halfacanuck

It seems that I have a lot less time to blog now that I'm not sitting at my computer for 14 hours each day. I'm hardly ever online these days. Most disturbing. However, I thought I'd share today's events with you, given that they were so enjoyable.

It all started, in fact, about a week ago. I woke up one morning (possibly Tuesday, possibly Wednesday) with a small and slightly painful lump on my back, about halfway up, on the right-hand side. Now I'm no stranger to mysterious lumps (take that how you may), given that I have an as-yet unidentified allergy to, er, something that causes the occasional eruption of such things in various areas of my body (usually forearms, wrists or back). Normally I pop an antihistamine and go about my business, and the lump swiftly disappears as mysteriously as it arrived.

This one, however, refused to go away. I waited a day, and it was still there. Perhaps slightly bigger, even, and a touch more painful. Normal people would go to the doctor at this point, but I'm not normal. Another day later it was still there, bigger and more strident. Did I go to the doctor? I did not.

As the days passed the lump became ever more self-confident, until finally this morning it covered an area of roughly 2 1/2 inches square and was throbbing boastfully, and I determined I would see a doctor in my lunch hour. So I did, and upon revealing my unwelcome visitor to him he gave a gasp of surprise.

"Wow, it's a big one!" he exclaimed insightfully, his years of medical training surging into action.

"Yes. Yes it is," I agreed, for there was no disputing it.

"It's infected. You need to go to the ER. ASAP."

"You mean now?"

"Um, yes?"

"Oh."

So I went to the ER and sat. Then I sat for a while, breaking up the monotony with a little sitting here and there. After about two hours of sitting (and sitting) I was summoned into a treatment room.

"So you've got a lump on your back, or something?" asked the nurse.

"The former," I replied.

"Let's have a look then."

So I lift my shirt and am once again complimented on the magnificence of my subcutaneous abnormality. The nurse bustles off and returns shortly with some tools. I'm to be administered an antibiotic intravenously, because I'm already running a fever and the doctor thinks "oral treatment would take too long." I bite my tongue. Hard.

So I'm hooked up to a drip and lie there wondering whether or not I should be alarmed by the air bubbles in the IV line. Then the doctor enters.

"Should I be alarmed by the air bubbles in the IV line?" I ask casually.

"You've watched too many movies," says the doctor, grasping my shoulder. "It'll be okay."

Behind the doctor are two guys, both younger than me and significantly more dishevelled.

"These doctors will be draining your abscess today," she explained. "No, they really are doctors, despite being about 19. Except for that one, who will perform the procedure. He's an intern, and will ask questions like 'So I put this thing in there, then?' throughout. And also 'Can I touch this bit?' But it's okay, because the other guy is a doctor, even though he'll seem incredibly anxious the whole time. It'll all be fine. I'm going to go now."

Before I could hurl myself to the floor and detain her by her ankles she swept from the room, leaving the two teenagers gazing at my back uncertainly. I won't distress you with the details of the procedure, except to say that the local anaesthetic they gave me was woefully inadequate, and once they'd reached about an inch deep with their foul implements of torture my lively vocalisations brought the proper doctor rushing back in.

"Er, you could perhaps give him a sedative?" she hinted. "Would you like something to take the edge off the pain, Ross?"

"Why, now you mention it that does seem like rather a good idea," I hinted back, though perhaps I worded it a little more emphatically at the time, and soon a warm soothing opiate was coursing through my brain and my nose was all a-tingle.

"Wait three minutes for it to kick in," she told the knife-wielding children above me. "We often make that mistake, start poking around right after we've given the sedative."

"Please don't make that mistake," I whimpered.

So they finished cutting and draining, giving me a bump of happy-juice halfway through when I started cursing again, then they packed the cut full of gauze and dressed it with a square foot of inch-thick bandages and instructed me to lie still for 20 minutes. So I did, rather enjoying the calm heavy-limbed feeling that crept over me from the sedative.

I have to go back tomorrow for more intravenous antibiotic, then the next day for the gauze to be changed, and probably again after that, since I assume they're not going to leave the gauze in there forever and ever. They left the remnants of the IV thingy in my arm, too, so that they don't have to drill into me again. Something tells me falling asleep tonight is going to be interesting.

So there you have it: my latest wild and wacky adventure, also the second-most physically painful experience of my life (the first was trying to get out of bed with a broken rib).

