Category: Uncategorized

My cats now both have facebook profiles.

If you’re on facebook and haven’t already friended me and my cats, please feel free!

I just had a brief phone interview with someone from [name withheld].

The interviewer asked me to outline my technical skills. So I tried to be brief but complete in outlining areas of competency – various programming languages, database environments, web design, etc… I wrapped that up as quickly as possible and said “I can go into considerably more depth but I don’t want to talk your ear off. Were there particular technical skills you were interested in?”

“Well,” he said, “our teams use Excel a lot. Would you be comfortable with that?”

Um, yeah. I can use Excel. And if you have to ask… you probably didn’t understand a word I just said, did you? Well, I hope you’re the type who’s impressed by what you don’t understand, rather than offended.

The job could still be interesting but definitely less challenging on the IT front than my last job…

He said they’d be scheduling a next-round interview with me, probably early next week. Maybe the next round will involve people who actually know something about the system?

So if I’ve set up a twitter account, how do I make the twitter posts turn into LJ posts? I see that several people do this so I know it must be possible…

I did go ahead and down load FF3 and see no particular difference in performance…

My quiet weekend has involved hurricane watching (I heartily second offthekuff  in his description of the mixed feelings involved – glad it’s looking unlikely to hit us, sorry it’s going to hit Louisiana, a bit guilty that the glad is stronger than the sorry right now…).  Also catching up on some reading, playing with kitties, and hanging out with friends.  And a yoga session yesterday AM that was a spendid lesson in just how weak I am… can’t hold a handstand for more than about 5 seconds.

I have been thinking about the thing that’s circulating about Sarah Palin faking pregnancy to cover her teen daughter’s pregnancy…  if true, who would it influence?  Perhaps one of those mythical voters who was in favor of Hillary Clinton but says they’ll vote for McCain over Obama. 

FF3 has been out for a while but I’d heard there were some security issues, so I’m still plugging along with 2.x.  I’m wondering whether anyone has uploaded 3?  Is it worth it?

Let’s see… I’m home from England but haven’t found the time to blog about it.  Wasn’t tons to blog about, really; I wandered around, seeing sights and mostly people-watching, 4 days in Cambridge and 2 days in London.  Highlights involved getting to see my old friend Lydia, who I haven’t seen in a decade, and another old friend Jason, along with his wonderful wife and daughter. 

On arrival home I spent last week starting to get out resumes and repairing tile and grout in my bathroom.  My in-laws arrived on Friday and stayed through today – it’s so nice to have the house to myself again, even though this visit was overall fairly pleasant. 

I’ve had a couple job interviews.  The one last Friday was dubious – nice guy, interesting-sounding work, but the job would involve a lot of travel and worse, the company appears to be financially very unstable.  Today’s was more encouraging – though again a possible fly in the ointment is that they seem to be looking for someone to fix a dysfunctional department as well as someone who can do the consulting work.  Sigh.  I asked to meet the person who is apparently responsible for making the department dysfunctional and we’ll see how that goes before making any judgments.

And when I got home today there was an email asking me to send a resume for one position, and a phone call from someone at another place – so other options may be forthcoming.

Rumor mill says I might be getting our new computer sometime next week.  That’d be cool.

It amazes me that I continue to try to “declutter” my house and I continue to find things that I just will never use and have no idea why I’ve been storing all these years.

Particularly sad is when I come across something that is useful to someone and instead I hoarded it until it’s probably no longer usable.

Today’s example is film.  I just came across a trove of 3 snapshot cameras – no idea if they actually work any more.  Also 4 of those instant disposable cameras, in various states of use from completely filled to unopened.  Also four rolls of fully or partially exposed film.  Also 11 rolls of unexposed film which is probably between 5 and 15 years old.

Is there any point in trying to use that old film, or is it likely to be useless at this point?  Likewise is there any point in trying to get the exposed film developed, if it also is probably 5-15 years old?  I’ve no idea what’s on it… apparently nothing too crucial or I would’ve made a point of exposing the film earlier, right?

Laughing at a story that managed to twist the definition of “humanitarian” into something parallel to “vegetarian”.

I’ve packed clothes, including socks, undies, and PJs
I’ve packed toiletries
I’ve packed a loaded ipod of entertainment including movies, games, and ebooks (K will also have his ipod and Kindle), a camera, a couple pencil/paper puzzle books, noise-cancelling headphones, rechargers and spare batteries.  Also my laptop, spare battery, and cord.
I have a small supply of ibuprofen, tylenol, and decongestant just in case.
I’ve printed my packet of info about things to do and see including maps, boarding passes.  My passport is laid out. 
I have chewing gum for the plane.
I have my super-stretchy soft slipper socks for the plane.

What am I forgetting?

So I have a profile on LinkedIn which was useful for my last jobhunt, so I’ve made sure to be keeping an eye on that site for the current hunt.

I’ve found the site is a cool way to find old friends that I had lost track of.  Sometimes I’ll find them because they’re linked to another friend; sometimes they’ll be suggested by the site because we share several second-degree connections or because we attended the same schools or worked at the same places.

But every now and then the site will suggest “you may know…” and I can’t figure out how on earth it knew that I would know this person.  Today’s examples include…

• My MOTHER-IN-LAW, who just started a profile and only has one connection.  We don’t share any alma maters, none of the rest of that side of the family is linked to me, and we don’t share the same last name.  We live in different cities…
• A professor from a class I took once – not in my normal subject field…
• An old friend who lives on a different continent, attended entirely different schools from me, works in a totally different field, and has only a few people on her contacts lists, none of whom are people I know.  My friendship with this person is because her husband once worked with my ex-husband, and because her little sister and I were on debate teams in the same state back in high school.  Not the sort of thing you’d expect LinkedIn to know!

I can’t think of any mechanism that would let LinkedIn see my personal address book or anything like this – but this ability to find people who are connected to me in ways that would be quite obscure from a data point of view is sort of freaking me out…