![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mdlbearOn the job search, the week was pretty much a waiting game. $COMPANY hasn't contacted me yet, probably because the HR person was out of town last week, and the hiring manager was on vacation this week. I did meet with the headhunter on Thursday, and had a good conversation. So that's pretty good. I had phone screens Thursday (with Amazon) and Friday (with WhitePages).
The one on Friday was interesting -- the person I was originally scheduled to talk to was unavailable, so the call was from the CTO. Which was great, because we were actually able to talk about why I didn't seem to be a good fit. This probably applies to many of my other recent rejections: PopCap, Zillow, Google, and Facebook. And my apparent success with $COMPANY.
There are two factors: seen from their side, I simply don't have any experience with huge web "properties" or the technologies they use. I'm not familiar with Ruby on Rails (which WhitePages is using), have comparatively little PHP, no database experience to speak of... I'm a fast learner, but that's not the same.
... and on my side, I'm just not all that interested in that kind of work. I like building websites -- small ones. I like building infrastructure that developers can use to build the big ones. I like having my software out in the wild where I can point to it, but apparently that really means I want to work on stuff that developers can use. I want to get into working inside open-source software, not just on top of it. Or on part of some proprietary software product like a game, or the stuff Intuitive or Tableau is doing.
I want to work on cool stuff that's appreciated by my peers, not invisible behind the scenes at a website, no matter how popular and cool that website may be. And, perhaps most importantly, I want to work on stuff that I believe is making the world a better place.
... change of subject ---
Yesterday I drove down to Longview (the closest Kaiser facility) with Colleen -- two and a half hours each way -- to see if we could get our prescriptions renewed and Colleen could get her disability forms filled out for DMV and ORCA. Partial success. Colleen only got 6 months of disability, and one month of her prescriptions. Mine haven't been transfered at all, so I'll have to go down again in a week or so.
It would never have occurred to me that Kaiser wouldn't have a nationwide, unified computer system for medical records and prescriptions. But they don't. GAAAK! If I'd known how much of a nightmare health care was going to be, I might not have moved. I call it "the health don't care system" for a reason. And I have yet to get two consecutive identical answers about what I can do next.
Anyone have suggestions for Seattle-area HMOs? I know GroupHealth works with Kaiser, which might be a plus, but don't know whether they have good in-network specialists for Colleen's Crohn's disease and other problems.
We stopped in Olympia for dinner at the Oyster House. I think the last time we were there was 20-odd years ago on the way to or from a Westercon. It's gotten better.
Last Monday -- Labor Day -- we drove out to Leavenworth. Lovely drive.
I read the Hugo-winning novella The Man Who Bridged the Mist -- marvelous! And re-read "The Dead Lady of Clown Town".
... And I had a couple of bouts of depression. Not really surprising considering the health care and job situations.
Links and details below in the notes.
0901 Sa * up 8:45; W=194.2; d, n, t; laundry @ Good Food Matters » Home Remedy f(Elizabeth Siemanski) * University Village mall, plus bonus explore. We were looking for the Goodwill in south Seattle, but took the wrong exit and ended up exploring through Belltown, Queen Anne, and Ballard. @ Yes, marriages can include more than two people f(Lee Billings) * Made dinner: chicken chunks on romaine lettuce; YD had caesar dressing, we had gorgonzola. Left over guacamole before dinner. ! Several bouts of depressive lethargy. At one point I found myself sitting on the floor of the laundry closet, removing stickers from ancient Elfa brackets. And feeling like I wanted to close the door and curl up * 3-4 boxes sorted through and marked for storage. Found the large stainless steel mixing bowl and the rest of the Horchow monogrammed glasses. 0902 Su * up 8:15; W=194.2; d, n, t; hair, shower, dishes @ The trouble with atheists: a defence of faith | Books | The Guardian (Don Marti) A European view of religion; Christianity seems to be different in the US. Top Economists: Iceland Did It Right … And Everyone Else Is Doing It Wrong “Long Flights” – a somewhat serious business idea : I've cleared away enough boxes that I really need something close by to put my netbook on. Could haul in the laptop table... * Farmer's market and Albertson's. Very little bought -- just meat at A's, and flowers, nuts, and pickles at the FM. Oh, and basil and green onions. * Unpacked the two large cubes in the far corner -- found the table tops, a dozen of my shirts, a bed pad, the purple sheets, and the carpet spot cleaner in the box labeled "stereo". Plus the stereo, of course. Growf! @ The Brooklyn bookshop saving out-of-print sci-fi, one e-book at a time * walk: d=2.74, t=59, s=2.8; mostly S. on B-G trail. % I love the fact