11/23/1996

Dear God,

    This weekend, I am faced with a decision.  This is a decision that can 
affect the course of the rest of my life.  Your life.  Our lives.
    On Wednesday, I took a trip to St. Louis.  Three things happened there.
First, I had a visit with my good friend Lauren Boland over at St. Louis
University.  We had a nice chat over at a corner coffee house over cocoa
(she had a mixture of cocoa and espresso) and bagels and cream cheese.  It
was nice.  She told me about how things are going for her in a general way.
I believe she talked some about her classes, especially about the one in which
a paper was (over)due the next hour.  I met her at the front of her dorm-
itory, phoning her room.  A lot of security was there.  We then decided, as
it was 12:10 or so, that we would not have time to go somewhere to eat lunch
since her next class was at 1:00pm, at least not in my car.  So that's when
we went to the Coffee Grinder.
    I told her of a few things going on with me, how I have quit my job and
a few of the circumstances surrounding my leaving Carfax.  I think she let
me do much of the talking, actually.  But talking about Carfax was making me
angry all over again, so I decided that it would be better to talk of other
things, as I had an interview scheduled for Maritz, Co., at 2:00pm.  We fin-
ished a little early, as she had a paper she needed to print out at the com-
puter lab for her next class.  So I got to see her computer lab, and her
paper.  Helped her get the laser printer going.
    Then went over to Maritz, starting about 1:10 or 1:15pm or so.  Maritz is
off of the Bowles road exit of I-44, just west of I-44's ntersection with
I-270.  Went to the 4th Maritz entrance and had the hardest time finding a
place to park.  Ended up finally parking at the very front, right in front
of the revolving door to the reception area.  Dave Magditch was there to
greet me; I told him I didn't know what to do, as I could not find a place
to park and didn't want to be late to the appointment.  We checked with the
receptionist, and she said it would be ok to park by the flagpole where it
said "No Parking."  So I did.
    Dave then escorted me to his office (he has a *real* office!), an office
that looks a bit like a bank vice-president's office in many banks I've been
in.  His boss, Victor _______ was not available, and he needed to chase down
the other fellow who was to interview me, Dan __________.  The interview
went very well.  I was relaxed; was able to pull a pun or so.  They des-
cribed in a general way what the project was made of; it sounded very fam-
iliar to what I've been used to doing at Carfax with state edits.  
    What I was interviewing for was a position as a Quality Control Tester 
(I?).  So when the inevitable question about my experience in software 
testing came, I answered more about my experience doing programming similar 
to the kind of work they are doing with their Polaris system and database, 
from the editing of "dirty" data from many different states into a common 
format to the kinds of testing and cases tables I was accustomed to making 
in dealing with dirty data.  Then I told Dan, "Well, I am not sure that I
have really answered your question."  But I told him that I probably had 
had experience doing many different tests in the course of my work, but
had never been told the formal names of those tests.  So he rephrased his
question about my testing experience to ask me this:  Given a range from 
0-99, how would I go about testing that range?  I answered in three parts:
   1) some value less than 0, 
   2) some value within the range 0-99, and 
   3) some value greater than 99.  
He told me that was right; splitting it up into three cases like that is 
called "equivalence classes." (I knew that already, but not from my work 
at Carfax; only from my work in the Programming Development Methodology I 
class I am currently taking and that one of my colleagues feels is 
"worthless."  It helped me get the job.)  We also talked about testing
the boundary conditions as well.  I suppose a full test for a range 0-99
would be:

    1)  Some value less than -1
    2)  -1  (one less than the lower part of the range) (on the boundary)
    3)  0   
    4)  1   (one more than lower boundary; should be ok; overkill?)
    5)  some value between 2-98
    6)  98  (one less than upper boundary; should be ok; overkill?)
    7)  99
    8)  100 (one more than upper boundary)
    9)  some value greater than 100.

Ok.

    Well, I am sure you don't really care about boundary testing or equi-
valence classes, God.  Guess I'm doing this for my own benefit.
    Anyway, the interview went well.  After the interview, I went on over
to where my friend Vicki Samuels works, at Anheuser-Busch.


				11/25/96 11:18am
				
Just got off the phone with my friend Vicki.  I am more confused than ever.
Got a phone call from a fella named Arjomand at a company called Arbor Con-
sulting Resources, Inc.  Just now left a message with Dave Magditch to re-
quest that he try to have his boss Victor as well as himself available for
the teleconference at 1:00pm.  I have not yet made it into Carfax this mor-
ning.  I feel bad for that.

I do not have good feelings about Arjomand (or "AJ" as he calls himself).  I
feel a little bit bandied about like a human commodity, and it doesn't feel
very good.  I got a phone call on Friday from another person at Arbor Con-
sulting Resources, Inc., John Poole, who said he was not interested in
coming between any arrangement that may already be in progress between
myself and Maritz Company.  But when I talked to "AJ", I felt an entirely
different approach, his informing me that if it didn't work out with the job
offer tendered by Maritz to me, that he'd be willing to work with me on
this.

This whole thing is starting to feel fishy.  And I don't know what to do.
I can swallow the pride (or is it self-esteem) that Vicki is helping me
realize.  "Don't let them rush you," she has warned.  Mom agrees.  Brother
Dominic seems to think that there may be good opportunity here, just lis-
tening to my listing pro's and con's and being willing to just listen.  On
the other hand, it may be news that I am willing to work cheap, and that
Arbor may already kind of know this, thinking that I may be some kind of
sucker.  "AJ" brought up the idea of "being taken care of" at lease twice,
and claimed his company is not like "some of the others."  He also asserted
that Barbara Ainsworth was a person typical of what they do there.  Vicki
differs with that, in large part because of the difficulties her husband
Ed has had with Arbor, his currently working for them.  Dave M. also sug-
gests calling Barb.  I have not yet called Barb, and somehow don't feel
overly inclined to do so.

I just placed a call, leaving a voice-mail message, with a fellow at Linden-
bert & Associates, Donald R. Schlag, Senior Staffing Specialist.  And I also
just called Dave at Maritz (left a voice-mail) asking him to have his boss
Victor around for our teleconference at 1:00pm, a reasonable request, ac-
cording to my friend Vicki.  It is also reasonable, according to Vicki, for
me to require them to ship me a copy of the contract I was only given to
look at for a few minutes, and told that I could not take with me, before
coming to any decision.  (I think the reason I couldn't take that contract
with me is because it was already signed.)

But are these self-protecting (of pride? of self-esteem? of ???) reasonab-
ilities things I wish to risk?  Am I willing to risk that if I ask for more
(time, options, whatever) that they will grow tired of dealing with me?  And
what if they do grow tired of haggling with me?  Is that my problem or theirs?
How much do they want me?  Will Victor be available for the meeting at 1:00pm?
How many hoops are we going to require each other to jump through?

I do feel unduly pressured.  I have a whole life ahead of me.  Any decision
this big needs to be carefully considered.  I have tried to do careful con-
sideration this weekend ... but all these calls by Arbor, and the pressure
that seems to be coming from a number of sides, makes me feel like I might
be walking into some kind of vise, into something ...

				11/25/96  3:33pm
				
I declined their offer, God.  Hope this was the right choice.  Now I am
thinking about working Carfax work from home:  The KY outline that Kris
wants.  Still haven't made it into Carfax yet today.  Am thinking about
doing the KY thing now.  Am also thinking about going to bed and sucking
my thumb.  Too bad there are so few people who seem willing to work with
me on terms I can find agreeable.  *sigh*  It has been a rough day, and
all I've done outside of home so far is meet with a psychiatrist (intern?).

   See ya around, God, 
   	David