Brain Scat

[Link to photos here]

I’m back from my trip to Yellowstone National Park.

In the end,I drove just over 2000 miles to get there,poke around and drive back all in about five days.

I had a great time.

The goal was to go off and explore someplace that I’ve wanted to visit all on my own,going where I wanted to go,stopping where I wanted to or not stopping at all.  I’d have happily gone with Christina,but she didn’t have time off available and she encouraged me,since I’ve been talking about doing this for a couple years,to go have fun.  And I did.

The first day was a simple road trip from Vancouver to Missoula,Montana.

I stopped part way there to visit Steptoe Butte State Park,which is about an hour south of Spokane where I grew up.  It’s a big,cylindrical butte that sticks up above the Palouse country.  Basically the whole countryside got smoothed down around it during the glaciers coming and going (this would have been some time ago…)  The view was impressive but it did suffer from being sort of in the middle of nowhere.  No exactly a getaway location.  But,I’m glad I finally got to see it as it was kind of impressive.

I drove on to Missoula and arrived there to try and find a motel to stay for the night.  Apparently,I had the misfortune to arrive on a Friday evening where Freshman orientation,a long range rifle competition,a rodeo and something else were all taking place.  Rooms were not plentiful.  But,I persevered and found someplace to crash till morning.

The next day I drove on to Gardiner,Montana,which is to the north of Yellowstone National Park.

Now,a few words about Yellowstone which I didn’t know.

Yellowstone was originally created as a National Park by Ulysses S Grant in 1872.  As big as it is (~3500 square miles),Lewis and Clark managed to miss it entirely.  Native Americans had been there something like 11,000 years before we stumbled across it.

When Teddy Roosevelt visited (he’s got a Lodge named after him in the northeast of the park with a stellar view of the valley and mountains to the east),he decided the park wasn’t big enough.  Using the newly passed Antiquities Act of 1906,he made Yellowstone much larger.  He also created Crater Lake in Oregon and was a major force for preservation of the national resources by created protected spaces and National Parks.

Back to the trip.  Day two had me going to Gardiner then in to the Park.

The Park has a limited set of roads,primarily two lane highways.  The major route forms a figure eight or two ovals on top of each other.  One could navigate much of the park by entering at the north and driving a figure eight and return back to where you started.  The average speed limit is posted at 45,but all the animals,hills,traffic,people and whatnot,often you’re moseying at much less than that.  At first this irritated me because I was still in “get there!” mode instead of slowing down to enjoy the scenery.

The first place I stopped was Mammoth Hot Springs in the northwest of the park.  Mammoth has an interesting set of terraces and geology that was very interesting to poke around in.

Before moving on,I should give a little context.  I’d been to Yellowstone once before when I was about … eight,I guess.  Maybe seven.  Between second and third grade we drove through on the way back from West Virginia where we lived briefly back to Spokane.  I really don’t recall much.  The most vivid memory is actually the smell of sulphur.  And I recall bears begging on the sides of the road.  I’m not entirely sure that’s my memory or just one I saw on television,though.  It’s been awhile.  This would be my first time going as an adult.

I stopped and wandered around Mammoth Hot Springs and took lots of pictures.  Then got back in the car and started wandering south,stopping at every little off road pullout or spring along the way that caught my eye.

By early evening,I was approaching Old Faithful but I had regained the “get there!” attitude from earlier and was more interested in making it to my camp so I blew by it.

I stayed at Grant Village,which sits next to West Thumb on Yellowstone Lake.  It was a nice campground but as I got my camp put together it was clear that mosquitoes were going to make the evenings unpleasant.  I got attacked through two coatings of various bug repellents.  Not fun.

In the evening I went to the Yellowstone Ranger presentation at the campground auditorium,led by Ranger Chuck.  Lots of park background,info on the animals,questions about bears.  Good stuff.

