RantsCounterRants:  DIE ALREADY, WILL YOU, DAMMIT ALL!!!  DIE!!!

 

Freakin' unearthly un-dead or something, nine lives like a demon feline from Hades, possessing the resistance of the spawn of Satan...

 

Bush's wet dream of a stimulus package will not DIE!!!

 

Which leads me to a terrifying thought: Good God, will we have to do this all over again with Jeb???

 

  10:08:36 PM    comment []

What’s for Dinner?:  Ugh, I caved in…

 

Oh dear, I feel like the mother-from-hell.  I gave in and got fast food tacos at the kids’ request.  We’d been shopping, they were tired, it was getting late, and cooking just sounded like hell on earth for all of us at this point in time.

 

A nice big glass of milk and a homemade chocolate brownie.  <sigh>

 

At least dinner had a nice finish.

 

Hubby’s home tomorrow, so back to cooking it will be.  Something low fat, with ham.  Again.

 

So, enough self-flagellation with the guilt thing since we’re back on the wagon tomorrow.

 

What do you do when it’s late, you’re tired, the kids are gnawing at your ankles?  Make me feel better, huh?

 

  9:26:23 PM    comment []

RantsCounterRants:  Huh?  Bush wants to nuke income taxes??

 

How did I miss something this big this week?  Okay, maybe it’s the stealth title chosen by NYT that caused this to get buried:

 

White House Floats Idea of Dropping Income Tax Overhaul

 

Contrast that title against the first paragraph:

 

President Bush, having already set off a firestorm over his proposals to cut taxes and revamp retirement accounts, suggested today that the time might be near to drop the income tax as a whole and replace it with some form of consumption tax.

 

HUH??? Am I imagining things, or is this column title misleading?

 

But that’s really a little thing – puny even when looking at this as a some sort of weird editorial manipulation of a Bush Administration trial balloon.

 

The real problem is the total incompetence of the Administration to get a handle on the economy.  We’re talking decades and multiple-generation-long deficits and this doofus Administration wants to mess with the revenue stream?

 

And about the concept of consumption: isn’t that wading into the states territory, revenues from consumption, i.e. sales tax?

 

Somebody give this Administration some sharp objects, will ya’?  Maybe they’ll poke themselves into reality or oblivion.

 

At least encourage Greenspan to start bitch-slapping some sense into them.

 

  8:42:10 PM    comment []

And now, for something different:  Squirrel Fishing!

 

Or, A Tale of Two Boys with entirely too much time and too much money on their hands.

 

(Lord, please don't let my children grow up to be squirrel fishers!)

 

  4:18:19 PM    comment []

DharmaSurfing:  Post-Interview reductionism…

 

So, what happened?

 

Who knows.

 

It felt so very Twilight Zone-ish, like a time warp.  I sat around a conference room table that I’ve sat around before.  Saw a presentation I’ve seen before on the organization’s structure; nothing new there, not even a new acronym.

 

Completely unchanged in the nearly 24 months since I worked for this Fortune 100 company; unchanged since I left the employ of their IT contractor seven months ago. 

 

The hiring manager apologized for all the acronyms used.  I laughed to myself (inside), thinking: HAH!  This is only a fraction of them.  I was certain administrative manager knew more acronyms than the hiring manager, having migrated recently from the Finance group.  Yeah, I was sure of that.

 

Two managers, four team members – all in one big cluster-interview.  One female team member, the rest guys.  I worked with one of the guys frequently on different projects, worked with his father as well.  The others are in technologies I haven’t supported.  The chick worked in the technology I’m most familiar with; never worked with her, but the right things came up in conversation.  Like the “800 pound gorilla” she supports – takes over everything during financial reporting.  I labeled this node as such, and her eyes lit up.  Yeah, babe, I know, that gorilla’s bitten off a piece of you a few times, too, hasn’t it.  Me too.

 

They ask all the scripted questions I expected:

-          give an example of a time you had to go beyond your role to support your team (like doing my analysts’ reporting to meet the timeline  for my own project because they’re already overworked; covering for other project managers on vacation, etc.);

-          give an example of a good day and a bad day (good is when everything happens on time, in scope, under budget, and the client is happy; and bad is when your husband says “we have to talk” because you’re working 100+ hours a week for more than a month);

-          give an example of a weakness and a strength and how you work to improve or develop them (an overused strength is a weakness; being highly articulate and tell-assertive, I can communicate very well, but I need to back-off and give myself a time-out once in a while, be more ask-assertive on re-approach).

