Being the luddite that I am, I got home last Thursday after work and didn't bother checking my voice mail. What programmer really expects to have a voice mail waiting on their personal phone? A better question is, Who leaves a personal voice mail for a programmer? It's not like we've made a name for ourselves as outgoing social animals.

For some reason this morning, I decided to check my voice mail. Sure enough the dial tone was intermittant. Check the message and low and behold, I have one more company interested in my services. This is a group that I had long ago written off. I did a phone interview with them around the middle of October and figured that I had completely blown it. During the interview the HR lady seemed to have her knickers all in a bunch and was definitely not interested in enjoying the process. Between that, and second guessing the answers that I gave for the technical questions, I figured I was doomed.

I called the same HR lady back today and had a very pleasant and cordial conversation with her. On more than one occasion I had her laughing. She wanted to talk about salary expectations and the benefit package. The most amazing thing, this group not being a government entity, is that they are looking for Analysts/Programmers to fill a postition that pays overtime, has a retirement plan and a number of other small benifits that together sound very much like a union job at the local plant. Please realize that this is a huge shock for someone who has worked in an environment with no OT, limited holidays, no retirement plan, and the need to put in 60+ hrs a week....every week.

By the end of the conversation we had rectified our differences in salary, and I am now waiting for a call back to tell me when I get to fly to the beautiful city of Saskatoon. The way the HR lady spoke, it almost sounds like a formality that I have to see the office and city.

Hopefully I haven't gotten my hopes up, only to see them get crushed once again.

Today I spent 4 hours working on a revamped resume based on the suggestion of a to be unnamed IT consulting company.  Apparentally the old one would not get very much interest from potential employers.  They told me this on Monday and sure enough I get a call on Wednesday (from another consulting company) and one today from a small IT firm.  Guess the old resume turned a couple of heads.
The guy on Wednesday seemed optomistic (perhaps not genuinely) for the chance at a contract doing Crystal Reports dev with Fujitsu.  Buddy today is from a small company making software for agriculture and looking for a .NET and report developer.   Since I have education in both IT and Ag, it would seem a very fine fit.  Problem with it is that they are talking about a salary that is a 25% pay cut from my last position.  Benifits are that it is in the city where I could get some weekend work, and the people that I'm programming for now might be interested in having me work 20 hrs a week remotely.  We'll see what happens.  I'll try not to get my hopes up, but it has been since the start of August without work.

So its post #1.  Woopee.  Have you ever watched a cow graze in a field.  Bout that exciting eh?

What we'll try to do here is post some random and perhaps relevant tech stuff as well as my ongoing quests.