Amazing day

Fri­day was an unbe­liev­able day. This has been an unbe­liev­able week, come to think of it.

Wednes­day I went on an inter­view to work for an online dat­ing web­site com­pa­ny. They had me write Perl with a pen­cil, but I think I did well. The HR man­ag­er who I spoke with first men­tioned a num­ber about ten thou­sand dol­lars per year more than I earn now. I’ve been quite unhap­py with my present posi­tion, so that sounds won­der­ful to me.

On the way back from Palo Alto, I took 280 instead of 101 and watched the sun go low over the moun­tains. 280 was smooth and clear of traf­fic and I spent most of the trip back at close to 100mph. A much bet­ter com­mute than my trip down 101 was.

I came back from my inter­view with the online dat­ing site and appro­pri­ate­ly enough had din­ner and saw a movie with a woman I met through Craig’s List.

Thurs­day I had a phone inter­view for a posi­tion with a large, high-pro­file (read “house­hold name”) Web­site com­pa­ny. I thought it went well. So well, in fact, that I was imme­di­ate­ly asked to come in Mon­day for an in-per­son interview.

Lat­er in the day I received an offer by phone from the dat­ing site. Instead of ten thou­sand dol­lars per year more than I make cur­rent­ly, I was offered a base salary of twen­ty thou­sand more than my cur­rent salary, plus quar­ter­ly bonus­es that, if fol­low­ing his­tor­i­cal exam­ple, would yield anoth­er four­teen thou­sand per year.

I slept on it and decid­ed to take the offer, can­cel the Mon­day inter­view, and put my notice in with my cur­rent employ­er. sug­gest­ed I wait until the offer was signed before putting notice in. I held off resign­ing, but called the recruiter who hooked me up with the high-pro­file site to can­cel the Mon­day interview.

A lit­tle more back­ground: the high-pro­file site is look­ing for an hourly per­son on a three-month con­tract, after which there are no guar­an­tees. Hell, Cal­i­for­nia is an at-will state, so there are no guar­an­tees peri­od. There would be the pos­si­bil­i­ty of renew­ing my con­tract or con­vert­ing to full-time, but only that: a possibility.

The mon­ey would be about twelve thou­sand a year more than I make now, but in con­trast with the dat­ing site, no pro­vid­ed ben­e­fits like 401k and health insurance.

The dat­ing site would be more weight­ed toward back-end work where I have more sol­id expe­ri­ence. The high-pro­file site would stress some very fun, cool client-side tech­nol­o­gy and put me in the mid­dle of the Web’s renaissance.

After turn­ing down the high-pro­file site’s inter­view, I received a call from the recruiter’s boss. There was a mis­un­der­stand­ing, she said. Instead of twelve thou­sand per year more (extrap­o­lat­ed from the hourly rate), the posi­tion would pay forty-thou­sand more. On mon­ey alone this is more than the dat­ing site, but remem­ber, this is three months only, and no benefits.

So I’ll go on the inter­view, but I’m sup­posed to return the signed offer let­ter for the dat­ing site no lat­er than Mon­day. Makes things interesting.

I fin­ished up a doc­u­men­ta­tion project at work Fri­day, one that has been pret­ty gru­el­ing. It’s nice to get it off of my plate.

Fri­day evening after I left my meet­ing, I noticed a red motor­cy­cle parked next to mine. I could­n’t rec­og­nize the type of bike, so I crossed the street for a bet­ter look. It turned out to be a BMW K‑series. Between the ver­ti­cal engine block and the almost dirt­bike style of the fair­ings, it did­n’t look like I expect a BMW to. Also I don’t see too many BMWs in red.

As it turns out, the own­er was with the bike, drink­ing a cup of cof­fee with her hel­met perched on top of her head. I asked her about her bike and she talked about it, we com­pared notes about our bikes and their quirks. I expect­ed the quick inter­change to be the end of it, but we kept talk­ing. And kept talk­ing. We went on for I think 20 min­utes. I had her climb on my Moto Guzzi to feel the bike kick to the right when she blipped the throt­tle and we talked about explor­ing Cal­i­for­nia. She asked for my num­ber and I found a scrap of paper and wrote it out.

Did I get hers? No. Do I need any­one to tell me what a com­plete moron I am? No. Any­how, she had some­where to go and I had some­where to go, so we went our sep­a­rate ways.

My sep­a­rate way was to head to the Can­dy From Strangers show at Jel­ly’s. They rocked my socks off and were fol­lowed by a band called Ringchil­dren, who did absolute­ly killer psy­che­del­ic met­al. I thought they were so fan­tas­tic, I pestered the singer after the show to let me have a CD. When we went out to his car to get the CD, he would­n’t let me pay for it. He said, “hey, if you lis­ten to it, that’s pay­ment enough.” So I hag­gled with him and he let me buy him a beer.

Then I went home and went to sleep, and that’s just that. Fri­day, what a day. Don’t have many like that one.