I Gots Me a Job!

So, I haven't been really good at writing in my blog lately. I think that's always a sign of me being depressed. But, I now have one less thing to be depressed about. I have a job offer! I actually haven't received the paperwork yet, but it seems to be a done deal.

The job is with a company called Qortex. They are a consulting firm. They were the very first place with which I interviewed when I started this search. I had a great feeling about them after the interview and I'm glad that something is working out with them. They are starting me at a set base salary with the chance to increase it by $5000 contingent upon me receiving two Microsoft certifications. I want to get the certifications anyways so this will hopefully be just the nudge I need. Certifications are a great thing to have on the resume and will definitely help me in my next job search. They also will help with the training and cost of the test. So it's not like I will be out a ton of money to make it happen. I like the concept of working with a company that is interested in seeing me get training. It's really a win-win because it makes me more marketable to their clients and helps my career.

I'm kind of sad on some levels that things are winding down with MoFo, however. The reality is, I'm realizing my feelings toward MoFo are rather complex. On some levels I would like things to just continue how they were because it's easy and a known entity. On other levels I realize that MoFo hasn't really helped my career much. I've done a fair bit of development with them, but they run such a sloppy development operation that my experience has a lot of holes in it. They aren't using any development methodologies or frameworks and that is what a lot of hiring managers are looking for. Also, they don't really examine new programming technologies to see what they can make use of. It's a very lazy environment and that has caused me a lot of problems in my job search. So, I'm happy to be moving on to a new environment that will hopefully help me learn more.

I'm also realizing that my working from home may be causing me distress. I'm a fairly social guy and working from home really puts me out of the loop. For two years I've felt really disconnected and alone and that really gets to me. I'm glad that I will still have work going on with MoFo purely for the money but I'm also glad to be moving on. I guess I'm still a little melancholy while things work themselves out.

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Krav Maga Winter Camp

I spent all day Friday and Saturday at a Krav Maga seminar this weekend. It was very tiring, exciting, interesting, terrifying and exhausting. Did I add enough modifiers? Hmmm.... maybe not...

I was quite scared going into the event because they kept playing up the training tools they were going to be using. One of them was called a "shock knife". It looked like the regular knives that they train with except that, when you pushed a button, it delivered a 7500 volt shock. It basically gave you the sensation of being cut without actually getting cut. The other training tool was called a "ram pistol". It was basically a gun that shot little rubber balls similar to paint balls. It shot the balls hard enough to leave welts if it hit you. Now, I fully admit that I'm a big chicken. I'm a wimp. I don't like pain. I avoid pain whenever I can. So, the concept of going to a two-day training class that utilized tools that caused pain was not sounding like fun to me. In the end I decided to swallow my fears and see how things went. It turned out that I really didn't have much to worry about. I got shocked with the knife only twice (not a terribly big deal) and grazed once by the rubber pellet. All of my stressing turned out to be for nothing.

The training was good because it was a lot of stuff that I had never done. I don't think I can recall one exercise we did that was something that I had done before. This was obviously quite subjective. My buddy Hank was really excited for the training but disappointed at the end because it was all stuff he had done before (he's in all the advanced classes.) There is no doubt that the training was all advanced techniques, but they were primarily techniques that are taught as part of the regular program. One of the things I loved was that I finally got to do gun defense. I've been wanting to do that for a while but it isn't offered in the basic classes. I've watched the advanced class that trains before mine do lots of gun work and I've really wanted to try my hand. Well, I finally got a chance this weekend. While I'm certainly no expert I think I did quite well for my first time and I had a lot of fun with it.

I didn't escape the weekend without malady, however. On Friday morning I hurt my wrist a little while doing punching drills. I think that's my number one indicator that my punching needs some work. I think I torque my wrist a little as I punch and that was all it took to cause some pain. So I spent the rest of the weekend with my wrist taped. Also, we had a massive temperature shift on Friday. It was really warm in the morning and afternoon but snowing by the time we left at 8:30. I woke up the next morning feeling like I was coming down with a cold. That has persisted throughout the weekend and I really hope it goes away before turning into a full-blown cold. I stayed late on Saturday and helped them clean up but I really just wanted to go home because I was pretty wiped out. I wound up sleeping most of the day Sunday.

The final thing they did on Saturday evening definitely has a bit of "the crazy" about it. They had three areas set up. One area was a fairly basic Krav Maga defense scenario. You worked with a partner and the partner attacked you in whatever ways you were comfortable defending. The interesting part came in that the attacker had a knife on them and at some point they would start to attack you with a knife. At that point you were to draw the ram pistol you had on you and start shooting at them. The second area was like a real-life video game. They had a room filled with all sort of defensive positions. Two people were defenders waiting inside the room. Three people were attackers coming in through the door. The goal was to take the other team out. Everybody had ram pistols and the rubber pellets were flying. The last room was the one that got the adrenaline rushing. There was a hallway setup with a curtain at the end of it. You were positioned 21 feet away from the curtain with a ram pistol in the holster. Behind the curtain at the end of the hallway was an attacker wielding a shock knife. At an unknown moment the attacker would burst from behind the curtain and run at you with the knife. If they reached you they would attack you with the knife, thereby shocking the bejibbers out of you. Your job was, once they started toward you, to pull your gun and kill them before they could reach you and start attacking. That one was pretty nerve-wracking. Also, the attackers wound up with welts all over them from getting shot so many times. I didn't volunteer to be an attacker. See my feelings about pain above for an explanation.

So, it was a very interesting weekend and, all things considered, I'm glad it's over. I don't think I could have taken one more day.

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