Remember how I quit my job the other day? Well, it’s true. I turned in a formal resignation letter to the department head announcing my departure…

to make way for being hired by another department. I was previously in an hourly position at the University as part of a cross-departmental IT organization. Due to financial issues at the University and state-level, they could not create new salaried positions- hence my position as an hourly employee. In the last few months, I had been starting up my job search again. I received a few responses- interviewed at Google again (more on that later), but otherwise I was too slow to get away.

In that time, the IT organization I’ve been working for managed to prod the right people and turn enough heads to get a position created. The listing was created, the job search was opened, I interviewed, and… I was hired. Behind the scenes, I’m being paid by a different department, so I had to resign from my current hourly position, only to work supporting the exact same people. So it looks like I’ll be in the Champaign-Urbana area for awhile longer. But despite my rather somber tone, it’s not a bad thing. I’m getting benefits like insurance- which is sorta useful because I haven’t had a cold/flu since junior year of high school, and a hefty pay bump.

So, all in all: New Job, new title, more money, “new” employer, same organization, same coworkers, same work.

Now that I’ll be around for at least a little while longer… who knows, maybe it’s time for some grad school.

I quit my job today.

I thought the phone interview was to be on the following Tuesday. I had been studying a little beforehand, but I was planning on doing more extensive study the night before. Yeah. Mega FAIL.

It was actually one day off, and come Monday morning, I received the interview call. The Google engineer who called me caught me while I was doing some work, and once he asked me if I was ready for the interview, I yelled rather loudly, “OH CRAP, it’s TODAY!?” into the phone. Fortunately, he gave me a minute for me to run outside for some quiet and privacy and called me again. Despite my little snafu, I must have sounded smart enough for him to forward me on to an onsite interview.

I know companies will often record phone interviews, so I just hope my initial OH CRAP soundbite isn’t making the rounds at Google HR.

bleh.

I threw in an application to Google over Memorial day weekend. And to my surprise, I got a request for a phone interview. I was pretty pumped, until a coworker told me to read the news. I hadn’t been keeping up recently, so when I hopped on Google Fast Flip to see the news, I was crushed.

“Google ditches Windows on security concerns”
“Google to ditch Windows, moves to Linux”
“Google Ditches Windows Company Wide”

And being in an IT office dealing almost completely with Windows systems, I was ruined. I thought I would have nothing to talk about.

In the end, it didn’t turn out too bad, and I later received an invitation for an onsite interview. I’ll be writing a more comprehensive blog post detailing my interview experience later.

Side note: Technically at this time my hair should have been around level 5 or 6 but I used my current hairstyle instead. (easier to draw!)

The first, is to have NO DIARRHEA. None. Not at all. Not a single nutty drop. The reason I have this odd goal here is because during the past year, I was hit by a bout of food poisoning not once, but twice. The first was due to a pork roast I prepared incorrectly. Oh lordy. The days that followed were TERRIBLE. The second time came a bit before Thanksgiving, at a local Mexican restaurant. I blame the chicken. Wasn’t as bad as the previous incident, but still wasn’t fun. All in all, I do not want to repeat that again. I do not want to experience anything remotely like it again.

So yes. There’s that, and my second (unfortunately) more realistic resolution is to take another firm step towards a more fulfilling job, and ultimately better life.

But alas, I must leave. Being the nerd that I am, to go play board games. More later.

EDIT: I’m back. So I have a couple things in mind. If I am offered a better position here on campus, I’ll prolly take it. If not, I’ll have to look elsewhere. I don’t know the sort of work I’d like to end up in, so I’ll prolly have to do some soul searching. On the inside, I think I already know that I’ll never really quite enjoy doing same work over and over again. I need change. Not radical, but still something. I’d like to get something of my own started, and hopefully I’ll be able to take steps in that direction during this year. Toodles.