Today is my last day on this project. It has been a good two and a half years professionally, and a tumultuous time personally. There have been times when this project, with all its instability, frustrations, and issues has been the best part of my life.
I am very happy to say that this is no longer the case. Once again I feel like I have found balance in my life between work and play, between professional and personal, between living and working. I am moving towards something rather than trying to leave anything behind.
The coming days and weeks will hold new challenges and new opportunities. I’m going to feel like the kid who moved to a new school in the middle of the year for a while, and I’m sure I will have moments of doubt and fear. However, to some extent I get to wipe the slate clean and start over fresh. Since this is the first new job I’ve had in a decade that didn’t also involve moving to a new city, I can focus more of my energy on the new position and not on the aftermath of moving.
To quote Calvin, from the final “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strip (31 December 1995):
In the two and a half years that I have been at my current engagement I have had surprisingly few problems with my workstation. Microsoft Windows is often maligned but XP has proved to be a stable platform for me. Or at least until this morning.
Upon arriving at work today I was greeted with a blank, black screen and a small white underscore cursor blinking merrily away in the upper left corner of the display. Control-Alt-Delete had no effect, neither did powering the machine off and restarting it. A quick call to the help desk resulted in an over the phone diagnoses that my hard drive had died.
Within an hour the technician had come, tested all the external connections, re-seated the cards and memory, and, when all of that failed to restore the machine, taken the hard drive away for diagnostics elsewhere. By mid-morning he had returned with a new drive, freshly loaded with the standard set of developer software. Fortunately the client has a policy of keeping the “My Documents” folder on a network drive, so I didn’t lose any of my files. And the tech was able to access the drive contents and copied some settings files and my email archive to the network for me.
That my workstation croaked just three days shy of my last day at this site is ironic I suppose. I’m adjusting desktop settings, reapplying configurations, and updating the base software to the levels I had yesterday - all activities I’ll be repeating to one degree or another next week at my new job.
The United States is being forced to grow up in as a result of efforts to improve border security. Starting tomorrow US citizens returning to the country from Mexico and Canada will be required to show a passport. A driver’s license or birth certificate will no longer be accepted. The tighter passport controls are only the first step. Tomorrow’s change is only for air passengers. As soon as 2008 the requirement maybe expended to include ground travel between the US and it’s neighbors.
The longest “open” border in the world just closed.
A friend of mine at work is on the verge of buying his daughter a laptop for college. A year ago he got his son an Intel machine for college, but this spring he is looking at Macintosh laptops as she is going into graphic arts. In a way I envy him, as he gets to explore a new operating system and a new set of applications. I’ll get to vicariously experience his journey as he is already looking to me for advice about software and setup.
I’ve always liked exploring new software. My Applications folder on this machine has nearly 250 entries; I download new software every week if not every day. A part of my delight with new software is seeing how they did it. What controls did they include on the menu bar? How are the panels and dialogs arranged? I also like playing with the customization features, can I select the font, is there a less obtrusive theme for the interface, et cetera.
My latest “new” software has been the latest version of all the instant message chat clients. For years I have used one or more of the multi-protocol replacement tools, that allowed me access to all the messenger services from one piece of software. The Mac OS X tool in particular, Adium, allows a tremendous amount of customization and setup. Switching back to the native clients has been eye-opening in that I can’t control the look and feel of the chat window or the contact list. And I am not at all used to having blinking ads embedded in my software.
In a week I’ll be starting a new job. Some of the software I’ll use there will be familiar, tools I’ve used for years. Setting them up will be comfortable and affirming, like putting on favorite old clothes. Some of the tools will be new and I’ll get to explore their nooks and crannies. I’m looking forward to both experiences.
For the first time in a decade I am taking a new job that doesn’t require a cross country move. And for the first time in ten years I’ll be an employee and not a consultant. I’m excited about the changes ahead and eager to get started with the new company.
The past two and a half years have been very good for me career wise, and I’ve made some true friends here. Leaving this engagement will be bittersweet. I am looking forward to new challenges and new opportunities to learn and grow. I am not looking forward to leaving behind some of the people I’ve come to know here.
I’ll write more about the new job, and my experiences there once I know for certain what (if any) blogging policy the new company has, especially regarding any mention of their business by employees. For now I am happy to say that I have a new job.
Ten years ago this month I became a consultant. The first thirteen years of my career had been spent exclusively as an employee. Sure, I’ve been the employee of several consulting firms, but the mental shift that comes with being a consultant, of being an outsider, alters your view of your employer as well. Most of the past ten years have been good for me professionally. I’ve had the opportunity to move and to grow technically. In an era when technology shifts happen so rapidly as to appear continuous, I have been able to adapt and incorporate paradigm shifts into my skill set with relative ease.
Recently I have been surveying the employment market and there are some excellent opportunities worth consideration. And for the first time in a very long time I am considering full-time employment as an employee, not a consultant or an employee of a consulting firm. I don’t remember how long the mental shift from employee to consultant took ten years ago, and I am not sure I’ll ever stop thinking of myself as a consultant. The attitude embodies a certain independence, a reliance upon self rather than others, an expectation of excellence and professionalism, a willingness to stand by your work, your opinions, your beliefs regardless of popular direction.
