Nailed it!

Holy smokes people, life is a whirlwind. A true told whirling dervish. I am now employed! I had both of my interviews today after blazing a trail in my minivan down to Austin from Dallas. This morning I interviewed with Jason and Nick at OuterNet, a server hosting and management IT company right on the beautiful banks of the Colorado river (yes, the same river that carved out the grand canyon).
Apparently I did something right for once and a few hours later I got called back with a job offer, and I accepted!
The nitty gritty of the job is that I will be providing technical and phone support for OuterNet's clients in regards to server operations and maintenance. This ranges from escalating calls to the appropriate party to getting hands on with the equipment. It is a small company (35 employees or so) with a great atmosphere and incredible growth potential. It is a position where I have experience, and I think I will learn a ton about the industry. Nick said that there is great opportunity to move up the ranks. I will go into more detail after I start, of course. Check out the link for more info:

OuterNet's website

I have a feeling this might be a long post, but you all love my creative and colorful style of writing so consider it a gift.

Sooo, a little bit about my first day in Austin. I arrived at about 9:00 in the night and took a quick gander through downtown which I honestly can say is the most inviting and modern downtown I have ever seen. I then went down to find the hostel

link to the Hostel in Austin

and luckily they had 1 single bed left for the night, phew. The hostel was amazing with 40 something beds, a massive clean common area, huge patio, and a huge lot on the river just a couple miles from the skyline of downtown. It was late and I was tired but I managed to meet a guy from Wisconsin that used to play shows in downtown La Crosse at Popcorn and Nighthawks. A crazy old scottish guy, a Swede, and even ran into my aussie buddy Alex who I met in Dallas. There were people running around all over the place but I had some research and work to attend to.
They really packed em in like sardines and the beds are noisy, every time you move it sounds like you're crushing a bag of potato chips. I was on the top bunk in a room of 14 dudes and everyone was snoring and coming in late so it was a terrible night of sleep to say the least.

I've been running around the city since early morning, and the layout is fantastic. There is a skyscraper boom in downtown, apparently the housing market is also booming in the city. It is known as "Silicon Hills" a play on Silicon Valley where all the IT companies are located. Major companies running out of Austin include Cisco, Google, Apple, HP, AMD, ebay, intel, Samsung, Sun microsystems and countless others. Recession? What recession, this city is booming!

Let's give some numbers: According to wikipedia in 1990 there were 472,000 people in the city limits. As of 2009, there were 758,000. I'm no good with numbers, oh wait yeah I am, and that comes out to 80% growth in 20 years. Almost doubled in size!

There are rolling hills everywhere with gorgeous homes and businesses. Nothing looks rundown, but of course there has to be a bad part of town - there's a bad part of every town. Wherever it is I'll just never go there and pretend it doesn't exist. I did read though that this metro is basically (one of) the best large city(s) to live in based on crime statistics, income, and cost of living. The capital building is nestled in between downtown and the HUGE university of Texas longhorns. It is a very liberal city which is very rare in Texas, and in the south as a whole. There are young people everywhere, the city is very clean, there are no expansive ugly huge highways running all over, the city planners seemed to have their heads screwed on straight.
There are about 1.6 million people that live in the area, so comparable to Milwaukee without the crappiness.

The young tech savvy liberal minded population and great urban planning makes for some of the best nightlife (I've heard) in the entire country. And starting today happens to be the largest music festival on the planet, south by southwest aka (SXSW) where there are tons of shows, movie premieres, and apparently free beer!! I'm thinking it might just be a really big Madison without the winter.

website for South By SouthWest



So due to SXSW getting a hotel was tough but I had to fork over some cash at a Best Western which is pretty nice actually for a 2 person room, but oh well.

Tonight I plan on checking out 6th street downtown, listening to some great music, drinking a celebration beer and meeting more incredible people as I try to grasp the fact that I'm going to be living here. Then next up is finding an apartment. I have the business card of the boyfriend of a girl I just met, and he happens to be a real estate guy that knows all about the apts. in Austin so I'll hit him up right now, and of course check craigslist!


OK I know I don't know squat about Texas, and that maybe I'm talking the area up a bit, but I am excited and super happy to finally have found a job. Other places are fantastic, but it was no sense trying to force the square peg in a round hole.

The roller coaster of life brings you up, then down, then up....and on and on. The peaks are great, but are only really enjoyable if you experience the valleys.

I saw on a billboard the other day in Dallas "It's not what you achieve, it's what you overcome", and it's true.

And as a final note, THANKS MOM!! love ya, you're the best!