Big News!!! (as told by Buddy)

Subject: News from the Budmeister

Guys,

So, I think most of you know this already, because I've been better than
usual about telling people in person this time, but there are still some
(particularly you out-of-staters) who don't know, and possibly some who
don't know all the details. So here ya go.

We're moving to California!

That was the short version. ;-> Long version is, after a rough day
on Memorial Day, I randomly
responded to the first email from a recruiter I could find that said
"California" in it, and about a week later I was in Santa Monica for a
job interview. It all happened really fast ... and so much of it was so
wildly unlikely as to make me believe that this was yet another thing in
our lives that was "meant to be" ... call it fate, destiny, kharma, or
the hand of whatever higher being you subscribe to. I mean, that one
email was the only recruiter email in my inbox at the time (my resume on
Monster is very stale, so I hadn't been receiving many responses
lately), plus Barefoot's email server has been very flaky lately and I
had to wade through 800 spam messages to find it, plus I didn't even
realize Santa Monica was in southern CA or I might not have responded
(knowing there are no Sudbury schools down there), plus I hardly ever
respond to recruiters _anyway_, plus when the guy called me back I
didn't answer my phone and the message he left was so garbled I wasn't
even sure it was him .... you get the picture. Plus the dizzying speed
of it all: on Tuesday I was talking to this recruiter, on Wednesday I
was talking to his boss, on Thursday I was talking to the guys at the
company doing a phone interview, on Friday I was talking to the travel
chick making flight plans, on Monday I was getting on a plane, on
Tuesday I was getting a job interview, on Wednesday I was getting a
signed offer letter PDF in my email, on Thursday I was getting the
paperwork from FedEx, and here it is Monday/Tuesday again and we're
already starting to go through the house looking for stuff to put out
for the yard sale. :-D

The company is rent.com, which (as I'm sure you already know if you
dashed out and loaded up their web site before getting to the end of the
sentence like the geeks I know some of you are ) is an eBay company.
That means they're paying full relocation. The salary bump is ...
significant. The atmosphere seems to be just as casual as ThinkGeek.
The guys I'll be working with are all senior developers and they seem
like a great bunch of guys. The boss (who won't even be my direct boss)
is non-technical but he seems to be devoted to listening to his techs
and getting them more involved in providing input on business decisions.
And they don't just have _a_ DBA and _a_ sys admin ... they have
several of each.

So, I said "yes" (actually more like "hell yes") and now we're
scrambling to move me, Christy, and the children--two humans, two cats,
two ferrets, three geckos, two parrakeets, and one ball python--across
the continent. Fun fun fun. Terrifying ... and yet exciting.

I'm going to miss being closeby to so many of you guys. My years here
in NoVA (all 18 of 'em) have been great ones, and I have some awesome
memories.

We love all you guys. We'll miss you.

Well, except the ones we're moving closer to ... hopefully we'll see you
more often. :-)

Take care everybody!


-- Buddy