etherfarm

Gone Corporate

Later

23:16 on Sunday, May 08, 2005 • 7 responses

Earlier

I have a confession to make. I have gone corporate. At the end of January I took a contract job with a large software company. I love the job, really enjoy the people I work with, and was made a good offer, so I’m staying on as a full-time employee. I don’t yet know how this will mix with the dissertation, but I hope that once things settle down on my current project at work, I can work on the dissertation in parallel. In any case, it was no secret that my nihilism regarding the academic humanities was reaching critical mass, so after some serious deliberation, I ‘spun’ a unique job opportunity into a hiatus from expending mental and emotional energy to live under the poverty line as the equivalent of an intellectual serf.

This isn’t the kind of job I blog about, but I will mention a couple of things:

• I work right across the road from a little experimental laboratory called Xerox PARC. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.
• The perks such as free lunches and espresso drinks haven’t gone to my head nearly as much as the whiteboard cleaner.
• Every once in a while I get to wander on leisurely paths between buildings on campus, wondering the whole while whether I’ll be eaten by the mountain lions which are occasionally seen in parking lots.

In my head, I also spun the new job as impetus to purchase a new car. I’ve never had a new car; I’ve had new (very) used cars. My last car I gave up at 227,000 miles (365,321km). Whereas my previous new (very) used cars smelled like people or pets I had never met, this car smells like new car. Between the new car smell and the huge (and frequently clean) whiteboard in my office, it’s no wonder I’m a pretty happy fellow these days.

Why a new car? Well, a 27-mile mountain highway previously known as Blood Alley constitutes the majority of my commute. When it’s dry, many Californians choose to take this road at ridiculously fast speeds. The image below is a rough approximation of what it looks like driving Highway 17 at night.

If you’re driving too slow, Californians like to velcro their front bumper to your rear bumper—always a good thing to do on a windy mountain highway which occasionally features slow-moving semis. 

When it’s wet out, Californians also like to drive this highway at breakneck speeds. I decided to get a new car one day when heading back home after a very light drizzle. I passed eight accidents. If you pay attention during the day, you’ll see all sorts of shrapnel on the sides of the road—tail light lens fragments, a bumper or three, a steering wheel, a charred passenger seat. I’ve personally witnessed six accidents on this highway, and a friend of mine a few weeks ago said he looked in his rear view mirror and saw a car in the air.

So I got a Volvo.

Anyway, things will settle down a bit on my project in the very near future. I have a bunch of photos to post and just haven’t had the time.