Oh, perhaps that would be “wrapping”. Same thing though, no?

So, a couple days before XMas, I take Amy to the mall to get a few things for Brandy. After we are mostly done shopping, Amy sees the charity gift wrapping booth. She gets a couple things wrapped, but then asks me “Can I ask them if I can help?” I am dubious and say I think you have to sign up for that in advance. But she is persistant. Eventually I say she can of course ask, just be prepared for them to say no. A few seconds later she comes running up top me “They want to know how long I can stay!” I say we could probably manage at least an hour. She runs back and tells them, then she is back to where I am jumping up and down saying “THEY SAID YES!!!”.

Amy then proceeded to spend the NEXT FOUR HOURS wrapping gifts at the mall charity gift wrap counter. Until the mall closed. I stayed for the first half of that or so, then switched off with Brandy who watched her for the rest of the time.

The whole time she was increadibly serious and professional and very intent on doing a good job and being helpful to the customers… not a bit of squirming or playing or getting off task. Just four hours of wrapping.

And then she was BEGGING to come back the next day to do more.

Yup, that’s Amy for ya.

I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time, but other things came up and I didn’t get to it. Just want to do a little of the “our girl is so great” thing for a moment.

First lets start with the stuff at the school. Way back a month or so after Amy started at the new school Amy was having a few adjustment issues to the new place, and we were having problems with one of the teachers in particular. In the end we got most of the things worked out, but one of the results is that they wanted to do some tests on Amy cause she wasn’t doing as good in school as expected. We were trying to explain the reasons why, but they were not listening.

Anyway, in November the test results came back. They did not find any of the learning disabilities or problems they were looking for and thinking might be the issue. Instead, they found what we knew… a Mensa level IQ and indications that the problem was simply that she was bored and not being challenged enough. So, a couple more follow up tests later, she got admitted into what they call “GSP” which is the special class for gifted kids. She started the next week.

And she has of course been absoutely thriving. It is only one day a week, but the change was immediately noticible. She is excited about it and engaged, and it carries over to all her other schoolwork too. She does her homework on her own in aftercare before she even gets home rather than it being a fight in the evenings to get it done. Etc. In addition to what actually happens in the class there is also just the effect of knowing she is in that group. It makes a big difference.

Although we did not get to do so literally, we at least figuratively got to shove the GSP thing in the face of the teacher who said “You think she is smart? We can’t see that. She needs to PROVE IT.” OK. Here ya go. Take her out of your class once a week and put her into a class that actually knows how to deal with smart kids and challenge them and interest them, and see what happens…

Anyway, we were proud of Amy for doing the battery of tests and coming out on top, and even prouder at how she has been doing since she started the new classes.

And in addition, the music continues to go well. She’s been preforming with the Brevard Children’s Chorus. And continuing taking lessons on her double bass, as well as piano lessions and guitar lessons. She’s all about the music. She got to solo on the bass in her school orchestra’s performance a couple weeks ago. All in all, doing very well with all three.

Anyway, she has been doing great.

Now, if we can just get her to clean her room…

So… what is this new thing to which I am going? Many of you who I speak to regularly by email or by phone already know at least some of it, but I’ll post some more here.

I don’t yet have a good sense of just how sensitive the new place is to employees mentioning them or talking about them or anything else on blogs and such. I know some companies are relaitively open to such things, others absolutely forbid it, and most are in between. Untill I hear any otherwise though, I’ll stick to the policy I have generally had since this website existed, which is to not mention my employers by name and not to ever discuss any specifics of what goes on at work. Generally, not to talk much about work at all, and when I do do so to be very high level and vague.

So anyway, where am I going? Well, without mentioning their name, think ecommerce, think books (and other things), think Seattle. Oh, and I tend to link to them every time I read a book. There, just about anybody should be able to figure that out.

So, what will I be doing? Well, I don’t know all the details and specifics myself yet, so no danger of saying things I should not. But I’ll be working managing projects related to data mining, and extracting useful (and profitable) information from the huge amounts of data collected by the company every day. In addition to managing existing projects, I’ll be expected to help come up with ideas for new projects and new ways of collecting data and extracting useful information from it. That will be the really fun part.

In the all day interview with a variety of people I will be working with I just got a sense of excitement over the kinds of things I would be working on. It will take some of the product and project management I’ve done over the last few years, merge it with some of the web stuff I did before that, and then throw in a healthy dose of logic, mathematics, algorithms and analysis that I love, and have dabbled with occationally for fun, but haven’t gotten to do for “real” since college. I am hoping that this will be a real blast. Fun projects to work on, surrounded by smart people, the right resources and support to get things done, real ownership of projects, etc.

And yes, the job is in Seattle. This will be yet another big huge change. And yet another move.

A couple years ago I figured just how often I’ve moved in my live. This only counting the “full” moves where I take all my stuff and move it somewhere new, not the many back and forths between parents and such when they lived close enough that I did things like alternate weeks as a child and such.

