21 April 2009

9 of 10 startups fail. As an engineer, you see this, because you want to work on leading (bleeding) edge stuff. It sucks though, for us engineers whose personality prefers stability.

I recently resigned from my prior employer because they couldn't make payroll. They tripled floorspace, moved to more expensive real-estate (near the airport), doubled staff, and then could not get business or investment ---and had radically underbid
my project. Classic fail, any pair of reasons ---moving, tripling, doubling, underbidding, and timing--- could have toasted them. Instead, they got all of them.

But they can remain in debt longer than I can so I quit, er, recognized the layoff, looking for fulltime work. The legal stuff is likely tangled, my former employer being I hope the bad guy. But I like him and his crew; but my obligations to family are stronger.

Just took my car to the dealer for oil, coolant change, found out I needed brakes (10%, ok, I expected this) new CV boot (had no idea, but I saw it), and my engine bushings are going, which explains some vibration I'd been noticing while idling (only realized later). Oh, and one of the ball joints was different than another, with grease showing, and that needs fixing. So instead of a quick $100 job its a pickup tomorrow or tonight $600 job. Good thing I have 'subaru bucks' from my credit card ---I think I can cover it without actually paying cash I don't want to.
Besides, its a 2001 bought Sept 2000 and now its Apr 2009, albeit only 76K miles.
Its a good car, Subes still sell (unlike General FAIL Motors etc) and its been good to me. Went up Silverado canyon drive, to the truck trail, most of the way to the top, but then el kiddo got bored. Nice though. Saw a salamander in a pool under a dam made during the Conservation Corps days. In SoCal in April, a salamander!

A few days ago found a large lizard in the house, sans tail. The tail was probably
found a month ago thanks to el gato. So I got the lizard out of the house. Now we have like a dozen houseflies on the ceiling. Am considering getting hausgeckos from petsmart.

over and out