Just a short post to update all my regular readers out there (yes, both of you) that I start my new job next Wednesday and I started school full-time today. Yes, today. I have started in the BS – IT Security Emphasis program at Western Governor’s University. I don’t have a projected finish date yet, but their competency-based model means that I can finish my degree much faster than with a standard program. (Word from one of the admissions counselors is that IT professionals going in to the IT program tend to finish their Bachelor in around 2 years.)

Although I shouldn’t have to remind anyone I will: everything I say (well, type) here is my opinion and does not reflect the views or opinions of my employer or the school which I attend. With that said I have only one small grievance about my first day at WGU: every link in the student portal has a target of _blank or uses a js call to open a new window. Grrrr. My opinion: bad design idea.

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Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time knows I don’t usually talk about work except to share things that I have learned or discovered while doing said work. This post, however, is a break from that tradition, as I am no longer employed. I was laid off in the latest round of RIF (reduction in force, a more polite way of saying downsized). I am back in the market and finding that there are a few things that make it tricky. As I pointed out in this post none of the code I have worked on recently belongs to me.

Which means that for those who desire code samples I need to do one of three things: either hand over old or unfinished code, write something entirely new, or get permission from my previous employer to share samples of some of the work where I was the only (or at least principal) developer. While the first is not appealing and the second will be ok once I have to time actually build something new or finish something I started back when, the third would be the simplest, at least if I felt that I would get the ok. But seeing how the last day went, I am not so sure. I walked some of the remaining developers through the code and documentation for a project I had headed up, and was on hand to put out fires. I was expecting to be answering questions right up to 5:00 PM. But at 3:30 PM my email account was disabled and shortly after that my Jabber account. While that was not unexpected, the lack of a final message from any of my current bosses was. No thanks, no sorry about the lay off, no good luck, nothing. I did get the farewells, sorry and thanks for everything you’ve done (as well a written LinkedIn reccomendation) from my former boss last week, and I appreciate that.

I don’t know, maybe I am just being overly sensitive. Or maybe I just expect too much from people. But would it really have been that hard to send an email to all the departing employees? Meh. I’ll get over it.

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While it was nice to have hosting during the move, I really do prefer having my server available at hand. And once again it is – after canceling the hosting and updating my DNS information this site and talkingfox.com are again hosted from my home office.

For future reference: SSH and command line access beats the crap out of cPanel any day.

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I am taking a few minutes before my work day officially starts to write this. We are hitting the road tomorrow, for our move to Olympia. There are certainly things I will miss about Alaska, like the ravens, the aurora, the endless summer days, the sheer vast beauty of the place… There are a few things I won’t miss though, like the smell during break-up, the short winter days, the bitter cold (I don’t need to do another interior winter to know that -50F is no fun), snow (no really, I’ve had my share, Washington state could outlaw it for all I care at this point.)

Anyhow, the move (as I said) happens tomorrow and we will be on the road for several days. The last couple times I drove the ALCAN I did it in 3 days or less. This time we are taking our time, seeing a few things along the way and generally trying to be sane about it. As I find wireless on the way I will update twitter so those who care can see where we are.

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As we start the new year I find that I am sadly fallen behind on things like this blog, social networking, reading and news aggregation, and generally anything unrelated to work or the daily functioning of the household. In other words, I have been working too much and relaxing too little. Well, that will have to change. Of course, that means I have to get back into a routine, which seems to be difficult when making major changes, such as, oh, starting a new job in a new town.

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