Psychotomy

today was the pseudo-annual “dog and pony show” as my boss calls it. it’s where he goes and talks about how great the site is and stuff and tries to con people into giving us money for another year :o

amusing thing — i’m way more acknowledged, respected and skilled now that i’m leaving … normally i’m a blip on the radar, today i was mentioned numerous times, including a comment on the fact that i was leaving and they’re going to be hard put to replace me. OK, so that part is a sop to the guy leaving, right?

except they’re breaking my job in twain. sysadmin and programming. sysadmin they’re trying to pass off to the unix support team (which is gonna cost them a nice sum of money; 50k/yr at the rack rates, but there’ll be some fudging of numbers b/c not all of the machines are network-facing, and their manager is our manager, yadda yadda). programming, he’s talking to the science support team at HQ and looking into passing off some of hte work to them, since they want to leverage some of our content.

which means they’re looking to hire someone to do like 25-50% of what i do now. they’re callign my job 3 people. AND I’VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR FOUR AND A HALF YEARS?? and getting nothing but crap b/c everything takes so damned long?

eesh

strangely, i’m feeling remorse about leaving. not b/c i liked the job at this point, but b/c i’ve been there 4.5 years. and i’ve got my workstation all nicely set up and everything happy like that. and i’ve got some friends. but, yaknow, for the grief i’ve gotten and the pay i’m going to get … i’ll just take an extra happy pill each morning for a week or something and get over it :)

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also got a note from the new job, i get training for like half of monday. the first half will probably be trying to figure out how to get in to the damned building without my badge so i can get my badge, then finding my office, and an hour or so looking for the bathrooms and soda machines :)

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so, finally got the official letter ~1:30 this afternoon, so i printed up my letter (well, after the guy with the 100pg followed by a 250 pg print job finished) and went over to turn it in.

the manager was a bit freaked out. but i’d done the letter with a format that effectively pre-rejected counteroffers, so she couldn’t throw out something to keep me. she kept dangling hoping i’d bite, but since i’m not interested in staying, i didn’t.

as of 2oct, i’ll start at my new job :o kinda scary, honestly.

had NO idea how to go in with “i quit” and break it softly. so i kinda went in, gave her the letter and told her another offer had come up and i was pursuing that direction.

she didn’ take it well :o now i’m gonna spend my two weeks documenting everything i can, and giving them as much detail on the 3FTE they need to replace me :o

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mominlaw was here this weekend. so she bougt kiir maternity clothes. she bought blob a buttload of clothes. we shopped at cribs and gliders an’ schtuff.

but we stopped at haggar’s at the outlet mall. and we bought me slacks. polos. button-downs. belts. and today kiir and i finally found a good trenchcoat. bought a “casual sports coat” (pick up soccer ?) its apparently a suit jacket that’s not dressy enough to wear as a suit jacket.

figure i can leave it in my office and just put it on when it’s chilly, instead of always running my trench everywhere.

hopefully gonna lose weight with the walk, too. so we only bought four pairs of slacks at 40′s. hopefully i’ll drop to 38 or 36 again in a few months. figure i may actually take a different metro stop and walk a few extra blocks each day. get some workout.

but first i need an offer letter so i can resign :o

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today i was requested to re-present my “site profiling” presentation (from the webmasters group two weeks ago) to the company’s senior staff. i think i’d scared someone :o

i know that by the time i finished i had scared a few people :) i think they’ve started to note the knowledge of security i bring to the table. maybe they’ll actually do something about it now.

of cousre … see other post :o

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so, ~20 hours after i left his office …

i got a call from the contracting/staffing company. i’m the first choice. :o

they wanted me to commit immediately, so i talked to kiir. thought about it a bit. she hit up her mom for some feedback. we looked up what we could find on medical/etc (may have to pay for chiro out of pocket; but as she points out, it’s only like 70$ a visit, and if i’m walking/gym/krav, i don’t need to go more than every few months when i done gone and done something stupid)

so i called back. and said, barring any unforseen snags in the written offer, i would accept.

as of oct 2, apparently, i start a new job :o

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had the interview yesterday with lockheed (the dba position through the recruiter. that contacted me in the beginning of august :o)

didn’t really ask me all that many questions. liked my resume, asked (somewhat perfunctorily i think) about what i was doing now, looked suitably interested/impressed when i told him.