that, in that section, the East side has these wonderful patches of absolute wildness. * dinner: Sushi Land near Alderwood Mall. Yum (though no unagi). @ Kiriba Sushi & Grill is next on the list to try @ Backup Ribbon Project | No judgment. No exceptions. We got your back. (via cflute) * following the Hugo awards on twitter * got the wardrobe box with the artwork emptied out; art now stacked in the corner. Except for what's under the bed, of course. We have a lot of it. 0903 Mo Labor Day % dreams involving some kind of retirement community. First time I remember something like that. Colleen wasn't there; I didn't know anyone, but was reaching out. * up 6:40; W=195.2; d, n, t; @ Cruel Conservatives Throw a Masquerade Ball - NYTimes.com : USB 5v chargers seem to be mostly AWOL - slightly weird. I think I remember separating them from the others, but should probably look in the bottom of the charger bin again. Not in the USB box, though that did have all the missing USB cables, i.e. for the printers. @ The Man Who Bridged the Mist - Hugo-winning novella. Marvelous. : not in the charger bin, either. Odd. : welcoming call from Brent Edwards & 15min: took a load of paper down to recycling; brought back bamboo staff found a headphone adapter and a chunk of Al wire that will do for a hook. @ I’m breaking up with eBooks (and you can too) | Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton (thnidu) * drive: with Colleen to Leavenworth via WA 522, US 2. Beautiful drive. Looked around, found no parking, came home. Octoberfest will be impossible without hotel reservations. Stopped and grabbed some buffalo jerky at a place just outside of Sultan on the way home. Worthwhile. * made caprese (with olives); franks+beans for dinner * Colleen went through 3 of her boxes this evening. * pay bills due this week! 0904 Tu * up 7:15; W=195.4; d, n, t, h; laundry, dishes @ Cordwainer Smith, Science Fiction Writer : Hartworks T-shirts. Noted here because the quotes from "The Dead Lady of Clown Town" are simply wonderful -- I have to go reread it now. "This is no time for fear. It's much too interesting." "When you make history, you cannot always take care of all the little things too." "Go on! Go on. This is a war of love. Keep going." @ Cordwainer Smith: Other Online Resources links to stories online : call from Ann at Amazon. @ First look: Windows Server 2012 brings the cloud down to earth | Ars Technica @ First look: Windows Server 2012 brings the cloud down to earth | Ars Technica @ Is Congress Getting Ready to Take on Patent Trolls? | EFF * set up online account for Terminix. Can't seem to make payments, though. @ The Five Reasons Why Romney/Ryan Must be Defeated in 2012 – And Why Conservatives Should Hope They Are. | Kurt Eichenwald f(Nora Rivkis et.al.) * shelves up in dining room - 3 spice shelves, a 4' wire shelf, and a 4' wood shelf. 2 boxes sorted with Colleen, and one box to storage with the crocks + other stuff that had been on the buffet. Win. @ Full remarks: Michelle Obama’s speech at the DNC Michelle Obama’s Speech Brings In 28K Tweets Per Minute, Destroys Mitt Romney | TechCrunch (with video) : Colleen did some walking - to dining room without holding on! YAY! Then set up a folding chair and sorted a couple of boxes of kitchen stuff. * did dishes on the way to bed. 0905 We * up 8am; W=194.4; d, n, t; laundry @ Don Marti - Link dump: Fun with SCM, CI, and devops Leaving Github :: IOTTMCO Fast tip: Enable Git rerere right now | Chuva Inc. What 10gen nailed with MongoDB by Calvin French-Owen Fixing common Unicode mistakes with Python — after they’ve been made ehsan/mozilla-history-tools · GitHub cvs+hg -> git! turns out that cvs2git is part of the cvs2svn package. Wish I'd known that... @ Four Geeky Laws That Rule Our World - Neatorama +(Bruce Adelsohn) @ HP Gets With the (Developer) Program. CEO pimps PaaS, NoSQL "The call to NoSQL is a wakeup call because unlike IBM, Oracle and Microsoft, HP doesn’t have a relational database franchise to protect." & disabled anonymous comments on LJ - been getting too much spam (>5/day) * Ordered "Hazardous Fiddle" (and set up WePay account) * ran some boxes to N's; came back with a few more (plus one that had already been sorted, and one that I round-tripped because it was only 1/4 full) Also brought back some wood shelving (6' over bed, two 2' in laundry) and 3 5' hanging shelf standards (now made of unobtainium) @ The Wordsmith's Forge - Poem: "Open This End First" Your freedom depends on four boxes. Use the soapbox first. & realized that the plastic tub with the Elfa brackets will sit nicely on shelf brackets in the laundry closet. Floor space! * .gnus - make nnml the primary select method This makes startup a lot faster, since it doesn't go looking for a nonexistent news server. But unfortunately it also dropped all newsgroups out of my topics! .newsrc is intact, though, should I ever wish to read news again. 