January 2005 is going to go down in history as a time of many changes.

Big boost for Iodynamics

Earlier in January, I was able to get a couple of job interviews. One was for a programmer/architect position for a company looking to overhaul the web application they used in their business of customer satisfaction surveys. The other was a system administration job for a web application service provider.

I was more interested in the programmer position because it seemed less stressful and it was only 10 minutes away from my house. The interview with that company went spectacularly and I was sure I was going to be offered a position. The next week, they called me in for a second interview. This interview was with the owner of the company. She was very nervous about hiring me because of Iodynamics. She said as the owner of a company herself, she could go work as a consultant somewhere, but if the demands of her own company grew, her priority would be there and not the consulting job.

That afternoon after the second interview, I received a "thanks, but no thanks." letter from that company via e-mail. In fact, they had attached a Microsoft Word document to the e-mail. That made it so much easier to accept the rejection.

The other company — the ASP — called me in for a second interview. I wasn’t crazy about working there because I had heard some negative stuff about the company, but I didn’t have anything else going on and nothing to lose.

My second interview went well, but again, they were also concerned about my ties to Iodynamics. My interviewer asked me if I could give them a verbal two-year committment. I told him I wasn’t comfortable giving him more than one year. He expressed concern about that.

Then, he asked me how I would feel about them outsourcing their system administration needs to Iodynamics.

Wow.

Well, to make a longer story shorter, that’s exactly what has happened. As we explored the possibility more, it seemed the right thing to do, for all people involved.

Our contract started this Monday. I’ve been going onsite and becoming familiar with their systems and doing minor tasks as needed. It’s going well.

And then...

I’m starting a personal contract project for another company next week doing some programming.

Will it end?

Finally...

After Guru Labs didn’t renew my contract, Christine decided she should look for work too. This week, she got a good offer from my old stomping ground, Sorenson Media and accepted it. She’ll be starting on Monday.