The Twilight Report

Your Home For Snappy Repartee

tucson “snow storms” and december in the southern hemisphere

In four years in Tucson, I remember it snowing exactly once. Actually I don’t even remember the snow itself, but reading about it the next Monday morning in the Wildcat, because I had slept through the snowing (and immediate melting) and it having snowed was newsworthy enough to be on the front page. Not that the front page had to be terribly newsworthy when it came to the Wildcat. Although I think the Wildcat probably had more content and journalistic integrity than mX does, and I always pick up a copy of mX if I am going through Town Hall station at the right time of day. The price is right.

I have been rewriting bits of my website in PHP in order to improve my PHP coding skills. It’s painful because Perl (on which most of my website is already written) is about a million times more powerful in almost every regard. It’s sticky to configure I guess, and is horrible to maintain if written by someone who is unskilled in the ways of the Perl. This is why companies that do OpenSource web development tend to stick with PHP, which bundles itself with everything and dumps everything (including kitchen_sink_faucet_on()) into the same global namespace. Hence the need to brush up on PHP and the loathing of said PHP.

I have also been introducing Tristan 賢 to some of my music. Some of it seems to be taking. I have this dream that he won’t be as conventional in his approach to things artistic as my dad is. He has to figure out what he likes on his own though, and he will do that, but it is fun to show him things that he might not otherwise see or hear :)

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Job Interviews

As a rule, I hate job interviews. I often feel flustered and end up leaving thinking that I have given a pretty poor impression of my ability to communicate. My job interview with Sydney Uni's Faculty of Dentistry was a complete disaster, and it is still fresh in my mind, unfortunately. So it wasn't with relish that I woke up this morning with the prospect of an interview with my current indirect employer: Company 2. Right now I am a contractor, the primary disadvantage to this is no paid vacation or sick leave; there aren't any advantages that I can think of.

(possibly more detail than what you care about)

Yesterday I got one of those e-mail invites to a luncheon for "Rory" who is taking a year off to have a child. I knew of this person, but I didn't know her. Her year off was in fact part of the reason there is even a job for my to apply for. Since I didn't know her and I haven't been feeling especially social lately I let it sit in my inbox.

But back to this morning: For a lot of reasons I have been feeling like I didn't want this job. e.g.

  1. I let someone talk me into applying for the "senior" permanent position which has opened up as apposed to the more technical one year appointment. I think this may have been a mistake because the last thing I feel like is anything resembling responsibility.
  2. Some days I like it at Company 2, the people seem pretty good-natured and the pace of work is reasonable. But there are irritants that continue to get to me. I hate the equipment that I've been given to work with and the way IT is handled at Company 2 (I'm not used to not having administrator privileges on computers that I work on). I realize that I was somewhat spoiled at IBM, and especially so at home, where I have spent more money than I care to admit on my computers, but I am comfortable with the way I've set them up and I am a hell of a lot more productive at home as a result.

On the other hand, one of the positions up for grabs is a permanent one, and that means a fair amount of stability (somebody told me "that means they can't fire you" but I know that isn't true - I remember what happened to Art).

So who knows what I was feeling when I walked into that room for the interview, but I am pretty sure I was past caring if I got the job or not.

To my surprise Rory was there (pregnant lady who is taking off for a year shortly), and she introduced herself and we started to chatting friendly like about things going on at Company 2. It was going pretty well when the department head came in and the interview started in earnest. Experience tells me that everything should have fallen apart here, given how I usually perform in interview situations, but hope won out this round because I feel I not only addressed all of their questions well, but I also addressed some of their unasked questions. They talked about the position and made sure that I understood that it isn't just a programming job, but also involved people skills. I don't have any people skills, but sometimes I can fake it.

I also went into detail about a highly positive experience I had at IBM doing technical legwork for lawyers between when I was on the GUI team and when I was on the Timing team. About how I enjoyed the change of assignment, where some programmers had grumbled, and that I had a good working relationship Tiffany (who is a great person, and I have to believe a great lawyer as well). I think part of what made it a powerful story is the fact that it is so true. In some ways that episode is no more than a footnote on my career, but I think I grew a lot in the way that I interact with people because of it.

After the interview I was looking through my e-mail again and I re-discovered the e-mail invitation to Rory's farewell luncheon. I clicked on "accept" because now I can't say that I only know of her. I guess I haven't completely killed off my aversion to being social. Damn it.

Anyway, to make a long story short, the interview went extraordinarily well to the point that I felt like for the first time ever I hadn't shot myself in the foot in a job interview, and that my poor interview skills for the first time wouldn't be the weak link in my overall application. For the first time, I felt if I don't get the job it is because there is someone out there who applied who is technically more qualified than myself, and I am pretty comfortable with that possibility.

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I Cannot Be Hurt by Anything this Wicked World Has Done

What was 2004? It was a year of stolen and disputed elections in Georgia and the Ukraine, the rise and fall of Howard Dean and John Kerry, the first private space flight and the end of the "X-Prize," disaster in Darfur, prisoner abuse in Iraq, expansion of the European Union, the death of Ronald Regan and a month of flags at half mast, the return of Greek Olympics and a very smug presidential victory. In less political but tragic terms, the worst natural disaster in my memory has occurred in Asia as Tsunami death tolls top 135,000 according to CNN.com.