It's just a shame the ending isn't better.

It's been a long time since I wrote, I know, and I have no real excuse except the lethargy of joblessness followed by a sudden mad rush of employment. Here's a life update...

I passed a couple of weeks looking for work. Everywhere. I spent hours walking round downtown giving out resumes wherever I saw a "help wanted" sign. I went to employment centres, I surfed Monster and Workopolis. I filled out the obligatory Starbucks application. I went to an IT recruiter, who told me that my resume is unimpressive and I'm going to have a tough time finding work. I even had an impromptu interview for the position of "assistant chef" at a sushi restaurant. In retrospect it's perhaps a good thing he laughed me out of the building.

Then, via Monster, I found the position of "Senior UNIX software developer" at a place called Sophos. I'd heard of them, or at least their anti-virus product, but knew next to nothing about them. Then I read the job description. I've looked at a lot of job descriptions online in the IT industry, but there was always something out of place, something that didn't quite fit with me. Either they required some skill I didn't possess or the work sounded dull. But this one was me. It was as if I'd given someone the commission of writing the perfect job for me. All my skills matched, I had more than the amount of experience they required. The only thing I lacked was a degree. I wavered for a while, decided to attempt to write a cover letter, and came up with the perfect opening line. The minute I stopped writing and read it over, I knew, somehow, I knew that they'd want to talk to me. The rest of it wrote itself, I attached my resume, hit send, and crossed my fingers. (What's the opening line, you ask? It was "HELO," which you'll only understand if you speak SMTP. Which you probably don't, because you're not an email server.)

Two days later I was working at a construction site as a general labourer (yes, I underestimated how hard it would be. No, I don't want to talk about it. The emotional scars are still too fresh) and got a call around noon. It was a recruiter from Sophos. They wanted to see me. The next day. "Holy crap," I thought to myself. "Holy crap," I said out loud. "Fuckin get back to fuckin work!" yelled Jim the lead hand, who needs some serious help with his people management skills.

So Friday there I am, betied, sitting across from Dave Cornell, Spam Analyst, and Dmitry Samosseiko, one of the guys who helped start ActiveState. He would be my boss in the SPOPS (Spam Operations) team, also known as SophosLabs. Holy crap. It's funny, though. I wasn't nervous. I hadn't been nervous since I wrote that first line of my cover letter. I knew I could do the job. I already had my foot in the door. I was confident, I made them laugh (by referencing Larry Wall's shirts), and I answered all their technical questions without hesitation. It went pretty good, I figured. Then

Dmitry: To be honest, we really like you.
Me: Oh. Uh... Cool!
Dmitry: We still have someone else to interview, but... [To Dave] I guess we still have to interview that guy...?
Dave: I guess.
Dmitry: But anyway, please don't accept any offers until you hear from us.
Me: Okay...

Holy crap, I thought. Then Dave invites me out to lunch with the team, and during lunch he tells me I nailed it (the interview. Not the lunch), and then I get a call from the Sophos recruiter, arranging an interview for Tuesday.

Dave: Was that HR?
Me: Yup.
Dave: Jesus. That was quick.

All in all I considered the events of the day to be mildly promising, if you'll permit me to wander deep into understatement.

So Tuesday rolls around (very slowly. Very, very slowly) and there I am again, being quizzed by a couple of programmers. I do pretty well, I think, and then I get a five-minute break before meeting Janet, the HR Director. We talk for fifteen minutes and then she says and holy crap then she says and then she formally offers me the job and I spend the next couple seconds moving my lips before I realized that no sounds were emerging, and then thanked her, I think, I don't really remember, and she went off to fetch my contract, which had apparently already been prepared, and I signed, and she signed, and we agreed I'd start Thursday, i.e. yesterday, and that was that.

So there you have it. There was a slight catch, which I'll talk about another time, and I've got about $75 left of my savings to last me 10 days until I get paid, but fuck it, I have a job, a really good job, at the kind of company you read about all the time but don't believe actually exists: where I can show up more or less when I want, where I can wear what I want, where coffee and tea is free and food is heavily subsidized, where there are pool tables and fussball tables and a beer fridge (yes, a beer fridge) and a patio with a hottub (yes, a hottub), and a bunch of young, friendly and really, really smart people, right downtown in a beautiful city.

I always knew being kind to small animals would pay off one day.