I too have started a new
job recently, but thankfully none of my coworkers have unnatural
fascinations with fish, save perhaps the one who loves
anchovies on pizza, but that's an acceptable level of fish, I suppose, and he doesn't try to forcefeed them or show them to anyone else.
Life is a little different from where I left most of you. I'm still no longer a student and not planning on completing my degree at Purdue... waiting until next Christmas when mcc graduates to move to California or whereever he lands a job, and I'll eventually go back to school there.
I'm no longer working my dream job at the newspaper... but that's OK, I think. It was turning into a little bit of a nightmare, as the editor in chief was taking the thing in directions that made it look more like a trashy teen zine or a high school newspaper than a professional arts and entertainment publication. I didn't lose my job so much as they lost their ability to pay me. It wasn't doing as well as they've have liked, and they had to go to a volunteer-only basis, even for the editor in chief. I'm still doing occasional things for them, but not much. If they want me, they know where to find me
Oddly, though, I had a new job just about fall into my lap. I sent out a bunch of resumes over Christmas Break, since I lost my other one just a couple days before vacation. I must have sent off an easy dozen... I only got one response to ONE, at all, ever. They wanted me for an interview as soon as humanly possible once I was back in Lafayette. They actually stayed late into the evening so I could make it that day since I had a midafternoon arrival and a bit of a drive affter that. By the next day they'd hird me.
So now I work for a tech support firm called Touchsupport. We're an "invisible" topside tech support group, that is web hosts contract us out to do their tech support for them, and to the end user we appear to be staff of the individual company. It's mostly done on a bbs style ticket-handling system, which is nice because I'm allowed to make wisecracks about user stupidity out loud without someone on the phone overhearing. It's not a bad job, and it seems a secure and educational chance to pad my resume for the tech sectors of California when we do move. My coworkers are as sarcastic and people-hating as I am, and for the first time in my life I'm working shifts my body agrees with--late morning->evening on some days, evening->midnight others. No early mornings. Ever. I can't belive how much better I'm feeling physically just for that.
It's still a bit scary and overwhelming, as my linux knowledge is about three years out of date, and my confidence in my own computer skills was pretty well shattered a couple years ago when I gave CS up as a major after it defeated me totally. But I'm doing well, my coworkers and bosses have been quite helpful and tolerent of really dumb questions...
I think I'll like it here.
Addendum, on a different note:
I've been asked by several people "what happened?" and why I'm no longer an editor here. That was a decision entirely of my own choosing, and entirely amiable. I realized with some horror that in the year and a half or so since I becamse an editor I had written all of FIVE nodes, and only one that was not a daylog.... at first it was because I really was very busy editing, but it eventually drifted into a lethargy, and I found myself barely ever editing either... so I decided to step back to where I used to be. I want my muse back, I want my writing groove returned. Once I have that back, I'll almost definately step back up to my old position. So that's what I'll be working on here in the near future... the thing that brought me here in the first place... noding.
Oh, I'm totally noding at work now. Since the work is web-based, and the workload totally random, we're allowed to goof off in our free time. Most of the guys are slashdotters or farkers, so I can goof off here all I want... and maybe actually use the time to node.