Last spring I woke up one Monday morning and signed into my laptop for work. About an hour later I got an e-mail for an all-employees town hall. A couple months earlier TDS had sold US Cellular to T-Mobile so I already knew what this was about. Sure enough we were informed that TDS sold us but we would all be brought over to the new company.
A few months later the deal closed and we were told no one would lose their jobs. We all got our benefits setup and everything. Then 8 days later, on 9/11 the massacre started. Not going to go into the details but I got a decent severance, and it was time to move on because the job was becoming too easy and boring. My last day was 2 days short of my 10 year anniversary.
The tech market has been an absolute joke. Most of the jobs are fake and we got let go the same time AWS and Microsoft were laying off people. The market is saturated, HR is a huge blocker, and everyone wants 1 person doing three jobs. I interviewed for one job where they didn't even tell me the pay, wanted me to travel to New York 3 days a week, and then they decided to pass and told me if I get Nutanix Certs I can get in there making half what I was making. I laughed and lost their number.
I had one job for a cruise line where it looked like I was going to get hired and then they pulled the job last minute. Then a couple weeks later a recruiter called me for another job over there. I asked her if she was recruiting for a certain manager and she asked him I know him. I laughed and told her what just happened and told her I'll pass on that train wreck.
I had a couple other jobs that I thought would go through and they were cancelled last minute. So in November I decided to take a trip to Trevose, Pennsylvania and did the CISSP bootcamp. I've wanted to get the CISSP for a long time and now I had the time to do it and I needed to burn some money. It was a long week but I passed the CISSP on my first attempt.
Shortly after I applied for a job at NASA. I went out there in the end of June and interviewed. I did really good in the interview but I don't know Linux, yet, so he said he would hold my resume. At that point I never thought I'd hear from them again. I interviewed with another company in Tampa but that was a hot mess. They wanted an IAM Engineer. That's me. But they also wanted someone that does Domino development to automated their accounts. The manager admitted his technical knowledge is up to 2005 and it shows. They brought me in for a 4 hour interview, bought me lunch, and did an assessment to see how much I understand their depreciated code. A week later they decided to pass and go with a developer. In my opinion a really stupid decision but a developer won't know Active Directory, Azure, or security. I could have done all their code with Cursor AI. But this is the crazy market we are dealing with.
Shortly after this rejection I get a call from the manager at NASA. He said something opened up he wants to get me into and I'm pretty much hired on the spot. He wanted to do an interview with that team where he said we would pretty much just shoot the shit. After a lengthy process through HR I finally started in early April. The best part is the first day they decided they wanted to move me into the role I originally applied for and just get me training on what I don't know.
In those six months, besides my side consulting and applying to 800+ jobs, I did get a lot of time to spend with the family. In October we took a trip to NYC, after Christmas a few days at Cocoa Beach, in March we went to Key West, and we had lots of weekends taking small trips. Natalie and I got some time to do day dates when the kids were at school. We got Sea World and Busch gardens passes and spent a lot of time at the parks.
Now it's picture time.....
The first couple footballs games this year were rained out. One of them we had to wait out for 90 minutes in the car before we decided to bail. I think they cancelled that game after we left. Another one we had to wait in the car an hour and then in 4th quarter we had to evacuate the stadium. I think that's the game they picked up later and lost. It was a weird end to summer with late evening storms.
I bought tickets for the Tampa Zoo just a couple days before the layoff was announced. They were buy a day get the rest of the year for free so we ended up taking a couple trips out there.
One of the first things we did while the kids were in school was take a trip to Orlando Tree Trek Adventure. We took the kids when Kim was out here but I had to stay with Dean the whole time on the little kid's course. This was my first time actually getting to participate.
That is hot.
Afterwards I found out we have a Columbia restaurant in Celebration. My shirt was soaked from the climb so I had to buy a new one at Tree Trek.
I found these in a store in Winter Garden. I bet they can't keep them on the shelves in The Villages.
Took a ride without the kids on the Lake Apopka Trail after hurricane Milton.
