Thursday, May 10, 2007

Not Many Adventures, Anymore

It has been sometime since I have updated this blog. A lot has changed and I thought I'd bring everyone up to date. First off I attended the Raytheon Polar Services Company job fair in early April and talked to people about going back. It appears the options were open to me if I so chose. I started contemplating returning to the long night and the friendly confines of Amundsen-Scott Station.

Later that same day I got a call which turned into a job offer from Sun Microsystems Inc. The money was about the same as the RPSC money, would be a full time position, located 7 miles from my condo, full benefits and would start relatively soon. When weighed against contract work that would not start until September, the endless PQ process and the fact I would be locked away in semi-seclusion for another 13 months prompted me to take the Sun job.

I've been at Sun for two weeks now and everything is going really well. Sure there are some corporate cultural differences from what I am used to and new hire paperwork is confusing anywhere you go. My new boss is fantastic and the campus I work at is like a university. Other IT folks who know me will chuckle that I now use a SunRay thin client and Solaris 10 for everything.

So where does this leave "The Blur's South Pole Adventures?" Well probably in limbo. I can't write much about the Pole because I get my info from mostly the same sources as everyone else; Neal Scheibe, Michael Rehm, and the South Pole Station Website. I do occasionally get a tidbit from my sources inside RPSC but usually they are of a boring technical type that make for poor blogging.

So will I ever return? Very hard to say, I would like to explore this opportunity at Sun and see just how far I can go. I definitely do feel a "pull" from the ice, especially toward Palmer, the one station that has eluded me in my travels. But the earliest opening there is March 2008, so I have lots of time to think about it. So maybe check back in January 2008 and see if I am packing.

Blur's new corporate contact information:

Patrick McClure
ITOps - Procurement and Logistics

Sun Microsystems, Inc.
500 Eldorado Blvd.
Broomfield, CO 80021 US
Phone 303-272-4046/x74046
Email Patrick.McClure@Sun.COM

Maybe I will blog about my adventures in Denver.... Probably not.