The most pertinent detail I took away was that hiking away from others on my own would be stupid.  The recommended hiking in Yellowstone involves yelling “Hey,bear!” or the equivalent and being in a party of more than one.  I don’t yell and I was alone,so it didn’t look good for my hiking options.  On top of all of that,on the Thursday before I left I was diagnosed with bronchitis and sent off with antibiotics,steroids and an inhaler.  I was wheezing.  Turns out much of Yellowstone is at 6000-8000 feet.  Hiking at that altitude with a wheeze is not fun!  Yeah,that’s my excuse.  That and the desire to not get eaten by bears.  Which,btw,did happen just a few weeks prior.  A guy got eaten by a bear.  His wife was smart enough to play dead,but he was killed.  They believe he ran from the bear,which is bad.  They closed off a significant chunk of the park because the bear is still out there.  All these stories served to limit my feelings of adventurousness.

I went back and hunkered down in my tent and sleeping bag and slept really well.  Till around 4am when two things became clear:First,it was cold!  Apparently nighttime temperatures were around freezing (I’d read around 40 and wasn’t worried).  Second,my feet were cold.  My feet are never cold.  I sleep hot.  So,it was cold.  Socks did the trick,but it was still a bit nippy.  Probably should have brought some long johns just in case,but I was sure I’d be fine.

The next morning I drove from about 7 o’clock on the lower oval up around the outside to the northeast corner of the upper oval,which is where Roosevelt Lodge sits.  On the way out of the campground,I saw my first large wildlife as about a dozen elk were wandering down the road,fairly oblivious to all the gawkers in cars and the side of the road.

Roosevelt Lodge was was where Teddy would bring his buddies when they wanted to get away.  It has a stellar view of the valley and mountains climbing to the east.  But,as a Lodge?  Meh.  Timberline is a much more impressive Lodge,if you ask me…

On the way there,traffic slowed.  There was a buffalo on the side of the road,just standing there munching grass.  For all I knew,this might be the only buffalo I would see,so of course I was bound and determined to get a good picture of him.  Which I did.

About a mile further down the road,the river came close and I spotted a few more buffalo off in the trees near the river.  I pulled over and got out and took some pictures.  In one of them,a couple of buffalo were gently head butting each other and generally wrestling with their horns while another,bigger buffalo watched from the shade.  They seemed like a couple younger buffalo.

A bit further down the road I stopped at another place called the Mud Cauldron.  Off to the east were more buffalo.  In fact,as I got out to look at the river below,four buffalo were crossing the Yellowstone River.  One of them was a young calf who was not making forward progress across the river.  It looked like he was struggling.  There were other onlookers and they were starting to get stressed for the calf.  After a few minutes,the calf got the bright idea to head for the shore directly rather than the indirect path his elders took.  He popped out of the river about a hundred yards back from the other three,bleated as if to say “Hey!  Wait for me!” then hustled his butt to catch up and they wander off.  Crisis averted.

The Mud Cauldron was impressive on its own but made more so by the presence of another couple dozen buffalo just hanging out around the boardwalks and pools of steaming mud.  A couple times a buffalo crossed the boardwalk,much to the consternation of the tourists (me included) who decided that if the buffalo wanted to be on the boardwalk,we probably wanted to be somewhere else.

Ranger Chuck from the night before recommended 100 yards distance from elk and buffalo.  These guys were about 10 yards away in many cases and not all that concerned about all the attention.

At one point,a small calf was hanging out on the boardwalk with someone who could have been his mom hanging out very nearby.  That calf caused several groups to hear around that area rather than risk getting anywhere near a mom and baby buffalo!

If you don’t know,the Yellowstone Caldera surrounds a good portion of the middle of the Park.  It was termed a supervolcano because of the size of the eruptions which were something like 1000x the size of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption which I recall very well.

The point of this is to say that much of Yellowstone is on or affected by a freaking live volcano!  And you really can see that when you stop in random parts of the park and look around and see dozens of plumes of steam/smoke that are coming out of the ground in various places.

