I was reading the other day about how they (the giant ants^[1]) were going to make a game featuring both Sonic and Mario. Not only that, but they were both going to be featured in the title of the game. Growing up with the Nintendo vs. Sega rivalry, this would have once seemed like the moral equivalent to having Darth Vader command the USS Enterprise-K in the Next Next Generation, or having Captain Kirk pilot an X-wing. Times they are a-changing I guess, and where there is a business case anything can happen. Just today I was reading that Dell was going to start selling PC desktop systems with Linux pre-installed, which further confused me: this can’t be the same reality that I’ve lived in for the last 30 years. All of this is way too early for April Fools, so they must be ice skating in hell for sure.

Speaking space opera, I always had this fantasy of quitting my job in corporate America/Australia by declaring “I am a programmer. Like my father before me.” (Tyler can correct me on the inaccuracy of that quote) All this with the Visigoths about to storm Rome in 410, and bring an end to the Empire^[2]. The trouble is, my dad is actually a chemist. A pretty damn good one, but although he knows Fortran I wouldn’t really describe him as a programmer. I hope that if it ever does come to that, fate will forgive the necessity of a nice dramatic statement in place of a factually correct one.

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1. Damn you Tyler, I can’t use the word “they” or “them” without thinking about giant ants!
2. so my fantasies are historically schizophrenic

I just wasted an evening installing software (Gentoo Linux… not worth it). I’ve come to the realization that software is never going to be exactly “right” for me, and the alternative of writing my own for every task in life is a loosing proposition. Everything is either too big or doesn’t have enough features. Nothing is, as Goldilocks would say, “just right.” There was this brief period in my life when I was completely happy spending my time taking photographs and pretending that I wasn’t a programmer anymore. I miss those days.

Speaking of Goldilocks, clichés and fairytales, mum was complaining the other day about someone at Sydney Uni who was using fairytales to justify his male chauvinism (it’s sad if you are a grown man and are using fairytales to try and understand how the world works). Her analysis was that she would be less likely to have to put up with such attitudes back in the states.

This was all happening at about the same time when I was reading a thread on slashdot (ug… which I am embarrassed to say that I have become addicted to) about crossing the gender barrier in an IT work environment. The question was asked: “How do you make it easier for a woman to enter in or interact well with gender cliques in an IT environment?” IT is of course (sadly) dominated by men, and I shouldn’t have been surprised that the /. crowed would be likewise dominated but I was shocked that the primary response to the question was: “I’d like to say ‘hi’ to women new hires, but if I did then I might get sued for sexual harassment and get fired, so instead I avert my eyes and walk the other way when I see them in the hallway.”

Does that actually happen? I mean in the numbers that would justify that kind of response? I suspect the number of men who have been unfairly dismissed from their jobs due to alleged sexual harassment is negligible. I think “some” people think they are victims because they are required to watch a one-hour instructional video once a year on stuff that should be obvious. Get over it.

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.

Work has been keeping me pretty busy, and while I still find the regime in control of the network at Company 2 to be on the oppressive side, I am enjoying playing with foreign language input methods. I have been tasked with making software tools usable by native Chinese speakers. I have always been interested in how people interact with computers and technology, and when you take away all of the assumptions (which I have always lived with) which come along with English, things become a little more interesting.

(中文 stuff)

My knowledge of Chinese is itty-bitty, but just the fact that I can sort of distinguish different forms of Chinese from each other and from other Asian languages excites me. Maybe someday I will find the time to properly study Chinese. I think it would be a fun and useful thing to know. I almost picked up a Chinese language Sydney paper at the newsagent last night just to study the characters.

Last night I went back to Sydney Uni for "Trivia Night." It was pretty fun, we had pizza and answered trivial questions. The one question I got "wrong" was something that I really should have gotten right. The correct answer was either SGML or HTML, but I was pretty sure that HTML didn't exist in the 1980s (as specified in the question), where as I knew that SGML (on which HTML is based) had been around since the 80s. I just checked on Wikipedia, and sure enough the first specification documents for HTML date back to 1993. The reason I should have known that the "right" answer was HTML is because non-IT people with whom I was playing would be more likely to recognize the term HTML than SGML. I mean, SGML - what's that?

For me, perl started out as this programming language that I didn't like because schallee liked it. I had a boss in my summer-job days who liked perl though, so I was forced to use it long enough to realize its power, and now I sometimes joke that English is a second language to my first language: perl (yes, I am a computer dork).

TWiki was introduced to me as this web application that I had to get working ASAP on doublethink, because they fired the only person in The Company who knew how to keep it running. At first I didn't want to use it any more than required to in order to get the job done. Now it is an integral part of the way that I plan and keep track of tasks, and bits of information which needs to be taken care of. I can't imagine living without it, frankly.

(incidentally, TWiki is written in perl, so these things that we don't like at first but come to like tend to build on each other)

There are a lot of things like this, but now that I am looking for work I am actually thankful that I got stuck with TWiki in my last year or so at The Company, because it gives me something concrete to talk about when people ask me certain kind of IT related questions now that I am looking for a job. It really was a good experience, though it didn't seem like it at the time.

Now I am seeing other things that I'm supposed to know that I am sure I will be extremely resistant to adding to my tool set, mainly because they will be some amount of work to learn and (ironically) they aren't perl or TWiki or one of the many other technologies that I already know. Which ones will I later be glad that I know?

I put Photoshop, along with dark room experience and studio lighting on my resumé in part because I had some of that kind of experience, but mostly just for fun, because I couldn't imagine possibly ever using that in my job (which is a pity). Today I actually gave my resumé to someone and he was like "oh, they would actually like someone who knows a little photoshop in addition to all this computer stuff."

I've been an ex-IBMer for a couple of days now. I may therefore reveal that "The Company" = IBM. I am pretty sure that comes as a surprise to nobody.

Today is the first day that I would have gone to work if I hadn't signed those papers on Friday. My last day I felt oddly detached. I was immune to things and people that ordinarily bother me, like my manager and Jeff. On the other hand I went around and said good-bye to people. It's harder to go wrong with that.

My going away party was on Saturday at Brian's house. I will be seeing people this week, but it is probably the last time that I will see "everyone" together. (Not that it could really be everyone without Sherry, Megan, Joanna and Padraic). I got to say goodbye to Sherry over lunch a week or so ago, and I hopefully I will get to visit Joanna and Padraic in California before I leave.

Everyone should come out and visit me in Salt Lake City for a ski holiday (I'll be there about 6 February to 8 March, with a short trip to New Mexico sometime the week of 22 February), or in Australia (anytime starting May 2006).

Starting tomorrow, GST (Graham Standard Time) will be observing the following new rules.

1. There will be no Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday
2. All days will be referred to as "Gorfday" (or "Gorgstag" Auf Deutsch)
3. As there are no longer any "days of the week" there will be no "week" either
4. As a downside, the concept of a weekend is now meaningless, this is conpensated for by the fact that weekdays are also now meaningless.

Thank you. That is all.

My days at The Company are now officially numbered, and that number is: thirteen.