This year Patterson and some other Gilbert Elementary schools were asked to participate in the Gilbert Days Parade. Okay, okay, I don’t really know if they asked or if they had to pay to participate or how exactly it worked out that Patterson was going. All I know is we were going to walk the mile or so as a family with a few others from the school.

This isn’t our first time in Gilbert Days parade. I think this might be our 4th or 5th time? So many times I forget. Last time we also walked with Patterson and it was FAR DIFFERENT from the years before. The first few times we went with Gilbert Parks and Recreation because Sarah and I taught some robotics classes there back then. And Gilbert Parks and Rec goes ALL OUT and has a big float and a theme and custom shirts and people decorate wagons that go around the float and we had candy to hand out (BUT DON’T THROW IT!) and we had music and people were dancing and the float had swings on it one year. It was super fun! And it was clear they put a ton of effort into organizing it.

Two years ago when we walked with Patterson, it wasn’t like that at all. We literally JUST WALKED. That’s it. No decorations. Nothing to give out. No wagons. No music. Nothing.

This year we wanted to do something different. So I decided to use up all my open rolls of filament and print out as many phone holders as I could in the week I had to prepare. In total we printed 590 of them! We had 6 gallon sized ziplock bags full of them.

Generally people thought they were bottle openers. Which is kinda funny that an elementary school would be handing out bottle openers!

We also went to Sams Club and spent $60 on 5 boxes of Air Heads (90 in each box). With that we had over 1000 things to give out! The kids with us were giving out the Air Heads and the adults had the phone holders. The candy was gone after about a quarter of the way! Pro tip . . . if you want a cool give away, get a spot in the beginning of the route.

ALSO . . . we took a couple of wagons (to hold the candy n stuff and hold any kids that got tired) and we had Dexter in his Jeep (that has a remote control).

People LOVED the Jeep and for the 3/4ths of the parade, Dexter was crying. But I think all the cheering helped and he was happy by the end. The trouble is we had to get there 2 hours early and he was already done and ready to go by the time we actually started. Plus, I wouldn’t let him ride in the Jeep those 2 hours on account of not being sure if the battery would last. It ended up doing the parade route and then going on a loop all the way back and was still ready to go another mile!

This time . . . we even had a banner to identify the school!

Overall we had a ton of fun and the give aways were a hit! Probably. The parade goes so fast you don’t have much time to get any feedback.

Today is my last day at AECOM (formerly URS). It’s been a wonderful 2 years and I’m thankful and grateful I made the leap. I’ve repeated this story many times but for the first few months after leaving ASU I thought I made the second biggest mistake of my working life (first being . . . well, ask me about that later). Looking back I can’t remember what it was that made me feel that way but I’ll never forget that sense of dread.

Now, 2 years later, I’m a better programmer, a better co-worker, and probably a better person. On a technical level, I know Javascript/node better, I understand far more about MongoDB, GIS, PostGIS, Jenkins/CI and the list goes on and on. I also finally worked on a big budget/big project where we had several programmers (and even divisions between front-end and back-end), several designers, testers, documenters, deployment/IT engineeris, etc. It was the biggest project I’ve ever worked on and it was a joy to get to learn what goes into this kind of work from Alex and James.

No job is a utopia but URS/AECOM was very close. Sure, it was annoying that I didn’t get time for training or to go to conferences (even when I was speaking at a conference by request I still had to use my own PTO time and work as much as possible). And when I moved to a new location in the building my cube rattled and monitors shook whenever someone came by. But those are small since I had plenty of PTO and had a flexible schedule so that I could work four 10 hour days to take a Friday off for a conference and could work from anywhere and didn’t have to go into the office, etc.

When I explain my AECOM/URS love people ask “then why are you leaving?” and it’s a good question because I do like it here. Sure, the new job is more money . . . but it’s not THAT much more. I think the main reason for leaving is that so many others have left and I not sure there is going to be another big contract to continue the work I was doing and I wanted to be able to leave on my terms not when suddenly there was no more work.

Another thing I get after working here 2 years are some great connections and dare I say . . . friendships? Chris Hogan left not long after I started (and he worked out of the Germantown office so I never met him in person) but he was the first real connection I made and we still chat from time to time to this day and even met up at a conference and will do so again someday. James Fee is the main reason I left and went to URS (he did that “do you want to sell sugar water the rest of your life” speech but relevant to what I was doing) and I’m glad he convinced me to go and then went on to patiently explain GIS and what it means to work on a big project. . . . I think we have forged a friendship that will last as long as he can stand my . . . loudness?. Rachel Wagner was a great boss and I learned a ton about the company culture from her even as I made fun of the company culture. She was patient and was a great communicator (i.e. she listened!). Alex Bostic . . . I can’t say enough about this guy . . . he’s an amazing developer/architect and I learned a ton but besides that he’s just “good at life” . . . things that would be so irritating to me were put into perspective thanks to Alex. Thanks!

I worked with so many others on projects big and small but I don’t have time to write about every one of them. Huge thanks to Lauren, JP, Darla, Bose, Bing, Asa, Manuel, Robert, Jason, Bill, Patty, John, and finally, Robin, who I never really worked with but knew her because she happened to be close to my cube and always very personable.

On to the next! I start my new adventure Monday and after few months I’ll let you know if it was a big mistake! 🙂

Sheldon

P.S. This is what I sent to my colleagues at AECOM:

Hello!

As most of you know today is my last day at AECOM. It was an amazing 2 years and I’m so glad I listened to James and decided to make the leap. I really am sad to be leaving and enjoyed my time here. I learned a ton, met many amazing people, and am immensely grateful for the opportunity. 

When your biggest complaint is that your new cube desk shakes when people walk by you know you have it good. Thanks AECOM! I hope you’ll have me back someday!

Feel free to reach out anytime at sheldon.mcgee@gmail or on twitter @tooshel. 

Sheldon