Well... that didn't suck so much
Oct. 16th, 2006 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bethlakshmiSorry for the long time, no typey.
Before we get to the content of my message:
COME SEE ME IN OUT FOR BLOOD!
C'mon, you know you want to and time is running out. There's only two weeks left to the show, I know a ton of ya'll haven't come yet (I'm there every night, remember?) and I guarantee that the last Fri/Sat will be PACKED, so come earlier than that when I still have some vim and vigour to hang out after the show!!!
http://www.bostonbabydolls.net/performances/halloween06.php
OK... now that that's out of the way.
Before we get to the content of my message:
COME SEE ME IN OUT FOR BLOOD!
C'mon, you know you want to and time is running out. There's only two weeks left to the show, I know a ton of ya'll haven't come yet (I'm there every night, remember?) and I guarantee that the last Fri/Sat will be PACKED, so come earlier than that when I still have some vim and vigour to hang out after the show!!!
http://www.bostonbabydolls.net/performances/halloween06.php
OK... now that that's out of the way.
How'm I? OK, I guess. This has been a season of vast ups and downs:
- up -lady_cassia's husband, Lord Edward, is fighting for me in Crown. This is very cool cause I've never gotten to be a consort before, and Edward is a lovely and chivalrous gentleman (and Lady Cassia is very cool too!)
- down - my butt broke. One Saturday over a week ago I woke up sore in the butt-u-lar region. By Sun/Mon I could barely walk.
- up - I'm seeing Barry Meklir (http://www.muscularsolutions.com) who is the Body Wizard. No shit. He's professional, knowledgable, holistic, very cool and he works magic, literally. He knows a shit ton of different disciplines of body work AND some wacky Oriental stuff that is downright uncanny. My butt is feeling progressively better after 2 visits, and I'm hoping that this will be the end of random Lakshmi pains.
- down - my ATM card went kerfuckety. They upgraded the network and locked up my card. It took them 3 days to call back to my frantic phone calls
- up - I got a new bank - Soveriegn - who offers more services than the old Credit Union ever did
- up - our Burlesque show rocks
- down - not enough people know that it rocks - don't just come see us, repost in your journal in your own words!!
- up - a little shaudenfraude - our company no-fun-at-work-for-you proxy not only allows me access to far too many interesting things, but it also fucked up our service to our customers. We got service restored, but at a cost. A cost the IT folks refuse to pay for. My boss is livid and it is not only fun to watch, but he stands a decent chance of making enough ruckus to do some good.
But... that wasn't what I really wanted to blabber about.
I just had my second technical interview. With the guy who rather intimidated me before. After the Happy HR Lady said "oh he's really nice! I can't believe you didn't think he was nice!", I gave him another shot. And he's pretty nice. He's a big hardcore geek, but not bad otherwise. And he's Asian (I looked up his bio). Knowing that he's an intense Asian geek guy who is tasked with verifying the interviewee makes his mannerisms seem far warmer and friendlier somehow.
We had a very, very tough interview today. Topics included:
- buffer overflow
- copy constructors in C++ and their impact on data security
- how a compiler actually handles an Interface class where all the methods are virtual
- threading - time to check vs. time to access with a sidebar on thread locking
And possibly other stuff.
This would be really good if I could use my Laurel medallion to tap intojducoeur brain. I bet he'd know the answers off the top of his head. But er.. I be the documentrix and system design dictator. I not be so close to compilers, threads and heaps in some time.
Ow. My brain is sore and needs and ice pack. These are all topics I might be able to handle, if I spent a week or two really drilling over them... In fact, the threading one I might have been able to handle no sweat this time last year when I was neck deep in processs handling via a multi-threaded C++ fake CPU that didn't work right on multi-processor machines. But ... er... I just spent the last two weeks designing data flows through a syslog daemon. And negotiating tricky "how does the application work?" questions with a subcontracting domain expert where our expertise and his expertise say contradictory things.
Kinda different.
But kinda fun. I told my Geek Interviewer that I liked this stuff, and it had been a while since I had dug this deep, and I kinda missed it. That's the truth.
He seemed pleased. I think he actually took the Really Hard Problems and leveled them at me. At one point I said "dear god, I'd go read something at this point and try to figure it out". And he said "good, this wouldn't be any fun if you actually knew the answer". Which was good, cause I SO didn't know the answer. So I assume that it was REALLY fun for him, then.
What really, really sucked was not having a way on the phone to draw a picture. Bleh.
What was good about the phone was that I could hug my teddy bear while answering questions. Clearly not a good plan going forward, but when you just got your period, your body therapy guy just pounded on your hip and now some strange guy from the hip geek company is asking you hard questions - believe me, a teddy bear is the PERFECT tool for a teleinterview.
