I'm ba-a-a-ck.

I've been away from the blog for a while, due mostly to a rather sudden and total hard disk failure. I was working away on the laptop when things started to become sluggish. I muddled through for a few minutes, but then Windows seemed completely locked up, so I gave up and rebooted. The next I knew I was hearing, "thunk... thunk... thunk..." Not generally an encouraging sound, especially in the context of computers. And of course, laptops being harder to keep backed up, and backup space being rather short anyway, I wasn't in the best of recovery postitions. In short, all was gone in the twinkling of an eye.

I considered replacing the hard disk, but I wasn't enthusiastic about sinking more money into a machine that was not up to my long term needs. Fortunately, Dad stepped up and offered to get me a new laptop, so now I'm working on a nice new Dell Inspiron 9400, with a 17" widescreen at 1920 x 1200. I can get a Word doc in full-page view on 1/3 of the screen and read it perfectly. Cool! Thanks, Dad.

Fortunately, the web site was safe on EarthLink, so it was never down and I have now recovered it and can get back to playing with it.

Of course, this has been only one of our recent trials. A couple of weeks ago the truck started acting up and went to the shop. On hearing that it needed three fixes for a total of $550 I asked if we could just do part of the work to get it limping along for a while. They tried that, but it wound up worse than before. I took it back and after three days, they said they couldn't figure it out with their diagnostic equipment and it would have to go to the dealer. $550 was starting to look like a bargain at that point.

But then, as we were driving home from church, the van suddenly started losing power. We managed to limp home, but by the time we got into our neighborhood it was clearly the transmission that was slipping. $1500 minimum, not including interim transportation, and no income to cover it. Fun. This time, thankfully, Mindy's parent's came to the rescue. They happened to be here for the week so we had a vehicle to get around in, and they offered to cover the repair cost for us. Also, the intervention of friends led to a huge favor which kept the price down to a bare minimum.

In short, God has certainly been testing our faith, mine in particular. I wish I could say that I have passed the tests, but I have to confess that each of these events has taken some wind out of my sails. I am glad though, that He has been quick in each case to prove His own faithfulness, and hopefully I am learning to trust Him more.

And for all of that, there is brighter news to report as well. A friend from church caught me in the hall one day and asked if I was still in the job market. He had been recently promoted to a management position and needed to fill his old job. We talked a bit and it seems that I can not only meet his need for C/C++ skills, but that I also have some mainframe background that would make me an even better fit. I've had two interviews and taken a personality assessment so far. I've got a couple more layers of management to wade through, but so for it looks promising. It's certainly the best opportunity I've had so far.

So pray for us please. We are fast approaching the end of our resources, and I'm beginning to think the old days of debtor's prisons weren't really so bad. We need the faith (and the help) to get through the rest of this wilderness, and we need this current job opportunity to not be another crash and burn.

Well, that didn't pan out after all. At least not yet. On Thursday I emailed the company to see if they had any questions or concerns that I could address. The called me back to say that they felt like they needed to, "learn more about the software that's available and what it entails," before they were ready to hire a consultant.

So it's not exactly dead, but I'm not in a position to wait around for them either. As much as I would like to work for this company — it was a very good meeting on Monday, I thought — I've got to find a job now. So it's back to the drawing board to see if I can round something up. I guess its time to broaden my search and look for non-development jobs and lower pay.

Amusingly enough, after being suitably depressed all Thursday afternoon, Friday brought no less than three spontaneous contacts for potential positions - something that hasn't happened in a few weeks. You know, I'm not sure I always fully appreciate God's sense of humor, but I must certainly admit that He has one!

Well there's news to report on the job front, but since this blog is much younger than my state of unemployment, I'll back up and give a little 'history' first.

I was fired from my job at Opsware Inc., effective April 28 of this year. There was no warning, I was simply called in for my semi-annual review and told that, "the company has decided to let you go." Now, to their credit, they did give me a transition period of about six weeks, from mid-March, on half-hours with full pay. And to be fair, I have to confess that my work had not been up to my usual standards for a good while, in consequence of my dissatisfaction with the company's working environment — in which I was far from alone. However, I remain convinced that my termination had at least as much to do with my being the oldest, and one of the most highly paid, developers on staff, and my being assigned to a project that had been terribly managed from the beginning and was currently far behind schedule and only getting farther behind, as with my own personal shortcomings. But, be that as it may, the result was that on hearing the dreaded phrase, I suffered literally two seconds of shock, followed immediately by a great sense of satisfied calm, and even relief. I did express some wonder at the lack of warning, but it seemed clear that by objecting too strenuously I could only hope to effect one of two negative outcomes, the latter even worse than the former: I could lose my job without benefit of the transition period, or I could win my point and have to keep working there!

