Star Trek Retro Re-Views will return next week, probably. It’s been an interesting few weeks. As some folks may have surmised from my list of things to do when laid off, I had a three week bout of “Unplanned, unscheduled, unpaid, and unwanted” unemployment when my former employer decided to end-of-life the product for which I was the subject matter expert (SME). With that decision made, my position also became redundant.
Fortunately, a new opportunity presented itself almost immediately, making this the shortest unemployment round I’ve had in my career. I started the new position on May 8th. However, there are some major differences with this company. Mainly, I’m back to working in an office cube farm every day. I haven’t had a commute in three years. Because two employers ago had daily catered lunches as an employee perk (at least until the Chinese Flu sent us all home) I haven’t had to pack a lunch in four years.
I wouldn’t call it a learning curve, exactly, because I spent a lot of years packing a lunch and driving to work, but it’s been a while. After a week I’m mostly back into the swing of things, but there’s definitely still some moments that I’m still trying to get used to. For that matter, when the WuFlu turned us all into work from homers in 2020, I’d only run two marathons. Since then I’ve run eight more. Daily marathon training became an important part of my life, so figuring out how to adjust my schedule to make that continue is interesting.
On the plus side, the Milwaukee Missile is finally getting some daily exercise. My new office is just far enough away that the oil gets up to temp and I feel good about taking the old girl out for my daily commute. So far, the work is interesting, it’s a market segment that is personally important to me, and hopefully I’ll be able to be here for a while.