You can’t swing a cat without hitting a geyser,super-heated pool,colorful mineral deposits in ponds and/or bubbling pools and ponds of water that’s either amazingly clear,highly acidic or bubbling mud!

The first one I saw I thought it was an amazing thing.  By the end of the day it was more like “Oh,look,more evidence that I’m going to stay a couple of nights here,on top of a freaking volcano”.  Over the last decade,measurements indicate that underground domes are rising at the rate of a couple inches per year.  Eventually these will blow up.  Back in 2004,five dead bison were discovered to have died from inhalation of toxic geothermal gasses in the Norris Geyser Basin.  Where I hung out.  On the freaking volcano!

Anyway.  Back on the road after hanging out with the buffalo and the freaking volcano!

The next major stop was Canyon Village,which is located near the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  Which is a thing I didn’t know about before.  That would be the result of a lack of interest in geography coupled with a public school education,I suspect.

The canyon is amazing and gorgeous.  Lots of stops for pictures and wandering down to the falls at the north end and various other stops along the way.

There used to be an observation platform about midway down the Canyon that stuck out in to the Canyon about 100’ more than the current observation point.  That is,until there was an earthquake back in 1975 that tumbled it in to the Canyon below.  The current viewpoint has the end surrounded by cyclone fence but you can see where it used to be.

It was here that I observed to myself that you can’t seem to turn around with a camera without being faced with yet another amazing photographic opportunity.  Everything was just amazing view and vista followed by more and different vistas and views.

After completing my wander up the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone,I continued up to the Roosevelt Lodge and wandered around there,frankly a bit underwhelmed aside from the stellar view.  Then,it was back in the car.  I wandered back down the right side of the topmost oval and across the middle.

Apparently there was a really impressive forest fire back in 1988 which burned nearly a third of the park.  You can still see lots of evidence of that,though it’s interesting to see loads and loads of 20 year old small trees which have self-seeded to fill back in the areas burned by the fire.  To this day there’s a good percentage of tree trunks towering over the 20 year old baby trees,making for an odd but pretty striking view.

Ranger Chuck was asked whether they inoculate the buffalo for disease and he said that no,their job was to preserve,not mess with the park and its animals.  That means they don’t (I’m pretty sure) fight forest fires,which are a natural thing,of course,or mess with the animals.

The exception to this is that when bears start messing with folks,they take a very quick and active hand in dealing with them.  Often this means killing them.  So,they are really serious that they don’t want people and bears mixing because when they do and the bears show signs of getting acclimated to people,they kill the bear.

I again wandered down the left side of the lower oval,stopping at places that I’d driven by the day before.
Back when it was discovered in 1870 (discovered by non Native Americans,I should say),it would shoot up in the air 120+ feet.

From Wikipedia:“Eruptions can shoot 3,700 to 8,400 US gallons (14,000 to 32,000 l) of boiling water to a height of 106 to 185 feet (32 to 56 m) lasting from 1.5 to 5 minutes. The average height of an eruption is 145 feet (44 m). The highest recorded eruption was 185 feet (56 m) high. Intervals between eruptions can range from 45 to 125 minutes,averaging 66.5 minutes in 1939,slowly increasing to an average of 90 minutes apart today.”

For years it would go off pretty reliably about every 60 minutes.  The duration between eruptions has lengthened to around 90 minutes,but interestingly,they are more predictable.

Old Faithful is also not the tallest or largest geyser in the park.  That’d be Steamboat Geyser.  I stopped there and while I was there that particular geyser only chugged up 10’ or so in the air,but it was pretty constant.

Anyway,I got there about 45 minutes before the best guess at the next eruption,which would take place within minutes of sundown,if it was on time.

They’ve built a series of benches two deep in a semi-circle around Old Faithful.  When I got there there were only a few folks.  As the predicted time approached,the benches filled up.