 

Yada-yada-yada.

 

Definitely, being too familiar could cost me.  When I got my tour around the facility (the most secure building in the entire corporation), I knew which equipment had been moved, could point it out, asked about the change (only real questions I had).  Even recognized a guy from Compaq on a service call at the site, got to say howdy – my tour guide was pleased since it was her area of expertise and Mr. Compaq-guy said “Hire her, she’s good!”.  (Damn, if I get this, I already owe him a lunch for this one!)

 

I found myself without even a single question to ask at the end of interview, because I already know intimately what they do in this department.  I’ve relied on them to assist me during projects, supported them when they had equipment failures.  Even their benchmarks were old hat.

 

Very difficult not to come off too cocky, had to restrain myself a bit.  They said they called me primarily because I could hit the ground running – yeah, it’s true, I could.  Call Security to get me network access, ask Messaging to unhide my archived e-mail account and clone it with a new ID, and I’m back in business.  Tops, 15 minutes.  20 minutes, if you want me to order my own phone line.  But I didn’t tell them that, hoped like hell they knew it.

 

I don’t know what to make of it.  It was almost too comfortable, obscuring that sixth sense one gets about whether they’ve done well or not.  If being too familiar doesn’t nip me, perhaps being too qualified will. 

 

They’ve got more interviewing to do; there’s an enormous crop of qualified people due to local layoffs and only a couple of openings.  Perhaps there’s another couple of big contenders in the group of candidates that’s even more familiar or qualified.

 

All so hard to say.  I imagine I’ll know by the end of next week.

 

Now, the hardest part: waiting.

  4:08:55 PM    comment []

WARNING: SLOW BLOGGING TODAY

 

(Hah!  That’s for you, Jan!)

 

Actually, it will be slow today.  I’m uploading this post while my car is warming up in the garage (I’d like warm fingers when I shake hands with my prospective supervisor, not cold ones).

 

I’m leaving for my interview, the one I’ve been whining about this past week.

 

Nope, little or no preparation and rehearsal in advance -- I didn’t brush up on the old software.  Nope, I didn’t go poking around for background on the team interviewing me. 

 

Trying just to go with the flow, hope that my background and references did most of my work for me.  If they didn’t, this isn’t going to fly any better than an elephant.

 

Questions keep popping up in my head, unbidden: will it be a tag-team interview or a one-on-one or a team-cluster interview?  Are they going to be offended by my outfit, see me as somehow threatening?  Will any of my old compadres be there and will I be able to say howdy without jinxing the whole thing?  Should I take more copies of my resume or will one do?

 

<deep cleansing breath>

 

Wish me luck.

 

Nope, I take that back; instead, wish the best outcome for me, please.  Take pity on me, just for once.

 

You can beat me up later when I resume so-called normal blogging.

 

What the heck, start without me.  Feel free to dump in my comments in the mean time, use your psychic powers and remote vision -- tell me what I did right/wrong in my interview today.  It can’t be any worse than I’ll be thinking to myself.

 

  9:10:02 AM    comment []

Shortie Sorties: today’s little fly-by items

 

Deposed dictators need only apply…

 

What a deal.  Surely Saddam would give this “dictator academy” some consideration.  Heck, might work for Kim Jung-Il as well. 

 

Almost wish I was a deposed dictator, too.  I’m particularly fond of the word “stipend”.

 

 

Small Fuel Cells – maybe at a Wal-Mart near you soon?

 

This article is a fair introduction to the current status of small fuel cell development.  Ideally, small fuel cells will power all handheld and portable electronics in the very near future.

 

The one blurb in this article that gives me pause:

 

“Much like the automobile industry, mobile electronics makers will have to work with retail outlets and other partners to develop the infrastructure to easily supply the fuel to consumers.”

 

Hello?  Is this really different from batteries?  Even if it’s mini-“tanks” of fuel, aren’t there already restrictions on handling automotive batteries?

 

(The nonsense in the article about fuel cells on board planes is a bit much, too.  Sure, regs say “no fuel on board” – but people carry butane lighters, cans of hairspray aren’t a stretch either.)

 

I think the developers just need to have a little chat with the folks at Wal-Mart -- it’d be a done-deal.  Wal-Mart would probably cough up a chunk of change to assist development, too, if it could corner initial placement.

 

  8:14:35 AM    comment []