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Offer Extended!

Hi Everyone. Quick update before we head out of town to McCall for the weekend.

They extended me an official offer! Their initial offer was a little low salary wise, so I countered and asked for a little bit more and they gladly met my requirements. (I agonized over actually sending it, but it worked out.)

All I have left to do is to officially sign it and set up a start date. That will be done on Monday.

I can finally exhale and relax. It’s been a LONG time coming.

Thanks again to all of your for your well wishes over the past month. It is ALL worthwhile.

More on Monday. Hope you enjoy your weekend as much as I will.

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While We’re Waiting

It is really impressive just how much you all seem to care about this little job adventure in my life.  I’ve gotten more blog page loads and comments (not to mention IM’s, text messages, calls and emails) about this offer than I have on just about anything else.

For the record… I have not received any offer.  However, I am assured that I am their guy.  The offer will come.

So, I figured while we’re all waiting, how about you enjoy some of my past blog posts you may have missed or just wanna read again.

Like, why you shouldn’t go to Kuna
Or perhaps why we’re sports fans
Or the time I was robbed
Perhaps the time I overdosed on football
Maybe my magical fridge
Or my review of one of the worst books I’ve read.

At least all of that will give you something to do.

Keep watching this space.  As soon as I know, you’ll know.

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All But Official…

Well folks, whatever you all have been doing, has apparently worked.

It is all but official that they are going to make me an offer.  The C.O.O had a meeting he had to go to at the end, but everything we discussed basically boiled down to the fact that I fit with them both technically, but what appears more importantly, personally.  They put a premium on their hiring people that fit the team.  I guess I do just that.

I’m assuming I will hear from them tomorrow as far as an official offer with all the nitty gritty such as pay and whatnot.

The position sounds very cool, and it really sounds like one that will have lots of opportunities to not only use what I already got, but to expand my skill set and learn new stuff.

But really, the selling point for me is the people.  I met half a dozen people and they are all very very cool.  I can’t tell you how exciting it will be to go to work and actually interact with folks doing the same gig on a daily basis.  It has been a long time since that has happened.

I don’t have much more to report at this time.  Keep your eyes peeled for further updates.  When I know more, you’ll know more.

Thanks again everyone for your thoughts and prayers.  I’m sure it made a difference.  (Although, the fact that I just plain kick ass might have had something to do with it too.)

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Twilight Criterium

Saturday night in Boise they had what is called the Twilight Criterium. This is a bicycle race around 3 city blocks downtown. It is a pretty cool event, and Jess wanted to go down there to check it out.

When we arrived, the races were already going. In fact, we saw part of the women’s race. We watched a few laps then decided to go find a drink. Actually, we didn’t just find ‘a’ drink, we instead found 2 pitchers of mojitos at The Reef. Well, we were having a good time even if we couldn’t see the race.

After that, we decided to go see a little of the race. I wanted to try to take a few pictures. I don’t know if it was because of, or despite the alcohol intake, but I ended up with 2 really really cool pictures, and a few others that were interesting. Please click on the images to go to flickr.com and you can select “all sizes” just above the pic to see it larger. It helps to get a little more detail to appreciate them.

IMG_4812

This picture is my favorite. I was trying to get a picture of the riders in focus with the background blurred by swinging the camera the same speed as they were going past me. I didn’t honestly think any of them would turn out, but got lucky with this one. How I was able to get focus on the furthest racer is beyond me. One of those happy accidents that can happen in photography.

IMG_4833

This is another shot I like. They were screaming down the back straight at probably 40+ mph. I tried to get a sense of speed as they went past. I wish the camera would have been just a touch faster so the racers to the far right weren’t as blurry, but still, I think this one turned out really well.

Then, I took a couple of pictures of the pack as they were racing past me… the funny thing was, I took them on multiple laps, but somehow I ended up with a shot of the same guy in both of them. Completely random, but an interesting coincidence.

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If you want to see more, (3 additional pics) just go to my flickr page here.

 

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Project Completion

This morning, I put the finishing touches on my ‘interview project‘ I’ve been working on. I hesitated to actually hit ‘send’ on the email for about an hour, as I was sure I forgot something.