I had a couple pre-teens around me who were clearly bored and not impressed by the whole thing.  As the time to eruption approached,the geyser started belching some smoke.  The boys were not impressed.  Then,about the time it was predicted to start,Old Faithful started belching some water.  But,only about 10-15 feet to start with.  Again,the pre-teens were not impressed,going so far as to theorize (I’m sure not for the first time),that Old Faithful was really fed by a large hose from the Lodge just to keep people coming and that obviously the hose had broken for this eruption.  Then,it went off,starting to belch water and smoke in to the air.  I’ve no idea how high,but it certainly seemed like 60’-100’ in the air with the water and the steam.  Now the boys were silent,letting out an occasional “Whoa!”

I wandered back to my campground as the sun set,just enjoying the act of moseying through the park and watching the landscape go by.

The next morning was cloudy and,in fact,I got rained on in the early morning.  This was not auspicious.  After I was up and about (warmer than the night before),I saw it was looking like a pretty cloudy day.

I broke camp and packed up my stuff as the plan had been to move on to a different campground.

But,the change in weather didn’t feel good.  Plus,I really had seen much or most of the park.

On a whim (which is kind of the point of this sort of road trip),I decided that I would go explore Grand Teton National Park,which is only 25 miles to the south of the south entrance to Yellowstone,which was very near my campground.

I had a beautiful drive through the park,seeing yet more amazing scenery,though it was interrupted by occasional thunderstorms and lightning and rain.

Reaching the south end of Grand Teton National Park,I paused and though about what I wanted to do.  I could camp,but it was wet and that didn’t sound like fun.  I could find a motel (the south end of Grand Teton National Park dumps out in Jackson,Wy,where the rich go to ski in the winter).  In the end,I decided that I had seen as much as I wanted to see in those two parks and I made the decision to start heading back.

My trip to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons was amazing.  It’s hard to imagine that I grew up in the Western United States and really had no experience to speak of with the Parks.

Did you know there is a Grand Canyon of Yellowstone?  I did not know that.

Have you ever heard buffalo talking to each other or the sound of a calf calling out to the other buffalo to wait up!  Now I have.

Did you know that the Sulphur Cauldron has the pH just one above battery acid?   Which sounds terrible until you see it’s one below lemon juice,which doesn’t seem that bad.

I was also reminded that as much as I enjoy some time to myself where I don’t have to meet anyone else’s needs but my own,after just a few days,I miss my wife,Christina,who was incredibly supportive of me just heading out and going exploring.  She rocks!

It was a great trip.  I’m glad I made the opportunity and did it.  I highly recommend it to anyone.

[Link to photos here]

Christy Tyson was not the first librarian to make a significant impact on my life,but she certainly made the largest.

By the time I was 10,I was running out of options in the children’s section I had been haunting in our local library.

I’d been beside Encyclopedia Brown for every mystery,I’d accompanied the Hardy Boys everywhere they’d gone,I had met Mrs Which,What and Who while traveling with Meg and Charles Wallace. I’d accompanied Lucy to Narnia,been to the Mushroom Planet with Mr. Bass,adventured with Tom Swift,solved mysteries with the Three Detectives and saved Barsoom with John Carter.

I’d loved all of them,but the stories that seemed to really get my imagination going were the Heinlein juveniles. These were like something entirely different and amazing to me. But,sadly,they were over too soon and there were,simply put,not enough of them. I’d come back in and check the racks to see if I had missed a Heinlein. Nope,nothing new. I needed more!

One day,while rummaging through the kids section one more time for something new and interesting,I recall the librarian tell me that,you know,Heinlein had written other books. For adults. Really?. Where could I get such things. I craved them. I needed them. The librarian told me that I really wasn’t supposed to be looking for books in the adult section because apparently there was a policy about not letting unaccompanied kids check out books from the adult section. But,as I was clearly in need,she eventually relented and introduced me to the rest of the library. Where the adults found books…

No crack dealer had ever more firmly hooked a new client than when that librarian introduced me to the mysteries and the power of the untapped shelves that were the Fiction section in my local library.

