...I've just finished my first week at my new job. #whew#

I'm the new Production System Administrator at Fortius One, a Geographic Information Systems company that is looking to become the Google of GIS. We've just recently started work on the product-level release of GeoCommons, a geographic data mining tool, and GeoCommons Appliance, a standalone rackable computer system that companies needing GIS data in a closed system setting can install and use much like companies that use the Google appliance for their in-house search platforms.

Our company's founder often blogs about the latest developments in the GIS world. Check out Off The Map for more details.

I'm loving my job. Great place to work. :)

It was a bust.

Well, sort of.

My trip to Wichita on 2/14, for a job interview with Cargill Meat Services as their #2 IT person, was already off to an inauspicious start due to my car accident on 2/12, but I was trying to view the accident as a positive sign. After all, if I hadn't had the accident, I would have still needed to schedule a doctor's appointment w/ my GP because I was out of pain meds; the ER doc prescribed pain meds, so that was one positive outcome. If I hadn't had the accident, I'd have had to have paid for parking; now, with my car in the AA police impound lot, no BWI parking fees would be owed. See, a positive thing.

( Always look on the bright side of life... )

It's been a while since I've updated. Much has happened in my life since the last update.

My last update was two days before I headed out for a job interview, probably the most important event in my unemployed life to that point.

Things got a little weird after that.

Actually, they got a lot weird.

( Click here to see how weird that day itself was... )

120 days into my life as an ex-AOL programmer, I'm two days away from an interview as an IT Applications Manager with a major U.S. corporation (not saying more than that right now). Wish me luck. :)

I'm not dead, though sometimes I feel that way.

Christmas was hard on me emotionally this year; it was the first anniversary of my divorce. (Actually, technically, the divorce was finalized on the 27th. But I digress.) It's also hard to be out of a job this time of year. I'm hopeful that some opportunities that came up near the end of 2007 manifest in 2008. Money isn't the issue--Thank God for the WARN act and 60 days of pay--but I could do without worrying that I won't get the promised paycheck from a company that would just as soon be rid of its financial obligation to me and 2000 of my closest friends and workmates. (And I miss said workmates, including my former officemate, who kept me sane and laughing throughout even the worst moments at the company.)

Family was in town--Mom arrived on the 19th and stayed until the 2nd; Rob came up from DC on the 24th and the 31st and stayed until the evening hours on the following day both times. That meant I was going crazy trying to clean up the rest of the house after the junk folks had cleared out the basement, and my body would not let me do the work.

My body has gone into full-blown rebellion lately. My GP, Dr. AwesomelyWonderful, was concerned about the long-term effects of steroids on my system (I was on 20 mg of Prednisone per day for Polymyalgia Rheumatica), so we made a stepdown plan: Go from 20 to 15 over a weekend, then 15 to 10, take a SED rate reading after a few days at 10 (to measure if the SED rate, which measures overall inflammation in the body, changes at all on the lower dose), then go from 10 to 5 to 0 in the space of the next week. So I'm now at 0 mg prednisone and have been for 3 days. I'm already noticing the roundness of my face is starting to fade--yay, no more risk of developing Cushing's Disease--and I've dropped 3 pounds in 3 days (water retention from the 'roids), but my back and shoulders are in so much pain that it's becoming nearly impossible to be out of bed and doing anything. All I have to do is bend over to pick something up, and my back seizes (right at the place where I have the worst nerve sheath tumors) so badly that it won't stop until I lie down. Same thing for lifting anything onto my shoulders. And I have headaches, so bad that I want to put a drill through my head. Women with PR tend to have severe headaches due to the increased SED rate and the spasming of the shoulder muscles causing muscle spasms and blood vessel irritation, and I can attest to that.

And, oh-by-the-way, I took a header in Georgetown the Saturday before Christmas. Yep, I fell down like a pile of bricks--smack-dab on the sidewalk on 29th St. NW approaching K Street. As near as I can tell from the injury pattern on my body, I apparently stepped onto an uneven section of the sidewalk on my left foot, which does not flex normally. I lost my balance and tried to correct with my right leg, only to have it hit a similar uneven section, causing my right foot to completely flex 90 degrees inward, in a direction ankles don't normally bend. With both my legs unable to catch their footing, I went down hard on my left side. I was disoriented and panicked (Mom was trying to send Rob to go get the car and I was calling out, "NoNoDon'tGoNoNo..." or something like that) for about 45 seconds, then finally began to calm down. After that, I took a look around, palpated my right ankle trying to feel for a break (I have broken this one before, so I know what that feels like), figured out that the worst I'd done was sprain it like Heck, then managed to get to my knees and then to my feet. I am bruised like all-get-out on my left leg and right ankle and have deep bruises on my hips as well, but I'm alive and reasonably well. (Mom said Rob was freaked out by my fall and mentioned to her that he had no idea I'd "gotten that bad" and that he wasn't prepared for me to "be so sick...she's way too young to die..." I felt bad about scaring him. Heck, those falls scare me, and I'm used to them. I fell 4 times cleaning the house before Mom's arrival. (One time I landed hard on a grocery sack full of breakfast cereals; I looked up and said, "God, is this your way of telling me that cereal is good for me?")

Anyway, Christmas ended up being nice--Mom and Rob both worked their tails off to help me get some rest and get better. I'm glad to have my house back, but I'll miss them.

Happy New Year, All. May 2008 be a darned sight better than 2007.

