![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
State of the Sparr
State of the Sparr
February 4th, 2012
It's been a while since I've written anything lengthy about myself. A lot of things have changed, and are changing, so it's probably time for a comprehensive update.
I lost my job at Peer1 in December. Officially it was for mishandling some customer facing issues. Actually it was for rocking the boat. It was a fun place to work, as far as the environment went, but I'm the sort of person that is annoyed by problems that impact the company, not just things that impact my job. After a year of seeing my team shrink and our metrics slip I had been getting more anxious to get someone in management to do something about our hiring problems. Unfortunately the only person in the chains of command of both myself and the HR folks who were discarding resumes is the CEO. I talked to HR. My boss talked to their boss. My boss' boss talked to their boss' boss. Eventually someone got tired of me going over their head and I got the axe. I'm getting the cold shoulder in dealing with ADP to try to retrieve my old pay stubs (and thus the reason I never "go paperless" despite the urging I got every pay period), and that's annoying, but they didn't contest my unemployment claim, and paid me two weeks of severance, so that's something.
I've been to a few conventions in Boston, and visited Kat a few other times as well. This time while I was up there I got more involved in the tech-y parts of Arisia, and some folks realized I'm clueful. This lead to a few job leads and a real plan for me to move up there. I'm currently job hunting with that move in mind. My primary goal is a high paying development job in Boston. Failing that, my secondary goals are a low paying temporary job in Boston to hold as long as my real job hunt up there lasts, or a high paying short term contract job in Atlanta while I continue to search, or a work-from-home job that I can take with me when I move. I've got a half dozen interviews scheduled for my Boston visit next week, and will keep aiming for more throughout the weekend and week ahead. I've got a few leads, including having done some technical interviews, on positions of various sorts in Atlanta. From all of this I expect at least a few offers, ranging from $50-120k and $15-75/hr. My most likely outcome right now is a job for an international company that I've had 3 interviews for and begun salary negotiations. It would involve 2-4 months of training and getting up to speed in Atlanta, followed by being able to work remotely (yay travel/relocation!), possibly with working out of the Providence office in between.
Along with losing my job and planning to leave town there is doubt about my plans for D2, my warehouse space. I ran out of funding before I could get enough labor done to handle the necessary demolition and cleanup, so buildout never really commenced. I've been completely unsuccessful in selling any of the high dollar items that I need to get rid of (including my truck), and I can't afford to pay rent on the warehouse ($1663/mo) on my unemployment benefits, so I'm hoping to drag out what little goodwill I have with the management to postpone getting evicted until I can catch up. I still think it could be a profitable endeavor, and I need to finish out the lease to avoid the ding on my credit (which barely matters, as bad as it already is). I'm going to keep plugging away at the demolition, and fishing for people willing to work for IOUs. I'm also going to start inquiring about friends, acquaintances, and businesses that might want to take over my lease. If I can get the labor done, I'm aiming for a less awesome but more manageable version of my original plan, likely partitioning the space into only 4-6 rooms instead of the original 12-15 I had planned.
My love life has been both awesome and disappointing lately. On the fun side, I've found an ED drug that works occasionally (4 successes out of 9 doses and ~15 attempts). Moving to Boston, as well as visiting more often, has given me a lot more time with Kat, for whom my fondness continues to grow. I'm going to marry that girl some day, and she knows I'll ask as soon as she'll say yes. We haven't figure out our ideal living situation yet. Definitely less than 3 hours and $100 in travel expenses apart. Likely farther than permanently sharing a room. Maybe housemates is where we should end up, maybe neighbors, maybe a few transit stops away. I look forward to finding out. I've also got a recurring FWB in the Boston area whose company I'm enjoying. Her romantic relationship isn't headed in a poly direction, so we might be on a just-friends-and-sex basis, but that's fun too. On the disappointing side, and another reason to jump ship in favor of Boston, I've completely failed at dating and/or finding play partners in the Atlanta area. I'm picky, more about personality than physically, but that too. I know that I'm limiting my options and have no one to blame for that but myself. Nevertheless, I've cast just about as wide of a net as I'm going to, and it's not going to bear any more fruit than it has already. I'm still close friends with two of the girls here who I've seen and played with in the past, but those relationships aren't headed back in an intimate direction for various reasons. There are a handful of girls who are happy to let me tie them up occasionally, but not often, and explicitly not leading to anything else, romantic or intimate. To most of the other girls I'm interested in, I'm just an acquaintance, or a friend at best. That's not a bad thing to have, but it's annoying when it's the only thing.
I've been intermittently crafty and hackery lately. Prompted by some job application processes I've also made a foray back into programming as mental exercise. I built a MendelMax and a vaccum cube and did some light software development for Slic3r and Printrun. I did some 3d modeling for the MendelMax, and designed some objects for printing. Moving to Boston will give me access to some amazing makerspaces, which I'm looking forward to after touring Artisan's Asylum recently. Consistent access to good tools is what's been stopping me from exercising a lot of my creative urges lately, and I look forward to getting over that hurdle.
Mentally, I've been putting a lot of effort lately into resolving more instances of cognitive dissonance. That's a recurring theme in my life, and I enjoy finding my mental model of the world becoming more consistent. I like that it makes me more predictable as well. Some of the issues I've been tackling more thoroughly lately have included prostitution, consent, taxation, choice, and attraction. I'll be writing more on those subjects at some point, either from scratch or bringing my older posts up to date with new insights and information.
That's just about everything that's going on with me lately. If you want to know more, just ask. I'm mostly an open book, as usual.
