Great tips Dave.
I'm in the process of looking for a new job and also figuring out what is it exactly that I want to do. I kind of would like to do the whole process myself, but I know how frustrating it can be at times if there's no help available. I'm afraid of getting a "one man band" job because I'm not that experienced. I'm bad at risk taking and I guess that's somewhat holding me back.
As a part of a team, it would be less stressful and also a team can accomplish greater things than just a single person. Still I don't want to be a part of a huge corporation because of the bureaucracy. I've been looking for smallish companies with tens or hundreds of employees.
Problem is that I don't know what these engineering positions usually are like. So I don't know what to expect and what is realistic to want. I Recently stumbled on a interesting thing called
informational interview which seems like a good idea to get information about real life jobs, but I don't know if these are that common in our field and how would one arrange something like this. I also like the
Describe your engineering job thread here. I wish there was more detailed information like this available. Someone should start interviewing professionals about their work. Hint

I've saved some "screw you money" and I'm really tempted to just quit and take some time off. But I should first plan how to make good use of that time.