The Big News
News! Update! Exclamation!
Well well well, Friday the 9th turned out to be quite eventful. While it started out a little stressful (more on that later), it really ended on a high note. I woke up knowing that it was annual bonus celebration day, and when I found out what I’d be getting, I was surprised with a decent chunk more than I expected! That alone was enough to put me in a good mood for the day. It allows us to take another bite out of some credit card debt, sock some away into savings, and still have some leftover for fun stuff. Now, I just need to figure out what that might be (evil laugh), haha. In all seriousness, I’m just happy to see some tangible reward for all the hard work.
The previously mentioned stressful part of the day also ended in relief. While playing with my 1-year-old, I was on the receiving end of a wicked left cross! On top of that, the little guy was holding a block when he tagged me with a direct hit on my right eyeball. The pain was pretty intense right away, but quickly subsided. I didn’t seem to have any immediate change in vision, so I didn’t think much of it. Fast-forward a week, and I was noticing a little bit of a haze, or cloud, out in the periphery of my impacted eye. Based on advice from family, and Dr. Google, I scheduled an appointment with my eye Doctor. I was nervous not knowing what to expect with the diagnosis. However, in keeping with the happy Friday, the Doc cleared me with no damage to the retina or any other part of my eye. That’s a relief, and a good reminder to take care of my eyes - especially when playing with a wild little one!
The Big News
As if I weren’t already on a roll for Friday (bonus, healthy eyeball), I was notified that I. finally. landed. A. New. Job! It’s an effort 4 years in the making and after a string of 21 job interviews, I finally put it all together. It’s not a Data Science job, but it’s a step in the right direction, and at the very least, gets me out of an environment that was not healthy. I’m looking forward to the new position, the new / different responsibilities, and new people. I should note that it’s still with the same company, but in a totally different department, and a Design Engineering role instead of Manufacturing Engineering. Three days later, I’m still sort of in shock about this news. I’m not gonna lie, I’m soaking it all up. I’ve been working so hard to improve myself, and improve my job situation, it’s nice to finally see some return on that investment. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I’ll quit my learning and side-work. I’m going to continue to look for ways to work it into the day job. Maybe I can land on a way to radically change & improve the new job! Onward and Upward!
Extras, Other Miscellany
I never heard back from the City, regarding the Data Science phone interview I had. That’s a shame, but as time went by, perhaps this is a red flag. If they can’t respond even to say “No, you’re not moving on” then maybe I don’t want to work in that group. I’m honored to get to even that preliminary step, and I’m going to continue to work towards that big goal of a machine learning or data science job. To that end, I finished the Tableau class and definitely feel pretty confident about using that software. I also started (restarted?) the fast.ai course in deep learning. This time it’s using PyTorch (my personal favorite framework), and I managed to get through lesson 1 and part of lesson 2 in a half-day. I think I’ve learned quite a bit since trying the previous version of the class, so I feel pretty good about this go ‘round. On that note, I’ll say “stay tuned” and treat yo-self!
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