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I haven't posted in quite a long time, but I'll tell you about what's happened, and it should make some sense.
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* I quit my job at the end of february.
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Early in february the boss came in and dropped the axe. About 25 people sent home, and everyone converted suddenly to hourly. Everything got pushed through so quickly I didn't realize how illegal it was until a few days later. It really upset me, all of a sudden *poof* goes my job security. The switch to hourly will make my next paycheck realliy bad, and without any kind of buffer time. WTF?
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On February 15th, I didn't get paid on time. This had happened before as well, but it hadn't bugged me the same way. There was no notice, no advance warning, no nothing until nearly the middle of that day. All i could think was “Thank god for contract work, or I would've just been f@cked.” This was totally it for me. I can't work somewhere where I'm afraid I'm not going to get paid on time, or paid at all! I don't have wiggle room, I'm sitting at a zero bank balance between paychecks and doing without a lot of the time to keep from breaking the bank… *sigh*
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I called Tom the same day. He's been my point of contact at AffinityLabs, and I'd been doing contract work with them since January. In fact, the money coming in from them was the ONLY reason I could handle the screwups at work, because actually that money was much more than my paychecks from Mercurial.
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I asked him to make me an offer, and I'd take it VERY seriously. He came back with 75K USD, and I accepted.
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I gave my notice that day, targetted for the end of the month. I figured that would allow Mercurial enough time to get answers to all their pressing questions, and give me enough time to train a replacement.
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They didn't ask any questions.
They wouldn't authorize off-hours documentation.
My replacement started the day after I left.
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WTF? That whole combination of crap just confused the hell out of me, and really made me feel a little frustrated. It was similar to the written authorization I'd been trying to get since DECEMBER, which would give blanket approval by Merc for me to work for Affinity on contract. Not entirely needed, just a nice little CYA signoff document. I didn't get that, despite weekly promises. Hell, 3 months later, when I left, I STILL didn't have it. How the hell can that be an effective business strategy? My biggest hope is still that that kind of situation isn't passed on to the customers!
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Anyway, I left Feb 28th for the last time, and it's been a wonderful time.
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* My wife and stepson moved in with me.
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They actually moved in on the 23rd of February, so it was a REALLY busy last week.
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Now it's been a month + together, and it's been a wonderful time. There has been so much to do! I moved a 1 bedroom apartment into a 4 bedroom house, and they brought over only portable stuff (because immigration STILL hasn't gotten around to sending us final approvals), so every week there's a new shopping list of household items, and it's LARGE!
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We've got Ty all set up in his space though, and that's working out well. He's got the biggest bedroom, it's downstairs at the other end of the house, so I can happily say I haven't had to threaten to strangle him at 3 am because he woke me up. In fact, he's pretty bloody reasonable about keeping the noise down, and our most common arguements are about bedtimes, not noise.
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His birthday happened this last month, and damn, we spoiled him. It was very cool, and I don't have any regrets. Who knows how often we'll be able to cut loose like that? Plus the fact he's now 14, we'll only have 4 more years of these, and on the last one he'll probably want a car or some such 🙂
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Christina has been turning this house into a home. I have managed to put things in fairly logical places, but she makes it look good. I've taken a step back from organizing the house, she's got it down pat, and it's an absolute pleasure to see the results of all of her hard work.
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Hmm… It's nearly lunch.. It's time to wake the family, I'll write more eventually.
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Cheers.
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