(Phaysis)

Technically, I am in-between jobs. As of Thursday, I am no longer a contractor, and as of tomorrow, I will be a full employee. And it’s about time.

But not without a thrillride, first.

See, on Tuesday, the manager responsible for my conversion got a call from Human Resources, and the message was to walk me out the door immediately. They got the results of my background check and did not like what they saw. That caught him by surprise, so he called my manager and told him the news. My manager threw the time-out signal. He remembered a conversation he and I (fortuitously) had in passing last week about how there’s another guy with my name in this state who’s apparently a criminal. So they immediately grabbed a conference room and phoned the HR staff again to discuss his conversation with me.

Shortly thereafter, he pulled me into the room for a chat, and HR agreed to have the background-check vendor send me a copy of the results. The determination that day was to keep me on as a contractor until a formal dispute could be launched and everything discovered once and for all.

So, Wednesday, that’s what I did. I reviewed the background check and found four notes regarding the criminal record of a man with my name, my exact birthdate, in Baxter county (where College Station is), who apparently has a major problem with drinking and driving and is currently serving the last of his 7 years in state prison for his third conviction. Coincidentally, he’s been in jail during the entirety of my time as a contractor. So I brought all this up to the HR rep, and he prompted me to call the vendor to begin the dispute process.

I explained to the vendor’s operator that I was not this guy, that I’ve had difficulties before with his name, birthdate, and felony record screwing me over, and that I have never been to Baxter county, so she took down some extra info like my driver license number and my biometric info (weight, height, eye color, hair color) and said she’d forward the info to the researchers for reevaluation. They’d let me know in three business days. After the call, it became a sit-and-wait game.

Luckily, they did their work quickly (because it really should’ve been a no-brainer) because they contacted me the next day to announce the other guy’s record has been expunged from mine, and that there’d be a note attached to my record (should they have to do another check on me in the future) stating what happened. I also got a call from HR telling me the head of security reexamined my case and gave me the green light to conversion, that the company apologizes for any potentially embarrassing (read legally-actionable) inconveniences, and that Monday would be my first day as a fully-badged employee with all the rights, duties, and responsibilities thereof.

And it’s about time.

I kinda feel like celebrating, but with the roller-coaster of this past week, I think I’ll hold off until I get my first paycheck. Just to be on the safe side.

Well, I remain, at least for the near duration, employed. I survived my 24-month anniversary.

Getting to work this morning was an uphill battle, naturally. I didn’t want to get out of bed. Dragged my feet getting out the door. Blanked out on the drive to work, dreading the day’s potential unfoldings. I arrived, walked through the lobby, and approached the locked door to my lab. I swiped my contractor badge at the card reader and cringed, hoping the light would turn green. With a modicum of relief, I was granted access.

According to my manager, he and his manager are working to get an employment position open for me, hopefully before the end of this quarter. The more I talk to them, the more I believe it. At this point, I have no option but to believe and cling to that hope. And since they’re going the extra miles to bring me on board, I’m hoping that I can live up to their expectations. I come from a short line of “oh, don’t trouble yourself over me, I’ll be fine”, so you can kinda see my trepidations.

With all the stress of not knowing if I’m going to finish out another paycheck without it being my final one, I’ve been all amped up and somber in preparation for the worst, with a short list of contingency plans should the worst actually happen. Luckily, it hasn’t happened, but time will tell. HR may have a dirty trick up their sleeve.

It’s been a while since I wrote something here. Let’s see…I went to see Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction at the Erwin Center a few weeks ago. I had bad seats, but the show was good regardless. The extreme strobelights on stage during the NIN set were unbelievable, and sorta gave me a headache. I’m just glad I’m not an epileptic with a floor seat. The venue site said cameras were allowed, so I took mine. Tons of people took theirs. I shot a ton of pictures; a handful are even what some would consider “good”. Amazing.

