New Project; New Neighborhood

Today was my second to last day on my project, on which I have been working for almost a year now. For most of the time I had a really technical role (mostly involving clicking a truck) but for the past month I have been doing performance testing (mostly involving making all sorts of MS Office documents). As I may have mentioned, my project is in Chicago, which means I haven’t been working face-to-face with anyone for a few weeks, so I have been pretty lonely most of the day. Yesterday I was getting pretty down about my job, researching med schools, daydreaming about working for our start-up full time, and pessimistically assuming I'd soon be staffed somewhere in South Dakota making office documents until my fingers shriveled off.

My research on grad schools revealed that a top-ten engineering degree probably isn’t enough to study genetics at Stanford. Apparently that program is number one in the country, which I find surprising since their website looks like it was created in 1999, and hasn’t been updated very many times since then. Stanford, along with all of the other high-ranking schools around here, want you to have a pristine undergraduate GPA (don’t have), research experience (don’t have), and, um, experience in biology or genetics (don’t have). So yeah that was kind of depressing. I might still apply. I mean, Kyle got a job at Google against some pretty terrible odds, right? He’s kind of a genius though :-/.

Needless to say, I wasn’t too optimistic about my career at that point.

But then today I got a couple calls about some projects - the Defense Logistics Agency in DC and Paramount Pictures in LA. It was really reassuring to have people telling me that they want me to work with them, that they’re willing to fly me across the country every week, and that I have some pretty valuable skills.

I was hoping to go unstaffed for a couple of weeks (also referred to as “on the bench” or “on the beach” in consulting), but I decided to go for the project in LA - it's a short commute and I'll be working in the Paramount studio right in the middle of Hollywood. From what I hear the team has had some star sightings - Hugh Hefner, Chris Rock, and Jamie Fox so far. I'm not really into celebrities, but like I told Dank, at least I'll have something to tell people about my job for a change. One time after work in Chicago I saw a guy in a bar who looked like Hurley from lost and I told like three people about it (turns out that is not a very interesting story).

So anyway I am really excited about the project, which I’m starting Monday! I’ll get to meet some new people (something I am desperate to do since moving to CA), check out LA, fly people to visit me (Accenture lets us fly friends in instead of flying home if we want) , get per diems (money the company pays us when we are away from home) , and collect airline points so I can get free flights. The job isn't too bad either ;-).

Then, more good news.I left work in a rush to sign for our new place in West Portal at 8pm, and was pleasantly surprised by how short the commute was. But then I remembered that my computer is on Chicago time (since I work on Chicago time), and realized I was two hours early.

To kill some time, I found a local coffee shop called Pearls, and was delighted to find that you can add tapioca pearls to any drink! So I had a coffee drink with bubbles – weird but tasty! Even better, they had free wireless internet. AND, best of all, they were playing this great music that I thought sounded like the Chicago band Wilco that I have been a fan of since college. Then I did some googling of the lyrics and found out that the band wasn’t just like Wilco, they were Wilco! Awesome!! That made me really happy.

Unfortunately that place closed at 7 so I have to find a new place to hang out until 8. I came here to this Irish bar, where I found they have Blue Moon, one of my favorite beers, on tap! I think the only reason I like this beer is that they serve it with an orange, but I’m ok with that. They are playing a song by The Police, which reminds me of the Midwest, probably because I have only ever heard it there.

I like the new neighborhood :)