The job description I responded to:

IT Guru

Systems support engineer needed for total IT support of highly mixed platform environment including Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Windows, and Cisco OSes. Tasks range from the exciting to mundane. They include maintenance of production-level servers (Sendmail, Bind, and Apache), firewall and VPN configuration, developing backup strategies, writing automation scripts, hardware specification and installation, installing server and desktop software, and fixing the damn printer (again).

I don’t think anyone can say I didn’t do that and didn’t do it well.

I was hoping that today’s lunch meeting with my former company’s COO, (call him Bart) would help me clear the air about the situation I had been working in for the past couple of months. Instead I got shown the door without ever getting a chance to explain my views.

I had set up the meeting after a very frustrating Friday trying to get a server put back together. For the past few weeks, I was being ignored by my manager, Daniel. Yep, ignored. No acknowlegement that I was even there. Meanwhile, I was given stupid tasks like designing new cubicle layouts and setting up conference rooms.

I thought at the time it was simply because I could get things done. In fact, rather than gripe about it, I actually took it as a compliment; that I was trusted to do new things. How naive.

So rather than allowing me to state my peace, the door was slammed in my face. I just think that’s wrong.

In the next few days I will write a few pages about Lulu (which I may or may not share with you) and then I will put this experiment out of my mind. As Kelly said today “it’s their loss.”

And she’s right. They will never find someone who can do all the things that I did for them, with as good an attitude as I have. They won’t.

They will miss me because I am moving on.

So this is what it’s like to be fired.

Not much unlike being laid-off, which I had the unfortunate luck to experience two years ago. This time, like last time, it was no real surprise. Not that I expected to be fired, mind you, only that something would have to change.

I am proud of the work I did at Lulu. I stand by it, and I stand by the people who supported me there. It is unfortunate that the situation wasn’t right for either of us.

I am dealing with a lot of thoughts and emotions right now, so I am resisting the urge to post them all now. I do not wish to point fingers but to analyze things with as much of a clear head as I can.

I vowed not to give up on Lulu, and I did not. I worked harder there every day. I made it better right up until the last minute I was employed there, taking a vendor phone call even while turning over company passwords.

Still, I can’t help but feel I’ve let my wife and daughter down. They aren’t here right now – out running errands and enjoying the beautiful spring weather.

And on the outside I’ll seem indifferent to this whole thing until the second they walk through the door.

Usually at a startup company, the politics is minimized, mostly because it hasn’t existed long enough for there to be any politics.

The one I’m working at now, however, is the reincarnation of a cratered start-up. It seems it has carried its baggage with it, however.

I have been spent my time here battling coworkers stubbornly set in their ways, whom I cannot seem to win over. It’s to the point where I cannot do the job I was hired to do.

Should anyone have job leads, please pass them my way. You can find out more about me by clicking on my resume link on the left side of this page.

Today is Garner’s “unprepared trash pickup” day. All the neighborhood junk lines the road today, ready for pickup by the trash company.

Only, most of it will be gone by the time the trashmen get here. Since we’ve moved here, Kelly and I have been so entertained at how our neighbors will cruise the streets, hauling away some treasure they found in someone else’s junkpile. Kelly watched this morning as a well-dressed lady hopped out of a minivan and janked two decrepit sawhorses out of our neighbors’ junkpile. Our neighbors’ bicycle didn’t last long, having been swiped by sunrise.

Last year we figured it out. The town announces “unprepared trash day” and then deliberately waits another week to dispatch the trucks. By that time, there is usually little left to pick up.

This, folks, is recycling at its best. Who needs landfills when you’ve got “unprepared trash day?”