0906 Th * up 7:30ish; W=194.4; d, n, t, s, h; laundry, dishes @ esr: A shout to the world’s technical journals copyright assignment * 10am phone interview: Amazon ads team. I'm probably more interested in cloud stuff, but we'll see. ->because everything is live, the team members rotate being on call. Gleep! Sounds fairly high-pressure. * 1pm Lisa and Liz at Direct Technology, 11624 SE 5th Street, #101 Bellevue (off of 116th across the street from the Masters Builders Asso., down the street from the Lexus dealership) -> Nice visit. * Container store: Elfa parts and shelf risers. The hooks they used to make for the edge of the wire shelves no longer exist, and my stash of them is missing. Fortunately, the hooks that go with the heavy-duty wire shelves work. * installed shelves in bedroom - 6'x12" wood, and 2 2'x16" wire. Should have gotten one more 12" bracket, for the 4' wire shelf. Some other day -- no place to put it now anyway. I could cut it into 2' pieces, and then I'd want 2 more. * N. over for a couple of hours @ Why Remote Workers Are More (Yes, More) Engaged @ 5 Reasons Why You Never Hear Back After Applying For A Job - Business Insider @ The Most Common 6 Body Language Mistakes That Jobseekers Make, And Don't Even Know It - Business Insider @ The Wordsmith's Forge - Poem: "A Bug on the Wing" @ Watch the Obama Speech That Set a Political Record on Twitter @ Apple Crisp Recipe | Simply Recipes @ The end of do-it-yourself - TechHive Beta Blog @ Shakesville: Explainer: What is a "Nice Guy®?" +(Kee Hinkley) "There's no crime in being attracted to someone who started as a true platonic friend. But if you're actually a friend, you deal with that like an adult dealing with a friend. You tell them what you're feeling. Maybe you find out that they share your feelings. Maybe you find out they don't. Maybe you feel after that you can stay friends, and maybe you can't. But if you never make your intentions clear, you can't complain that your One True Love didn't read your mind. If she views you as just a friend, she may think you view her that way too. After all, you say you're her friend, right? * installed the remaining 2'x16" shelf in the dining room over the hutch, completing the 6' top shelf. Go me! 0907 Fr * up 7:25; W=195.4; d, n, t, h; laundry & took recycling out with YD - 2 bins and a box, so easy for 2 to carry * 9am - apple pancakes * 10am phone interview/coding test with Scott Sikora of whitepages -> likes me but not a good fit. That may be what happened with the other web "properties", too, now that I think of it - not so much lack of technical qualification as lack of interest in what the company is doing. I think I now have a better handle on what I _do_ want, including being close enough to some major open source projects (such as OpenStack or Apache) to actually become a contributor to them. * 11am (after call) - make pon-pon pork * got a late start due to 3 trips back to the apt for stuff I'd forgotten. :( : Kaiser regions aren't connected! Unbelievably stupid. Maybe my prescriptions have been transfered, but if so I won't be able to mail-order! Really hoping I get a job soon. -> the ones I tried to refill have apparently been taken out of the mailorder system, so I'll have to make another trip to Longview :P * dinner at the Oyster House in Olympia. It's redecorated a lot since we were there last, 20-odd years ago. Next time skip the oysters Rockefeller and potato skins, and get a dozen raw and a dozen cognac. The oyster stew is excellent: bacon, rosemary, thyme, potatoes, and carrots (at least!). @ Daily Dot | The demise of a social media platform: Tracking LiveJournal's decline (The Ferrett's Journal - *cough* Bullshit! *cough*) : gmail ate my entire reply after several minutes of typing, probably due to typing something after a ^A, or a double click. Sucks. From now on I reply from gnus on nova whenever it's possible (i.e. when I'm at home).
no subject
Date: 2012-09-08 06:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-09 12:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-10 05:44 am (UTC)When you go back to KP, call them on it.
KP has spent billions getting the Health Connect system up and running. All your records are centralized and available to any KP facility.
What they have an issue with, is that you Northern California Member IDs and they look for NW member IDs.
Remind them, you records are in the NorCal systems. They have to switch their view, but they can do that, it's just that many clerks and such don't know or want to do that.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-15 02:43 am (UTC)They filled out Colleen's disability forms as "temporary" because they didn't bother to look at her record. And they want her to see a gastroenterologist in Oregon. I'm furious, but there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it.
I got pretty much the same thing when I griped at the member services person in Santa Clara last time I was down there. These are not isolated incidents, or laziness. It's systematic.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-10 09:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-10 07:34 pm (UTC)Tableau online training
Date: 2014-02-14 05:54 am (UTC)For Enquiry -Call Us-91-900-044-4287 21st Century Software Solutions from india
Online Training
Tableau Software—how it can change your world
Power
Speed
Flexibility
Simplicity Beauty
Build the core—Tableau basics
Download, install and open Tableau
Connect to sample data and review the Tableau
Interface “Show Me” Tableau in action
Categorically clear views
Go with the flow—more Tableau basics