So, content to accept this fate and wait on God to answer the needs of our family, I have spent the last 19 weeks rewriting, rewriting, and rewriting my resume, posting it on various web sites, contacting headhunters, submitting unemployment claims, rewriting my resume, taking classes, studying reference books, adding web development skills to my repertoire, talking to headhunters, and rewriting my resume. Doing everything, in short, related to seeking gainful employment except interviewing. (Did I mention rewriting my resume?) It has been extremely, and increasingly, frustrating. I have found several job postings for which I seemed to be perfectly qualified, and yet I have not gotten so much as an initial phone screening. This modern — nay, let the crotchety old man in me come right out and say, "new-fangled" — way of employment recruiting / job hunting is so utterly impersonal. I have always been able to interview well. I am certain that if I could just get some face-to-face contact — or even voice-to-voice, I could land a position fairly quickly. But businesses just don't want to operate that way anymore. Many won't even accept a hard-copy resume, which I've used to advantage in the past to stand out in the crowd. Moreover, I've come to believe that most employers are only interested in hiring young people who don't know or care how to prioritize their lives, and will happily work themselves to death and call it success. I don't fit that description anymore, and it's obvious even on digital paper.

Frustration and faith don't go together though. So I've struggled to reject the one and cling the other. And now, at long last — on my calendar, if not on God's — the fruit may be ripening. A good friend from church who is in the executive recruiting business has put me in touch with a small local manufacturing firm who needs help in selecting, procuring, implementing, and using a major software package for the operation of their business. This is rather different from the software development I have done in the past, but it answers a desire I've had for some time to be able to offer my long and varied IT experience in the role of an 'expert' to those who simply lack the technical expertise to satisfy the needs that they recognise. I had a good conversation with the president on the phone just yesterday and we have scheduled a meeting on the premises for Monday morning. Real contact with real people. What a concept!

This job was first presented to me as a full-time opening, but, lacking direct experience in the manufacturing sector and with the software they need to implement, I decided to offer myself as a consultant, so that I can acquire the foundation I need in our initial meeting(s). It may transpire that I get their software problem solved and they will be done with me, or we may return the full-time idea if they seem to have enough of the right kind of work for me. However it works out, it is certainly a blessing from God — and a relief from frustration as well, in spite of my best efforts at faith and trust.

So whoever among you may feel so led, please pray for a fruitful meeting on Monday morning; especially that I will prove to be of genuine value in addressing the needs of this business. And even more importantly, join me in praising our Lord for His grace and providence, and thanking Him for once again demonstrating His faithfulness by providing in the "nick of time" (from our perspective, that is, "at the proper time" from His). Also, while we're on the subject, let's lift up another brother, Tom, who is now unemployed for the second time in just a few years, and whose financial situation is consequently much more severe than our own.

To be continued...

Ok, here we go. I've been spending the last several weeks worth of my spare time, which I have all to much of here in the winter of my unemployment, trying to expand my skillset into the web arena. As a "class" project I assigned myself the creation of a personal website. In the process I've pulled out about half of my remaining hair (which was down to about 75% already) but I've finally reached a point where I'm fairly satisfied with the result.

Of course, it's not finished yet. There's plenty of stuff to add. But the design is complete enough that I can just work on adding content for a while. The main thing, though, is that this blog/History page is up and running. Now we finally have a place where we can quickly record the occasional significant event, for the sake of anyone who is interested in keeping up with such things. Shortly we'll start telling some folks about it and see what kind of reaction we get. If any; shortly after that we'll probably have to take it all down again so we can stop getting those reactions.

For right now, though, I think it's time to get back to some of the many things I've been ignoring lately.

Having spent the last few years adamantly refusing to become a blogger, I have now finally lost my spine. Woe is me.