because it’s just not blog-worthy.  I’ve been bored, okay and when I get bored…

I get twitchy.

Last week, I had a couple of telephone interviews at a place I’ve been trying to get into for over a year.  The biggest bonus is that they’re about 12 miles from my home, and I don’t think I’ve worked that close to home since before I got married or when I was laid off.

The second interview was a little rough, but there were some cultural things in there and some feelings for me that this place would be a lot like my current place.  I do relatively decent at interviews, so I held my own and got moved on to the next phase, which is a 4 hour battery of interviews in their office this week.

Out of the blue on Tuesday, after that second interview, I got a call from a company that’s about 8 miles away.  In the suburbs, that’s like only 20 minutes (heh), but it’s also just life-altering when you compare it to the $150+ per month spent on parking and train fares and when you consider that my commute ends up being loosely 1.5 hours each way when you factor in leaving early to drop of Sydney or leaving early enough to ensure a seat on the damned train on the way home so you’re not left either standing in a frigid vestibule or in a soaking wet stairwell.

You get the idea; you’re a smart one.

I went in on Wednesday to interview and seriously knocked it out of the park.  I rocked them pretty solidl and could tell that they were impressed.  As usual, they had “a couple of more candidates to talk to, but want to move quick so they’ll be in touch early next week…”  That typicaly means the following Wednesday or Thursday at the earliest, if at all, and sometimes it’s just a verbal hand-job to end the conversation and get you out the door.

The next day they sent a survey / questionnaire for me to fill out.  “Please don’t spend more than an hour on it”…and I think I spent like 5-6 on it.  I diligently asked others who know of my skills and my work ethic to take a look at it, and it was well-received with some helpful recommendations.

I sent it back in around 2.30 on Friday afternoon.

I forgot about it; I haven’t really stressed about these things lately.  Haven’t even let them be a major thought in my head.

This is odd for me.

This morning, while on a conference call at work around 9a, my cellphone rang and I had to push it to voicemail.  I did a quick check of some previous emails with signatures to verify–and it was that company.

All signs were good at this point.  It was hard to pay attention to the phone call, but I did.

Then, the email came.  I’ve got a BlackBerry, so it buzzed and told me what was up–then I went to webmail and there was on offer letter in there for me.

I hung up the call and started calling people–my wife, a couple of friends, etc.

The company that I will be working for does work in the Biometrics space.  Biometrics is … the study of automated methods for uniquely recognizing humans based upon one or more intrinsic physical or behavioral traits.

Cool, eh?

Most notably, they do a lot of stuff with various businesses and consumers around passwords and access–think of using your fingerprint to send your login/password to your PC or your safety deposit box.

So, long story short (and a Product Management book order from Amazon later), I got a new job that I really, truly feel like I’m going to be insanely happy with.  I’ll be hitting some trade shows around the states and such, so I may be coming to your towns for some NA Beers.

This is my “pat myself on the back” moment, so that’s it.  It feels like it’s been a long time coming and that I’ve finally gotten my career back on track.  It’s difficult to articulate the high right now…and even though I’m on top of the world, I still have to go downstairs and convince a 2 year old that Chicken Little needs to be put on pause while we eat dinner.  And write a resignation letter…or call in sick.  Whichever.

Wow.  This is long.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 27th, 2006 at 6:40 pm and is filed under Raves, Bloggy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.