if you haven’t read parts 1 and 2 of this posting, do so now.

so at that point, i had to decide where to take not only my career, but also my life. i wasn’t just taking myself somewhere anymore, i had a wife to think of at this point.

so crystal and i debated back and forth, forth and back, about this decision. this was the cause of approximately 2 weeks of sleepless nights for us. we spent many a days in coffee houses making pros and cons lists. we asked everyone we knew for insight as to the decision they might make, hoping that their decision might shed light on a different aspect of the dilemma we had yet to consider.

it was no use; every time it was debated and talked about, the matter came down to one thing: proximity to businesses (so crystal can get a job) and proximity to a good university. we were afraid that crystal wouldn’t be able to find a job in boise as the market was pretty thin. boise state university was also fairly unimpressive; their CS department seemed to be the most under funded department.

on the positive side, HP was offering a research position. since i am extremely interested in doing commercial research and this is what made HP’s offer most interesting. the huge pay increase also made it all the more appetizing.

boise was a definite change from texas. it was roughly 20-30 degrees cooler in march. the mountains were snowcapped but that was about it. there were views of the foothills which looked very scenic (rolling and all). the downtown has maybe 3 or 4 towers but that’s about it. it looked like a cleaner and more empty austin. there was one highway which took you from one end of the town to the other in 5 minutes. the town in general had the feeling of kansas with some small mountains.

i have to hand it to HP; they know how to take of applicants. we received $250 in traveler’s checks the next day. we had flight and hotel arrangements made immediately (which is more than i can say for L-3). they set us up in a hilton on the banks of the city’s river (boise river, clever name). we tried to have an authentic boise dinner so we ate at a place (can’t remember the name) that was near the hotel.

HP was a big plant, spread across 7 or 8 buildings. most rooms in the buildings were cubical farms. part of the site used to apparently be a manufacturing plant for their printer division, but most of that had been moved to china. the first guy that i talked to was supposed to grill me over algorithms and general computing questions. i know this because i saw the cheat sheet the hiring manager had on his clipboard. the guy took me to get some coffee while we talked in the cafe. it became clear to him in no time that i was not lying on my resume. in a few minutes, he said that he could tell that i was clearly competent in my field and didn’t need to ask any more algorithms questions. at this point, he wanted to hear more about my school/personal projects.

the rest of the interviews were fairly plain. i handled them all very well and all of the interviewers appeared impressed. the only difficult interview came from the hiring manager. it was a very pressing interview, including many open ended and behavioral questions. the day ended well and i was invited to stick my nametag on a massive ball of previous interviewees’ nametags.

overall, i was very impressed with HP, more so than L-3. On the other hand, L-3 had the location card on its side. after much deliberation, we decided that L-3 would be best for our careers and lives. i decided that a master’s and phd from UTD is more important than one job. ten years from now, i won’t regret passing up my first choice job. the same goes for crystal; she will be earning her mba.

we spent the next 2 weeks making very frequent trips to dallas to look for a place to live. we were originally going to buy a cheaper home with no up-front financing. after seeing too many homes we were less than pleased with, we decided to find an apartment while we paid off our consumer debt and saved to cover closing and maybe some down payment.

as a side note, we decided against continuing our past dealings with the coldwell banker real-estate agent that we were using. he whined constantly, on everything from his imminent divorce to him not making a sale. get this: after we drove around rockwall with him for 2 hours and listened to him talk about his several properties that he owns here and there, he had the gall to claim that he would not be eating that night because we did not sign for a home that day!!

so we packed up and the usual crew helped up fill a u-haul. we rented a 24″ truck this time because the 17″ truck barely held my belongings when i moved out of sendero ridge. we are now living in a much nicer, cheaper and smaller apartment in mckinney texas. it’s a small town (pop 90k) 30 minutes north of dallas. the reason we chose to live there was because of the access to highway 380. that road is one of 2 routes to greenville (the sticks), where i work.

so here we are now, we’ve been here for 2 months and i just received my second paycheck, so things have started rolling smoothly and life is great. in my next posting, i’ll talk about some of our experiences since we’ve moved here. stay tuned.