Author: Jason Haberman

35 years old and starting over in April 06. Moving onwards and upwards. With the help of friends, family and a little creative writing.
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And so it ends…

Door ClosingThis is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

-T.S. Eliot

Indeed, this is how my HP world ended. Certainly not a bang, but with a whimper. I got home from what was my last “day” with HP and started this post. Actually, this day was exactly 38 minutes long. My exit interview was scheduled for 9:30am Friday morning. I arrived a little before 9 to finish cleaning up some things on my PC and to get my last load of crap out to the car.

I find it amusing that they still call it an “exit interview”. Quite frankly, it was more of an “escort out of the building” than an interview. According to the HP Portal, the exit interview consists of sitting down with one’s manager who asks about why you’re leaving, your overall HP experience, how they could improve things, etc. In actuality, here’s how it went.

The guy performing the “interview” was someone I’d never met since my latest manager (as of 3 weeks ago, I think the 10th I’ve had in 8 years) was remote. In fact, I spoke to my actual manager exactly once. So, this process was sub-contracted out to a local manager. Now, he was a nice enough guy. I think he was more happy that my leaving was on good terms. I really got the impression that he’s done more than one of these where the person leaving is none too pleased about it. Welcome to the wonderful world of corporate layoff culture. Anyway, I soon realized that there was going to be no “interview”. I gathered up my remaining shit and headed to the door.

Opened the card controlled double doors, handed him my badge, and poof… Gone. That’s it. The ultimate whimper.

The accompanying picture you see above is, in fact, the final door closing on my HP career. I was able to whip out my camera and snatch one shot before the door finished closing. Not often that you get an image of both and actual and metaphorical event in one shot.

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My Words Reaching Out

The other night, I got one of the best emails I’ve ever gotten in regards to my blog. Well, quite frankly, most of the emails I get from my blog come from people I get email from all the time. Not that that is a bad thing or anything, but when you get an email from someone out of the blue who has read something you wrote and it has moved them enough to sit down and compose an email… to me that is huge.

What follows is the email I got from my new pal Keith from Washington… (links added by me)

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Thank God It’s August

Summer HeatWe made it. It is finally August and I couldn’t be happier.

I barely survived the smoking, sun-scarred moonscape that was existence here in July.  In case you’re not from here or didn’t leave your house for a full month (in either case, I envy you) but July was officially the hottest month on record here in Boise. The Statesman said that there were 14 days of 100+ temps. Well, if you look at this pdf you will see that in addition to those “official” triple digit temps, there were 8 additional days that were 97-99. As I see it, if you’re driving around and its 97 or above ‘officially’ you will find somewhere in some parking lot or whatever is over 100. I think that should count. Just because where they took the measurement didn’t hit 100 doesn’t mean that somewhere you were didn’t.

That makes 22 out of 31 days that were WAY too friggin hot. Not to mention, it’s not like those other 9 days were cool and breezy. They were still hotter than hell.

Continue reading “Thank God It’s August”

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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.

IMG_4827 IMG_4826

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:

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