Christy Tyson was no crack dealer,but she offered a different kind of drug. She offered a chance to hang out with other like-minded readers and do something that all young adults craved:Read books and share what we loved.

When I was 16,Christy created the Young Adult Advisory Committee (or YAAC). This was a weekly meeting at the downtown Spokane Public Library at 9am on Saturdays. As you can imagine,9am on a Saturday was probably not the most attractive time in the world for a group of teenagers to get together and speak coherently about anything,but we did and and we were.

I was there with my friends Ken and Bill and we were amongst the oldest of this crowd. Yes,it was a bookish crowd,but it was a group of young adults who got together with the intent of sharing what they thought about books. And here was the kicker that was hard for me to believe:Christy,who headed the Young Adult Services for the Spokane Public Library,would buy more of the books we liked and less of the ones we didn’t. Suddenly,our opinions mattered. That was a new and wonderful thing for me at that age. At a time when it seemed no one cared what a 16 year old thought about much of anything and I wasn’t convinced I had any opinions worth sharing,Christy was soliciting our opinions and making decisions based on those opinions. What a crazy,wonderful idea.

We did a variety of things in YAAC. We read and reviewed books. We printed a monthly newsletter with reviews and articles. These were printed and available in the Young Adult (YA) sections of multiple libraries in the area. We had editors,we talked about what content we’d print,we wrote,we argued books and we shared what we loved and didn’t love about them. Christy encouraged critical thinking. Why did we like it. What worked or didn’t work about the book?

We also created our Golden Pen award. Each year we’d nominate authors in different categories that had written books we loved. In 1982,our choice for Best Fantasy author was Piers Anthony,author of the Xanth fantasy books. We sent each of our recipients a nice letter and a real golden quill pen and plaque as part of the award. Mr. Anthony was kind enough to write back,thanking us for the award. Later,I recall my excitement when looking at the author notes in his Xanth paperback books,our Golden Pen award showed up in his bio. Someone was listening to us. What a great feeling for a bunch of young adults.

We got involved in anti-censorship campaigns,including creating and selling anti-censorship buttons in school. I was able to participate in a radio story about Dungeons and Dragons including answering some questions about the game and played a mock game for the story.

We also socialized together,had summer picnics and enjoyed each others company. I know of at least one case of a couple meeting because of YAAC and eventually marrying and having kids.

As high school wrapped up,we “graduated” from YAAC as we prepared to head off to college. It was time to move on and Christy was there to wish us well and told us to be sure to stay in touch.

That was … 27 years ago. I wish I could say I had done a good job staying in touch. But,I can’t. I lost touch with most of the friends I made during that time. Occasionally I’d hear something about one or the other of them. I heard when Christy moved to Seattle to join their library. I heard when one of our members published the compendium of Star Trek fiction. But,mostly,time passed as we all lived our lives.

Christy passed away just after the first of this year in 2011. I heard about it via one of those friends I hadn’t kept in touch with but who knew that it would matter to know.

Her family had a memorial service for her up in Seattle. I wanted to go and be there.

Somewhere in my head I had the idea that I wanted to say something. To say thanks. Maybe to see some of those friends that were so important to me at a time when I really needed them.

The memorial was attended by many of her friends and family. Amongst those friends were six of what her sister Jean called “Christy’s YAAC kids”. Speaking as one of those kids,at 45 years old,that was a nice feeling. Her sister said she spoke often of us and it’s nice to think that perhaps that time was in some way as important to her as it was to me.

