Change is afoot.

Well, it’s official: I’ve accepted an IT job in a research department at $UNIVERSITY, and tendered my resignation for my current position.

The new job itself is somewhat similar to my current one: it’s a small IT department covering many independent subunits, and I’ll be geek-of-all-trades for a while longer. Plus, it’s a 25% increase in salary; benefits are better; there are more opportunities for career development; I can get free undergrad tuition after a year of service; it’s friendlier to gay employees; supporting research is more meaningful; et al. The biggest reason for the transition, though, is that I’m sick of the poor state of internal communications and rampant institutional inertia at $CURRENT_EMPLOYER; I don’t anticipate these issues among graduate researchers, especially when almost all of the labs are adjacent.

(IMHO, naming one’s employer on one’s blog is both incredibly foolish and moderately tacky, even if one is leaving said employer. The wildcard names will continue.)

My last day here will be the 19th; my first day at the new place will be the 24th. This gives me a chance to spend my birthday and Fred’s birthday doing birthday type things instead of learning the new place.

I’ll be spending the next two weeks preparing for the transition, mostly by documenting every little thing I can possibly think of, but also by burning my “birthday holiday” (the free holiday I get in the month of my birth) and by working through the various stacks of paperwork I’ll invariably wind up facing. And yes, there will also be a very thorough desk cleaning.

I’m not entirely certain how my days will pan out at $UNI, but I suspect I may not be able to dally online as much as I (sometimes) get to do now. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but it could affect some blog content like the Tweets on the right or the quickie “OMG YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS” post.

(I like the phrase in the title, but I’ve often wondered why change couldn’t be ahand or aface or abigtoe.)

More will follow in time, of course.