So, I’m sitting in an overpriced Mountain View eatery with the oxymoronic name of Country Gourmet (and, I'm not making this up, outdoor loos), publishing this post courtesy of the company that put Mountain View on the cosmic map, Google.
Turns out that Google has showered this burg with free WiFi. It’s a little iffy from where I’m sitting—took me about 13 tries to get connected, and the network (and others) kept appearing and disappearing in my available wireless networks list. But all of a sudden, like the first Spring daffodil, it was here.
Speed isn’t great, and frankly this Google hegemony is a little creepy, but for free…
America, goniff!
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
A loss to us all
I’ve received word that Jack Corkey, a fellow chorister at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Reston has died. His wife, Laurie, returned from church on Sunday morning; he was on the floor after his usual run. Apparently—kindly—it was quite sudden.
Aside from all the other ways they contributed to the vibrant St. Anne’s (and Northern Virginia) community, Jack and Laurie are part of my first and strongest memories of my time in the choir. Laurie was the accompanist, Jack sang tenor. Jack had that easy-going ranginess of the distance runner (although I didn’t know he ran); and the two had the most brilliant million-megawatt smiles. They were welcoming and generous, and helped me feel at home, which isn’t easy to do.
They also provided the communion bread from their bakery—strong, molassy, dark bread in round loaves the servers broke off to give you. I hate the straw disks you get at communion rails in every other church I’ve attended and miss that earthy flavor.
I didn’t know Jack very well. Just well enough to know that, at age 66, he died way too young and has left a hole in the community fabric.
Aside from all the other ways they contributed to the vibrant St. Anne’s (and Northern Virginia) community, Jack and Laurie are part of my first and strongest memories of my time in the choir. Laurie was the accompanist, Jack sang tenor. Jack had that easy-going ranginess of the distance runner (although I didn’t know he ran); and the two had the most brilliant million-megawatt smiles. They were welcoming and generous, and helped me feel at home, which isn’t easy to do.
They also provided the communion bread from their bakery—strong, molassy, dark bread in round loaves the servers broke off to give you. I hate the straw disks you get at communion rails in every other church I’ve attended and miss that earthy flavor.
I didn’t know Jack very well. Just well enough to know that, at age 66, he died way too young and has left a hole in the community fabric.
The earth moved
Although I spent the first thirty-something years of my life in California, I experienced my very first earthquake last Friday. For all of the big ones I was always out of state; I was even watching the World Series game from North Carolina when the Loma Prieta one hit in 1989.
This one was 4.1 on the Richter scale, centered about 12 miles or so away from me.
It was a very strange sensation—I was sitting on my Ikea chair and felt it go sort of fluid. (The chair may have exaggerated the effect somewhat.) The bookcases swayed a bit and I heard a faint rattle of the glasses in the kitchen cupboard. Then, maybe a couple of seconds later, I heard something that sounded like maybe a bomb had been dropped about ten miles away.
I waited to see if it would repeat and I’d need to dash outside, but there was no follow-up that I could perceive.
My friends in Palm Springs have their kitchen cabinets earthquake-proofed (latches to prevent dishes and stuff falling out when the building shakes). They also have stores of bottled water and escape routes that don’t involve any kind of overpasses that could/would collapse in The Big One.
I figure that here in the South Bay we’re pretty well screwed. I’m reminded of some Discovery Channel docu on Vesuvius: authorities in Naples have a plan for how city dwellers would be notified and evacuation routes; but normal traffic is at a standstill. When Vesuvius blows, that’ll be all she wrote.
In the event of a serious quake in this area I’m thinking my best bet is to get out to the park across the street with my cat in a pillowcase (like I’m going to be able to catch her), a good book (because the cell network is going to be paralyzed) and my AmEx card for when things start sorting themselves out.
This one was 4.1 on the Richter scale, centered about 12 miles or so away from me.
It was a very strange sensation—I was sitting on my Ikea chair and felt it go sort of fluid. (The chair may have exaggerated the effect somewhat.) The bookcases swayed a bit and I heard a faint rattle of the glasses in the kitchen cupboard. Then, maybe a couple of seconds later, I heard something that sounded like maybe a bomb had been dropped about ten miles away.
I waited to see if it would repeat and I’d need to dash outside, but there was no follow-up that I could perceive.
My friends in Palm Springs have their kitchen cabinets earthquake-proofed (latches to prevent dishes and stuff falling out when the building shakes). They also have stores of bottled water and escape routes that don’t involve any kind of overpasses that could/would collapse in The Big One.
I figure that here in the South Bay we’re pretty well screwed. I’m reminded of some Discovery Channel docu on Vesuvius: authorities in Naples have a plan for how city dwellers would be notified and evacuation routes; but normal traffic is at a standstill. When Vesuvius blows, that’ll be all she wrote.
In the event of a serious quake in this area I’m thinking my best bet is to get out to the park across the street with my cat in a pillowcase (like I’m going to be able to catch her), a good book (because the cell network is going to be paralyzed) and my AmEx card for when things start sorting themselves out.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
State of the state
If you don’t live in the Golden State you may not be aware that California is facing a budget deficit of approximately twelve squillion dollars. Jerry Brown, who replaced Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor last week, has inherited the mess and has started slashing expenses. (Or, at least he’s announcing cuts in expenses.)
And I got a chuckle out one of his first targets: the apparently indiscriminate assignment of taxpayer-paid cell phones to 96,000 state employees. Brown’s cutting the cordless to half of them, with an expected savings of $20M per year.