As I was catching up with some of those friends I hadn’t seen in so long,I was struck by an observation:Out of the six of us that were able to be there (there were many,I know,who would have liked to be there),we had in attendance three librarians. A full half of us had become librarians. What a wonderful thing to pass on to the world. Additionally there was a scientist,engineers,wives,husbands and partners. Christy had played a part in helping us,as well as many others like us,grow up and discover who we would be,who we could be. Good people who cared about the world,cared about reading,cared about each other.

I did speak at the memorial. In amongst my fumbling to try and tell a story about Christy and talk about how she impacted my life,I tried to describe how if our lives were represented by stones tossed in a pond,some people live lives that,like a pebble in that pond,wouldn’t make many ripples. Their impact would be small and quickly lost. Other people live lives that make a splash,make ripples and waves that reach out and touch all the other ripples and waves from all the other lives that are represented by that pond. Christy truly was a boulder dropped in a pond. She impacted all of us who knew her in YAAC. Those ripples continue today as we share what we learned,that love of reading,that love for talking about books and sharing opinions and caring. The ripples from Christy’s life did not stop affecting me 27 years ago when I went off to college. The ripples from Christy’s life brought me back to her memorial where I got to meet her family and hear stories of her life from her co-workers and friends. Those ripples brought me back together once again with friends I hadn’t seen in more than a quarter century.

That’s a life well and truly lived.

Christy didn’t have kids of her own,but I will always be happy to be thought of as one of “Christy’s YAAC kids”. That’s an honor to me and with that,I hope I honor the difference Christy made not only in my life,but the lives of my fellow YAAC members and all the friends,family,co-workers and readers who she came in to contact with in her life.

Thank you Christy. Thanks for everything.

That Was The Year That Was (Tom Lehrer)

So,it’s a bit early to call this year complete,but for my purposes,the year I’m going to review is from mid-November to mid-November (more or less).  For these purposes,we’ll call that 2009.

The year that was 2009 got an early start in mid-November of 2008.

The startup that I’d been a part of for a little more than a year ran out of funding and was forced to close its doors.  It was very sad since we had interesting products (which were arguably still looking for their best markets),great tools,great folks and actual customers.  Unfortunately,a hardware company is a tougher sell to investors even in good times.  In the bad times of late 2008,at the beginning of the year-long recession we’re arguably still in the midst of,it was an untenable time to try and wrangle tens of millions of dollars from financiers who were trying to hold on to what they had in hopes of weathering the coming storms.

We were forced to close our doors on November 14th,2008.  For all but the CEO,who probably had a bit more warning than the rest of us,we came in that Friday hoping that we had another couple weeks to secure financing which seemed like it might happen and left at the end of the day with a box with our personal stuff in it while they locked the building behind us.

Around the same time,you might recall,we elected our first African American President in our country’s history.  This was,for me,probably one of the most hopeful things to have happened in a great while.

After Ambric closed its doors,we took a vacation that we had planned (and paid for) for some time before that.  It was a nice vacation.  I even did a phone screen for a job,so things seemed like they might not be so bad.

I was wrong.

The phone screen turned in to an interview at the company down in Mountain View.  It went poorly.  It seemed more an opportunity to torture the candidate than to really establish whether I was a good candidate.  What it did do was establish that this was not a place I wanted to work.  Which was fortuitous since it turned out they felt the same way.

For much of the next few months,I sent out lots and lots of resumes,usually getting no response whatsoever indicating that they were even received,let alone seen by human eyes.  It was a cold,cold winter on the job front.

In the Spring,based on my experience with Ambric,I landed a consulting job for the company that purchased the IP (Intellectual Property) that remained after Ambric shut its doors.  I was tasked with rebuilding the process that we used to build and test the tools.  This meant provisioning a Linux and Windows box,running down the necessary tools,installing and configuring them and trying to recreate the build process which hadn’t run in the past five months.

I described the process like this:Imagine that you know what the Death Star from Star Wars looks like.  Now imagine someone hands you a tote full of Lego bricks and says “This can,if assembled correctly,be built in to the Death Star.  We don’t have the instructions.  But,we know you know what the Death Star looks like,so please build us a Death Star.”

