This week, I start my new job at Automatiq!

As I wrote in early May, I was laid off from Mechanical Orchard earlier this year. After a several month job search, I’m happy to say I’ve found a new role.

Automatiq is a ticket resale automation platform that powers every type of ticket seller. I’ll be working on a polyglot team with a focus on Elixir.

I’m looking forward to working with everyone there and learning a lot!

As always, I’m deeply grateful for everyone who reached out with opportunities, provided encouragement along the way, and generally supported me during the job search process.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

This is the longest I’ve been without work since I started delivering newspapers (remember those?) at age 13 or so. While it was a nice break in many ways, I’m ready to get back to work.

In addition to spending time every day in the job search, I also found time to:

  • 🚴‍♂️ Cycle: I put almost 2500 miles on my gravel bike during my time off and am in better physical shape than I have been for years. Not perfect, but much better.
  • 🔨 Manage construction projects: We had some work scheduled for our house this summer, and I was able to manage those projects, wrangling contractors and ensuring that everything stayed coordinated and on track.
  • 🧪 Work on open source: I made some enhancements to mix test.interactive.
  • 💵 Do some contract work: I was able to do a bit of side contract work to help out a client.
  • 📚 Publish: I built an automated publishing pipeline for The Guardian Oak Series, building a system that allowed my wife and her co-author to get book 2 of the series published.
  • 🧑‍🎓 Learn: Stayed on top of the rapidly-changing AI landscape so I didn’t fall behind while out of work. Experimented with some different tools, skills, and ideas.
  • ☎️ Stay connected: Have some great conversations with friends and former colleagues.
  • ✈️ Travel: We were able to do a weekend trip to Canada to see family, an anniversary trip to Alaska, and I attended ElixirConf in Chicago.
  • 🧒 Grandparent: I spent some extra time with my two wonderful grandchildren. Normally, I’m working when they’re here, so it was very nice to be able to spend some focused time with them.