Here goes...

In just over an hour, I'm heading to the airport to go to Scumdee Dundee. Flight's at 2.40, arrives at 3.30. I should be at the company apartment around 4.30 or 5.00, if everything goes smoothly. I doubt I'll have an internet connection there, and even if there's a port I won't have anything able to connect.

According to the contract, I'm supposed to start work tomorrow at 10am, so hopefully it'll be decent weather and I'll be able to walk in, just to familiarize myself with the route while I've got the time.

At this point, all I can think of are the negative things. Not even anything in particular; just general unease/nervousness and my natural pessimism. Fingers crossed it'll all go smoothly and I won't make an utter arse of myself on the first day.

I'm done

Just had my exit interview at my old employer, which means - more or less - that I'm free to go whenever. I'll probably hang about til the usual time anyway, though; not in any rush to get stuck in rush-hour traffic.

It's a weird feeling. I've been working in this building for four and a half years; the idea that I'm never going to be back in it after today is really quite alien.

Two weeks from now, on the 16th, I'll be flying into Dundee to start at RTW. That's a much more daunting prospect; it's been so long since I started a new job, I'm not sure what I'll have to do. I don't know what training to expect, what forms I'll have to fill in, or even how long it'll take to meet the people I'm going to be working with, hopefully for at least as long as I've been here. The fact that it's a completely new industry, with an entirely different type of product that's more complex by an order of magnitude than anything I've had to work on here, isn't too comforting either.

Still, I'm looking forward to the challenge. As busy as I've been kept where I am, it was rarely very taxing on an intellectual level - at least, not after the first few months.

Job thoughts

Seems to be a bit of a slow news day - the fact that one of today's biggest stories is the revelation that some woman took drugs 25 years ago should be proof enough of that.

So, in lieu of any actual stuff to post (read: rip off) from other sites, I'm just going to ramble about my move to Dundee - skip this post if you're not interested.

I've resigned from my current post, and I've been given a final working day of August 10th, although I'm still debating whether to take some of my remaining holidays off before then to get out sooner. I've already got the 10th off for Amecon, so another couple of days to chill out would be appreciated.

After Ame, I'll be back in Belfast for one night before I hop on a one-way plane to Scotchland. I've never taken a one-way trip before; it's kind of a scary thought. I start at Realtime on Wednesday, August 15th.

It's going to be a busy couple of weeks, though - I'll be staying in a flat provided by the company for the first while, but I've got to look for places to live on a more permanent basis, and they aren't going to be cheap. I'll also have to fly back to Northern Ireland for Tomo-Dachi, after just a week in Dundee. All the while working as much as I can, for two reasons: to make a strong impression, and so that I get into the routine properly.

I've got a big list of scary thoughts as well - top of the list is the aforementioned accomodation search. While it would be much cheaper to just stay in the company apartment, I don't think they'd appreciate that kind of sponging. Still, it's not going to be much fun, and Lord knows what sort of place I'll end up being ripped off for. Searches online haven't revealed any awesome bargains, either.

Not sure what to do with all the stuff that's in the house in Belfast, either; looked into storage places 'round Dundee, but they're much more expensive than I was expecting. Might see if I can just stash stuff at the folks' and have them look after it until I get more permanent living arrangements. Of course, I've got to get round to packing it all away first, and I've got no idea how I'll get it out of that house, being sans voiture.

I'm looking forward to the new job, certainly - there's just a whole load of frightening stuff around it that I've got to take care of while getting used to a new company, new people, a new place, and even a new accent.

It's all very exciting, in an utterly terrifying kind of way.

New job

Just over a month ago, I applied for a job at Realtime Worlds in Dundee, as a Software Test Engineer. It's the first job I've actually applied for in almost five years; when I quit University I started working in a callcentre in Belfast and through a series of contract changes moved into software testing.

Games Tester is one of those jobs that everybody who's ever played games dreams about getting. It sounds like a fantastic way to earn a living - you're paid for playing videogames all day, right? And it's a great door into the industry if you really want to do something else instead.

Although an insurance website is a far cry from entertainment software, I've been thinking more and more seriously about trying to move into games QA since I started testing here in Belfast. It's broken a lot of my misconceptions about testing in general and I know for a fact that without the benefit of the experience I've gotten in these three years I wouldn't have had the confidence to apply for the job.

On top of that, I quite enjoy testing. One of my favourite things about progarmming always was how to solve problems, and there's a lot of the same mindset needed for testing. Taking what's required and working out what should be provided by the software, as well as what shouldn't. I like working in QA, although the environment I'm currently working in is starting to get to me, and the variety of applications just isn't large enough. I've been staring at the same few screens for almost the entire three years, and it's just getting frustrating.

So, for the sake of a change of scenery in my professional life, and partly just to see if I could get another job (not a good idea to stake my entire reserve of self-confidence on this job application, but I did anyway) I decided to apply to Realtime Worlds.

I'd played Crackdown, of course. I'd never have looked on their website if I hadn't. I opened the Careers section on a whim; I'd never seen QA jobs actually advertised on a company website before, I assumed this would have the same "coders, artists, send in your CVs!".

That they not only had QA positions open, but ones that I could apply for without feeling like I was stretching plausiblity, was something of a revelation. It took me a couple of months to dust off and polish my CV and write a cover letter (which turned out to be what got my application a second look), and before I knew it I'd been sent a C# coding questionnaire (which scared the shit out of me, considering I'd not used object-oriented languages in five years) and then given a phone interview.

I had a face-to-face interview just over two weeks ago, and an hour ago got a call from the Realtime Worlds HR department offering me the job, with a significant increase (~9%) on my current salary.

Now I just need to serve my month's notice... and hand in my resignation first, obviously.

Still no word

The interview on Monday went pretty well, I thought. A very casual conversation, all in all, punctuated by the occasional awkward Interview Question.

I was expecting to hear back pretty quickly; they'd been really fast getting back to me at every other stage, but nothing about this yet. Every email notification I got this week, I got terribly excited and then disappointed immediately after.

It's not even the thought that I might not have gotten the job that gets to me either - it's the not knowing. I'd rather know I haven't got the job, than not know I have.

Back from the dead?

I've deleted almost everything from this account (all of which is still on my LiveJournal), with the intent of starting a more regularly updating "blog". The two remaining here, I kept for no real reason except I think they cover things that might be important to know about me.

News:I'm currently waiting for word back about a job at a software company in Dundee; I applied for it three or four weeks ago, and have since had a telephone interview and a real face-to-face one which was on Monday.

Fingers crossed.