Family / Work

I had a great weekend.  My Mom visited so I spent it with her.  Gave her the Bioware tour, went to nice restaurants, saw Transformers 2 and UP.  Spent a lot of time with Bill and Tia.  It was great seeing her again; I hadn’t seen her since Christmas.  She was happy for me and my new life.

We went to the Muttart Conservatory, and then spent the afternoon on Whyte Ave.  We visited the Chapters and I bought a book that I’ve heard is very useful in the QA Design field, The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.  An amazing read so far, all about how there is an age old story structure pattern that appears in all myths and fictions of our past and even in current movies, games and books.  This “monomyth” shows up everywhere because it is our internal story, the common narrative which guides us from birth, through adolescence and finally to death.  This internal story finds its way into all our stories.  Very cool stuff, and I can see how it’s so useful to QA Design.

Yesterday was my Mom’s last day in Edmonton.  Sad to see her go again.  I’m going to try to visit Winnipeg in October.  Either I’ll have 3 months I need to take off between terms, or I’ll be full time with 3 weeks paid vacation and can afford it.  We’ll see.

On that topic, over the past few months I’ve been looking for QA Design work I could volunteer for to prove myself, but unfortunately it’s very hard to find that kind of work at this stage because most Design work has been completed for some time.  I can’t get in to specifics, but I took some initiative and pulled a bit of a power-play that really paid off.  All the right people seem to be impressed, and that can’t be a bad thing.  So now I’m doing some QA Design work, and I love it.  I’ve already received some great feedback.  I really feel like this is something I’m good at and could make a career out of.

And that may be sooner than I expected.  A QA Design Analyst position at Bioware was just posted.  I spent hours working on a new resume, custom made for this position.  I had it proof read by several people, and took their input.  In the end it went through 4 iterations.  It looks really professional.  The only official way to apply is online, but I also printed a copy and booked a small meeting with the Quality Assurance Lead at Bioware and personally handed him my resume so he knew I was serious about it.  And now he can put a face to the name.  Couldn’t hurt.  He seemed to appreciate it. 

This one is a bit of a long shot, I admit, but I’m trying my hardest to get it.  But even if I don’t, it looks good for the next time a position opens up.  By then I’ll have QA Design experience from this new assignment I volunteered for, and hopefully some references from that team.  And they’ll see I’ve applied before and am clearly determined on getting the position and increasing my knowledge in the area. 

But I am still secretly hoping, despite the odds, that I get the position first time around.  That would be just swell.