My employment situation has been resolved. As I reported earlier, EFI has decided to close the Vancouver office after this month but they have offered some of the engineers the opportunity to continue to support the Splash product while working from home. I was lucky enough to receive one of those offers and decided to accept it after investigating a couple of non-EFI opportunities. In addition to continuing at my current salary, EFI has generously offered to pay for my home office expenses including a cell phone and a faster internet connection. When the office closes, I’ll also have my pick of computer equipment. EFI has structured a bonus program for me to encourage me to stay until next July, but I have been assured that my employment could continue well past that.
Better not get up or you might lose your seat
Yesterday, during the quarterly company wide conference call, EFI announced that they are closing their Vancouver office. While the Splash product continues to be profitable for the company, our OEM isn’t introducing any new products for at least 18 months. Our office will be open through August and the team will be wrapping up operations during that time. EFI is providing everyone with a very generous severance package, even for the guy that’s only been there since January.
Continue reading “Better not get up or you might lose your seat”
Forcin’ a light into all those stony faces left stranded on this warm July
After a busy day cooking and cleaning on Independence Day, we’ve been a lazy bunch around here. We really enjoyed ourselves on the 4th, though, and were happy to have the company of so many people. The fireworks were fun and I think everybody was entertained. Next year I need to buy fewer ground blooms and more mortars.
Last week I started out the week by traveling to Foster City, CA, for some training at EFI headquarters. Because of the Northern California wildfires, my direct flight was cancelled and I was forced to take a flight through Seattle. By the time I arrived in Seattle, the connecting flight had been delayed and I didn’t arrive in San Francisco until 1:30. Unfortunately, my luggage (a change of clothes and my CPAP) was on another flight which did not arrive until quite later in the day. After waiting in line for at least an hour at the United luggage service counter, I left them orders to deliver the bag to my hotel after it arrived. It was eventually delivered to my hotel while I was at dinner that night.
I was glad to join my friend, Rob, for dinner both nights that I was in California. On the second night, we ate at a nice French restaurant before Rob dropped me off at SFO for my late evening flight home. There were no complications this time and the plane was only half full making it almost enjoyable.
Continue reading “Forcin’ a light into all those stony faces left stranded on this warm July”
My Cubicle
Wrap me in your cinnamon
Thomas had a cold a few weeks back and we thought that the congestion was affecting his voice. The cold is long gone now and his voice is still deeper than it was before. After hearing a good review of it online, I bought What’s Going On Down There for Thomas. When I handed it to him, he took it wordlessly back to his room and set it on top of My Body, My Self for Boys, a book that Tina bought for him earlier. He has no interest in discussing or reading either right now. He’s had a difficult time adjusting to the rigors of middle school this year, especially the demanding homework obligations. He has a difficult time sitting still long enough to “get into” the work and is easily distracted. Once he gets started, though, he whizzes right through it. He’s also had some problems with organization, often not knowing (or claiming to not know) about assignments. We’re helping him with the latter problem by using some techniques suggested by his teachers and my friend, Amy Sunleaf, who helps kids like him in her profession.
The concentration/distraction problems are something that he has inherited from me, I’m afraid. After watching him go through this, I was reminded of sitting in the Wartburg library years ago trying to “buckle down” and do my Calculus homework. Even now I often find it difficult to read the lengthy technical documentation that is required in my profession. This week I was tasked with reviewing user documentation for our product and had to make a great effort not to get distracted. Once I overcome that hurdle, I can really tear through my current objective, but sometimes it seems nearly impossible. I feel for Thomas in this.
Despite those frustrations, the new job is going very well. I miss certain aspects of working at CPS but I’m trying to figure out how to change my life around to get them back. For example, I miss the hour of reading that I used to have during my commute but I really like my short 20 minute drive to work now. I’ve been thinking about setting aside an hour every night for reading, but the Tivo talks me out of it every night. I also miss riding my bike but I’m going to join a nearby gym so I can start riding again (there is no shower in our office building). Luckily, EFI has a gym reimbursement benefit.
I definitely need to get back on my bike because I’m losing the battle of the bulge again, as you may have already noticed from recent Vital Statistics entries. During 2006 and 2007 I lost over 60 pounds but in the last six months I’ve gained all but 15 back. I continue to learn more about myself during this time and still think I can get where I want to be, but it’s going to take a long time.
Yes, we’re going to a party, party
I had the first week at my new job this week and it was largely uneventful. The one remarkable thing was the striking difference between my current benefit package and my old benefit package at CPS. When I signed on there eight years ago, I remember thinking that it was sub-par, but I made sure to negotiate the differences into my salary. That kind of thinking was certainly a mistake on my part, especially when salary failed to keep up with health insurance costs. Now health insurance premiums are a very minor dent in my paycheck and the other benefits are icing on the cake.
I don’t think I explained before that my “new” job is actually the old job that I left to join CPS back in 1999. Back then I worked in a small office in Vancouver for a company called Splash which had grown successful developing a high quality RIP (raster image processor) that made it possible for computers to print to Xerox color copiers. Our little office was initially tasked with developing a similar product to drive Xerox’ line of wide format printers. Splash eventually attempted to diversify their product line and transferred the Macintosh-based product that had made them successful to the Vancouver office, thinking that it was on it’s last legs. Within a year after I left, Splash was bought by their primary competitor, Electronics for Imaging (EFI). Eventually all of the Splash offices were shut down except the little office in Vancouver, where the team I left continued to churn out high quality Splash-branded, Macintosh-based products for Xerox color copiers. That is the team that I joined this week. It was good to see some familiar faces and exciting to see new faces. I’m really looking forward to my future there.
Thomas is away on Mount Hood with the Boy Scouts this weekend. The BSA owns a snow lodge up there and Thomas’ troop goes up there once a year for inner-tubing fun. This week we celebrated Thomas’ 12th birthday. It’s hard to believe that we’ve had Thomas for that long and even harder to believe that he’ll be out of our hands in another six years. Last weekend he celebrated with his friends in a hotel suite for which a friend got a good deal for us. Tina described that shindig pretty well, so I won’t go into details here. Yesterday he used all the money he got from his birthday and some that he had been saving to buy an iPod Touch, which he has been dreaming about since the iPhone came out last summer.
Safe Eyes 3.0 for Macintosh
In all the hub-bub over my departure from CPS, I missed this press release announcing the update to Safe Eyes that I worked on last year. I wrote the code for all of the new features and really enjoyed working with the people at InternetSafety.com. It’s a great product and provided a welcome respite from the difficult political machinations that went on at CPS during that time.
I love to work at nothing all day
Yesterday was my last day at Critical Path Software. After a torturous month of soul-searching, I met with my managers and they decided that I can no longer continue with CPS. After 8 years of loyal service, I received a paycheck for January and $1300 for severance. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that I will be starting a new job on Monday, January 28, with Electronics for Imaging, the company that bought Splash back in 2000. They offer a much better compensation and benefit package than Critical Path does and the hours are much more regular. As I settle into middle age, I really think this is going to be the kind of job I need.
I’m still mulling over whether I should write about the whole CPS saga but you can probably tell it did not end amicably. It’s a shame, too. For a long time I really loved working there.
Office Gags for Nerds
I’m gonna give you ’til the morning comes
As part of the new project I’m working on for CPS, I spent the day learning all about cascading style sheets (CSS) for HTML. To test out my newfound knowledge, I made some extensive additions to the main page of this blog. You should now see links and dynamic content from several of the web applications that I regularly use. Enjoy!