February 4th, 2012
It's been a while since I've written anything lengthy about myself. A lot of things have changed, and are changing, so it's probably time for a comprehensive update.
I lost my job at Peer1 in December. Officially it was for mishandling some customer facing issues. Actually it was for rocking the boat. It was a fun place to work, as far as the environment went, but I'm the sort of person that is annoyed by problems that impact the company, not just things that impact my job. After a year of seeing my team shrink and our metrics slip I had been getting more anxious to get someone in management to do something about our hiring problems. Unfortunately the only person in the chains of command of both myself and the HR folks who were discarding resumes is the CEO. I talked to HR. My boss talked to their boss. My boss' boss talked to their boss' boss. Eventually someone got tired of me going over their head and I got the axe. I'm getting the cold shoulder in dealing with ADP to try to retrieve my old pay stubs (and thus the reason I never "go paperless" despite the urging I got every pay period), and that's annoying, but they didn't contest my unemployment claim, and paid me two weeks of severance, so that's something.
I've been to a few conventions in Boston, and visited Kat a few other times as well. This time while I was up there I got more involved in the tech-y parts of Arisia, and some folks realized I'm clueful. This lead to a few job leads and a real plan for me to move up there. I'm currently job hunting with that move in mind. My primary goal is a high paying development job in Boston. Failing that, my secondary goals are a low paying temporary job in Boston to hold as long as my real job hunt up there lasts, or a high paying short term contract job in Atlanta while I continue to search, or a work-from-home job that I can take with me when I move. I've got a half dozen interviews scheduled for my Boston visit next week, and will keep aiming for more throughout the weekend and week ahead. I've got a few leads, including having done some technical interviews, on positions of various sorts in Atlanta. From all of this I expect at least a few offers, ranging from $50-120k and $15-75/hr. My most likely outcome right now is a job for an international company that I've had 3 interviews for and begun salary negotiations. It would involve 2-4 months of training and getting up to speed in Atlanta, followed by being able to work remotely (yay travel/relocation!), possibly with working out of the Providence office in between.
Along with losing my job and planning to leave town there is doubt about my plans for D2, my warehouse space. I ran out of funding before I could get enough labor done to handle the necessary demolition and cleanup, so buildout never really commenced. I've been completely unsuccessful in selling any of the high dollar items that I need to get rid of (including my truck), and I can't afford to pay rent on the warehouse ($1663/mo) on my unemployment benefits, so I'm hoping to drag out what little goodwill I have with the management to postpone getting evicted until I can catch up. I still think it could be a profitable endeavor, and I need to finish out the lease to avoid the ding on my credit (which barely matters, as bad as it already is). I'm going to keep plugging away at the demolition, and fishing for people willing to work for IOUs. I'm also going to start inquiring about friends, acquaintances, and businesses that might want to take over my lease. If I can get the labor done, I'm aiming for a less awesome but more manageable version of my original plan, likely partitioning the space into only 4-6 rooms instead of the original 12-15 I had planned.
My love life has been both awesome and disappointing lately. On the fun side, I've found an ED drug that works occasionally (4 successes out of 9 doses and ~15 attempts). Moving to Boston, as well as visiting more often, has given me a lot more time with Kat, for whom my fondness continues to grow. I'm going to marry that girl some day, and she knows I'll ask as soon as she'll say yes. We haven't figure out our ideal living situation yet. Definitely less than 3 hours and $100 in travel expenses apart. Likely farther than permanently sharing a room. Maybe housemates is where we should end up, maybe neighbors, maybe a few transit stops away. I look forward to finding out. I've also got a recurring FWB in the Boston area whose company I'm enjoying. Her romantic relationship isn't headed in a poly direction, so we might be on a just-friends-and-sex basis, but that's fun too. On the disappointing side, and another reason to jump ship in favor of Boston, I've completely failed at dating and/or finding play partners in the Atlanta area. I'm picky, more about personality than physically, but that too. I know that I'm limiting my options and have no one to blame for that but myself. Nevertheless, I've cast just about as wide of a net as I'm going to, and it's not going to bear any more fruit than it has already. I'm still close friends with two of the girls here who I've seen and played with in the past, but those relationships aren't headed back in an intimate direction for various reasons. There are a handful of girls who are happy to let me tie them up occasionally, but not often, and explicitly not leading to anything else, romantic or intimate. To most of the other girls I'm interested in, I'm just an acquaintance, or a friend at best. That's not a bad thing to have, but it's annoying when it's the only thing.
I've been intermittently crafty and hackery lately. Prompted by some job application processes I've also made a foray back into programming as mental exercise. I built a MendelMax and a vaccum cube and did some light software development for Slic3r and Printrun. I did some 3d modeling for the MendelMax, and designed some objects for printing. Moving to Boston will give me access to some amazing makerspaces, which I'm looking forward to after touring Artisan's Asylum recently. Consistent access to good tools is what's been stopping me from exercising a lot of my creative urges lately, and I look forward to getting over that hurdle.
Mentally, I've been putting a lot of effort lately into resolving more instances of cognitive dissonance. That's a recurring theme in my life, and I enjoy finding my mental model of the world becoming more consistent. I like that it makes me more predictable as well. Some of the issues I've been tackling more thoroughly lately have included prostitution, consent, taxation, choice, and attraction. I'll be writing more on those subjects at some point, either from scratch or bringing my older posts up to date with new insights and information.
That's just about everything that's going on with me lately. If you want to know more, just ask. I'm mostly an open book, as usual.