First Half of the Interview Quartet is Finished

In four business days (really three and a half because today is a holiday) I will have four direct-hire interviews. I don't really count recruiter interviews as real interviews because they don't really mean anything. They're just formalities for the people sending resumes out. My interview today is over the phone with TransUnion. They're one of the major credit reporting bureaus. Part of the interview process is drug testing so I get the joy of peeing in a cup and hoping there's no weird interaction between my toothpaste and hairspray. Tomorrow's interview is in person at a consulting house (I believe).

The interview on Thursday was with a small consulting shop. They do a variety of projects as needed for their clients. The interview went really well. The technical guy I interviewed with told me flat-out that he thought I would be a great fit for the company. He gave me a small programming task to gauge my thought processes and told me afterwords that he had never seen my solution to that problem before and that my solution was more efficient than the others he'd seen. That made me feel good. I was really happy when I came home from that interview. The only problem is that the company needs to wait to hire until they have projects come in from clients. They are expecting that to happen at any time, though. I have a really good feeling about this job and I hope it's the one I get.

The interview on Friday was for a large publishing company and it would be a management position. I didn't have a good feeling about this place at all. I had bad feelings about it before I even went to the interview. When I got there it only got worse. The whole situation reminded me of my time at Siebel, which isn't a good thing. I interviewed with two people, a tech guy and the manager. The tech guy asked me a couple of detailed technical questions which I wasn't able to adequately answer.

We will have a brief pause in the story for Jerry to whine...

I really hate when interviewers quiz you on programming theory. It's like they expect you to have all aspects of a programming language available off the top of your head. Are they expecting the job to be closed book? Am I not allowed to use Google when I run into some problem? I have been programming for years. Who cares if I don't know the exact execution order of methods between a web page and the user controls it contains! That hasn't stopped me from being quite successful in my projects for a long time. And, of course, not knowing makes me feel like a complete loser. It's the worst part of interviewing in my opinion.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog already in progress.

So, I felt like I came up with a big goose egg with the technical interviewer. Then came the manager. His one or two questions were soft-skill related. I don't feel like I answered them adequately, either. When he described the job to me, however, he described a nightmare. The team I would be managing is responsible for this out-dated web app that houses 90% of their web sites. It apparently goes down on a regular basis and is incredibly flaky. To top it off the internal customers are the worst type of whiners and complainers with no patience at all. And the manager is a self-proclaimed work-aholic who seems to expect the same from his employees. All of this translated to me really not wanting this job. While it's true that a job is better than no job; this job would only be slightly better.

So, right now I'm batting one and one in the interview quartet. Here's to hoping that the next two interviews go more like the first.

Read More →

General Ham Radio Class

On Friday night I started my Ham Radio class for my General license. For those who don't know that's the middle level of license that you can get. It goes Technician, General and then Amateur Extra. I got my Technician license last April but I really haven't done anything with it. I have a radio now but I never turn it on. I'm not certain I'm really into the whole chat-with-random-strangers-over-the-radio thing. I'm only taking the class because it's a free and it seems wrong to turn down the training.

When I started reading for the class I learned that one of the big things about the General license is that it allows you to use HF (High Frequency) bands. HF bands allow for longer distance contacts. My current Technician license mainly allows for local contacts. Of course my radio doesn't run HF so it wouldn't even work if I did have my General. I'm certainly not going to buy another radio either. There is a whole bunch of knowledge that is expected for the General test that I just don't have. I barely use my radio, let alone know all sorts of technical details about using it. I contemplated dropping the class after the first night but I think I'm going to stick it out. I just don't know, though...

Read More →

Popcorn Trials

Jim and Judith got us this old fashioned popcorn maker for Christmas. It's a smaller version of what they use in movie theatres. It's counter-top size; although a little too large for our counter. I thought it was kind of a cool thing and have been a little anxious to try it out. I came up with the idea of inviting some friends over on Saturday night for a movie and popcorn evening. Karen thought we should give this thing a test drive before we had to use it for real so last night we did a trial run with it.

In general the machine did an okay job. It's got a gear that extends down from the top of the machine and meshes with a gear that extends up from the top of the popcorn drum. That gear turns a stirring wire inside the popcorn drum. In the first run we did the motor kept getting bogged down and stopping. We were using vegetable oil and some "gourmet" popcorn that Karen had. My thought is that something in that combo didn't move around as easily as it should have and blocked the stirring arm from turning. It wasn't working well at all and I was fast moving into this-is-a-piece-of-junk mode.