It was a great project and I delivered a working solution that could build the product and run some basic tests.  (And,yes,like the Lego project above,there may have been some bricks left over…)

This kept me busy and off the unemployment rolls for two and a half months.  I am very thankful for that opportunity.

That project ramped down and it was back to looking for jobs as my full time occupation.

Much like the winter was cold,the late Spring was very,very dry on the job front.

In June I landed a job.  It was the one job in my professional life that I look back and and think was a terrible mistake and wish I’d not taken it.  But,things were learned in my two and a half months there and then I was out in the market again.  And that was two and a half months of making a salary (albeit reduced) and not being on unemployment.

This year seemed to have a theme to it.  Loss.

For most of the year I had known that my mother was suffering from COPD.  Amongst the list of things I’m thankful for (which probably ought to be a separate exercise,whether I choose to share it or not) is that I was able to travel the seven hours by car to spend several weeks with my parents and specifically with my mother.  On Mother’s Day my brother and I were there and I wasn’t sure she was going to make it through the weekend.  I’m glad I was there,but it was a very hard time to be there.

My sister flew out from the east coast and stayed with my parents for a couple weeks.  I joined her for roughly a week of that.  I’m thankful for that time with her,as I don’t get to see her as much as I’d like.  I’m also thankful for the additional time with my mother.

My mother passed away the first of August,2009.  She was at home with my father,which is where she wanted to be.

I was struck,repeatedly (as with a hammer to the forehead) by the disconnect between how I experienced this intellectually and how I experienced this emotionally.  I could intellectualize myself through the process all day,but all it took was thinking a bit about how it felt and it was like getting beat with an emotional hockey stick.  Surprisingly painful and difficult.

So,loss of a close family members,loss of job(s).

Loss of control.

This was a big one for me.  I pride myself (and pride goeth before the yadda,yadda,yadda) on many things in my life and one of those is my career.  I’ve been very fortunate,in many respects,but it’s also come with a great deal of work on my part.  That is to say,I’ve worked hard for my career.  To have that sense of control of my destiny yanked away by the realization that circumstances outside my control can still have a dramatic effect on me and on my career was a painful realization.

Learning to focus on the things that I can control and attempting to let go of the things I cannot.  Now there’s something I could likely spend the rest of my life working towards and never reach that goal.

In the first week of September,I received an email from a former co-worker asking if I knew someone looking for a job as a QA (Quality Assurance) Manager.  While I am not a QA Manager,I threw my hat in to the ring in part because,frankly,there weren’t that many rings in which to toss my hat.

After a few weeks a time was set up to interview.  In that same timeframe I found out I would be interviewing against another former co-worker from Ambric who actually is a QA Manager.  And a good one.  Crap.

But,I had some indications that perhaps they might consider a Development Manager who could do some QA.  I thought I could do that.  So,I retained some hope.

In the end,the QA Manager rocked her interview and apparently I did well with mine because we were both offered jobs.  The best of all possible outcomes.

So,on November 3rd,2009,I started my new job as a Development Engineer at Flashlight Engineering and Consulting.

It’s been a little over a month now and it has been more than 13 years since I have had this much fun at a job.  And a job that felt like a good fit for me and where I want to be in my career.

To summarize,this last year,as I choose to measure it from mid-November 2008 to mid-November 2009 has been a year of ups and downs.  It’s a year I would not choose to repeat,though I suppose if I’ve learned anything it’s that,while you cannot plan for the unpredictable,it may well happen and it can happen to any of us.

For all of the adventures of the last year,I also have much to be thankful for.

I have my health and the health of my family and kids.  My kids are doing well in starting their lives as young adults.  I have a relationship that makes me happy and hopeful for the future.

The fundamentals (if we were talking about the economy as described by multiple elected officials) are sound.  After a year like the last one,that’s a lot to be thankful for.