You're Asian, you must be smart, right?

Though the one on the left isn't quite so small anymore.

The similarity to the Fallout Mag is too bizarre to be coincidental.

Somewhat surprised at the camera quality

Yes on GG.

The stance on Re is as yet unknown.

Like a billion accidents on 880 today. Yay for non-moving traffic.
The clouds look kinda cool though.

I started this particular position on Dec 4th of 2006. My first week
was a busy-work week at headquarters. My boss was in the Phillipines
basically just hanging out as far as I could tell, and one of the guys
he seems to like was taking care of me and trying to keep me busy. I
spent a lot of time trying to read documentation, getting bored, and I
think I definitely fell asleep at my desk at one point - there's only
so much one can take of reading about OVIs (Octal Voltage and Current)
and TMU (Time Measurement Units). I was only to be at HQ for a week
(they put me in a nearby hotel) before I had to make the drive to
Sunny Tucson.

The drive altogether took about.., 15 hours maybe? I stopped once for
the night, and once to visit a friend in Phoenix on my way into town.
I went straight to another hotel, had a bunch of billing issues
because apparently my company expected me to front the cost of the
hotel (I think I was about $4000 in debt at this point, with no money
in my checking account and a nearly maxed credit card), but they took
my card and promised not to charge it and I promised to get the
billing situation resolved.
My first day of work in Tucson was sorta eventful. I got up early,
got to the office complex where my new workplace was supposed to be,
and had to spend about 20 minutes finding the actual office. It was
tucked off in a corner, and so after finally finding it, I swiped my
badge to unlock the door, walked in, and was greeted by the shrill
blaring of the alarm I just triggered - apparently I was the first one
there on that Monday morning.
Luckily, as I was calling the alarm company and trying to explain to
them my ridiculous situation, one of the employees finally arrived -
15 minutes after the alarm started - and turned the damn thing off.
He informed the alarm company of the situation, and no one was hurt or
arrested. A good start to a half year stint.

Other things of note relating to my job and time in Tucson :
IT would not set up my e-mail until about two months or so into the
job when my boss finally went to the IT guy and watched over his
shoulder as he set it up for me.
I didn't get a computer (I was using a broke-ass hand-me-down) until
three months or more into the job. They were apparently having
problems with the disk images, and even after 'fixing them', I still
have one of the disk image sets that doesn't quite work correctly. A
known issue the IT guy says he'll have to fix on my computer. I've
e-mailed the responsible IT guy to fix it, but he seems to prefer
spending his time perusing engadget, printing out comics and articles
and posting them on his cube wall, talking about his sweet, tricked
out truck, and chatting up anything with boobs at the workplace.
This company doesn't really have much in the way of any sort of
'training' or 'orientation'. My training involved my mentor at the
new workplace giving me one of his unfinished projects, making sure I
could handle the basics of what needed to be done, and letting me go.
I don't actually mind this that much, as I prefer to get involved as
soon as I can, but this lead to other problems down the line. No one
ever told me I had to track my time and what I've been working on, so
three months down the line, I had to fill in three months worth of
what I did for every hour of every day. This became a common theme at
work, someone telling me to do something a certain way way later than
they should have.

So, blah blah blah, in the stay in Tucson I flew back to HQ twice to
do some work. I finally left in July or so. Another 15 hour drive,
another couple of pit stops, another few tanks of gas, and a lot of
Harry Potter on tape later, I arrived at my new home.
The Tucson workplace had five people, plus me. Four engineers, one
technician. Four were married, the other was divorced. Four had
children, two of those had pregnant wives, one was childless but
that's probably because his wife looked closer to my age than his and
I guess they hadn't been married long. I think the youngest of them
was 35.
Headquarters is closer to 4000 people I think. My boss had about
fourteen people under him when I started the job in December, and I
think by the time I got back to HQ it was down to twelve. One more
would leave before the end of 2007, one was laid off a month ago, and
I know two more now who are starting to shop around a bit. In any
case, moving from a six person facility to a four thousand person
facility was a bit of a culture shock. I moved into the cube of one
of the people who left while I was gone, so all his knickknacks were
still there; I still don't use my my drawers or cabinet because it's
still full of his stuff. Not sure where the guy is now, but I'm sure
he's happier there.
The nice thing about being at HQ though, is that there are more people
my age. A new employee started in the cube next to mine when I flew
back to HQ for the second time. She's a few years older than me, but
we get along well and she's the person I go to to randomly waste time
or vent. Besides her, there are more than a few others that I'll go
to lunch with, randomly chat with, and occasionally gripe excessively
with.

Now it is May. In three days time I will have been with this company
for one year and five months, about seventy four weeks. I have
received in that time, probably thirty six paychecks (I took two weeks
off without pay), one bonus, one raise, and a couple hundred shares of
(largely worthless) stock. I've released two products, internally
referred to as the AU55 and the AU67 (Class D audio amplifiers with
analog/digital gain control, and frequency matching!). I've also
directly talked, through e-mail or phone, with ten or so companies,
I've done phone interviews with seven of those, and on-site interviews
with four of those, one within the past week.

At this point I'm pretty ready to move on.
Things on my mind regarding moving on :
- Breaking it to the boss. It's like a breakup, ugh, I just don't
want to do it.
- Projects I'm working on. I feel bad leaving in the middle of one,
but man I don't like being here.
- Coworkers! I like them. They are cool, and fun to talk to, and I'd
hate to lose contact. And I wonder if I'd have as many coworkers
around my age at the next place.
- Another job I hate. I don't want to move into another position that
I don't like and repeat this cycle. Similarly, I'd hate to jump into
a new job too soon and lose the opportunity with a better company.
After I started at this place, I got a call from a startup within a
few weeks, and turned them down. Not sure if I made the right choice
there.

So..., yeah. This is what I have done. I'm still not sure what I am
going to do.

It being a bit past midnight, I have by this point in the night, lost my voice. It's fun sounding a bit like Louis Armstrong, but it'd be nice not to have to repeat every other sentence.

There are thirty two days left of the year 2007. Give or take some amount of hours, minutes, and seconds, but roughly, thirty one days left. Given my own birth year of 1984, that means 2008 will be the 24th year of my life. Given an average male life expectancy of 75 years, I'm getting close to one third of my expected life.

So anyway, tomorrow I fly across the Pacific Ocean for roughly eleven hours (1.4% of the rest of the year) to come to a several day stop (15.6%) in a large city on the island of Honshu.
It won't be my first time crossing this ocean, or my first time going to that city, and not even my first time making this exact flight. It is, however, my first time flying while sick, and for that I am bringing Nyquil, to make the experience, hopefully, largely unmemorable.

I've got all my stuff packed; I tried packing light this time, though between the winter clothes and enough Chanukah paraphernalia for three small synagogues, I'm still filling a fat suitcase and a duffel.
I've brought four paperbacks for entertainment : Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Lolita, The Great Gatsby and High Fidelity.
No gameboy, no DS, no laptop, though I couldn't live without my music so I've actually got two portable music devices on me.
And then the other random crap necessary on trips plus a few bags of cough drops and a box of Nyquil LiquiCaps.

So, time to rest and get going, hoorah.

Labels: travel