For the second run we used stuff from a little kit that Karen had. It had real popcorn oil (butter flavored!) and normal popcorn kernels with some butter flavoring mixed in. This trial ran much better. The motor only got bogged down once at the very end of the cycle when the drum was full of popcorn. Plus the popcorn was much tastier. I'm certain that was because of the pre-added flavoring but it still tasted better coming out of the machine.

In general the machine redeemed itself as being able to pop decent popcorn if the right materials are used a little care taken. Now we're ready for Saturday night's party.

Read More →

Krav Last Night

I went to Krav last night after another two week absence. I swear it seems like I've had a hard time getting to my classes recently. I'm really glad I went last night, though. I was going to go to the yellow belt test a couple of weeks ago, but I came down sick and had to miss it. That's the main reason why I didn't go the last two weeks. I was feeling pretty crummy.

It turns out I must not be up to full speed as much as I thought I was. I had to sit out several times. I haven't had to do that since my first class. I just didn't have any wind last night. I had a couple of moments where I was light-headed as well. A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that I'm out of practice as well. I need to get back into going on a regular basis. I probably should check out one of their fitness classes as well. I'm paying for it so I might as well use it.

We actually did a technique last night that I haven't done before. I had assumed that I had seen everything in the basic level because I've been going to the basic classes for so long and everything we do seems to be a repeat. Apparently that is not quite the case. We did a front toe kick. The only other kick I've ever done there is a straight up the middle, basic kick. This was actually a forward kick. I was a little surprised given that we've never done it before. I did fine with it, though. It's a kick I have practiced enough times at home that it wasn't a problem. Yes, I practice kicks at home. I know... I'm a weirdo.

Read More →

The Job Search Begins

I started my job search today. I had updated my resume a few weeks ago so I, fortunately, did not have to do that. I started with my old standby web site, Dice. That is the first place I always go for job searches.

Dice is specifically geared toward IT jobs, which is good. It's also more specifically geared toward staffing firms. This is kind of a mixed blessing. Getting my resume in front of staffing firms is good because it gives me access to a lot of potential jobs; more than I would probably find on my own. But a lot of companies won't go through staffing firms so Dice is not as likely to have those postings. Regardless I started at Dice today. Next up is Monster.com.

I probably submitted my resume to 15-20 positions today. One thing I don't understand is how tough some places make it. Dice is really easy as a job board. You setup your resume and cover letter and then just auto-apply with them to the jobs that interest you. Dice takes care of the formatting and sending. Some places insist on dragging you through their submission process. Some are as simple as telling you to send an e-mail. Others want you to configure a whole profile. "You want me to create an account in your system and configure a profile all for one job submission? Sheesh!"

There were a couple that I didn't submit for because of their annoying submission process. If I don't have any luck with the first few batches I may change my annoyance threshold but it's there for right now. It's almost like they're discouraging people from submitting resumes. Maybe they are. Maybe they want to weed out resumes from people who aren't really serious about applying. I'll probably wind up going ahead and applying to those places, I just found their process ridiculous.

Regardless, the hunt has started. I really hate job searching. Wish me luck.

Read More →

WotLK Cake Pictures

Here are the WotLK cake pictures.

Read More →

One WotLK Cake Coming Up

My attempts to work a normal work day yesterday were subverted because it was my nephew's birthday. He wanted a World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King cake. Nothing like picking a theme that the party store doesn't stock! It's actually a fairly regular request from our nieces and nephews to have something out of the ordinary as the theme for their birthday cake. Karen and I always seem to deliver, though. She's very creative about finding action figures and other little toys to decorate the top of the cake. And I'm there as backup to pull some graphic design magic out of my hat when toys aren't available.

That was the case this time. Wrath of the Lich King toys aren't readily available (if even available at all) so I had to come up with something. Fortunately I happened to have purchased the collector's edition of Wrath when it came out. Fortunate because it just happened to come with a book, "Art of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King." How providential is that? So we had a source for artwork that I could use for the cake. I used a huge picture of the Lich King as the main cake top. Then there were small medallions representing a couple of his armor pieces that I made to go around the side of the cake. I took the basic WoW logo and modified it so that it would say "Happy Birthday" in the WoW fonts. I had found a font that mimicked the WoW logo font, but it was flat. The text in the original logo is very 3-D looking. So I had to do some massaging to make the text look like a reasonable facsimile of the original logo. The whole thing turned out pretty nice, if I do say so myself.

The only stink thing was that it took me all day to make the stuff for the cake. So now I'm working this weekend to make up the time. Oh well. I guess it was worth it. My nephew totally loved the cake. I'll post some pictures once they are off the camera.

Read More →