For me, the year started out as a bleak one in the coldest New York winter I have ever experienced. My mother came to visit me for her birthday. We stayed in Manhattan and it was bitterly cold.

Lowel and Johanna
I took a lighting class at Dutchess which was a blast. Some of my friends from Black and White II were taking the class and I met some other cool people. It was so much fun working with those people, including the teacher, Lowel Handler.

(Read more...)

In Short, 2004 was A Great Year and I have high hopes that 2005 will be even better.
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Wizard

I got a promotion of sorts. It's a rather hollow victory, since it comes at the expense of a departed colleague. Still, I should be more gracious about this whole thing. I'm now in charge of Wizard development.

I guess this is what bothers me: my manager has gotten rid of two people in my time in the Timing department, and asked me to take over for both of them. Things were never like this under Bob, the manager that hired me.
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Edited For T.V. Version

First of all, I have been crazy busy lately, so if you have written me recently and haven't gotten a reply, please bare with me because things are going to settle down soon!

What happened today?

I have been working on Parallel Abstraction for most of 2004 now, with little to show for it. Well, that isn't entirely true. I have actually accomplished a lot, it just doesn't feel that way sometimes, you know? Anyway, I have been extremely stressed about this because the thing is supposed to be working by mid December, and I have my doubts about it.

I realized it really doesn't matter if I don't finish Parallel Abstraction, because it doesn't matter anymore if I get a bad performance appraisal for 2004. I was completely relieved and stress free for the first time in recent memory. I'm not going to stop working hard to make sure that Parallel Abstraction is working in time, but I realized in this case, failure really is an option. I didn't write the code originally, after all, so I don't feel I ought to be held accountable for it.

My partner came over to my office and we looked at a section of the offending code for about a half an hour, and we found the memory error that has been dogging me for the entire time that I have been working on Parallel Abstraction. I kid you not. It was like as soon as I decided to let go everything fell into place. Parallel Abstraction isn't done yet... but this is big. Melly told me that this would happen.

The major downer of the day was when Art came by to wish me luck. I told him that I was sorry to see him go, which is honest. I think he is a decent, hard working man and The Company needs more people like him, not less.

After work, I drove up to school to get one of my slides from Sarah. I really wanted to tell her about the things which are going on in my life, and ask about how things were going for her. She seemed real excited for me, and I think she's is also doing well.

On the way home, I stopped at Hanaford to pick up a Turkey for next week. I flirted with the pretty check out girl, enough so that I forgot to press "YES" on the touch pad which takes the credit card. It was a pleasant experience.

My mom and step father Don are flying in next week for Thanksgiving. They haven't been up since I moved, so this will afford them the opportunity to see my new place.

I called E as I drove home and told her what was going on. She was real happy for me too.

Yes, my friends. Life is good. It's like that Sheryl Crow song "It's not having what you want / It's wanting what you have." It's only going to get better.
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Those Idiots

So I have been working in my new department for about nine months or so now. I basically work on two major things. I don't want to get into the details of what I do, because it is pretty boring, but lets just call them Interface and Parallel. Neither have anything to do with each other. I have a partner for Parallel with whom I work with pretty closely. It has to do with the nature of the beast. When I work on the Interface, I am much more subordinate to the owner of the code, and it is therefore not a partnership. One day, when I learn more about how the Interface works it could be, but it is far too early for that.

The guy who owns the Interface code had a family emergency recently and was gone from work for three weeks. When he got back he asked me how much time I had been spending on Interface vs. Parallel. The truth is I have not been working much on the Interface, because Parallel has been soaking up all kinds of time. I find out today that my idiot manager strongly suggested that the Interface owner resign from The Company and everyone understands if he doesn't that they will probably fire him. My manager seems to think that he hasn't been working hard enough, which is bullshit.

It's bad enough that The Company continually shoots itself in the foot by getting rid of good people that they really need, but this seems totally over the top. The guy's son had been in the hospital for three weeks he comes back to work and they kick him while he's down. What makes it worse is that I think the reason they moved me into the Interface when they did because they wanted to get rid of him. They are using me as a tool to get rid of this guy and that makes me hate them.

In the afternoon I was working with my Parallel partner and we came up with an idea which I hope may tie up a whole bunch of loose ends. My Parallel partner has been at The Company for about 20 years, and he was telling me that he felt as though he had done himself a real disservice by staying here for as long as he has, because bam! they get rid of you and the things we work on are so specialized that you really don't know enough about the real world to get a decent job. After 20 years and with a family to support it is real tough to start over. I've been here for four years and I'm thinking it is time to get the hell out. Suggestions anyone? Seriously. Suggestions?

After work I was both pissed off at management, while at the same time excited about our potential Parallel breakthrough. My friend Sarah had asked me to take her portrait for her web site. She is an aspiring wedding photographer and she is going to need to advertise. I was humbled that she asked me, because she knows lots of photographers. I was also super excited to get back into the studio and shoot some pictures. Tonight was the night that we were going to get together for this.

Afterward we ordered a pizza and talked about various things. She's broken up with her sort of boyfriend and she's going to be moving to New Hampshire, probably sometime next year. I'm going to miss having her around. She says that she will be back eventually, but by the time she is, I had better be gone, for my own sake.
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