The acquisition announcement that occurred last summer finally has run its course.  A few weeks ago the actual hand over occurred and such.

Good signs:

The acquiring company’s acquisition rule #1 was “We don’t want executives”.  So they caned all the executives in what was our previous company.   A good sign as that gathering of execs was likely the least impressive group I have ever worked for.  I never once met them, but OMG they were bad.  Horrible decisions that began with asking questions that indicated they fundamentally didn’t understand … anything.  Numerous “good job fellow executive” company e-mails.  Continuous poor quarters and layoffs followed by “this is an exciting time to work at __” e-mails. 

This no executives plan may have been more than just a coincidence or some sort of company nepotism by the acquiring company.  The company that acquired us actually has a former employee of ours as their CEO.  I get the feeling this was a “Dude I was there, we need to dump them all!”

Another good sign is that the executive in charge of our department is actually new to the new company and only recently fired up our equivalent department at our new combined company.  As such he met with our people and basically said “You guys already have an organization that makes money and that we’ve been trying to figure out how to start and organize here for a few months now.  We’ll be in touch… a lot.”

Our little department is not the corporate HQ, it has its good and bad possibilities.  One good thing is we’ve managed to lease out the extra space in our building here so at the very least our office space here costs nothing and oddly turns a profit.

Bad signs:

None yet, but as I said it the new company didn’t have a department like ours (at least not as complex or capable) and I get the feeling they had no idea we existed so it’s not like they had any plans for us.

Surprises:

The company that acquired us is out of California.  Surprisingly one location (not our location) we thought would be totally abandoned by the new company is actually going to be used.  Due to the price of office space and historical electricity supply issues they’re moving their entire QA lab operations out of California and to the remote site we thought would be abandoned. 

The Best Sign:

Being acquired the last time was horrendous.  IT, HR, everyone at the company acquiring us seemed to hate us.  E-mails that used the phrase “you people don’t do things the way we do, and we’re going to do it our way” were common a whole year after the acquisition.

Word has it the company acquiring us this time sent out folks who interviewed some people about the last acquisition and heard the horror stories.  As such upon being acquired they sent word to everyone in the company the day before the official acquisition telling them “These people are now our peers, treat them that way, do whatever you have to do to make them comfortable.”

It was crazy how prepared everyone was.  There were of course glitches here and there but right away we had a whole thirty days to get our paper work done and packages prepared to tell us everything we needed to do and such.  It was very nice.

Anyway they still pay me and that’s good enough for now.

New Cell Phone

The wife and I got new cell phones finally.  We use Verizon and went with the VX83000s.  Previously I had a VX6000.  The interface is a little less efficient but the display and misc details are somewhat more customizable.  At least customizable how I like it, super minimalist.  First thing I did was set the display to blue, take a photo of the sky and set it as my wallpaper.  Nice and clean.

The fact that the phone comes with the five or six worst ringtones irks me a bit.  Attention Verizon.  I bought a data cable from ebay and I’m not buying ring tones, give it up!

So in the meantime I’m surfing the net for a site that isn’t trying to sell me ringtones.  It is sad that maybe five years ago or so had I needed to search for free random midi files that would make good ringtones or something like that it would have been easier to find compared today.

Video Games

I’ve been playing a lot of Supreme Commander.  It lives up to its billing as the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation.

Sony announced its Second Lifeish / doomed to become micro transaction and advertising hell game lobby system called “HOME”.  Attention Sony, stuff like this should be done before you release a system.  Call me when you have some games that I want to play.  K thnx bye.

Adobe Lightroom

Adobe finally released Lightroom.  Of course it costs far more than they hinted at early on but I am enjoying it anyway.  It has all the actual photofinishing tools I regularly use (and more), along with being an awesome photo organization tool.  Finally one easy place to view all my photos and do stuff with them.

It has a couple 1.0 quirks.  Nothing that breaks the software but dang it when importing photos my mouse wheel should NEVER auto scroll thru the possible import options.  It is too easy to scroll, and not realize you changed a very important option.  In fact that import method option should somehow be set permanently somewhere so you don’t have to make sure it is set right each time as it is unlikely you would chose more than the one option you want … ever.

It might sound cheesy but I feel like I’ve found many of my photos all over again.

Sick

I caught a cold last week.  I called in sick yesterday as I’m on call later this week and can’t be in that perpetual state of sinus pressure and survive being on call at the same time.  Had to sleep in the guest room to avoid waking the wife with my many trips to blow my nose and sniffling a few night.  Thankfully this cold appears to be subsiding quickly.

Marriage

We passed the six month mark for being married.  I believe it was our “beyond Hollywood” anniversary.  Things are calm and well.

House

Talk of spawning sometime in the next few years has the wife thinking about the house.  Moving two people in their late 20s who always lived on their own into my tiny house resulted in much discarding of extra stuff.  Even so my two bedroom 1.5 bath tiny town house is at best a starter home if we ever plan to have more than one pair if feet (even then it would be hard come teenage time).  So the wife likes to browse the newspaper for new homes. 

It’s surprising how just a few ticks in interest rates and a few ticks in home price can result in an insanely higher monthly mortgage payment.  I’m a big penny pincher and I’d rather not have my current mortgage payment rise much if we were to buy a new larger home.  Toss in my equity plus my own savings and I figured that would work out but now I’m not so sure.  Different calculators tell me different things.

In the meantime there is the issue of the wife’s family.  The fact is the father in law has lots of money.  You wouldn’t know it because he’s about as modest as it comes, and his kids really don’t know how much he has as growing up not having to worry about money the kids of course never thought of it, or thought to ask.

The father in law was awesome and bought us a new car (the wife’s old car was going to explode) for the wedding, wrote a check for it.  He doesn’t do it flamboyantly or anything.  He’s just the kind of dad that feels it is his job to provide and that’s how he shows his love.

So I married the daughter who on top of not really knowing her father’s finances, also doesn’t like using her family’s money.  The other daughters were happy to run to private school and get that paid for and received money for starting new houses and etc.  Mine went to public school, took out some loans and works to pay them off.  All very honorable . . .

How do I say this?  I’m more than happy to be the recipient of her father’s love.  At the same time I in no way shape or form want to ask for it as the new car for the wedding IMO was crazy nice of them.  A reliable family vehicle on top of the help with finances is a blessing.  Then again if there is a financial transaction that a few extra $ goes a long way it is buying a house.

We’ll see what happens.  New house searching right now is a purely casual affair and we’ve no immediate plans for buying a new house.  If the wife refuses to use the family resources so be it.  We’ll survive, but boy it would be nice…  One more whole bathroom would be keen.