Rob the Fiddler

This is a sweet site.

Trends in Japan

I really cant explain it..nor what those wacky folks in Japan are thinking. Still, I keep up with the trends.

Well, I told myself I would take a month off before starting my campaign for a new job.  I still have some classes to take at Right Management, but I suppose I can start seeing whats out there.  One of the better classes I took was one on resume writing.

I suppose its time to post my offical resume.

Word and PDF

They do some formatting too, so I might update it as needed.

Ive done an interview already. I had planned to take a month off, but this was a pretty interesting sounding job and the interview window was closing quick on the offered job so I jumped. The HR person told me it was a technical interview so be prepared.

Still I didn’t see any reason to not brush up on a few things. I have a pathological fear of being under prepared for these kind of things. When I googled “Technical interview questions” I found a wealth of du jour offbeat questions. The forums were filled with people asking “what do interviewers ask?” from candidates. Sadly, they were also filled with questions from potential interviewers asking what sort of questions should they be asking.

The most reasonable questions were the ones that test basic knowledge. I agree with those. If you have SQL on your resume, be prepared to write out a few simple statements. If you have JAVA, be prepared to write a simple class. Patterns and UML…better be able to write a diagram and at least know how to code a singleton on the whiteboard. I prepared for that stuff. It took time but it all was review or at most reviewing what the latest jargon was describing the stuff I already know.

Since I know everything I put on my resume I felt pretty confident.
(although…I might take PHP off because it is apparently a bit more involved that the stuff Ive done so far).

My technical interview went really well. I felt I nailed it, but they had somebody they liked better. I guess my vacation will go as planned.

An ex-coworker told me of an interview he did that had 7+ interviewers including the CTO . Then they asked him to come in the next day so that the CEO could do more stuff. (including those stupid riddles that self absorbed executives like to ask so they feel like they are smarter than the “talent”).

Finally after about 6 hours into the interview process he said “Make an offer”. It was for half his old salarly and one week vacation. He laughed and left.

One thing I did notice about my Swing knowledge was that even though I have been using it for almost a decade, there is a ton of stuff to learn. Java makes it so easy to pick up what you need. The APIs are all on line. You tell me what you want and I can research and code it. But after the interview and looking at all those questions it seemed like I needed to be a bit more proactive.

off to NERDBOOKS!

If you have not been to nerdbooks…you gotta go. (If your into technical books I mean) Its an internet bookstore in Richardson. They really are just an internet store, but you can visit the warehouse and browse the shelves. You have to follow a few rules.

1. You gotta like Dogs! There are 3 huge dogs that have the run of the place. They are more important than walkins. If you dont like dogs…tough…use the internet. Walk-ins are a privilage. The dogs have the rights!

2. No Small children. See 1.

3. You still have to order online. They have terminals inside. Weird huh? You enter your credit card and hand the guy the books. He looks em over and hands them back to you.

4. There are a ton of books and a crazy ordering system that you will not understand. If you cant
find a book, and you often will not…ask for it. Dont even try.

5. Its ALWAYS Chirstmas. Or..well…they just dont see any reason to take down the Christmas tree.

Its a really neat place. The books are cheaper than Borders and they have free soda. The dogs are actually very well behaved. I try and get my books there whenever possible.

Well its finally happened…I got laid off from Nortel. Luckily, its not a surprise. In fact, we have known it was going to happen since last year. Most of this year has been spent transitioning everything to China. I got a trip out of it to Beijing as well. That was cool.

The severance package was pretty generous. Its not really anything I can disclose, but since I’m single, and my only debt is a mortgage payment…if I really had to I could go for a year without a job fairly comfortably. (I might need to set the AC to 86 though in the summer).

I suppose technically…as of now I’m a professional musician.

The only thing I’m uneasy about it what its like in other jobs. I have heard from several Ex-Nortel folks that we have had it pretty good here. All the groups I have been have been extremely well managed. I don’t mind working the occasional 12 hour day. In fact…my idea week seems to be a 12 hour Monday where I get a LOT of stuff done. Still, all my projects have been WELL managed with plenty of time to make my milestones. I probably average a 45 hour week only because I tend to put in that extra 10% into anything I do. It worries me to hear about companies where software engineers put in 50-60 hours a week. I cant work for a manager that over-promises.

Ive been there for 13 years. It was my first job outta college. Ive seen the excesses of the dot com era. I still have options that are in the money at $400 a share (NT is below 6 now).

Still, things were getting a bit stale. There was not much room for growth. The project I was on was REALLY cool and was an opportunity to work with all kinds of great JAVA technologies and methodologies. Something foreign in a big company. I think hitting the wild workplace will help me become a better developer. I would love an Extreme or Agile environment. The waterfall method is crushing. Thats not to say it doesnt have a place. For MTX it was well suited. As a designer I could identify EVERY line of code and why it was changed for the past 20 years. Useful? For the DMS it was critical to know this. A one line fix could cause a 10 year old bug to resurface. I took pride in my code and inspections as an architect.

So..enough about that.

In other news…sadly Mojo took off for a walkabout. In July, my dear Mojo walked out the kitty door and has yet to come back. I hear stories about cats bailing for 6 months at a time. I hope thats the case. Im still hoping he will come back and find myself chasing down every black cat stray I see in a 5 mile radius. Mojo was a great cat!!!

Still, life goes on and it turns out that Barry Kooda has more kittens than he can handle. Barry has the rather dubious hobby of “urban exploration”. Generally it requires a camera and a crowbar as you explore the underbelly of the city and poke around in places where nobody cares to be nor wants to be. In the process, apparently you find lots of kittens.

I took one in. It was orginally a he but we are pretty sure she is a she. Pictures to follow.
She is so cute. I guess I do have one dependant but I have yet to hear her say “Get a JOB…baby needs her KMR!”

Seems like I was having problems with wordpress after ipower upgraded its mySQL servers. Unfortunately I was in Beijing so there was little I could do about.  I upgraded to 2.5.1…soo….Im hoping that fixes everything.

Kitty, a stray that has settled into Spyche’s place, had a kitten!

We are not really sure of kittys background. Its even suspect that she used to live in that house all along and perhaps the previous owner left her.

In any case, kitty was getting bigger and bigger and when she finally was taken to the vet for an inital checkup, it was confirmed that she was pregnant.

Her water broke (I didnt know that they did that) on Wed night. We frantically hit the interwebs to see what the signs of a cat going into labor was.

Lost of appetite - Check
Affectionate - Check (but she is always that way)
Hiding in safe place - “Wheres kitty? Hiding behind the door” - Check

Luckily a trip was made that very day for towels and a nesting box. She kinda had this surprise “help me” look on her face and was promptly scooped into the box and in about an hour, we had a new kitten.

We were pretty worried about what to do with a big basket of kittens, but kitty only had one kitten.

Here are pics one day old.