Warning: This is a long post! It's been a long time since I posted anything to this blog. I apologize for that and offer an excuse/explanation: the past couple of months, I've been busy with job interviews, dropping out of school, and starting a new job! Most of you already know I started a new job last week, but for those who don't know or want more info, I'll try to sum it up here.
So Jenny and I were in sort of a dilemma. I graduated with a BSCS degree from UNM in December of last year. Since I graduated, my internship at Sandia National Laboratories was set to expire March 20. In order to stay on as an intern, I had to either start a graduate program in January or go to UNM as a non-degree status student and start a graduate program in the fall. Since I didn't want to go to grad school at UNM, I enrolled as a non-degree student and applied to a handful of other schools for the fall. So our tentative plan was for me to take a couple of classes at UNM this spring and transfer the credits to my graduate program in the fall. I was kind of planning on getting some sort of funding for grad school so we wouldn't go into debt (since the grad schools I applied to would have cost around $60-70k by the time I graduated).
It turns out that while I was accepted to the majority of schools I applied to (Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Purdue, University of Utah; rejected from Stanford, UC Berkeley, and University of Colorado), I was only offered financial assistance to one of the schools. Even with the assistance, Jenny and I would still be going into around $30k of debt if we chose to go to that school.
As luck would have it, I was contacted by two companies in February requesting job interviews. The first company, Qforma Inc., was located in Santa Fe, NM and does work primarily in Python. The second company, Lockheed Martin, was in Santa Maria, CA and the job mainly had to do with computer support for field operatives. I was surprised that these two companies would contact me when I hadn't even been actively searching for a job and I was grateful for the opportunity to interview with them.
Anyway, Jenny and I decided that it would be in our best interest to forget about grad school for the time being and accept the position in Santa Fe. The offer was good as were the benefits and the flexibility Qforma gives me is wonderful. Until we sell our house here in Belén, I'm taking the train to work. The commute is almost 2 hours each way, but the company bought me a new laptop (Macbook Pro) and a Verizon high speed modem so I am able to work on the train during my commute. This works out to about 11 hours of work a day, Monday-Thursday. I can work as much or as little as I want and the hours are also as flexible as I want.
I started work last Monday, the 23rd of March. So far, I'm enjoying the work. The company is keeping me busy with lots of projects and I have been trying to get up to speed with this new code base. I was hired as a programmer on the data analysis team and I work with three other talented programmers. You can check out the company website at http://www.qforma.com if you want to find out more about the company.
Jenny and I are now trying to sell our house as quickly as we can so we can move to Santa Fe. Please keep us in your prayers so we can sell ASAP!
Well, if you've read all this post, congratulations! I know it was a lot of reading. I wanted to get everyone up to date with our lives since my last post. But now it's time for bed. I need to get up early to catch the train! Bye!
New job
