Day 6

There is work going on on my building.  If you've ever lived in an apartment, you know that occasionally, they need to drill the balconies and thus is incredibly loud.  It makes it nearly impossible to get any work done.  Because of this, I will be relying on the local coffee shop and the public library to help me focus.

I am not sure what I want to do today.  Basically, I have a number of jobs saved in my Indeed account and I should go over them and apply to each one.  Aside from that, it would be nice to do some coding.  My plan was to create a Flask project.  I am not sure if I want to do this anymore.  It's a very good idea, as it will help me keep my python skills up.  There is a steep learning curve and I have other things to think about.   The most pressing thing on my mind right now is whether I want to accept any of the telecom jobs that may be offered to me.  More specifically, I don't know if I should get hung ho about the telecom connections I have, seeing as I most want to move to Toronto and do pure software there.

The thought I just had  was that I probably should take all opportunities that I can get.  If I land a job here in Ottawa, I just put my Toronto plans on hold for six months and say no to whoever comes back interested in an interview.  My dream is to have this time to apply for  jobs in Toronto and eventually just move right into a nice one bedroom at Yonge and Eglinton.   I looked at 1 bedroom apts in that area and they would cost the same as my apartment.  Supposing I get the same salary there, it would be a perfect move.  So, it looks like I have an ideal situation, and some realities.  Supposing I can get EI for five months, I could take five months to get this job.  The ideal situation is a software job, using Python, in Toronto, near downtown, making 80k.  This job should come in within two or three months.  This is the ideal, and there are significant realities to consider.

Day 5

Today it seems I am interested in any kind of job in any industry.  When I was doing my Masters in Comp Sci, I eventually settled on the video games industry as my target.  Officially, my project was in animation.  I figured this was good enough, as it was focused on programming and 3D technologies.  That isn't far off from video game design.  I also took courses in Video Game design, animation, and Distributed Systems.  Each of these courses shed some light on a large part of the video game industry.  They all involved serious programming too.  As a guy with not too much programming experience, these were good courses and it is a testament to my versatility and intelligence that I was able to pass those courses.  Today, I applied for two very different jobs at the Ubisoft office in Toronto. The first job was relevant to my work experience was a software developer in test position.  The second job was somewhat more related to my schooling and was a game developer position.  Jobs at places like Ubisoft are in extreme demand and there is very little chance that I will even be sent a rejection letter for the software test job.  Still, it is important that I apply for jobs which I, either now or in the past, have some interest on a personal level.

I have been thinking of taking a vacation.  I know of a beach resort in Miami FLA that costs only 90$ per night.  I have been there once and liked it, so I want to drive down there now and spend a week there.  While I should not spend that money, this is a perfect time to have a vacation and there would be no better vacay than a long drive and sitting on the beach in a cool city in the 32 degree weather.  I am not sure if I will do this as I seem to have some weird kidney infection that I need to see a doctor about.  We'll see.

Day 4

Today is Sunday, Thanks Giving Sunday.  I don't expect to see my family this weekend, which is fine.  I have a lot to think about and they would not be helpful in this situation.  Instead, I am just going to continue focusing on what my goals are and what my fears are.  I don't want any of my fears to get in the way of my job search.  I have a very powerful resume and an education that is unparalleled and my next job should be a bit of a home run.  This is all in great contrast to the fact that I was just laid off.  I was doing interviews for eight months before this weeks final cut and, in fact, turned down a job at Google.  The job was in software testing.  Albeit testing of an incredibly interesting product, it just did not justify moving out of Canada.  I really want to stay in Canada.  For one thing, I worry about my health a lot.  Though this is probably just nerves, I still value the fact that I have a solid health care system in place.

So, I want to stay in Canada.  I want to get out of telecommunications and move into data analytics.  I want to move to Toronto and get a great job there.  It all sounds like a plan, however, what are the best steps to take at this point?  Perhaps I should study the data analytics industry in Toronto.  That sounds like a good idea.  In fact, I am starting to realize that a very good daily activity I need to add is research into my preferred industry.  How would one go about studying the data analytics industry in Toronto?

I took a few seconds, just now, to start this research.  I began by studying one of the main companies I am interested in working for.  They produce products which website owners can drop into their infrastructure to do things like predict customer purchases based on known customer behaviour.  I clearly want to be in this industry.  About a year ago, I was thinking of creating just such a company.  So, this is really the industry for me.  The question is, how do I get involved?  I will have to study more than just the industry.  I will have to study things like statistics and machine learning techniques.  I have already taken my ML course from coursera.  There are other courses I can take, but that is a good start.

Day 3

Yesterday, I met with three of my friends.  One at lunch, two after dinner.  They all tried to cheer me up.  I am actually quite happy for a man who was just laid off.  Still, it was nice to see them and talk about what I want to do with my life.  Today is Saturday and I started the day off by reading about Python.  I'm still doing that now.

