Category — Jobs n' Work

Spotted today at my office: one of my colleagues wearing 3-hole Doc Martens, in black.

Why this is strange: Doc Martens, while not out of business, are certainly not as in vogue as they were in the mid- to late- 1990’s. I know because I had a pair back then. I still have them, but haven’t pulled them out of the closet in a while.

What’s even stranger: Is that the colleague wearing them was actually younger than me! Meaning, he was like 9 or 10 when the fad was all the rage, so it’s very strange that he’d still be wearing them today.

We’re almost at the end of the week dear friends, almost! I’m nearing the end of Week 4 of the new job, and things are going great! I’m really enjoying the work, my colleagues and everything about it. I actually haven’t been this busy at work in several years, which is a little strange to say, but is so true! I’m actually out of practice, if that makes sense. My writing colleagues and I have been joking that each day is a “dog day” since each 8 hour day feels like about 12 hours. Seriously though, I’m really liking it, and am glad I made the move.

Well, I haven’t made the move yet, as I’m still commuting from T.O. to Waterloo, but you know what I mean. Speaking of, the commute’s actually pretty decent, not too annoying. In the morning it’s almost pleasant, but on the way home it takes me about 50% longer to get home, as I hit some pockets of traffic on the drive back into the city. *sigh* BUT, I’ve got my laptop all set up now, and just need to take the VPN access for a spin, and I’ll be cooking with gas! I’ll be able to work from home a couple of days a week, which would be ideal. I’m not going to do that often just yet, as I get used to the schedule, the work and so on, but as we get further on in, my boss says he’s got no problemo about that. Most of the non-writers I work with are in other offices literally around the world, so I can do my work from wherever, as long as I’ve got an Internet connection and a phone. Very cool.

So I’ve now completed two days at my new job, and all in all, things are going well. That is to say, they’re extremely confusing, as they’ve never had a technical writer before, so they don’t quite know what to do with me. But once I get things set up and everyone around me trained, things should go swimmingly.

What have I spent the last two days doing then? Surfing around their internet wiki page trying to figure out what everyone’s talking about. I’m working for a commercial company, which is a new thing for me, so I’m not used to all the retail talk. So I’m learning all the lingo, and all the development processes for their products too. Basically, I’m doing lots of learnding, as Ralph says on the Simpsons.

I’m looking forward to getting things settled down, the first item being: who do I report to? No one seems to know, plus there were a few people on vacation yesterday, so that hasn’t helped the confusion factor. But I’m meeting with either one or both of my bosses tomorrow in a meet-and-greet. Hopefully I’ll be able to get my page o’ questions answered too. I’ve got a whack-load of general company ones to get answered, as well as some technical writing-specific ones too. All in all though, I’m quite hopeful, so keep your fingers crossed that this feeling continues! hahaha.

Okay, on to some relaxation at home now. Ciao!

Just how long was I able to make my severance package last? Mmm, about 7 weeks. And I haven’t even touched the bonus payment they still owe me! Why is this significant? Because as of this morning at about 10:30am, I am officially employed. Yes, you heard correctly. In this insanely hot IT market in Toronto, it only took me two weeks to find a new job, and that’s only because I played phone tag with the HR lady for most of that time. I had applied to my new employer on my first day of job hunting, last Monday, and secured the job by Friday, a total of 10 business days. Impressive. So I’ll be working as the lone technical writer for now, although I don’t know if they’ll be hiring any more. At any rate, they don’t have anything ready in terms of docs or anything, so I’ll pretty much have free reign to do what I want, when I want. More importantly, I was able to negotiate a salary increase not only from my previous job, but also from their initial offer, as well as securing an extra week’s vacation per year. Nice. I guess my sister’s negotiating skills are starting to rub off, because she does this all the time and succeeds!

So my time off ends Aug. 19th, and I start work again Aug. 20th. Still have two weeks to play around and do nothing, which rocks.

Yes, it’s true, I finally put in my window a/c unit this morning. I hadn’t installed it thus far this summer because after a couple of days, the weather would always cool down, so I could survive with the fans I’ve got in my place. But this morning was the final straw…when I woke up and walked across the room to turn off the fan, I started sweating…at 7:40am. I paused for about 30 seconds, and then I decided that it was time. So I pulled out the screen from the window, lugged over the a/c, and slid that puppy in. And it’s working great! Within 10 minutes of turning it on, my bedroom is already 4 degrees colder. Nice. Of course my bedroom is quite teeny tiny, so that’s not surprising. But now I have my cold room. Mwah haha.

I normally don’t turn on the a/c that often, just when the humidity’s really high. That’s what does it, the humidity. I can deal with 32 degrees when it’s dry, but with the humidity making it feel like 44, 45 degrees, that’s just too much. I once went to a wedding in Kelowna, BC a few years ago, and they had a heat wave where the coldest day was 35 degrees. The day of the wedding was a sweltering 39 degrees. BUT, BC tends to get dry heat, so it was nice. Sure, it was hot, but when you sweat, your body actually cooled off.

Ah, the joys of July summer in the city.

Oh, and wish me luck this morning, as I’ve got a job interview! Plus I’m meeting another recruiter this afternoon. Yesterday was a banner day, I fielded phone calls & e-mails from 6 different recruiters that I haven’t spoken to before. Impressive.