Chilling at SFO, waiting for my flight to Seattle and the Penny Arcade Expo. It feels and looks like PAX is a smokescreen; the schedule came out recently and most of the panels are not as interesting-sounding as the panels from the Boston PAX that happened earlier this year. But hey, I'll be able to say I went, and I'm spending a few days in great company, so if it only ends up being a plausible excuse rather than a draw in itself, that's okay with me.

Also, Virgin America, the best airline there is, lets you check out the schmancy new Chromebooks at San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, and Boston. If you are flying between those airports, you can take it with you and drop it at your destination. If you aren't, you can use it while you're waiting for your flight. So look at me "blogging" again and what not. My old desktop won't turn on anymore, my shitty netbook died, and I was taking a night statistics course; with the addition of a relatively full social calendar, I had a perfect recipe for not writing much. I'm close to buying a new desktop with the aid of a friend who knows - if such were possible - too much about computer building, so hopefully I'll be merrily typing and gaming away again within a year of the old warhorse finally giving out on me.

San Francisco is a really cool place, from all of the almost nothing that I've seen of it. It's odd to think that I was close to making a move out here, not getting the job offer for my most recent job might well have clinched that in November when it became clear that the house I was living in wasn't going to be available for rent for much longer. When I think about everything that I've done and experienced in even that short of a time period, and how so many things would be different if I had, it's kind of mind-boggling. It's not really that surprising; we all kind of know that, but it's interesting to get a glimpse into that window and be reminded of it.

This week, I told my boss I thought the stuff he had me doing was boring. I had interviewed for a FTE spot with the company. I'm a contractor currently and the contract is out in early December, so the timing felt good. Work as a contractor for nearly a year, get a legit post. Unfortunately, the people with the position to offer didn't share my viewpoint. I didn't get any particular feedback on why from them. I got it secondhand from my patron inside. He made out that I seemed too passive to them, and that the people who had the post wanted someone who had a firmer grasp of SAS (programming language for statistics) and that in their opinion I didn't know enough about the job posting (of course, the posting they put up had NOTHING to do with the job as they described it in interviews; they reposted it last week with a description that much more accurately describes the job, so I wasn't happy about that). Now, I wanted to get a job here almost entirely because I wanted to get training in SAS because it's a marketable skill and I like the idea of being good at programming. When I started as a contractor I did put some time in to learn it, but my primary job duties were nothing to do with SAS. So I let it slide, which it turns out was my mistake.

Because I wanted to seem compliant and appear to be a willing worker, etc. I didn't push back to get SAS tasks. I accumulated useless documentation projects that no one else wanted to do, and now my patron seems to have decided that that must be what I'm good for, since I never do anything with SAS. The interview was for a SAS job, and the person who had it told me to apply for it and that it would be fine for me to play a little catch up - I was going to get some time to adjust and learn rather than be expected to hit the ground running. So I didn't make much effort to sell my SAS-ing, and that probably doomed me. Anyway, I talked to my coworkers about it, and the general consensus was, if you want to do SAS, do SAS. If they ask you to do something not-SAS, try to get out of it or get it done quickly. Pester some of the middle-management guys for SAS things to do. Find a way to impress the patron and demonstrate SAS-ability to him. This week's announcement of 'documentation equals boring' was the first step. I am annoyed that I let it get like this. I am complacent often, so I should have known that I would do it, but I didn't anticipate and didn't prevent, and now if I'm not able to pull something together I'll be out of a job. I think I can do it, I learned plenty of the basics for SAS already, I just need to spend more time with it and get some applied use under my belt. I have plenty of time to do it (which, given my tendency to complacency may be a negative), and there's a harsh penalty for failure, and that makes me confident.

So depending on how things shake out, maybe I'll be in San Francisco a year later than nega-quantum-me would have been. For now, I want to stay with the gravy train I have going, but if the biscuit wheels fall off, I think I'm going off the rails.