Came back with the kids a couple weeks later. We were able to do about 5 miles round trip with Dean. We had to stop by Old Highway 50 because of the hill.
Natalie's early birthday dinner at Salt Shack before I went to Philly.
Walking to class the first day. It's three miles one way and only about a mile of it has a sidewalk. Had to cross some highways with busy traffic. When I got to class the first day one of the guys there recognized me from the hotel lobby. Had driven down with his Jeep from MA and offered to give another guy and me a ride to and from class every day.
On November 20th we got snow flurries. I walked to lunch and it was a mix of rain, sleet, and snow.
Studying my butt off.
Just passed the CISSP. Heading home.
Driving through Philly.
Our 16th anniversary on Miami Beach.
Getting ready for dinner at Sazon.
Ice cream at midnight. Still 75 degrees in Miami.
We went to Disney Springs for lunch one day and saw this in the parking lot. I've seen memes like this before but this is the first time I've seen it in the wild.
Adri's Christmas parade in downtown Clermont.
Ghirardelli in Disney Springs. The other savages were in school. I don't remember why but Dean got to hang out with us that day instead of going to school.
I asked Dean if he wants a picture with the Christmas tree and he does this.
Coming home late one night from something. Look at these two.
Christmas morning.
I got a gas firepit for Christmas. Nice addition to the lanai.
Two days after Christmas we went to Ghirardelli for some ice cream. The place was insanely crowded.
A couple days after Christmas we went to Cocoa Beach for a few days and got a hotel on the water. It was warm the first few hours we were there and then a cold front came through. We had a couple days of foggy and cool weather. Finally, right as we were getting ready to check out on New Years Eve the sun came out and it was warm again.
The boys really didn't care about the weather.
Adri tried surfing a couple times. The last day she brought the board out and it was too cold to get in. After we checked out when it was warm again she decided to go for it. When we got home I bought her a wetsuit, which she still hasn't used yet.
Dean could do this all day every day.
For Dean's birthday we took him to Legoland. I was told it's really lame and for small kids but these kids love legos so we decided to take him anyways. Most of the time he just wanted to shop and play with the legos. I could have saved myself a lot of money and just bought him legos and stayed at home. At least for dinner he decided he just wants Taco Bell.
I tried an awful new mineral based sunblock that made me white face all day.
The one cool thing was the lego city.
Interviewing for the new job.
We took the kids to Palatlakaha Park and I walked the boardwalk. Lots of really big cypress down from Hurricane Milton.
A foggy morning in the backyard.
I've had a varmint problem. Called fish and game and they basically told me if they are a nuisance to trap and take care of it myself. So here I am teaching the boy how to trap. Got 13 of these buggers so far, and the vultures have been loving it. I even got a couple bald eagles in my yard getting a piece of the kill.
Vultures everywhere
A bald eagle in my backyard.
Hurricane Milton took out all the elderberry trees behind us and gave us a clear view of the lake. I cleaned up all the broken, dead, and decaying trees and did a few big bonfires.
Last year I saw an ad for Havasi. I had never heard of him but it said Rock style Symphony and it had fire on the ad. Thought it looked cool so we dropped the kids off with Suegrita and went to the show at Hard Rock. Havasi is from Hungary and I've never heard his music, but I read that he's the fastest pianist in the world and hit the same note 498 times in one minute. He's the only Eastern European to ever sell out at Hard Rock and he's played in Royal Albert Hall.
The show exceeded expectations. I'd say it's one of the best shows I've ever seen. All types of people were there. I'm a metal head but in front of me was a couple that were 75+ years old. The concert was really loud at times, but they didn't seem to mind a bit. The light show was amazing. During one song there was a whale hologram coming off the stage. One of the last songs he did, and the only one that wasn't one of his originals was Kashmir and it was absolutely amazing. I enjoyed my night out with the wife but I think next time we'll be taking the kids. They missed out on a good show.
After the show we went to Hard Rock Cafe for dinner. One our way back to the truck we ran into Havasi with his family in the casino. He smiled and waved.
And that wraps up my six months off work. Besides the stress of the crazy IT market, it was good to have some time off.
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