Going straight to the top

First of all, let me say I love my job. For that matter, looking around me I am grateful just to *have* a job. Even so, there is one thing that has bothered me since last Thanksgiving. You see, when Virtuoso hired me it was as a QA person. It wasn't really what I wanted to do, but feel free to go back and check the second sentence of this paragraph. In the fallout of 9-11 when the application we are developing was changed from a Win32 app to a web app I was moved to the developer group because of my web development experience. Way cool.

And hey, the stuff I have been doing has been fantastic. I have almost a year's experience coding in C# on the .NET platform, writing both data layer and business logic objects as well as front end components in ASP.NET. You could't ask for a better project to work on. There has been a fair amount of chaos on the team, but as time has progressed things have gotten continually better and the team has become more and more focused and productive.

So what's my beef? Simple. I got moved to a developer role, but I am still being paid as a QA person. At first I didn't want to say anything because I was grateful just to have a job. Then I wanted to wait until after a major milestone so that I could point to my work and demonstrate that it was a good move to put me in the developer group. Finally this week I decided it was time to just buckle up and talk to someone. The problem was deciding who. With all the shifting that has happened in my immediate management there was nobody that really seemed appropriate. I kept coming back to Mindy, who is the senior manager that reports directly to the CEO. It seemed like a bit high up to go for this kind of talk, but in the past few months I have built a great rappor with both her and Kristy (the CEO). I finally came to the conclusion that she was the best choice, and she liked me well enough to respect what I had to say.

I went to her office yesterday, and we talked for about a half hour. We talked about kids, we talked about business philosophy and development philisophy, and we talked about my place in the grand scheme of things. As it turns out, she was already keenly aware of my situation, the paperwork is already done, and I will be seeing a salary adjustment on my next paycheck, retroactive to April 1st.

Did I mention I love my job?

In other news, I stopped by Sara's place tonight to drop off a jacket for Ben. He was so excited to see me, it was great. He ran around in circles for a bit, and then came over and gave me a big hug and turned out his cheek for a smooch. Then he disappeared into his room for a minute. When he reappeared he came into the living room dragging his packed suitcase behind him. He was all set and ready to come home with me. What a great kid. Some days I just love him so much it hurts.

Too damn early

I just want to point out that 5:00 a.m. is a stupid time for anybody to have to wake up. It's not so bad if you are *still* up at 5, but getting up that early just so you can go sit in traffic really and truly sucks.

"I don't know any other life. I have no other brother."

As I am writing this I still have tears welling in my eye. Not tears of sadness,or pain, but tears of understanding.

By ten o'clock this morning I had received emails from three different people telling me that the cover story for this week's Time magazine is about autism. By eleven o'clock I left work to go pick up a copy, and have just finished reading the article and all the sidebars over lunch.

Much of what was in the article was things I already know first hand. The statistics are terrifying when you look at them. When Ben was diagnosed seven years ago the rate of autism was assumed to be around 1 in 10,000 people. Current studies are showing that the rate of autism in children under age 10 could be as high as 1 in 150. Five years ago the level of research into autism was basically nil, but finally now there has been an explosion in research because of the pressures being placed on the system by parents, teachers, and doctors.

There is a sidebar in the article that shows brain scans showing the neural activity of an autistic child when being shown pictures of strangers, and then pictures of parents. For decades it has been the prevailing thought that autistics simply could not compute facial recognition, that they don't see other people as any different than a teacup or a wooden post. The discouraging news is that the brain scans show that this is true when it comes to strangers. The good news is that when an autisic sees a picture of their parents their brain lights up just like any other kid.

The part that really brought tears to my eyes, though, was a sidebar by the adult brother of an autistic. When he was three he used to play with his younger brother, wrestling on the ground and tickling. That's the last time he ever played with him, though. He got older, but his brother effectively stayed a child. He is now 35 years old and institutionalized. The family comes to visit on the weekends, but this child in his thirties will never lead an independant life. When people as the writer what it is like to have an autistic brother, his only response has been "I don't know any other life. I have no other brother." That was what shook me to the core.

I don't know any other life.

I have no other son.