Job Search Starting Week Five

I am starting week five of the search. Each of the past four weeks I have been busy with sifting through job listings, being screened on phone calls, and participating in face to face interviews. I’ve had only one offer so far, which I declined because it would require re-location, which I am not considering at this time. I have a couple of leads that are very far along but no offers, even verbal, as of yet.

Yesterday was an especially long day. I met with a new recruiter in Virginia, then fielded about a dozen more calls while sitting in my car after lunch. The sequence of calls was something like take one call and hear the call waiting tone, finish that call and check voice mail, hear call waiting tones while listening to the voice mail. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I had a final on site interview with my most promising prospect. I think it went well and the CEO and founder of the company paid me several compliments. He also answered the few concerns I had about the management and future roadmap of the company. Despite the nearly hour long commute, all by metro at least, I am pretty excited about this opportunity. I have to call the recruiter who brought it to me later today, I may have some good news as soon as the end of day, maybe tomorrow. We’ll see.

Since I was in Virginia, I brought some takeout over to my friends, Paul and Martha, who are brand new parents. I got to meet their new daughter, Eliza, aka Darth BonBon. I learned that Andrea is not the only one who has retained the magic baby touch as I unconsciously coddled Eliza into a deep sleep right before bath time.

Paul and Martha were very gracious when I somewhat impolitely took my last call of the day. Given that it sounds like a couple of leads may float offers this week, I have been trying to move the others along to a point where I think they might make a counter offer, when the first offers come, or I can rule them out.

I am still thinking over that call but I am leaning towards putting that lead into the latter category. This was also with a CEO and the study in contrasts is striking. The CEO of the earlier interview was focused and had quick, ready answers for my questions. The one I spoke with on the phone later last night was rambling all over the place. He shared some other thoughts about which I am concerned but it really boils down to a general lack of coherence in the business plan, or at least in his ability to communicate it which might as well be the same thing.

If I am able to become employed again, this week or next, then Andrea and I can actually go ahead with some travel we’ve been contemplating and thinking we’d have to decline. Needless to say, we are both eager for this to be over, if not now, then soon.

Job Search Continues

I am a few days into week three. I have submitted my severance paperwork but received no confirmation. I am considering calling HR at the corporate offices, again, since not knowing interferes with my ability to claim unemployment in Maryland. I’d rather have the severance but this question was effective last time I called to get my severance letter sent out and the waiver for the package actually compiled and sent, too.

I am getting anxious because I don’t know if my severance will be paid and if it will, when. My last paycheck was paid on time and in good faith, so I am optimistic but I have nothing, written or verbal, to go on. This frustrates and frightens me.

On the search front, I have had one verbal offer but turned it down as it required re-location. It was a lead I got through a personal referral and the whole process, even my decision to decline, was very friendly. I have a couple of leads for which I’ve completed a interviews and am now waiting on offers. I heard from both today and hope to either get offers or thank-you-anyway notes soon.

Each day I pore through the job sites and other resources and send out a few more resumes. One I sent last week netted a phone screen tomorrow. Nothing else I’ve sent out in the past week has generated any responses. The opportunities I am finding are interesting, jobs I’d really like to do like building the technology to support a political action platform or doing the same for a social media concern.

Keep your fingers crossed, first and foremost that my severance arrives soon.

Job Loss

I lost my job on Monday. Most of my family follows me on at least one social site but I figured I’d post an update for the rest who do not.

This is the first time I have lost a job, rather than leaving of my own volition. I wish I could say it was a reduction in force but it was not and I am not going to speculate in public further.

I have updated my resume. I had an immense amount of help in punching it up and editing it for correctness. Huge thanks to J.R., Allie, Paul and Alex (none of whom knew previously that this site existed, I think, but I cannot thank them enough).

I already have an interview lined up, first thing tomorrow, and a handful of people have my resume to shop around either with their own employer or interesting prospects within their own network. Paul and Martha, local friends here in the DC Metro area, are going gangbusters on the internal job boards at their very large local employers. I haven’t even had a chance, yet, to create the necessary profiles to follow up, let alone sift through the stuff they have sent me.

I have re-activated my profile on one job site, so far. I have to do so on a few more. Just on that one site, though, I have already gotten a handful of hits. One of them was the interview I landed for tomorrow. I haven’t even had a chance to perform my own active searches yet.

Given how fast things are going, I am cautiously optimistic. At all events, I am hugely grateful for the enormous support from my local friends, online friends, and acquaintances. My social network has expanded immensely in the last three years, largely through my podcast, and I am amazed at the depth and breadth of support that has provided in this stressful time of need.

Growlers

Our entire family enjoys the local Dogfish Head Alehouse. Andrea’s and my only complaint is the cost. Both the food and the beer are superb, it is just a bit pricey for us to afford going there too often.

Thanks to my GPS’ bias towards right turns, a few months back I was driving through Old Towne Gaithersburg. I passed Growlers that from the signage appeared to be a local brew pub. A bit of Googling once I arrived home confirmed that and revealed an excellent beer and food menu, comparable to DFH.

With Andrea’s digestive health issues and amazing progress on her diet, our regular habit of eating out most Saturdays had stopped a while back. This was before I discovered Growlers and made a note of it. We recently chatted about this, though, and formed a new plan to resuscitate this tradition. We’d each take a turn picking the restaurant so that we’d break out of our old rut, also part of the reason we stopped, of habiting the same three places and so Andrea would get equal choice for a place favorable to her restrictions, voluntary and otherwise.