told me how the team works. told me that everyone on the team is the best at what they do but the rest of the company isn’t willing to admit that to themselves yet :) i could work with this group. told me they were redoing a bunch of “crap code” that they’d gotten from the last umpteen years as the team goes through changes. crap code … i can live with a manager who understands wtf he’s talking about :)

team’s 25-35, relatively laid back. he’s a reasonably hands-off kinda manager (yay) but understands enough that he can ask useful questions (never had that before :o)

didn’t even blink at the salary i quoted when asked. of course, lockheed is freakin’ HUGE, so they probably aren’t as worried :o felt like a “i want to meet you and talk to you before hiring you” kindof meeting. and i think it went well, although i was my usual interviewing taciturn self :/ don’t want to come off babbling, so i end up saying too little. tried to interact some though, so hopefully i came off OK (only 20% face time, rather than the team average of 50%, so my skills may carry me past my interpersonal skills)

said he plans to make his choice by monday, so here’s hoping! … then i just have to figure out how to make the 1.5hr commute NOT SUCK …

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got an interview for tuesday, for a dba position. this is through a recruiter. who contacted me initially at the end of july or something. month and a half to get an interview, and i’ve come to think that i really don’t have much interest in doing dba

but its like a 10% overall increase (so including her salary, which if i leave she probably would too), so i could live with it for a year or two. esp since i think it’d get me a clearance. ooooh

but, the interview is downtown (DC). and my wife and m-i-l both say i should wear a jacket and tie. *sigh* which brings me to one of those things i always see on the job stuff. well, not the “how to get the job” but in the other stuff. dressing up to be someone i’m not in order to get the job … means they want the person i’m not to be hired, not actually me. which means i get to be unhappy at work :/

i realize that they’re telling me to dress up so that i put on a good show, since i don’t know what the dress code would be (and it’s contracting to a major govt’ agency in DC, so suit/tie isn’t entirely unbelievable), and its better to overdress and be able to back down than underdress and not get the job.

of course, since i don’t even know if i WANT the job … mind, i haven’t gotten any otehr hits, but i just put out some resumes last week too for security gigs. but who knows how long i’d be waiting for those to come up with pings :/

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so i’ve spent the last month or so trolling baltimore-craigslist, washington post, and monster. finding jack all in computer security. mostly finding entry level monkey positions or management. i’m waaay past the entry level (where were these when i needed an entry level job???) and monkey bit. not raelly interested in management, and no experience in it, so i wouldn’t necessarily qualify for those.

a lot of positions that look promising require top secret or better clearance. before applying. as in, your current employer got it for you and we want you to jump ship. which is the clearance way here in dc i guess, to be fair.

then i checked sans and giac. giac took down their listings, doh. sans i found a link to a couple companies that the instructors work at, but couldn’t find any hiring information (not too surprising, since they’re small and do consulting work)

then. after a month. THEN it FINALLY occurs to me. “duh, who does the cyber crime stuff?” (i was looking at a position on monster doing homeland security stuff, but not for dhs). so i hit dhs. no, apparently they don’t do much with computers according to their site. oh, fbi cybercrime. the guys who prosecute cross-state attacks! so i’m there, fishing around.

and it finally hits me. down the road, like 5-10 minutes tops. there’s a big black glass building. lotsa guards. it’s another tla. not dhs. fbi. cia …. DUH! N FREAKIN’ SA!

The No Such Agency people have lots computers, lotsa security stuff, cryptography!

so now i’m gonna tweak up my res and put in for some fbi and nsa jobs :) wheee, moron!

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today i gave my site profiling/google hacking presentation. i had to write this presentation when she said this was the one she wanted me to present :o

apparently there were 140 people there, according to the webmasters head who was, i guess, counting whilst i talked :o

went over well. got a lot of people telling me after how they liked the talk etc and it was really enlightening. i’d think they were being polite, but even my peanut gallery said it was good and they learned. i mean, i expected them to heckle me irregardless of what i said or what they thought. and they DIDN’T??? i was so confused and lost :o

and the “live demo” (i ran my script yesterday to find good results to demo today ; but today was live. just with preselected choices) was apparently REALLY eye-opening. b/c two sites on campus (and who had people in the room) showed up on my 3 examples :o heh. one of them scurried off without the free food to go fix it :)

maybe they’ll let me give the other 4 i’ve prepped. although i should go back and fill them in. 20 slides is ~30 minutes give or take, and most of the others are only ~15 slides. too short. and less “live demo” ops. i can do pdfs of examples, but i should embrace and extend my topics some :)

(oh, and maybe i can get them to give me a job too … civil servant, or contractor with security clearance … i’m not picky. just greedy :)

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