Last night I did a Flask tutorial.  I haven't mentioned this yet, but my most current programming experience has been in Python and this is the language that I am targeting for my next job.  Also, I want to get into the data analytics industry and there are many great python tools for Machine Learning and statistics.  Flask is a web development framework that is written in Python.  I have already done one interview where they wanted me to know Flask.  I definitely want to keep my programming chops and I figured that writing a website in Python would keep me busy.  After having completed the little cut and paste project, I really don't know that you want to be involved in web development.  I want to write software, but I hate languages like HTML.  My real interest in computer programming lies in mathematical modelling and object oriented design.  System design is also cool, and I have written a system that was like Expedia.

I am also looking into getting a Linux setup going and killing two birds with one stone by renting a virtual private server to develop and host my website.  In that vein, I started a free trial with a vps company and have been trying different Linux versions is to see if I can remotely log in and use it as a dev environment.  So far, I have been trying Ubuntu and it hasn't worked well.  Before leaving for lunch, I started a Debian installation to see if that works any better.

Right now, I am just sitting in the coffee shop, getting ready to continue reading my Python manual.  I think I will go lift some weights today.

One thought that is going around my head is that I have do decide what industry I want to move into.  For years, this has been the data analytics industry.  I want to get into that industry and start a great career.

Day 2

I'm in the coffee shop right now, having a tea and getting my day started.  I was pretty freaked out trying to go to sleep last night.  I feel okay today and have just jumped right back into my job search.  I have some pretty bad anxiety writing these posts and I'm not sure why exactly.  A coffee followed by a tea, all following a layoff is good cause for anxiety, though.  I received an email from my former director and in it he passed along the contact information from some people at a large telecommunications firm.  The contacts come straight from the owner of the company and state that the contact is eager to see our resumes.  The contact information was sent to all parties laid off.  I noticed a data analytics job available at this company and am wondering how I can parlay the contact into getting this job or one like it.

When you are working you have the luxury of turning down jobs that don't suit you.  When you are out of work, I suppose, it is a hard choice.  You need the cash flow right away, but you also have time to look around for a good job.  This is especially poignant when considering unemployment insurance.  That service is specifically designed to get you to accept the first job that comes along.

Last night I was planning my future and I added together my savings plus UI and decided that I had time to wait for just the job I wanted.  In fact, the UI system will force me to look for the first job I can get.  That sucks, but perhaps it is for the best.  Perhaps I can't get that good job in Toronto right now and will have to wait six months.  That is not the end of the world, supposing a few things.  If it is the case that UI will allow me to at least wait for a good programming job, the only kind of job that I should be accepting, then I guess I can get a good programming job here and in six months, move out to TO.

This is all to say that I am on the fence about contacting the people at Alcatel.  My intention was to move to Toronto and get a good programming job in a data analytics focused environment.  That would be ideal.  I want to take two months to find a job, spending my days exercising both mentally and physically.  I intend to go to the gym frequently and also to study things like Python, Machine Learning, Statistics, Data Analytics, Java, MySQL, Flask etc.  I am not sure that I have the luxury for that in the scope of UI.  I know that a colleague was on UI for a fairly long time, so perhaps I do have the luxury.  I guess I need to have a few questions answered about that....

Day 1

Day 1.

I went in to work today, very excited about a program that I had run over night.  It was a fairly complex software/hardware testing program.  I was employed as an automation specialist, so I would write programs that automatically tested our equipment.  I had been working on that particular program for more than six months.  The results I expected would form the first successful run of the program.  It consisted of many components that did various things in harmony to create the test, complete it and publish test results.  At around ten am, I was invited into the boardroom for a restructuring meeting.  Knowing immediately what this meant, I frantically went through my code trying to copy down all the classes and their relationships so that I would be able to remember it.  My plan was to have this particular software project ready to share at job interviews. I got about seventy percent through all the classes before I had to go to the meeting.  Once inside, I became certain of what was about to happen.  After a speech by both the owner and the CTO, my name was read off of a list of about ten employees who were to be put on "Temporary Layoff".  This meant no paycheck for an indeterminate amount of time, up to 35 weeks.  The size of the layoff really indicated that there was no hope for this company and so I quickly said good bye to everyone, packed up and left.  As soon as I got back to my apartment, I packed my briefcase with a notepad and a laptop and headed off to the coffee shop.  Once there, I began writing out a plan for dealing with the situation.

During the meeting where our names were called, the subject of unemployment insurance was brought up.  Temporary layoffs have happened several times at the company and I picked a former employee to contact about unemployment insurance.  He responded almost immediately with details on how to start the process.  After thanking him, I got online to start my application.  Within two hours, I was finished and the application was accepted, according to the website.

At that point, I moved to the public library, where I am assuming I will spend much of my time in the near future.  My apartment building is undergoing balcony repairs and there is a terrible racket of drilling all day every day.  I will have to get used to the library as it will be the only place I will be able to work in peace.

And so, I am sitting here in the Ottawa Public Library, having started a new blog to write about my job search.  I am a little nervous, but aside from that, I am excited about this process coming up.