Yesterday I got an email from Chip regarding employment opportunities at his employer (and my former employer) in Colorado. Seems as if they're having trouble filling some positions there, and it's gotten to the point to where corporate management is offering referral bonuses to their employees if those they refer get hired. We talked on the phone some last night, and after discussing this with Sheila I decided to pull that trigger.
Chip found eleven openings which he thought I would be suited for. I agreed with most of them, and applied for all, via his referral. I also found some others which I think would be a good fit. All of these are in satellite engineering, and in my career the most fun I ever had was in being a satellite engineer. I recall in this blog, somewhere in the past, I wouldn't mind being a satellite engineer again if I could.
I've got some work to do this weekend, identifying those other openings I could be a fit for. With a holiday weekend, I don't see much happening. I'll have to wait until Chip is back at work on Monday so that he can refer me for those other positions.
Chip and I have a friendship that has gone back for almost 30 years. He was a co-worker in my very first assignment back at that firm, and one real good guy to work with too. We discovered a lot of common interests and in the fall of 1986 both of us took up guitar playing and songwriting, and we even went on to form a garage band. We both thought it would be neat if we could break the Bay Area club scene with our original songs, but as it is we kept the day jobs. He still practices his guitar quite a bit, and me, well you would think I would have picked it up a few times this week but I've been busy trying to sort out my future.
I sometimes think about the what ifs. What if some of our songs had made it? What if we had suddenly emerged out of nowhere with our band and our songs? What if we had recorded a couple of albums?
Knowing what I now know about the rock and roll business, I can tell you that I am glad that we did *NOT* make it. This is based upon a lot of my inside knowledge of what went on behind the scenes with the Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive....knowledge that wasn't readily available in 1986.
Those guys made sacrifices that most folks are incapable of imagining. Lots of broken promises, backstabbing, failed marriages, deals gone bad........I look at all of that and I tell myself I'm glad I wasn't part of that. I guess if we had made it we'd now be playing the county fair and casino circuit, and not having a market for any new product since the record company executives are signing other bands and FM radio has gone "corporate", for lack of a better term.
Anyway.....getting back to my situation, and Colorado.
I'd be up for a move to the Rocky Mountain State. It's something I once considered in the early 1990s when I thought Colorado Springs would be a great place to live. I got to go there in 1994 to do a satellite test that had me out there for eight days, which gave me a chance to check the place out.
The openings though are in Denver metro. I don't particularly like the politics of Denver and the politics of Colorado. But there's lots of great scenery, and lots of hunting, hiking and fishing. I don't like cold weather very much but it has been so miserably hot here in Tucson as of late and I'm thinking that my tolerance of it just might be reaching its end.
Sheila would go for Colorado in a minute. She would also be OK with the Pacific Northwest (and I like Portland) but right now Colorado is sounding very good.
Meantime, I am pursuing contracting opportunities in Phoenix and Tucson, as well as direct hire opportunities in Phoenix. I know Phoenix is always a few degrees hotter than here but I have some friends there, and a move there would be doable as well.
But I think I'll see what's shakin' in Denver.
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