My new job has been, to date, fantastic. I thoroughly enjoy the work, as well as the people. The company itself is great – they demand a lot from their employees, but they reward that by giving employees everything they need to be successful and taking care of employees. It’s a wonderful change of pace from my recent employment where they demanded a lot but gave little back to the employees. They would be angry at me if they heard me say that: as far as the leadership team there sees it – they give a lot back to employees. Unfortunately, the leadership team for the company is out of touch with the Indianapolis office, and are only slowly becoming aware that it’s not a friendly or nice place to work. The contrast between where I am now and where I came from is night and day.

In other developments – This past weekend was decent. It would have been great, but Ann’s mom was in town (which in and of itself isn’t a bad thing), and Ann and I did not get to spend the weekend hanging out together like we normally do (which in and of itself IS a bad thing). My buddy Trevor had a birthday party (along with his sister and two of her friends whose birthdays all fell within roughly a few weeks of each other). It was…. interesting. There was plenty of drinking going on, as I expected there would be. There were also a lot of weird people who I did not know all that well (I had met most of them before at least once, but didn’t know any of them beyond having met them in passing). One of these strange people insisted that I looked very much like Steve Guttenburg, to the point where he was asking random other partygoers what they thought on the matter. (For those who have no idea who Steve Guttenburg is, he was Carey Mahoney in Police Academy, and one of the dudes in 3 Men and a Baby). Personally, I have no idea what the guy was talking about – I look NOTHING like Steve Guttenburg.

In other, other developments – I bought a new lens for my dSLR camera. It’s a Cannon 70-200mm f/2.8L, and it’s awesome. I plan on using it quite a bit in the coming months – first and foremost to shoot hockey with, but also to shoot nature and other stuff while I am out and about with Ann. The only downside is that it’s bulky and kinda heavy, but that’s the price you gotta pay for good glass. Well, that and the actual price of the lens.

And with that, I leave you all. For now. This coming week at work is New Employee Orientation (NEO), which I’ve been told will last approximately 4 days. Normally this would be the first thing a new employee is exposed to, but due to my circumstances they allowed me to start two weeks ago – so I’m getting it on my third week on the job. I have a feeling I will be putting in a lot of work from home in the evenings to make sure I’m caught up.   

Maybe I’ll write some more in the near future

* Blagging is taken from the XKCD web comic. It’s a mispronunciation of “blogging”, and is used in the comic as “blag”. Click the link above to see the actual comic.

It was your typical first day. They had already sent me the paperwork that needed to be filled out, and I had it completed before I showed up so the on-boarding process took all of 5 minutes. Most of the rest of the day was spent getting my new Macbook Pro set up, needed software installed, and eating lunch at a great brazilian steak house.   

So, I don’t really have a whole lot to say about it. The people seem pretty cool, and I’m sure I’m going to end up liking the job (I do like it so far), and the company is great. It’s a good opportunity, pays well, and is challenging. What’s not to like?

Given that I just sat here for five minutes trying to think of what else to write…. I guess that’s all I’ve got.

I’ve been fairly silent over the past week. That’s something that in and of itself isn’t too much of a shock… there are times when I go for weeks without posting anything, so why should a handful of days be special? Well – in this case – they were special.

For quite a while I’ve been considering a job change. There are a variety of reasons for this consideration – none of which I will go into in such a public forum. Back in December, just before Christmas, I interviewed with a company in downtown Indianapolis, for a position on their Information Security team. I felt myself to be a strong candidate – after all, for the past 10 months I’ve been building and managing a security program for a federal contractor. This position offered me things I couldn’t get in my existing position, and these were things I found to be highly desirable.

The hiring manager mentioned that he hoped to have an offer out before the end of ‘08, but if not, then shortly into ‘08. Christmas came and went with no word one way or another. A week or so into ‘09 and I sent a second followup e-mail (I sent the first when I got home from the interview). Again, no word. I’ll be honest – at this point I wrote it off as a “not gonna happen”.

Imagine my surprise, then, when on Tuesday, when I got back from lunch, I noticed an email from Twitter that the hiring manager had started following me. I can remember thinking “What the hell?! He ignored me, didn’t hire me, now starts following me on twitter?!” It was about that time he called to offer me the position.

And so, two days later – once I got the official offer letter – I resigned. I offered the company two weeks to transition my duties from me to my senior security analyst. They (and by they I mean a certain few – not the entire company – a long story that I won’t mention here) didn’t take it well, and have banished me to work those two weeks from the comfort of my own home. I am – to the best of my knowledge – still on payroll, and still earning my salary. That’s something.

So, for the next two weeks I get to work from the comfort of my new home office – with the notable exception of this coming Monday morning, during which I will be conducting an exit interview with the senior executive team of the company (CEO, COO, CTO and HR Director – Possibly the CFO as well). While my physical access to the office I was based out of has been revoked, my laptop and blackberry taken, my VPN access also revoked , I still have access to e-mail and that – apparently – is enough for me to work. Supposedly.

I am looking forward to the new job. It seems to be a good company, performing strong even in this dismal economy. They also offer a variety of employee benefits that go well above and beyond my previous employer. The work will be much more in line with what I want to be doing as well, so the whole deal is just much better.

If only I didn’t have to wait two more weeks to start….