White Boy/White Dog Move To Skid Row

Certified Beach Dude Moves To Downtown Los Angeles

I am not too big of a man to admit when I am wrong, and I was SO wrong about almost everything involving my contract at the insurance company in the Valley. First off, I thought an insurance company would be the most boring, technologically impared company to work at. WRONG!

The project I am on is a $20 million dollar re-vamp of their bread-and-butter: the Claims processing system. They are getting rid of the IBM AS/400 in favor of Linux servers and a completely new software package. This company has been pushing technology since the late 1940s- they were one of the first to adopt computers, using mountains of 80-column card decks to store data and always having the latest IBM mainframe to handle the processing. Their current claim processing system has evolved since the 1950s- there is remnents of code that shows the use of single character year fields (when data storage was a premium, the use of a single digit for a year was substantial savings- of course they went to 2-digits and then 4-digits to solve the “Y2K” problem). There is still an active claim on-line from a 1952 workers compensation claim of asbetos poisoning.

The owner of the company is the son of the founder, and he is very health-concious, stemming from his wife’s 3-year battle with cancer, that I understand she is winning (it’s a public company but still run as a family business). He offers incentives to employees to exercise and lose weight- Weight Watchers re-imbursements, subsidized gym membership ($10/month cost) at the on-site gym, and low-cost pedometers to track the steps employees take on their daily walk-breaks. Additionally, free health-screenings where employees can win a new Pontiac Solstice sportscar for participating.

The ladies in my area turn out to be very sweet, Armenian folks (many, many Armenians working and living in the Valley- 60% of Glendale is Armenian I hear). When I thought I was coming down with a cold one day, my “cube-mate” offered to go to drugstore at lunch and get me some medicine- just an example of how good they treat me.

And my “boss” turns out to be a very funny, dry-humored guy that is extremely smart, organized, but doesn’t like the B.S. of “normal” corporate Info Sys departments. We get along great and have a strong mutual respect for each other, which makes the working environment perfect. And, to top it off, he is PAYING me to learn- he wants me to do all the DBA (database administration) and change-management stuff for my project, and he wants me to take the time to learn on my own and to “play” with all the tools on the AS/400- I have admin access to virtually everything. Not that I’ll use these skills again, but I always like learning, and getting paid to do it is so cool!

Now I understand why most of the people I work with have been at the company for 20, 30, or more years… I always thought my previous high-tech employers such as Peter Norton Computing, or Sony Pictures or Marshall Industries knew how to “do it right” but this Insurance company is a stellar place to work, as a contractor or as an employee.

I am one extremely happy dude- I really haven’t smiled so much for a long time. I only hope I can find more tasks that I can help this company with- I am so happy! (The only thing I was not wrong about was that Ventura Blvd. is the “arm-pit” of the Valley- but I do get a kick out of watching the various folks get on and off the bus and it cruises through the Valley- another part of the contract I actually look forward to).