He actually said he was pleased and I could probably expect to hear from Mr. Hiring Guy. They are trying to get me a position to start with that involves billable hours. But if that drags on too long, they will figure something else out. That sounds very promising, but there will be no chicken counting here.
I told him that I felt like I had just been run over by a Jeep. A very nice, polite Jeep, but a Jeep nonetheless. He seemed a little sad to have been the Jeep, but I said I should probably get used to it, since answering hard problems on the fly would definitely be part of the job, right?
- up -
lady_cassia's husband, Lord Edward, is fighting for me in Crown. This is very cool cause I've never gotten to be a consort before, and Edward is a lovely and chivalrous gentleman (and Lady Cassia is very cool too!)- down - my butt broke. One Saturday over a week ago I woke up sore in the butt-u-lar region. By Sun/Mon I could barely walk.
- up - I'm seeing Barry Meklir (http://www.muscularsolutions.com) who is the Body Wizard. No shit. He's professional, knowledgable, holistic, very cool and he works magic, literally. He knows a shit ton of different disciplines of body work AND some wacky Oriental stuff that is downright uncanny. My butt is feeling progressively better after 2 visits, and I'm hoping that this will be the end of random Lakshmi pains.
- down - my ATM card went kerfuckety. They upgraded the network and locked up my card. It took them 3 days to call back to my frantic phone calls
- up - I got a new bank - Soveriegn - who offers more services than the old Credit Union ever did
- up - our Burlesque show rocks
- down - not enough people know that it rocks - don't just come see us, repost in your journal in your own words!!
- up - a little shaudenfraude - our company no-fun-at-work-for-you proxy not only allows me access to far too many interesting things, but it also fucked up our service to our customers. We got service restored, but at a cost. A cost the IT folks refuse to pay for. My boss is livid and it is not only fun to watch, but he stands a decent chance of making enough ruckus to do some good.
But... that wasn't what I really wanted to blabber about.
I just had my second technical interview. With the guy who rather intimidated me before. After the Happy HR Lady said "oh he's really nice! I can't believe you didn't think he was nice!", I gave him another shot. And he's pretty nice. He's a big hardcore geek, but not bad otherwise. And he's Asian (I looked up his bio). Knowing that he's an intense Asian geek guy who is tasked with verifying the interviewee makes his mannerisms seem far warmer and friendlier somehow.
We had a very, very tough interview today. Topics included:
- buffer overflow
- copy constructors in C++ and their impact on data security
- how a compiler actually handles an Interface class where all the methods are virtual
- threading - time to check vs. time to access with a sidebar on thread locking
And possibly other stuff.
This would be really good if I could use my Laurel medallion to tap into
jducoeur brain. I bet he'd know the answers off the top of his head. But er.. I be the documentrix and system design dictator. I not be so close to compilers, threads and heaps in some time.Ow. My brain is sore and needs and ice pack. These are all topics I might be able to handle, if I spent a week or two really drilling over them... In fact, the threading one I might have been able to handle no sweat this time last year when I was neck deep in processs handling via a multi-threaded C++ fake CPU that didn't work right on multi-processor machines. But ... er... I just spent the last two weeks designing data flows through a syslog daemon. And negotiating tricky "how does the application work?" questions with a subcontracting domain expert where our expertise and his expertise say contradictory things.
Kinda different.
But kinda fun. I told my Geek Interviewer that I liked this stuff, and it had been a while since I had dug this deep, and I kinda missed it. That's the truth.
He seemed pleased. I think he actually took the Really Hard Problems and leveled them at me. At one point I said "dear god, I'd go read something at this point and try to figure it out". And he said "good, this wouldn't be any fun if you actually knew the answer". Which was good, cause I SO didn't know the answer. So I assume that it was REALLY fun for him, then.
What really, really sucked was not having a way on the phone to draw a picture. Bleh.
What was good about the phone was that I could hug my teddy bear while answering questions. Clearly not a good plan going forward, but when you just got your period, your body therapy guy just pounded on your hip and now some strange guy from the hip geek company is asking you hard questions - believe me, a teddy bear is the PERFECT tool for a teleinterview.
He actually said he was pleased and I could probably expect to hear from Mr. Hiring Guy. They are trying to get me a position to start with that involves billable hours. But if that drags on too long, they will figure something else out. That sounds very promising, but there will be no chicken counting here.
I told him that I felt like I had just been run over by a Jeep. A very nice, polite Jeep, but a Jeep nonetheless. He seemed a little sad to have been the Jeep, but I said I should probably get used to it, since answering hard problems on the fly would definitely be part of the job, right?
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no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 03:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 12:31 pm (UTC)http://pics.livejournal.com/lady_cassia/pic/00002szg/g2
no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-23 07:42 pm (UTC)The buffer-overflow one is probably the only one I could do completely offhand -- it's a stock security thing nowadays...