To be honest there are some stresses that come with the free agent aspects of consulting, and you develop a thick skin for being treated as an outsider or second class citizen. Some would argue that consultants are more mercenary than patriot, and there is a nugget of truth in that statement. However, I feel that the last ten years have seen a stead erosion of the paternalistic employer-employee model that existed when I started my career in the early 1980s. Gone are the days of two or three decades of loyal service resulting in handsome retirements. Individuals now have to actively prepare for retirement, and moreover, have to expect to work at more than one employer in their working lifetime.
When I took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation’s basic rider’s course many years ago, the statement was made that, “by throwing your leg over the seat of a motorcycle you are telling the world you are willing to accept some risk.” By working as a consultant you are telling the world that you are willing to accept total responsibility, not just for the work you perform, but also for all aspects of working. Consulting is riding a motorcycle, employment is driving a car. I happen to enjoy aspects of both modes of work, just as I enjoy aspects of both modes of transportation.
The real trick is deciding what the career weather is going to be for the next year or decade, and choosing the right vehicle for the next leg of the journey.
The back massage I had just before the new year started did make an improvement in my overall level of pain. Since the therapist pointed out that my upper back is suffering from years of cubical living at work, I have taken some steps to alter the way I sit at my workstation.
Chair Unfortunately I don’t have the option of getting a new chair. The one I currently have is reasonably good, with adjustments for seat height, arm rest height, reclining or locked, and seat back angle. In order to create a baseline, so that I can tell which adjustment or adjustments makes a difference I have raised the seat height slightly, maybe an inch, to effectively lower the height of the work surface. I’ve also locked the seat back into the upright position and lowered the arm rests.
Desk The desks at my current engagement, are all corner models, suspended from cubical walls. In a nod towards ergonomics they have an adjustable keyboard tray in the corner of the desk’s “el.” Since the mechanism that allows this tray to be adjusted is flexible I have never liked it - the whole thing vibrates as I type. Also, the supports that tie the tray into the articulated arm are at a perfect width to smack into my knees if the tray is much lower than the height of the desk top. The tray is barely wide enough to hold the keyboard and the mouse. Like I said, the tray is only a nod towards ergonomics. I’ve lowered the keyboard tray as far as I can without smacking my knees.
All of these adjustments have dropped my hands two or three inches from where they were previously. My goal is to keep this arrangement for a week or so, and then change one and only one parameter, working my way around all the parameters eventually, in order to see what setting feels the best and causes the least amount of tension in my upper back by the end of the day. Maybe someday I’ll be fortunate enough to work at a company that has a good ergonomics understanding and works with their employees to prevent chronic conditions like my back.
Life being what it is, there are times when the plethora of choices, options, and decisions to be made can overwhelm. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have options, to have more good than you can use at once. But it can also wear you down. Leaving options on the table, recognizing that not everything that was possible is possible can leave you drained.
That’s when you need to stay home and refold undies. Or collect navel lint, or star gaze, or whatever you do when the information abundance era threatens to overwhelm.
For me it is watching, or at least playing, favorite movies. Ones I’ve seen again and again but still enjoy. Since it isn’t new, since it is a known quantity, I can participate without active focus. The minimal level of concentration required is just enough to clear my head of all the noise my options, choices, decisions have generated. It provides the necessary downtime to recharge my batteries.
How do you refold your undies?
Not so much a resolution, but a determination that we’d like to walk more days than not each week this year resulting in a beautiful walking in the brisk sunshine of a new day, new month, and new year this morning.
For the past several months I have been dealing with intermittent lower back pain. Some days it hurts, some days it’s hard to even notice, and some days it is debilitating in a I-need-four-Motrin-to-move-way. I kept trying to pinpoint a cause and therefore, hopefully, a cure.
This past weekend I decided to try a massage therapist. His theory on why my lower back hurts starts in my neck. And continues through my upper back. As a cubical dweller at work, I sit for hours a day with my arms raised - basically tensing the muscles in my upper back. Twenty plus years of this torture have resulted in some adhesions or scar tissues between the layered muscles of my back. When one muscle was over taxed its neighbors would take up the slack resulting in multiple adhesions that have basically glued my upper back into one large muscle.
A late summer groin pull may have been the proverbial straw, causing compensation injuries to my lower back. With the upper region already damaged from years of sitting at desks that were too high or too low, the sudden extra load on my lower back had no where else to go. The chronic upper back situation was enough to turn what should have been only an acute lower back ache into persistent, chronic lower back pain.
The hour-long massage helped to loosen my entire back considerably. In fact today my lower back doesn’t hurt at all. The rhombus muscles in my mid to upper back are quite sore however, as these where the ones he worked on the most. The therapist warned me that I would feel worse for a day or two before getting some relief. Repeated sessions will be required to fully break up the numerous, and quite large, areas of scar tissue in my back.
I’ll also be investigating ways to raise my work chair so that my arms aren’t held up so high all day long. For now I am pleased to finally have an explanation that makes sense, and a course of action to remedy the situation.