Lets see:

Madison, WI => Durham, NC => Tanzania => Mozambique => Durham, NC => Indianapolis, IN => Washington, DC => Durham, NC => Frederick, MD => Pittsburgh, PA => Washington, DC => Alexandria, VA => Plainsboro, NJ => Yardley, PA => Melbourne, FL => Palm Bay, FL => Seattle, WA (or nearby suburb)

By the time we actually get fully to the Seattle area I’ll be only a few months from 35, so lets just call it 35. 16 moves in 35 years. That is moving about every 26 months. If you only count moves since I graduated college it becomes 7 moves in 13 years. Which is moving every 22 months or so. That is a lot of moves! Sigh! I had really hoped that I’d be in Palm Bay for many years. But given the situation at my previous employer that just was not feasible. And this opportunity would most likely have been worth a move even if the current position had been going well and I had been happy.

So, how are we doing this?

We could have opted for a “quick move” getting out of here instantly (or close thereto), then trying to sell the house remotely. Two problems with that.

First, there is some fixing up we want to do on the house as we put it on the market. Just a little additional work, things which we had intended to do all along but will now accellerate, will most likely raise the selling price by considerably more than they cost to do.

But second and more importantly, having myself changed schools in the middle of a school year, I know that is not fun. Plus if we moved right NOW, chances are we would not start out in the same school district we will end up in, and that would be yet another school change for Amy. She’s already been in one school for 3rd grade, another for 4th, and two different schools for 5th. Hopefully for 6th we’ll be able to put her somewhere that will let her stay with the same group of kids for longer than a year.

So in order to accomidate both of the above items…

Looks like we’re going to become a long distance family for a little while. I’ll be heading to Seattle on the weekend of Janusary 7th and 8th. I will start on the 9th. Brandy and Amy will stay home. Amy will finish 5th grade. Brandy will get all the things that need to be taken care of on the hose taken care of. There will be some sort of temporary housing for me from the company for a few weeks, but after that I’ll probably get a studio apartment or some such on a 6 month lease if I can find such a thing. The goal will to be to move into something perminant (or at least semi-perminant… good for a couple years at least) once Amy’s school year is over and the whole family moves.

In the mean time, I’ll get back on weekends when I can. It probably will not be every weekend. The first month I might not get back at all. This will really be difficult. The whole long distance thing is not fun. These few months will probably seem to be much longer. Tons of phone calls, emails, IMs and those visits as often as possible to be sure, but it is not the same as coming home and being together every evening.

But we know it is needed, and know that in the long run it is for the best.

Anyway, there is definate apprehension about the transition period… that will be hard… and the fact that when we do move, we will definately be moving into something smaller.

However, the new position is very exciting and seems like a great opportunity. It certainly beats any option that existed here in Florida… by quite a large margin. I am very excited about it and while those two thing may be difficult in the short run, in the long run almost everything should be better at the new position and the new location.

So… Seattle here I come!

This face has greeted me on the way to my desk for 21 months. It will only do so for a couple more weeks. Thursday I officially submitted my resignation from the place where I have been working since before I moved to Florida. The place for which I moved to Florida. The place which never lived up to expectations, but at which the first year was still OK. The place where most of the second year was a steady decent into a worse and worse place, punctuated by only occational moments of satisfaction.

I will resist the very strong temptation to go into extreme detail on all the reasons why this engagement has not worked out for me and the difficulties I have had with this company. Suffice it to say that, at least in my perception (I am sure they would describe it differently) there was never any serious attempt to use me in the way which matched the job description I signed on for (in fact the company was simply not in a position where it could effectively utilize such a role), and instead as time progressed I was given tasks further and further away from my core skills and interests, to the point that in the last few months it was made clear that my function was to be primarily SALES, that I would be “graded” only on new revenue generated for the firm and that part of my salary would be converted to being based on commission. Needless to say, I had absolutely no interest in any of this. Add this to a series of of other things I won’t go into in public, and it was absolutely clear that a change was needed.

I started looking in a non-serious sort of way all the way back in April. Brandy thought I should have been serious about it way back then, and she was right. But I wanted to give it another shot, and a few changes going on at work gave me some false hope. But by September, it was no longer possible for even I to deny that the situation was hopeless. I began searching seriously. It quickly became apperant that local options were not viable. The most serious inquiry I had was an unsolicited inquiry from out of state. I hadn’t been looking outside the Florida area, I wanted somewhere I could commute to from our current home, but they called me. After some discussion, I decided to not exclude the option and I went through the whole process with them. Once I interviewed in person with them, I decided I might as well look nationwide at other companies as well. I started sending out resumes to places I had not considered previously.

By the last couple of weeks I had two good offers from two major companies. I turned one down, I said yes to the other, and I resigned from my current position.

It is about time. Some of my coworkers are great. I truly will miss working with them. But for the most part I have been unhappy there for around 9 months, doing what I needed to do, but getting no joy out of it. I am very glad to be moving on. The new position has me very excited.

More about “what is next” in a later post. Not sure when I’ll get to it, but soon.