strawberryJAMM's Space

W00T!!!!

I got a job that started Sep 1, 2009 as the Usability Manager with an Internet Service start up (and I really mean start up – I’m the 7th employee!) and things have been so busy I only just thought of posting about it now.  The company is called CrowdTrust and the product will most likely be called Gleanr (we’re in the middle of the branding process right now) and I’ll tell you more about the application once the web site goes live.

What’s really refreshing is to be among developers who really GET User Experience.  I mean, how many start ups can you think of that hire a Usability Manager before hiring a QA manager?

{big time snoopy dance!}

:-j(enni)

Ron, Nathan and I went downtown today “just because”.  While we were there we walked around the Vancouver Art Gallery and, within this one block journey we encountered:

• The Islamic Cultural Expo
  (at the front, with many tents, music, food, etc.)
• Several old men playing chess
  (They’re always there on the weekends)
• A Zombie Walk
  (with many people in zombie costumes, zombie face painting and more, all to raising money for a charity – I think it was the BC Children’s hospital)
• A Pre-Teen busker who was playing the Bagpipes
  (He was very good. He was also right next to the Zombies, it made quite a bizarre combination)
• A Juggling Troup at Practice
  (They were just in regular clothes and puttering about with different tools – clubs, batons, strings will balls on the end hula-hoops)

Ah yes.  Vancouver.  Can’t get much more multicultural than that. :D

:-j(enni)

Well, that “almost” job with Burntsand I mentioned just after I finished my college diploma courses hasn’t worked out so far.  The thing is, they still really want to hire me, but the economy has put a damper on their efforts to land a new contract – according to their HR person, a process that used to take one to three weeks is now taking three weeks to over a month. This is as frustrating for them as it is for me – while I’m annoyed that they haven’t hired me yet, they’re just as annoyed that they haven’t been hired either!

At this point, the head of the Burntsand Vancouver office is saying he hopes to have the contract approved by July 15th but, of course, he can’t even guarantee that.  This is, unfortunately, an untenable situation for me – as much as I want to work for them and they want me to work for them, I desperately need a job ASAP. So, I’ve been working on my online portfolio (all the jobs I’d like to apply to indicate they require applicants to provide some kind of design portfolio) and have also started to look at possible freelance jobs through Craigslist and the like.

You know what really sucks?

This is the third time I’ve had an “almost guaranteed” job that has, apparently, failed to work out:

The first time was just after we moved back here, when the manager of the department at the company in question actually had all the paperwork to hire me all filled out and had even handed it in to his manager for approval but then the head office declared a hiring freeze for which, although he tried for three days, he was unable to get an exception. (It turned out that the freeze was because another company was starting the process to acquire them.)

The second time was at the start of my current drought of work, and the manager at this other company who had interviewed me once before (but for a different company) said he fully intended to hire me but that he had to meet with a couple more applicants just for the purpose of due diligence. And then, much to both his and my annoyance, he was told by his manager that there was this project manager whom he really liked and he was to hire this other person, using up the “headcount” that he had set aside to hire a user experience specialist!

{sigh} I’m really getting tired of this – it’s almost been a year and a half since I was let go from CGTV… When is all this bad karma going to switch to being good karma?

:-j(enni)

I just realized I haven’t updated my blog to discuss my weight loss since the first time. Bad Jenni!

So, this morning, I weighed in at 140.5 lb – that’s 4.5 lb down from my starting point. While I dropped almost 3 lbs in the first three days that was undoubtedly water weight as I bounced back up to 144.5 a couple of days later, but it’s averaged a fairly steady 1 lb / week over all (this week was 1.5 lb).  So far so good.

Now if I could just get myself exercising regularly again I could bump that up to 2 to 2.5 lb a week... we’ll see. It’s hard to get motivated for exercise when you’re still looking for work (more on that to follow).

:-j(enni)

Nothing to see here - the "update" icon on Messager is from updating my comics list (added Dork Tower, removed BugBash and reorganized the list a bit)