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I had told MIM earlier last week I wanted to wait to hear back from HP before I made a decision on what I was going to do, which was Friday. Long complicated story aside, they(HP) would like to hire me but can't for a little while due to a hiring freeze. Would I be willing to wait? Not really since I'd rather work for MIM anyway. So it just seemed to confirm that idea. Contacted Alexey, the CTO of MIM, and he wants to get together this coming Wednesday for a meeting with the rest of the team (I pretty much met everyone there I thought, at least in passing, but maybe he wants to buy everyone coffee or something) and to talk about some of the final details like compensation and other employee/employer relations. At least that's what I hope it is and not a "Sorry we found someone to work for us for cheaper" or something. haha

This is my last week at the fitness club though! I'm way excited, no more drives across town at 4:30 in the morning. I'm going to try try TRY to keep getting up early somewhat, at the very least until this class is done with. If I can just go down to the coffee shop that is underneath the office of MIM and work on homework and stuff for 2 hours a day, I'd be all set here in about 3-4 weeks. Then I could just coast completely until graduation. : ) .. wow almost forgot about that in all the goings on!

Interviews all went well. HP's was interesting; it did take over 6 hours, but it wasn't as dreadful as I'd feared. They did grill me quite a bit, but it wasn't a team of people all at once and everyone that I talked with was very polite and considerate; it really gave me a good feeling of how it would be to work in a team with them to solve a problem, which I suppose is the point, both for myself and for them. 

Now I have to wait for a week to see what they thought and then I'll have to make a decision on what I'm going to do. I'm contacting MIM today to let them know what's going on. I really thought I wanted to work for MIM, but after the interview, I'm not so sure. Especially if HP comes back with anything near a decent offer, they will probably blow MIM out of the water. Still..    At any rate, there is a job fair this next Tuesday with a few companies at BSU that I'll go to as well, not sure what'll turn up there if anything.

It's finally getting closer! 

I guess I should probably catch up on everything else that has been going on and more fully fill in some of the holes in the details that I've written. 

Pre-Jan

Graduation didn't happen, didn't pass my Theory of Computation class. Micron is already in a phase of laying off full-time engineers, and hence can't offer me a full time job. Also, I don't qualify to be an intern anymore since I'm taking only one class... thus starts a second period of my life where I feel lost with out purpose and definitely without a job and source of income.. 

Jan 6thish - HP job fair

This was an interesting experience. Show up on site with about 30 other candidates, about 5 or 6 of which were actually other BSU students. In fact, I guess really it was a job fair for BSU students, but all the same. There were some very interesting people there, from a guy in his 30's who was a freshman and working in a carpenter shop (nothing wrong with that) and had just came from work, dusty boots, jeans and all to myself and a few other who were dressed in business formal(is that a term?). We all got a long tour, lunch, and then those of us dressed up got interviews and those who didn't left. It wasn't quite like that, I think those who got interviews dressed knowing they were and the rest were just there to check it out. At any rate, I didn't get a job offer out of that, I think a lot of it was because they had me down as a possible intern and really I'm not anymore. 

Jan 10thish - Fitness 19

Currently my job, though I've put in my two-weeks officially now. Get up at 4am MWF and sleep in until 7 or so on TuTh... but at least I've been done at 1 everyday. And all I have to do is stand at the front and look pretty. (which of course I do very well) Really if it paid a bit more, and or I could get more hours in, it wouldn't be bad to do until I finished with my class this semester. They even tried tempting me to stay with a manager position (or pushed me away with it?), but opportunities have been presenting themselves and turning them down/away wouldn't be smart.  

Feb 15thish - Cognizo Interview

During my digging around online for jobs, I came across a listing in Boise for a job down in Las Vegas for doing PHP work that mentioned a code challenge. So I contacted them mostly wanting just to see what the code challenge would be like. Well, of course they decided to approach it like I was really applying (at the time I wasn't) and so I did the challenge in the allotted time and sent it back to them. Wasn't too hard, just a problem to calculate a person's next payment based on some criteria (those who are interested in the technical details let me know). But as we all know the world is full of stupid people and not many who responded did it correctly and then it turned into a full blown interview process. The end of the whole thing was when I wouldn't lie to them and claim that I was the best PHP programmer I've ever known. Confidence is one thing, but to say something like that when I really have no one else to compare to (I haven't been around many other PHP developers) would just be foolish. 

A long silence between my email inbox and the corporate world

Apparently Jan/Feb/Mar isn't the best time to be job hunting. There was a long time of nothing coming back to me for all the dozens of emails I sent out. But now...

More than I know how to respond to and what/how do I decide?

So the first positive response after all of this was MIM about March 1st, which I think I've written about. I have a standing job offer from them, albeit it a confusing one in terms of deciding how good the offer really is. HP is now in a hiring freeze, but might be able to push a few people through for critical needs. I think I wrote about that too. And this week there is a job fair at BSU and I might have another job interview with HP coming up soon too from my adviser at BSU. How quickly it all changes..

And that in a nutshell, is the last 3 months.. 

Guess it's been awhile again since I've given any kind of an update. I probably should do this more often for my own documentary reasons. At any rate..

Everything considered, stuff is going pretty well. Had my interview with a small startup company, MIM, last Friday and from everything that was said, it looks like I have the job. But I've got my interview with HP this Thursday. So now it gets interesting. There are pros and cons to both of course. The small startup would offer me a lot in the way of interesting projects and access and control (or at least sole-responsibility for) a large portion of the project. I'd be working on the server portion, and it's going to need to be very scalable. The down side is that there aren't really any immediate benefits financially. Lower wage, and no medical etc. But stock options that could eventually turn out to be very lucrative. On the flip-side of all that is HP. Stable position, stable work, stable everything. Slow and steady and .. possibly dull. But of course better financial options. Well, who knows. We'll see how the interview actually goes, it might be that they grill me for a while and tell me to go home. haha

All in all it's been a few rather interesting months. The code challenges I've actually enjoyed, especially the PHP project down in Vegas. It's funny in a way, I can't believe that they'd no be interested in me simply because I didn't rate myself as the best developer ever. I never said I wasn't good. I suppose this should be a lesson to me to not "sell myself short" but I still like to look at it as "not over-selling" myself. Frankly if they are too..  pessimistic to think that because I didn't give myself a 10/10 rating as a PHP hacker, then they can suffer whoever they did hire. *smirk* Who'd want to be a PHP development anyway when you can do C or Java??

Working at the gym has been a very interesting experience. Actually it's a bunch of interesting experiences. The getting up at 4am thing I discovered I really can be a morning person a few days a week and kind of like it. I think why I always ended up going into Micron so late is that I hate going in with the masses. I guess actually I already knew that I liked that, I went into work at Micron a few times really early, until they axed that out. Anyway, the other side is seeing how "health services" are actually sold and what they have to do to make money. On the one hand, I know to some extent that have to use the methods that they do. Working out is something everyone needs to do a a gym is the most common way of really being able to push yourself. And sometimes you have to convince people of that. But .. the convincing sometimes is just too ..  underhanded for my taste. It seems to me that if you really have something that people need and want, then it should sell itself. Capitalism does rule all, but convincing us that we NEED things when we really don't seem like a terrible business model. Anyway, it's been a real education in evaluating what I want and think I need before I even go into a store. 

Guess that's enough ranting and blabbing for now..