Review Time

For instance, I finally finished my Christmas shopping today. I need to drop a box in the mail to my sister, but everything else for my family is either coming with me on the plane to New England, or is on order/in the mail. Yay! I might still buy a few things for local friends, though.

Yesterday I stood in line at the Post Office for 40 minutes to mail all my crap. This wouldn't have been so bad except that I forgot to bring a book. I'm trying to train myself to bring something to read everywhere I go, but I haven't got it down yet. (Since I've recently started buying Scientific American and Analog, it's not like I have a shortage of stuff to read. Not to mention that I received three issues of Comics Buyer's Guide today, including one from October!) And even that wouldn't have been so bad except for the lady with her infant child who was crying like mad every ten minutes.

Boy, if ever there was an incentive not to have kids... I don't think I could bring myself to inflict my crying infant on the unsuspecting and potentially-innocent public.

Played ultimate frisbee again on Tuesday. My shins still aren't 100%, but they did pretty well for the evening. Not many people showed up, so we combined the four teams into two. My team got crushed early on, but we did better as the evening progressed.

And yesterday morning I had the pleasant surprise that I've lost another pound! And I kept it off through this morning, too! Yay! With some luck, maybe I can inch below the fabled 220 lb mark before Christmas (because ghod knows I'll start inching back up during my slothful vacation).

Other things sucking up my time have included looking for a new suitcase (my large one's zipper broke during my May trip to Wisconsin), taking my car in for its 15,000 mile check-up (it did fine, thanks), looking for a new strap for my watch, catching up on my TV, and reading this week's haul of comic books.

Yesterday at work I had my annual review.

Unlike my last job, where official reviews were infrequent ("Gee, you haven't had a review in two years; we should do something about that") and raises were therefore not really tied to the review, at Apple all employees are reviewed in November, consisting of writing a self-review, getting input from cow-orkers (and provided input on them), and then having it assembled by your manager in an official review, which the two of you then discuss.

Salary adjustments (as they're called) and stock option grants are generally handled at the same time as the final in-person review (though this year Apple granted stock early, to take advantage of our low stock price; our stock promptly fell another four bucks after the grant price was set).

As you may recall, I switched from testing to development this year, and also went through two different managers on each team. (In fact, if the timing had worked out slightly differently, I could have had seven different managers this year, due to three people leaving, three people moving into managerial positions, and one being an interim manager.) This was not really a hardship, as I haven't lacked for direction on either job. Anyway, my current manager has only been in the position for about a month and a half, and we haven't worked closely together in the past, so he relied largely on input from others.

Overall, the review went really well. People in the department seem to respect me, and my ability to work with other teams in Apple, as well as my writing skills, have impressed people. (I have a suspicion that I'm going to be writing quite a few documents in the coming year...) I think the direction in which I want to go is clearly understood by management, which is good.

And I was happy with my raise this year (last year I was not so happy with it), it turning out to be a smidgen above what I'd felt was reasonable to hope for. The nice thing about this is that it gives me some extra flexibility to go out and look for a home, as I could potentially spend a little bit more if necessary, or else save a little bit more after buying. I'm still trying to tighten my spending habits somewhat, anyway (not an easy thing to do during December!).

As for the stock options, well, I've decided that the only sane way to look at stock options is to consider them "funny money". I don't make plans around my stock options, and I just consider them a potential windfall. Yes, I know that in reality they are assets, but unless I can convert them into cold, hard cash tomorrow, I don't count on them. Playing games like "How much wealth have I gained/lost in the recent stock market fluctuations?" is a sucker's game.

On the other hand, I would like to stick around long enough for the stock to actually go up a good bit, and vest a good chunk of my options. That would sure be nice...

So overall it was a positive experience. Now I have to take that next step and lock in my cost of living (spiraling electricity costs notwithstanding) so the next rent increase doesn't suck away these gains.

Soon...