Last Expenses (random rambling)

They're closing out where I have been working for 15 months, so these might be the last expenses I file. I won't miss that process...

I must say I got pretty clever at it using my camera (shown on the left, although one cannot see the damage R did.. other story..) in closeup mode to picture the receipts, converting to PDF for upload to the online system, then print the report to PDF and add a signature as a digital graphic, before sending it all electronically (to India, as it happens). Lots of steps just to get paid back what the company should have been paying up front, like flights and hotels, but at least it avoided printing things only to scan them back in, twice, which was the suggested process!

As for the closing it leaves me sad and annoyed. What a waste - I wasted a year and have nothing but stories to show for it - turning around a team and projects and getting some major sites launched, all of which will now just go elsewhere.

But if I am totally honest I am most annoyed at having once again to decide what to do, once again to produce a CV/resume, once again jump through hoops with recruiters, interviews, passive biases...

Perhaps I am annoyed enough to start a company instead... perhaps not. I know how hard that is, especially since I would not want to do a solo thing.

It will work out, in the end, but there's perhaps months of this stuff ahead and I don't relish that process. Nobody does. There has to be a better way... become famous? retire 35 years early? ignore it all and go hiking across the world? come up with a better way to match people to jobs and jobs to people that doesn't involve a biased process?

I need a plan. or two.

Oddly enough I was already on blip the last time I had to wrap up a job, in April 2008. It was different then, we were breaking up but most of what I had conceived and built would be sold, teams would follow the products, so much would survive. This time they just give up without having properly tried.

As for the camera, R thanked me for arranging a great birthday weekend for him by dropping the F70 which I had lent him so he could take pictures of trees. From a ladder stile, onto the rocks. The screen is, well, abstract art.
I have taken the risk of ordering a replacement LCD on ebay, will see how that works (I suspect it will be a not-very-good screen that somehow uses up the battery faster...). If not, will insist on a pocket camera with a normal viewfinder as well, next time.