.. post:: 2008-02-20 14:56:23

Job hunt
========

Starting the good ol' job hunt. Trying to figure out what I'm going
to be doing with myself for the next couple years of my life. Big
ol' decision that it is.

I'm seriously considering continuing on with my current job at
CACI. It is an awesome job with awesome people. I work with good
kids, and my bosses and everything else is really good. The main
downside is my moral dilemma of working for the government. I'm
technically working for a defense contractor, working on a portal
for on-base use. So I'm not doing anything except allowing the
government to communicate with themselves better; which with my
view of the inefficiencies of government, could be seen as a good
goal.

I'm looking at places out in Cali, Kansas (the makes of Django!),
and Australia very strongly. I want to be in a neat place, with
good culture and good waves :) Too much of my life has been lived
without surfing, so I need to get back to it. It's one of my true
passions in life, and cannot be suppressed much longer. I also want
to be in a college town, because that breeds culture and cool
people. Plus I do someday want to be a teacher or at least an
adjunct at a school, which requires an advanced degree. So being
near a good college would allow me to go to said college easier ;)

I've been throwing lots of my old projects back up on my website,
in working order. They are all Perl programs, and bring me back to
my roots. It's amazing that I wrote a couple of them in high
school! I feel like my college years have not been as useful in
side projects, but that can be easily explained. For one, I've
gotten a degree in CS! Lots of my time has been devoted to
learning, and school projects that are academic in nature but
important none-the-less. A couple of my updates have in fact been
school projects, or independent studies, which is good. I see the
progression in my skill as a coder and general "computer scientist"
to be a natural and linear progression. All of the baby steps I
took earlier in my career have enabled me the through understanding
of the mechanisms now at my disposal.

Been trying to find time to actually update my resume. Tinkering
with my old code to get it working again is good fun, resume
writing is about the polar opposite. It's coming along though, and
is a work in progress. It's interesting writing a resume for myself
because it differs from most other people I know in fundamental
ways. As my friend Jeff said: "You have marketable skills, lucky".
Technical resumes are awesome in that regard. Lots of languages
with lots of years of experience is a good things.

However, my main problem that I've been struggling with is how to
convey my passion for the craft in my resume. I feel that it is
intrinsic, and people will be able to see it. The whole getting my
CompTIA Linux+ certification in high school, and doing the lyrics
program to scratch an itch are good indicators. However, I can't
help but feel that there are more design-oriented and literary
aspects that I could use.

Upon reflection (aka writing it down..neat, knew there was a reason
I did that) I presume that these feelings are more of a lack of
control and understanding. My limited skills in the design and
literary fields breed insecurities in my understanding of their
use. I assume there are ways that I could represent myself
differently if I had those skills, but I guess you can't have
everything right? The always present academics dilemma: The more
you learn, the more you learn you don't know...

Cheers and wish me luck, should be an interesting couple of
months.