Appliance Repair and Other Stuff

So, our dryer went out a few days ago. Considering my job situation, I took it upon myself to investigate the problem. Lesser men would have chucked the whole thing to the curb. Not me. Whoa no. I took the whole dryer apart to discover that a $15 heating element had taken a crap. Pulled it, ordered a new one and I now have it all reassembled and functioning again. These are the things you have to do when you're unemployed...

Oh, yeah, about that... I have a job now.  Finally, right?


Its not completely official, but I'm 95% sure I will accept an engineering position with the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA). I say 95% because only 12 minutes after receiving the DCMA offer, my contacts at Milwaukee Tool notified me that a position would be opening up there very shortly.  Unfortunately, I haven't yet heard from them, so I can't be 100% on any decision.  Either way, they'll have a very tough time beating the DCMA offer.  Back to the job...before you say "contract management... ugh," read this (unfiltered & unedited) portion of my notes from a phone conversation with the hiring manager, Steve Giacoletto:

not just failure analysis - cover entire state of WI - vehicle-sized engines, house sized aircraft carrier engines, ammo, cannons, weapons, trucks, tow vehicles. biggest for the team emtac amron (spelling?) (hour and a half away) - 40mm ammunition 40-50% of time - 2.2billion contract. failure analysis, test and evaluation, engineering studies. first article, IPR, etc... other time spent supporting the rest of the group. some floating barges and stuff???? tech support of negotiations, config management, spend a couple of weeks @ oshkosh truck, ultimately backup engr for oshkosh truck (dale turviden stationed there full time), couple weeks w/ dan berzinsky, take a tour of the state. supporting a total of 25 people on MKE team alone. answer technical questions they don't understand - 15% of time, roughly

In talking with my brother, we kinda came to the conclusion that I'd be the "engineering answer man" for the DCMA-Milwaukee office.  I'd do a lot of different engineering work for a lot of different people, customers and contracts.  This is something that very much suits me because I often get bored with repetitive work rather quickly.  On top of being interesting work, much of the workforce is eligible for retirement in the next 4-8 years, leaving me with quite a bit of opportunity for advancement, especially given that I'll be done with my Master's degree in Engineering Management (think Engineering MBA) come Memorial Day.

I do have to give credit where credit's due.  Social networking got me this job.  When I was first laid off, I sent an email out to everyone I have ever met in an effort to fish for leads, job opportunities and other connections.  One of the recipients was a very good friend from our days in DC, Kristy Brown (or Blum if you're feeling reminiscent).  She has since moved from DC to Philly to now Long Island, but we have still stayed in touch.  As luck would have it, Kristy keeps in touch with a former co-worker from her Philly days, Margie McDevitt, who keeps in touch with Barry Sokolowski at the Philly office of the DCMA.  Through a lot of trust between friends, Barry was kind enough to write a recommendation on my behalf (without actually ever meeting me) which truly opened the door for me.  Thanks to Kristy, Margie and Barry, once I was in contact with the people in the Milwaukee office, everything really fell into place.  Put simply, were it not for a couple of emails between friends, I'd still be unemployed today.

Here are Some small pleasures a person experiences when the "un" is removed from the word "employed:"
- My inbox went from 73 emails yesterday afternoon down to 9. And 3 of those are Fantasy Football-related.
- The trendline on my budget/income prediction spreadsheet went from very negative to very positive with only a couple of keystrokes in the "Matt Income" cell.
- I don't have to read throught the 200+ job postings fed to my RSS reader on a daily basis or wade through the 9 daily job-search emails anymore (thank goodness I never had to read the acutal newspaper classifieds!)
- I can play golf again!
- I can now ignore phone calls from recruiters just like they have ignored my phone calls and emails over the last 8 months.   Some are better than others, for sure, but most in this day and age truly suck.  If you're reading, you know who you are, good or bad.
 - I went to the store today... and BOUGHT STUFF.  Its so weird.

 And for those of you who read this blog for updates on Steve and not me, they can be seen in the August 2009 or September 2009 Picasa albums.