Biggest news is WE’VE MOVED OUT OF OUR SHITTY FUCKING MOULD-INFESTED APARTMENT! \o/ We found a gorgeous two-bedroom townhouse that’s right near to the train station in Hornsby, and has AIR CONDITIONING and GAS COOKING! And a backyard! It’s about forty to fifty minutes train ride, which is a fair bit more than the twenty to thirty minute bus ride we had in Lane Cove, but it’s still less than when we were living in Dee Why. It’ll just take a little while before we’re used to the longer commute again. Pictures will be forthcoming once we’ve finished putting everything away. 😛 …I should point out that we’re still renting, not buying, heh.

Work is going well as always. I’m going to be doing support for JIRA Studio for this quarter, to see how I like it, and move into it permanently if it’s good. It sounds it, it’s a much more sysadmin-type role, which sounds fun.

And lastly, we’re going to see Rammstein and Tool this Thursday night! \o/ I saw Tool last time they were out here, and they were fucking AMAZING. Rammstein has been here before, but I’ve never seen them. Woohoo!

♦ The company I work for now, Atlassian, got US$60M in venture capital from Accel Partners, who invested in companies like Facebook and Macromedia. As part of all of that, we ended up getting an 8% payrise (it used to be that people would get a bonus at the end of the year, but there was a lot of angst about it and everyone ended up getting the full 8% anyway, so they just rolled it all into our salaries). Also as part of the whole venture capital thing, we got given share options! (Lots of coverage about it).

♦ So basically my current job is awesome. It’s all of the bits I really enjoyed about the Tier 2 job at Apple, expanded out to an entire job, and without the phone support, plus with lots of good extras!

♦ In less good news, the useless mother of my child decided to move to Wagga Wagga (for those not in NSW, it’s about a five hour drive away from Sydney). She’s coming up to Sydney once a month with Lily now. I really miss Lily, but I also don’t miss the more frequent drama with her, so it’s a net gain I think. Not to mention I’m sure she won’t be in Wagga Wagga for more than a few months at most, given how utterly useless she is with money.

♦ We bought a new lens last month, the Canon EF 100mm f/2, and have been busily taking lots of photos.

♦ kungfupolarbear and I are looking at buying a unit! It won’t be for a year or more, but we’ve got a reasonable chunk of money saved up already and with both our jobs going very nicely, we’re able to put a goodly amount into the savings account each month!

So on the whole, huzzah!

We are now the proud owners of a Canon EOS 7D!

…we just don’t have a lens yet, hah. Mum and dad have gotten me our first lens, a Canon EF 35mm f/2, for my birthday, and we’ll be getting that tomorrow when we go up to theirs for birthday lunch.

This is the last weekend of my unemployment too! I start work at Atlassian on Monday. Very exciting! kungfupolarbear‘s new job is going extremely well as well, everyone there is nice and and she’s actively getting to exercise her brain a bunch.

Boom!

I GOT THE JOB!

At Atlassian, that is! And holy crap, the pay is significantly better than at Apple. AND they’re giving me a voucher for kungfupolarbear and I to stay in a snazzy hotel for a few nights before I start! And I don’t start until April 12!

I also got a call last night from the Catholic school asking me to come in for a second interview, and an email this morning from the place in Artarmon asking me to come in for a face-to-face interview! Man.

But YAY! I haz a job! One of my co-workers from Apple also got a job there too, which is awesome, so there’ll be a familiar face there to begin with. WHEE!!

So, I had the interview at the Catholic school yesterday, which went pretty well. They said they have pretty much no proper Mac experienced people there and they’re rolling out MacBooks to the whole of Year 11, followed soon thereafter by the entire 1100 students at the school, so it’d be pretty hectic. I’d also need to be training up the staff as well, in weekly sessions.

The Atlassian interview went really well, they mostly asked me technical questions, which I knew all of the answers to. The only they asked about that I didn’t have any experience with was Java, and one of the interviewers laughed and said “Willing to learn?” to which I replied “Absolutely!”.

I sent the interviewer a follow-up email basically saying thanks for interviewing me, and kungfupolarbear suggested adding a line about MyMac probably going to make me an offer soon, which I did. I got a call yesterday evening from one of the HR ladies there asking if I could come in today for a second interview!

I had the phone interview with the place in Artarmon this morning at 10, they’re looking for a jack-of-all-trades sort of person with both hardware and software troubleshooting. Then I had the second interview at Atlassian at 11:30, which was via video conference to one of the support managers who was in San Francisco at the time, which also went very well, followed up by a quick session with one of the other HR people. They said they’d get back to me by the end of the week.

I got a missed call on my phone from some random number while I was on the bus on the way home, checked my voicemail and it was a friend who used to work at Apple who had left, and it turned out one of the jobs I’d applied for was with the company he’s at! He was just calling me to let me know it was a relatively junior role and to check what sort of money I’d be after, and to make sure I was interested before he put my résumé forward. I asked about promotion prospects, and he said that he’s actually going to be moving over to the UK at the end of this year, which nobody else knows about, and that whoever was in the role that I applied for would end up taking over his position. And the money he’s getting at the moment is quite a lot better than the initial position. I told him I was definitely interested.

And THEN at about 5:30 I got a call from a guy at the University of New South Wales about a job I’d applied for back at the start of this month, saying he was very keen to get me in for an interview and that I’m their number one candidate for the job at the moment!

And I’m still waiting to hear back from MyMac as well.

Holy crap.

Well, that’s annoying. I had an informal interview today with a recruiter, but it was only $25/hour and a contract that was only until the end of the year, so I said I wasn’t interested in that particular role. It was a pain to get to as well… it shouldn’t have been, but there’s been a bunch of construction on the way to the area, which meant Google Maps was totally wrong. Urgh.

And I was meant to get a call for that job that’s ten minutes away from home, but didn’t. Emailed the lady that originally contacted me, no reply. Called her, and her voice message was “I’m not available, please send me an email”. Useful!

On the bright side, I’ve got two interviews tomorrow, the one at Atlassian that I mentioned previously, and one at Monte Sant Angelo Mercy College in North Sydney. Which is a Catholic girls high school. If I got that job, I could say, “At work I’m surrounded by Catholic schoolgirls!” and it’d be true. Hah.