Actually, this was probably a good thing since I forgot to validate all of the code for w3c compliance. There were about a dozen errors. Of course, nothing major that affects the display of the page, but just little things, alt tags on images and being sure to close tags. But, once I got those cleared up I swallowed hard and sent it off.

I wasn’t so much relieved as I was nervous that I still forgot something. But, since I had sent it, at least I could stop working on it.

I was pretty tired this afternoon as I have spent much of the week running on caffeine and adrenalin. But, then I heard back from Mike, the guy I interviewed with:

Continue reading “Project Completion”

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Crazy Busy

CSSFor the past week, I have been absolutely up to my ass in web development. Literally morning, noon and night.

See, I needed to get some pictures posted for AJsAngels.org from their recent summer fundraising events. I got a little ambitious and tried a new CSS photo gallery thing that worked pretty well, until I got around to testing IE 6 and lower. Then it crapped out. While I was trying to get that fixed, I got another little request that would take precedence.

When I interviewed with Wirestone last week, they told me that I would send me a .psd file (Photoshop) that I would need to work on. Okay… I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I would figure it out soon enough.

Continue reading “Crazy Busy”

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I Hate Summer

It’s official… I’ve lost it. Today is supposed to be 105° again. I can’t take it anymore. This will make I don’t know how many days so far this year in triple digits. The forecast for the Boise area the next few days is 105° today, followed by 103°, 101°, 102°, and 102°. Yay global warming!

I don’t do well in the heat. I have no energy. I don’t sleep for shit. I tend to get a touch cranky when we have day after day after day that feels like living in a blast furnace. Don’t you love getting out of the car and having your underwear damp? I know I do.

As many of you know, and the rest can tell from the various pictures of me, I’m what’s known as a fair skinned person. Ok, that might be an understatement. I’m white. Bright white, in fact. My ancestors came from them northern European climes where the sun doesn’t shine much and its cold a lot. Basically what this means for me is that I will sunburn in about 7 minutes of unprotected sun exposure. Of course, that doesn’t have to be summer exposure, as I have gotten wicked burns in the winter as well.

But, at least in the winter we usually have clouds and its not a thousand degrees outside. No such luck these days. They are bright and sunny, but don’t forget the lovely smoke from all the wildfires around… that’s always fun.

Top that all off with the absolute worst sporting month in the calendar and it all adds up to the fact that I just hate summer. The only good thing about summer is that it leads to fall, which is the greatest season ever invented. As much as I loathe summer is mirrored by how much I absolutely love the fall. But until then, its just me versus the sun.

The sun is my sworn mortal enemy. We are locked in a battle to the death and he will win. My only chance is to not give him the opportunity to bludgeon me regularly. So, I’m stuck indoors, valiantly trying to avoid the carcinoma that may strike me down.

And with only baseball games and SportsCenter trying to figure out who is more NOW (unquestionably the dumbest thing EVER), I’m slowly going mad. Check that… not so slowly. I am mad.

Someone… anyone… I’m begging you… do a rain dance. Sacrifice a goat. Do whatever it takes to get it cool outside. You will have my eternal gratitude.

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Interview Follow Up

I just got done with my Wirestone interview. I can tell you one thing. If I thought I wanted to work there before… now, I know I want to work there. The guy I interviewed with was very cool. We spent a lot of time talking about the company, what they do, and more importantly their teams and culture. We spent a lot of time talking about me. They put a lot of value on finding a right fit for the team, and I totally respect that. Having worked with sticks-in-the-mud, I know nothing can destroy morale quite like a bad team member. I guess they know, as I do, that the tech stuff can be learned. I botched a few technical questions, but I hope he could tell I’m competent.

Perhaps it was during the discussion of computer gaming that sealed it for me. They’re young, they’re technical, they’re like me.

This place pretty much sounds like everything that HP is not.  All I kept thinking about was the old Coach Hawk saying, “Bigger isn’t necessarily better…. Better is Better.”

But, I’m not putting the cart before the horse. He said he’s got a couple more interviews this week. He’s also sending me a doc to work on to show what I can do. So, I’ve still got more to do. Do I feel confident? Sure… I’m a positive guy. But I’m prepared for anything.

He also said there would be an interview or two more as well, provided I make it.

Keep the good thoughts coming. I appreciate them all!