Blankbaby

I alluded to it in one of my previous posts, but I thought I would write a little bit more about my new job and how it came to pass.

I’m a professional geek by trade; taking care of Windows machines and dispensing IT support in the office and in the field has been my bread and butter for awhile now. I have been doing a mixture of tech support, systems admin, DBA stuff, and web development for the last 5 years or so all in support of one or another fundraising department.

I was happy with my job and things were going along fairly well when I went to a presentation about our new ColdFusion environment a few months back. I’ve had an interest in ColdFusion (CF as I will refer to it from here on in) for a few years and I have been fiddling with it for most of that time. I am not what you would call a CF expert, but I can whip up fairly stable applications given enough time. I went to the meeting to hear about all the cool new things in CF MX 7 and see when I could play with them myself.

Terry presented a bunch of stuff (including the death of using SQL statements in our code) and then the meeting was over. I took my notepad (never go to a meeting without a notepad, that’s one of my rules) and was getting ready to leave and when I noticed Terry was staring at me (I was in the back row).

Normally Terry doesn’t stare at me, but who could blame him? I am a luscious piece of man candy after all. Somehow I didn’t think he was just enjoying the view, though I did look quite fetching what with my notepad and all. Terry made his way up to where I was standing and said, ‘Do you wanna have lunch sometime?’

Perhaps he was enjoying the view after all.

I replied, ‘I like lunch!’ (I’m so clever).

Terry then explained that he had an opportunity that he would like to talk to me about, and since I also enjoy an opportunity from time to time we set a date for the lunch (which Terry was going to pay for) and I went back to my office.

Fast forward a few days and I am sitting at a table with Terry, eating a hamburger and listening to what this ‘opportunity’ could be. It seemed that Terry had some job openings and wanted to know if I was interested in either of them.

Now, for a quick aside, I always got the impression that Terry thought I was an idiot. I’m not sure why I got that impression, I just did. I often think most people regard me as an idiot (or a fool at the very least) so I suppose Terry’s case wasn’t unusual. What was unusual is that Terry was offering me (an idiot) a job, therefore this made me think that either Terry didn’t think I was an idiot or that he was a bigger idiot than I am.

I made it very clear to Terry that while I knew about CF I wasn’t an expert and he was all like, ‘I know that’ (he had seen my code you see) and that didn’t seem to phase him. My interest was piqued and my stomach was full of a free hamburger; not too bad for a free lunch.

I was flattered to be offered a job without even looking for one and asked Terry why he wanted me of all people. It seems that Terry reads Blankbaby (which I knew) and that he thought it demonstrated that I was an ubercool guy (ok, I made that part up) and that I had a good grasp of technology (he actually said that. Honest!).

To make a long story just a little shorter, Blankbaby got me a new job which pays more, lets me play around with cool tech, and learn new skill sets.

The power of the blog is truly an awesome thing.

Tomorrow is my first day on the new job and I am looking forward to it. Not only do I get more dinero and get to do new stuff, I get to work on a Mac and wear shorts to work.

The only bad thing associated with the new job is that I don’t get an office (I shared one with Paul in my old position), however, my cube has a couch so that is cool. I love napping.