Yay, no interviews! It felt like a weekend because I didn’t have anything stressful scheduled at all. Chris from DreamHost called me to let me know they would meet my salary request. Yay again! I know it’s fair for them and for me. I was very happy. He said he would send over the paperwork and asked if I had read over the benefits. I hadn’t had time to do that so I told him I would get that done. Unfortunately Wayne and I had a ton of running around to do so I wasn’t exactly sure I would get to it this day.
Kristin and Jason were hitting the road today and we were sad to see them go. They are really great people and our time with them was too brief! We talked them into a tour of our Airstream before they left then it was hugs all around and they were off on their next adventure.
Meanwhile a friend of mine had let me know she was feeling very stuck on her path to becoming a developer. I suggested maybe she try contributing to Air Mozilla. Peter is a fantastic mentor and it might be really good for her so I sent her links to the Github repository and suggested she get the development environment set up and that she install and join the #airmozilla-dev channel. She only got really stuck one time and ended up figuring it out herself anyway. I was busy running around so she introduced herself to Peter and he assigned her a bug. It’s a bug that is associated with the feature I added so I thought that was super cool! She was feeling much better about things and I am confident she will kick ass just based on how well she is doing so far. She works full time, runs an excellent website, ladylovescode.com, hosts a very informative podcast featuring some really inspiring women and in her spare time teaches herself to code in multiple languages and is now contributing to Air Mozilla. She’s already kicking plenty of ass!
Wayne and I drove out to Indigo Traders in Multnomah Village. What a cute area! We didn’t have any time to wander around and just spent the entire time towel shopping. They have a LOT of choices! It was a bit overwhelming but the owner and staff were incredibly nice and helpful. They even had hot tea! It was the most pleasant towel shopping experience ever. We ended up getting a few different styles to try out so we can decide what we really like. These are Turkish Peshtemal towels. We haven’t used them before but everyone who has says they will never go back to regular terry cloth, thick towels. The owner and staff took a lot of time with us, showing us the different styles, weights and materials. They explained the history of the towels and told us about the people that make them. They even have a really old loom that the owner uses to weave his own towels. It was pretty fantastic.
While we were out John from UA emailed and asked me to complete a small technical exercise just to get an idea of my skill level. I told him I would be more than happy to do that and also mentioned to him that I now had a solid job offer so the sooner he could send it the sooner I could get it back to him. He sent it before I even made it home and it was pretty easy. I was anxious to get started on it but it seemed all of my children needed to talk to me about one thing or another. Definitely a priority! It was also my mom’s birthday so I wanted to call her before it got too late. We talked for a while but we had just spoken so the conversation wasn’t too terribly long. Alice stopped by after that and talked to me for a bit. By this time we were heading for a late dinner. Into the kitchen I went to try and figure out what we could throw together. We had a lot of leftovers so we decided it was scrounge night. Simple! Now I could sit down and get this exercise done. It was pretty much as easy as I had anticipated. I didn’t write tests or anything and I know I could have spent an indefinite amount of time tweaking it and adding to it but I don’t think he wanted anything terribly complicated so I sent it off. At least it will help him decide one way or another.
I don’t know exactly what I will be doing at DreamHost but the people I will work with are fantastic and I know it will be a fun place to work. The job at UA sounds super interesting and fun and like something I would really love doing. I wish I could have both jobs! I guess this is a good problem to have and an even better one if they were to happen to make me an offer as well. Either way I am thankful for the opportunity to interview at UA again.
Today I learned that we must go back and explore Multnomah Village. I had heard the name but didn’t know it was it’s own little community.