My problem with cameras — and I’ve discovered this the past few shows I’ve taken my camera to — is that my attention ends up getting split between my camera (and the technical and aesthetic aspects thereof) and the actual show itself. I don’t remember some of the show because I was too focused on my camera, and some of the joy of being there is diminished. As a further injury, almost everyone has cameras, and almost everyone is taking pictures of the exact same thing I am…so my pictures are close to worthless to anyone but me. Do a search on Flickr for Austin NIN|JA and you’ll find at least 100 photostreams with shots 100 times better than mine.

I had a great time, but the camera thing gets to be too much. Does that make any sense?

So, what else? It’s Memorial Day weekend, which means I have three days off. Three unpaid days off. Life as a permanent contractor has its downside. I don’t get paid sick leave. I haven’t had a vacation in three years (and I wouldn’t even call that a vacation…I went to Texarkana for that trip). If I don’t work, I don’t get paid. It’s that simple. After the paycut I got a few months ago, I’m living just below my means, so I can’t really afford to not go to work.

That being said, this Wednesday the 27th is my 24-month anniversary as a contractor at AMD. This is important to me, and scary for certain reasons. AMD’s human resources rules state that contractors cannot work beyond 24 months, unless certain conditions apply. At such a time, the contractor should’ve already been converted to a permanent employee, or they’re walked out the door. Luckily, I have a certain condition, but it is my hope that HR will continue to let it apply: back in February, I got a six-month extension on my contract, which puts me three months beyond my anniversary. Which means I’m done after August 27 if I’m not converted already.

My hope, my prayer if you will, is that I am not unceremoniously walked out the door this Wednesday. I’m kinda in-between projects, and it would make sense if they did, but my managers keep talking about future projects. The contract I’m working under isn’t between me and AMD…it’s between AMD and Volt Technical Services, the company I actually work for. Whenever HR deems, they can end Volt’s contract for my services, and that is perhaps the shittiest part of contracting. I am not an employee – I am a capital expense.

First week of the new year. 51 more until the next.

Sitting at Epoch having some much-needed caffeine. Yeah, you heard me…I am at Epoch. I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s something about every coffee shop that just bugs the shit out of me, and over time, it all evens out. Every place sucks. So much so that I bought a french press, but even though my apartment has fucking awesome wireless, great seating, killer music, and absolutely no problem with parking, it’s practically empty. There’s nobody there. So over the holiday break, I got epically bored out of my mind and decided to break my personal ban on Epoch. Now it’s just another humdrum option out of a handful of other humdrum options.

So anyway, I’m having coffee. I think it’s starting to kick in. Usually some time around 5 o’clock my head just caves in and I feel like all my sugar and will and concentration and vision just goes away like wet ashes. And that’s when I need coffee. Usually, by the time I leave work an hour or so later, I’m at wits end trying to concentrate on the road home.

I’ve got a big project at work, and it finally started after three days of false starts. A coworker has spent the past year writing on a suite of tools to allow the automation of some of our hardware data collection efforts. We finally had a reason to apply his software to our setup, and after several fits and starts while trying to fit the hammer to the nail, it’s finally up and working.

Right now, it’s banging away in the lab and doing nicely. We got it running at 5:30, and I decided that instead of letting it run for part of its cycle before killing it when I leave for the weekend, I would go ahead and let it finish its full run since the data is so important to those who deem it so. I would’ve done that regardless except the actual testbed setup needs to be shut down afterwards. There are parts of the equipment that don’t need to be running idle all weekend, so my plan is to return to work tonight at 10 and shut it down when it’s done.

Which is why I’m here having coffee and a slice of pizza. I got time to kill, and a need to fill. Sucks that I have to go back to work on a friday night, but I’ll be there for, what, half an hour.

Speaking of work and billable time, I got an extension on my contract. My manager has been pressing Human Resources to get me converted to permanent for the past few months, and now that the company’s on hard times, the economy’s in the dumps, blah blah blah, HR has frozen all open requisitions company-wide. So I can’t get converted, at least not this quarter. So instead of hiring me permanently, they extended my contract another six months…which puts me over the company-standard 24-month limit on contracts. So, if anything happens in May (the 24th month), it happens. Elsewise, I finish the contract extension and see what happens at the next end.

I’m glad that my manager was able to impress upon HR how important my position is. I just hope that I can live up to that.