Hours of Daylight – 10:42
October is a good month for me. I landed my job at Ordway Center in October many years ago, and now i’ve started a regular job for Boise State University in October. That’s right, it may be part time now, but it’s full time in spirit. I’m the newest "Web Design Specialist" for the department of Marketing and Communications. I started on Monday the 9th so i have officially completed two weeks of work. In that time i’ve totally rebuilt the twice-weekly staff e-newsletter, dug through many, many lines of HTML code to figure out how the current "system" has been set up… and already begun arguing for wholesale change in the existing processes.
In other news i purchased an Apple 30 inch monitor. Yeah, the big one. When i first put it on my desk i was shocked by the size. It was too big, way too big. What had i done? I should have bought the smaller monitor…. Well that first impression dissolved into geek nirvana as i began to use the screen real estate as intended. Now anything smaller seems cramped.
But right now i want to talk about the reality of getting a job in Boise, Idaho. See, the only reason i landed this job was i was in the right place at the right time and had some allies in key positions when the opportunity materialized. Back when i interviewed for the SUB job i happened to meet Bob McDiarmed. He was working as a "web design specialist" half time for Marketing and half time for OIT. During our meeting he let fly that he’d quit BSU and would be leaving in a matter of weeks. One thing led to another, my resume made its way to Frank Zang’s desk, and two interviews later i took over for the departed Bob McD.
After more than a year of wandering the streets of Boise i landed this job solely because the previous occupant had left. The lesson? When glossy "Business" magazines trumpet how freaking wonderful a place is to live, how a place is "growing by leaps and bounds," be sure to take a closer look at the numbers behind such a story. McDonalds and Taco Time might be expanding, and for sure there is loads of carpentry and construction work to be had, but the underlying jobs that ultimately support the crust of service sector jobs and construction work are shrinking or holding steady.