I got a "thanks but no thanks" note from ESPN this morning. Believe it or not, there are a lot of computer jobs available at ESPN (especially at Bristol HQ), and I applied for 4 of them. Oh, well.

I also applied at FOX (same thing--huge number of computer-related jobs in LA and NYC), and while I haven't been outright rejected, I haven't gotten a callback, either.

That said, I had a headhunter call me at the recommendation of a friend, and he seemed very excited when I gave him my verbal resume. So, here's hoping things will look up soon.

...is finding two new requests for interviews in your "Job Hunt" e-mail folder.

#crosses fingers#

Today is 30 days post-layoff. Something somewhat scary about that.

Dumped TWX stock options available for $10; netted nice return on investment.

Job hunt is progressing. Lots of resumes sent. Hired a professional resume service to rewrite my resume (and they did a freaking awesome job; I highly recommend Alesia Benedict of GetInterviews.com if you're on a job hunt, because she turned my resume from a 5-page ramble into a 2-page thing of beauty), which I've just started submitting this week. That one actually resulted in a phone call from a headhunter, so I consider that a win.

I also got a rejection letter from advertising.com, the advertising arm of AOL. I applied on a lark just to see if they'd either recognize me or reconsider me. The response was priceless:

"I recently received / reviewed your resume for the Director, Infrastructure position that you submitted it towards. Unfortunately, that position has been filled by a contractor that will convert into full-time in December/January. Until then, it must remain posted."

Direct translation: "Um, we're hoping to outsource all of our IT positions. We were hoping nobody would notice we still had vacancies posted."

</cynical>

All of this pales, though, to waking up Sunday morning just three weeks after surgery to remove a periodontal abscess with a toothache that I would have had to die to have felt better from. I e-mailed my dentists' office with a plea for an appointment, which I finally had on Wednesday. In the interim I had brushed and washed and flossed and rinsed to remove any stuck food particles for hours until I finally felt the last piece of food wash free from around that broken molar filing (which again felt newly cracked), making the pain a bit more tolerable. By Wednesday, I forced myself to get up and out of bed and head into NoVA once more, pretty much resigned to the inevitable: I had another cavity and it would likely be difficult if not impossible to clean out without root canal surgery.

( Dentist procedure haters should stop reading right here... )

Next time, I'm buying dental insurance. Phooey on this.

Spent Thursday (11/01) in NoVA. Had lunch with a former co-worker (way fun). Met up w/ another former co-worker whom I hadn't gotten a chance to see before my departure on 16 Oct (also way fun). Went to Job Fair in Reston, where I saw more former co-workers who'd left on 16 Oct than should ever be in one place at any one time (weird).

Job Fair was very interesting. Despite my fears that it would be only a handful of local firms plus the usual suspects (other tech headhunters), it turned out to be very well populated. Lockheed Martin rep practically drooled over my resume. So did Google rep (and was especially pleased to hear I'd consider relocating). Even Microsoft was interested (especially when they found out I (1) do software dev, (2) was heavy into InfoSec and other computer security issues, and (3) used to teach Microsoft products at the NCS in Linthicum, MD). Got a lot of hot leads and lots of business cards with the recommendation of "PLEASE send me a soft copy of your resume..."

Headed into DC for an interview with Robert Half International. If you've never heard of them, RHI is a very diverse umbrella company for several business contract-to-hire or contract-temp firms you may have heard of: AccounTemps, OfficeTeam, The Creative Group, and Robert Half Technology. I interviewed with one of their recruiters, met the head of their sales team, took an online Perl test (got frustrated with some of the questions having no real available answers to choose from--several questions had something close to the right answer but the wrong syntax, and none of the other answers were any better--so I didn't score as high as I would have liked), and in general had them eating out of my hand within an hour. If I could have started immediately, I think I'd have been offered a job on the spot. As is (I'm holding out for a 1/1/2008 start no matter where I end up, and especially nothing before 12/15/2007, the day after my last official day on AOL's payroll), they're still very interested and are trying to convince one specific customer who's crying for Perl programmers that they think I'm worth the wait. All in all, a productive day.

Of course, I'd feel better if I already had a job lined up--I'm personally shooting for a real job offer by Thanksgiving--but at least I'm getting paid and have health insurance. I can wait.

I tell myself that all the time. It doesn't help the worrier in me, though. Thank {deity} for anti-anxiety meds, or I think I'd be going insane by now. As is, I'm having trouble sleeping these days. But I'll get through it.

So far today: 2 headhunter calls, one personal interview scheduled. Finally, job hunt is turning around. :)

I was told by a friend I trusted at AOL that I would be stir-crazy without a job inside of 2 weeks.

Well, it's day 11, and I wouldn't call this stir-crazy, but I would call it kind of bored.

The good news is I'm sleeping a lot. With CFS, this is important. I'm also submitting a lot of resumes. That's important for the job hunt. I'm going to a job fair next week. That's important for the job hunt, too.

I've had a lot of bites on the resumes, but no firm offers. That's O.K. I've got until January before I really have to even think about it.

Have done some looking out of state in areas I wouldn't mind relocating to (Las Vegas; Northeast Mississippi; Indiana) and some I might (San Francisco, home of sky-high rents and great tech jobs). Have applied for several jobs in Mississippi and Indiana.

Getting a lot of knitting done, too. That's fun.

The worst part is feeling kind of isolated. Don't get to see my work friends as often as I'd like, though I spent most of last week visiting with friends from previous jobs to catch up with them.

I'm going to see my doctor this week to get some test scheduled before my health insurance runs out. Other than that, madness does indeed take its toll.