A new job

[Brian Moffet]

This started in another thread, where I mentioned that I had gotten a new job. I have, and it's going to be a major change for my wife and I.  We currently own a house in Santa Cruz, and I work at the local university as a computer programmer/digital media guru.  On a whim, I noticed that industrial Light and Magic, the special effects house started by George Lucas, had an interesting position called "pipeline developer".  I applied and promptly forgot about it, since it is pretty much one of the top, if not the top computer special effects houses around.

A while later, I got a call from an HR person at ILM, and we talked about that position.  I sent him a new resume, and forgot about it. I have had situations where the HR person thinks I may be a good match and I never get called again.  A couple of days later, I got a call from the supervisor to the position and I impressed him with my background and skills.  He told me that he was going to arrange an on-site interview.  I was told that on the 24th of July, I needed to give a 1/2 hour presentation on how my skills meet their needs.

Come the 24th, I drove up to San Francisco, a 2 hour drive, and parked in the underground parking lot.  I carefully grabbed all of my things and shut the door.  And I looked at my keys sitting on the dashboard, behind locked doors.  Great start.  The interview was at 4:00, and I just left my keys there, I would deal with it later.

After trying to find the HR guy, I was led into the interview room, where I met Tommy, the supervisor, and I saw a friend of mine from college (nigh on 25 years ago).  I did well on the interview, and did manage to get my keys out of the car and drive home.  Some friends of ours went to a late dinner with us.  We got back late, and crashed.

The next morning, I saw I had missed a message.  Turns out I had really impressed them, and they offered me the position the same day.  Most times ILM will delay several weeks, which is what I was expecting.  Needless to say, after accepting, a huge train of events started.  We needed to figure out what my wife would do, housing issues (too long to commute) and all of that stuff.

End results, I will be moving to San Francisco at the end of August.  I need to figure out what to do with my vehicles: 3 cars, 2 bikes and a plane.  I need to find a place to rent, I need to get our house rented...  It's going to be an interesting month.

As far as the job?  As you might imagine, every single frame of a special effects movie needs to be either modified, generated, or something like that.  The pipeline is the software that guides the frames along, scheduling time on a large number of computers, does fault-recovery, etc...  It's going to be a fascinating position, working on the bleeding edge of distributed computing and special effects computing.  I'm looking forward to it, even if it is a huge change in our lives.

So, as the month moves along, I'll probably becomes less visible on the forum, and after I start at ILM probably disappear for large periods of time.  I'll still read when I can, and offer what help I can.  I'll even threaten to photoshop Lucky occasionally  :)  I don't know where my bike will be, whether with me or stored for a while.  I'm more likely to sell my RX-7 than my vision...

Brian

[Tiger]

 8) Congratulations Brian...Wishing you and your family Bon Voyage and good luck in the new position... 8)

                        8).......TIGER....... 8)

[h2olawyer]

Cool story, Brian.  Now that you're in the private sector, remember - they expect results!

Congrats on the position and I hope it doesn't take too much time away from your Vision and Stinson (and other toys), yet still leaves the all important family time.

H₂O

[Ron_McCoy]

Congratulations Brian, best of luck in your new position. I'll take care of your Vision for you now that its clean.

Ron  ;D ;D ;D

[Brian_Matthewson]

Brian, if I owned a house in Santa Cruz, I wouldn't leave for anything!!!
Must be a fantastic opportunity!
Congratulations & good luck!
Brian

[Night Vision]

all I can say is WOW....

... and congrats!
....and let us know what movie has your first creds that flash by  ;)

[Lucky]

Fantastic & congrats!

(& I can stop sweating for a while, lol  ::)  )

[supervision]

   Way to go Brian!  Sounds interesting

[Kevin]

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU.

[ColinthePilot]

Congrats. I'll expect good things on whatever Star Wars installment/improvement ILM decides to do next.

BTW...I'll babysit the Stinson as long as you need!!!

[glennw]

Congratulations..  :o
San Francisco is the perfect place for you Brian!
Keep the Vision parked out front so you know why
you are working so hard!... Honestly is must be nice to
work at something you enjoy!
GlennW

[abogado68]

Congratulations (felicidades and en hora buena in Spanish) Brian. It's a great felling to conqueor a new objective in life. In SFO I have my law partner who is a bike lover and who currently takes care of my vision I just bought. His name is Eric Messersmith. His cel phone is 1-415-793-3333, give him a call, tell him I gave you his info and that you are a fellow visionary moving to SFO, he might help you out. Once again CONGRATULATIONS.

[Brian Moffet]

Anyone in San Francisco have suggestions on Rental Agencies (those people that will hunt down appropriate apartments/houses that match your needs, etc...)?

Thanks,
Brian

[kiawrench]

hey,, brian,,,
   sorry to be a bug,, send me regular e-mail  kiawrench @aol.com  ,, havea question to ask , but is way off topic ,and still legal

[YellowJacket!]

Congratulations Brian and best of luck to you!  ;D

David

[haunter]

thats awesome!

[Tanno]

A shot-in-the-dark on a great oportunity. Now, aren't you glad you took that shot?

Great find and CONGRATS!!!

[kiawrench]

thanks Brian for fast response and great direction,, that boy is still online ,found a slew of info to get him in right direction!   and he says the maya link will make his senior class project the perfect cap to his schooling--- whatever that means------- something about finally skinning his skeletons and adding some sort of motion dynamics he never had access to -- i am scared to see this !!

[Brian Moffet]

As long as he's okay with a watermark, glad to help out. My wife and I are going up to the city to look at a place in the Sunset district (named for a street, it's too foggy to see the sun) and an apartment complex nearer to where I'll be working.  For those interested, this is the building complex I'll be working at:  http://www.onelettermandrive.com/welcome.html

It's getting a little strange, yesterday was my last day at UCSC in the film department, and it turns out that my evil (or good) twin in the department (same basic job I have) has resigned and is headed to a startup in San Francisco.  That leaves 1/2 of an employee to handle 200+ production students and faculty, and she's only been there 4 months.

Brian

[h2olawyer]

Looks like a nice place to work.  Also sounds like the 1/2 employee at UCSC will have to get up to speed pretty quickly - hope the University is looking for some experienced help to hire as well!

H₂O