Well, last weekend, I got my first W2 of the year.  That's right, a bit earlier than usual.  However, there was a good reason for it.  It turns out that my previous employer, Express Financial Services, had closed their doors for good.

Now, I can't say that I'm shocked.  They invested heavily in some custom designed software built by a extremely small company who didn't do a very good job.  In fact, just a few months after deploying the system, they were already encountering scalability issues with the database as some tables already had millions of records, and there were no archiving considerations yet built.  Since I was the in-house DBA, I decided that was a good queue for me to make my way out instead of somebody pointing the finger at me for something I didn't design or maintain.

The irony of the whole situation was that they put over a year into designing and implementing this system to better server their customers, and they ended up losing one major customer while designing because they got tired of the poor service and they lost another one not long after the new system was put in place.

Thankfully, I saw the writing on the wall, though it came much faster than I had expected.  Anyway, I got back to software development in ColdFusion, which I enjoy more than just doing DBA work anyway.

Hopefully all my former co-workers (200+ employees when I left) have or are able to land back on their feet after the closing of the company.

Let me just take a minute to talk about a little pet peeve of mine. Now, when I'm looking for a new job, I normally update my resume on the major job sites (Monster, CareerBuilder and HotJobs). Almost unfailingly, the next day I'll get 15-20 calls from "recruiting companies" or "placement services", which are nice names for corporate headhunting services. The services themselves can be a great help because they have access to job listings you won't find anywhere else, but sometimes the representatives leave bad impressions. I'll file these in three categories:

1. The Mysterious Hit-And-Run - This is the person who calls, leaves a voicemail (because, especially at work, I have a policy of not answering my cell phone if I don't recognize the number) with only their name, company, contact number, and that the have "a job I think you'd be interested in" or "a job that might be a good fit for you". When I have called them back, I've found that almost a quarter of the time, they really don't have a job they are looking to fill, but just want to get you working with their company (I actually went in for an interview with a recruiter once, only to find there wasn't a job opening at the time...boy, that one did not sit well). The rest of the time, they seem reluctant to give details about the job. In my opinion, if you're looking to get details on my experience, I expect job details as well. Let me decide if it's a good fit for what I want. By the way, I've gotten an increasing number of these via e-mail as well, with the shortest maybe being an e-mail entitled "Job Opportunity" with only "Please call me." and the recruiter's e-mail signature in the e-mail body. I didn't call him back.

2. The Geographically Impaired - So I take the time on the career sites to list that I'm not interested in relocating, and what does that get me? Only 3-4 e-mails a week from people who are offering contract work (all under a year in length) in cities I counldn't commute to if I had a private jet. These people never get a response from me because they're illiterate or lazy, and I'm not really interested in working with them.

3. The Reacher - This is the person who focuses all their attention on something you did once for a class or internship but haven't worked with for years. For example, I've worked very basically with ASP .NET, enough that I can read the code and follow it, but not well enough to do any serious development with it. However, I still regularly get inquiries about jobs with it because I list it as like the 12th programming language on my resume. So either they're just looking for a warm body to fill a spot, or there's a major communication issue between the cilent and the recruiter. These e-mails usually find the same treatment as spam. DELETE.

Maybe I'm just a detail oriented person, but I like it when I can actually get some information up front to decide if an opportunity is even worth looking into. I'm sure I'm not the only one!

But all that said, I have had the pleasure or working with a few excellent recruiters who have provided the details that I wanted, and did so happily.

So, did I leave any group out? Have you had any experiences one way or another?

Well, I'm making another change on the job front in the coming weeks. Today, I accepted a position at Northrop Grumman and gave my notice at EFS. I'll finally be getting back to ColdFusion development after working the last 10 months focusing on Database Administration. I'm really looking forward to the change.

I can't say anything bad about my time at EFS. It's been a great experience in getting to learn more about business after coming off of working at an academic research study, and I've enjoyed working with everyone there. However, I really wanted to get back to developing in ColdFusion, which was the main motivation behind the change.

Looking forward to seeing where this move will take me!

Well, I think spending all day in front of a computer at work is beginning to take it's toll, as I've become almost avoidant of my computer at home. It's not that there aren't things I'd like to do or can do on the one at home, but it's that I'm usually tired of being stuck in a chair behind a keyboard at the end of a day. So, I've been doing less work on my sites and updating my blogs recently, along with less checking of e-mail, forums and IMs. So, if anyone out there is feeling ignored by me...well, it's not you...it's the computer.

But in other news, I'm trying harder to commit to getting to the gym more often as well. And after hearing a lot of good things about LOST, I've gone back and started watching from Episode 1. I'm five episodes in so far, and I have to admit that I'm pretty captivated by it. And I thought I wouldn't get this excited about a TV show until 24 came back on the air in January (ok, I like House too, but it doesn't have the same kind of continuous story line that 24 and LOST seem to have...and I'm a sucker for epics, like every Final Fantasy game I've ever played).

Oh, and if you'd like to catch up...feel free to call. I'm not sick of my cell phone just yet...

Boy, talk about your long weekends! I ended up putting in over 40 hours of work in at work between Saturday and Tuesday so we could go live with our new order management system at EFS this morning. Let's just say that I'm a bit worn down from all that (hence the limited postings), and I'm here again today for a regular work day of support.

I've really got my eye on Saturday morning and being able to sleep in.

Still at work!

However, I've finished most of what I need to do. I just need to stick around for "support" in case anything goes wrong while others are doing testing.

It's days like today that are motivators to strive towards self-employment. At least then I'd get something out of putting in these extra hours.

Ah, such is life...

It's much better than being unemployed, I guess...

Here it is, a nice spring morning and I'm at WORK! Yea, it's a bit frustrating at times, but when things need to be done, they need to be done. Wouldn't want to company going under because we don't meet a deadline, ya know? At least my boss pitched in for breakfast!

Anyway, last night I finally rollled an updated site for my church, South Pittsburgh Assembly of God. It took about a week to convert it into a similar system to this blog with a few tweaks for the layout and additional blocks for content. I'm pretty happy with it, but there's always minor fixes to be made.

Check it out, and let me know what you think of my efforts!

I have to admit that the last few days I have been a bit burned out. I've taken almost the last week off from doing any more web work, which is quite a long stretch for me if I'm near my computer. So, instead I've been gearing up for baseball season and playing a lot of MVP '06 NCAA Baseball because it doesn't require much thought.

There are still a lot of things I'd like to work on for my various sites. Even this one, where I've gotten a lot of new features completed in my development at home, but there's still a lot more to do. And then I want to transfer the power over to various church websites. Eventually I'd like to make it a product I can distribute or part of a service that I can provide, but we'll see how that goes.

But by-and-large, I've just been a bit burned out and unmotivated to accomplish anything. I know the feeling will pass, as it always does, but please pray for me in the meantime. I know I've put all this work into this because of His calling, so pray for my restoration and reinvigoration to go out and continue my work.

So after Tuesday night's great mishaps, it turned out that I couldn't get my car through the shop in time to get to my new job on the scheduled first day.

I know...just the kind of thing you want to do to your new employer.

Therefore, today was my first day at Express Financial Services, Inc. Thankfully they were very understanding of the whole situation, and are very happy to have me on board. Today has been a bit slow as I've spent a lot of time filling out forms and reading handbooks and documentation, but I'm glad to be in a new place where my work will likely be more appreciated. It's definately going to be different going into a business atmosphere after spending the last 18 months in a research environment. However, I think it will be in a good way, and I know I'll grow a lot professionally in my time here.