[rescue] 2 SGI Power Challenge XLs for Rescue

[Phil Stracchino]

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 07:28:33AM -0500, Joshua D. Boyd wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 01:37:51AM -0400, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> > Tell you what, hang onto it in case things really drop in the pot.
> > There's other items in the sell-if-needed queue that'd be harder to
> > replace than the computing-power equivalent of the E3000.  And I no
> > longer think that the argument of maintaining familiarity on enterprise
> > class hardware to improve my marketability for an IT job really means a
> > damn; I have this gut feeling I'm too far behind the curve to catch up
> > outside of an IT job anyway.
> 
> How is Solaris 9 on an E3k behind the curve?

It's behind the curve if you want to work in a shop whose HR department
throws any resume that doesn't contain the word SunFire in the trash
unread, for example.  The facts that I have no certifications, and that
I've never worked in an IT shop bigger than a half-dozen servers just
stack the odds higher, when you can't get a job working in a large
datacenter until you have experience working in a large datacenter.

I think I could still swing it if the industry wasn't in the shape it's
in.  Then again, if the industry wasn't in the shape it's in, I probably
wouldn't have been looking for work as long as two years.  But those,
*plus* the shape of the industry, *plus* being disabled, just adds up to
more disadvantages than I know how to overcome, and frankly after two
years of trying, my confidence is shot full of more holes than the Iraqi
Republican Guard.  I'm still looking, but I'm focusing on small shops in
out-of-the-way places.

I'm still kicking myself every day for not following up the configuration
management job in Salt Lake City about two weeks after I was laid off. 
My wife didn't want to deal with Olympic traffic (as if it would have
been as bad as everyday Bay Area traffic anyway), and we just had NO
IDEA at that time exactly how bad the tech job market was going to get.
If I'd known then what I know now, we'd have been all over that job like
ugly on an ape.


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