We inaugurated the rebirth of this practice with my choice, Growlers. Everybody was pretty happy with it, too. The food was delicious and the portions were reasonable. The price fit the portion, addressing our main complaint with DFH. They have a kids menu, too, as much as I am coming to hate them but it makes it easier to avoid an argument with the boys.

I also reviewed my first taste of their beer brewed on the premises.

Not only are we planning on returning, we are hoping our friends, who seem to be defaulting to gathering at DFH, would be amenable to giving this local treasure a try sometime.

Family Flickr Account Deleted

I deleted our family Flickr account. As I mentioned previously, the sidebar has been updated with recent photos and links to Andrea’s and my individual accounts. There was a mass of pictures of the boys on the old account that were public and after talking with our friends with kids, we were convinced this was a Very Bad Idea.

If photos get posted to either of our accounts, which we are also much better about updating than the old joint account, and include either of the boys (or any of our friends’ kids) we mark those photos as private. That means you need to be on our contact lists to see them. If you have a Yahoo account, you can activated it with Flickr and then add us first as a contact. If you don’t have a Yahoo account, they are free and easy to set up. Activating with Flickr in either case should be as simple as visiting Flickr, clicking its login button and then logging into your Yahoo account. It should prompt you to activate it for Flickr if you have not already.

Once you have added us as contacts, we can reciprocate and then mark you as family or friends which will give you access to the private photos.

If you have any trouble, contact me and I’ll do my best to help.

Bike Rider 2

This past weekend I took Liam out in the court during a spot of some gorgeous weather and helped him riding Calum’s bike, his first attempt without training wheels.

Calum has definitely outgrown his bike and it is even a bit small for Liam at this point. Our big gift to Calum for his just past birthday is a new bike. We have yet to get it, though. We were holding off until we could use his old bike to help Liam get comfortable riding without training wheels.

I now need to remove the training wheels from Liam’s bike but he is pretty excited. He went out several more times on his own to practice. He definitely has the hanging of riding and even has been stopping pretty well without incident. He still fumbles a bit with getting started but he manages.

Flickr Changes

I am going to allow my old Flickr account to expire and delete it if possible. Andrea and I each have our own independent accounts that we individually do a far better job of posting the pictures we take. I have changed the Flickr widget in the sidebar to point to my photos and added a text/RSS widget for Andrea’s. The free host I use won’t let me add two Flickr widgets, go figure.

You can click on either to get to our accounts.

We’ve both also started marking photos with pictures of the boys as private. Most of my friends do this and it occurs to me way after I started posting photos of the boys publicly that this would have been much more responsible to do all along. For friends and family, if you haven’t already register for a free Flickr account and add either or both of us as friends. We’ll tag you as friend and/or family appropriately and once we do, you’ll be able to see the protected photos when you are logged into Flickr.

Liamzilla

The weather has moved passed the pleasant Spring cool a little quickly. Its already moving into the more hot and humid of Summer. But we’ve had some nice afternoons all the same and after Dree brought the monkeys home from Gran’s after their overnight Saturday, we were all spending some quality time out in the sun.

While Dree and I read on the deck, Liam and Calum played in the backyard. Dree wandered down to check on them and came back up giggling. When Liam was a baby one of his nicknames was Liamzilla. She explained that he had grown back into that name, that he was stomping around the yard making monster roars. He even flipped a toy truck, much like a Liamzilla might be expected to do.

Pictures

Please check out our Flickr stream for some recent pictures. I put Easter up a while ago but also just added pictures from a baby shower at work. I have some pictures from the last weekend, when I took the monkeys down to the National Mall to see some cool NASA exhibits. I’ll probabyl get those posted on Saturday.

Holiday Wrap Up

Wow, it has been a while since I posted. Sorry about that. Just wanted to take a few minutes to write up our recent holiday travels and experience by way of catching up.

First, all of the holiday pictures are up on Flicker. The most recent three are over there in the sidebar and there’s a link to all the rest.

As for the trip itself, it was pretty pleasant. We got a little delayed on the way down, but jetBlue, as always, was worth the little extra. That includes the direct flight, which is worth twice as much, easily, when traveling with small children.

It was a real joy seeing all of my family, since we are usually hundreds of miles apart. My parents and siblings positively dote on the boys, which suits the pair of them fine. When Dree and I get an afternoon or an evening off, it suits us pretty well, too.

The presents were not too crazed this year, which is appreciated when keeping the boys from being totally taken in by the crass commercialism gets harder as they get older. The gifts were thoughtful and in fairly moderate quantities. The only sad note really had nothing to do with the family but rather that within a few hours of getting home, Calum realized his and Liam’s game cartridges were missing.

Searching has not since turned them up. I called the jetBlue baggage office at Dulles in case we left them on the plane but no such luck. I am pretty sure we had them with us on the flight, so if we did leave them, they didn’t make it to the lost and found. Each boy has the cartridge that was in their respective game systems, but the other three apiece appear to have been totally lost.

Surprisingly, other than some sniffling right when they realized the loss they seem to have taken it in stride. I’m sure they will re-generate their libraries a bit at their birthdays.