I agree with him that it stretches credulity to think that all those functionaries require 24x7 ties to the job. I actually think that no one needs round-the-clock connectivity to his/her employer; when colleagues start thinking they can reach you at the same time Conan does, there’s a lot of both arrogance and inefficiency going on.
Which, of course, are probably not in short supply in the state government. As anyone who’s tried to get a driver’s license can tell you.
And, speaking of the DMV, Brown’s also going to make users of their 12,000 light vehicles justify the business case for retaining them. That’s going to bite, and I fully expect the agencies to squawk big time over it. In the past it hasn’t been unknown for a group to assign an official car to staff members for commuting in order to drive up the mileage and thus justify the need for having it in the pool.
And compared with the delta of $25.5B, this is just chipping off some of the edges.
Still—$20M here, $14M there. After a while you’re talking real money.
And I got a chuckle out one of his first targets: the apparently indiscriminate assignment of taxpayer-paid cell phones to 96,000 state employees. Brown’s cutting the cordless to half of them, with an expected savings of $20M per year.
I agree with him that it stretches credulity to think that all those functionaries require 24x7 ties to the job. I actually think that no one needs round-the-clock connectivity to his/her employer; when colleagues start thinking they can reach you at the same time Conan does, there’s a lot of both arrogance and inefficiency going on.
Which, of course, are probably not in short supply in the state government. As anyone who’s tried to get a driver’s license can tell you.
And, speaking of the DMV, Brown’s also going to make users of their 12,000 light vehicles justify the business case for retaining them. That’s going to bite, and I fully expect the agencies to squawk big time over it. In the past it hasn’t been unknown for a group to assign an official car to staff members for commuting in order to drive up the mileage and thus justify the need for having it in the pool.
And compared with the delta of $25.5B, this is just chipping off some of the edges.
Still—$20M here, $14M there. After a while you’re talking real money.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Recruiters 9
Finally—someone involved with this contract product marketing gig who’s intelligent, professional and knowledgeable about the position and the discipline.
I met Friday with the actual hiring manager, had a cogent exchange of information and think I could do the work and enjoy it. And, contrary to what Shveta Here (how the recruiter invariably begins any phone conversation) had said to prep me for the Skippy call, I’m not under consideration for the retail PMM role, but the enterprise one. Quelle surprise that she got that little bit of crucial information exactly backwards.
At the least, I’m interested in an organization that names its conference rooms after TV shows. My interview was held in “The Outer Limits”; make of that what you will.
The recruiter, however, was as useless as ever. Because the hiring manager’s LinkedIn profile was only her name and three job titles, I’d asked SH to use her premium account to get me a screen shot of the whole profile. She said she would; this was Tuesday.
I pinged again Thursday morning; in the afternoon she rang me to say she hadn’t been able to do that and the only thing she could tell me was the hiring manager’s title. Which she got wrong.
And she gave me the wrong pronunciation for the HM’s surname.
Then, at 1028 on Friday (as I was literally stepping out the door to go to the 1100 interview), she called to inform me that the HM is “the decision maker” and “a very senior person”.
Oh, and Skippy reports to her.
(That would mean that he isn’t the hiring manager, which is what she’d insisted when I questioned that fact. Of course, she didn’t refer to the previous conversation.)
She enjoined me to call her after the interview so she could “follow up with the client”.
Well, when I hadn’t contacted her by 1330, she rang and reproached me: “I said for you to call me.”
Yeah, whatever. I gave her a brief summary of the meeting—I thought it went well but HM has only just started the interview process. (In fact, I saw another candidate had signed in with Reception a couple of hours before my appointment.) And she said hoped to get back to us sometime next week.
(I did leave out the little bits about the HM giving me her card and taking down my phone number; I knew SH would have a cow over that.)
I don’t know what SH was hoping to get out of me—she kept pressing me for indicators that I’m the chosen one, and there was nothing to give. Most interviewers are very evasive about that sort of thing. And I have no idea what she means by the phrase “follow-up with the client”, because obviously she hasn’t had any conversations with the client at all (she doesn’t even seem to speak with the account manager) and she wasn’t going to do anything on Friday anyhow.
We now return control of your television set to you, until the next episode.
I met Friday with the actual hiring manager, had a cogent exchange of information and think I could do the work and enjoy it. And, contrary to what Shveta Here (how the recruiter invariably begins any phone conversation) had said to prep me for the Skippy call, I’m not under consideration for the retail PMM role, but the enterprise one. Quelle surprise that she got that little bit of crucial information exactly backwards.
At the least, I’m interested in an organization that names its conference rooms after TV shows. My interview was held in “The Outer Limits”; make of that what you will.
The recruiter, however, was as useless as ever. Because the hiring manager’s LinkedIn profile was only her name and three job titles, I’d asked SH to use her premium account to get me a screen shot of the whole profile. She said she would; this was Tuesday.
I pinged again Thursday morning; in the afternoon she rang me to say she hadn’t been able to do that and the only thing she could tell me was the hiring manager’s title. Which she got wrong.
And she gave me the wrong pronunciation for the HM’s surname.
Then, at 1028 on Friday (as I was literally stepping out the door to go to the 1100 interview), she called to inform me that the HM is “the decision maker” and “a very senior person”.
Oh, and Skippy reports to her.
(That would mean that he isn’t the hiring manager, which is what she’d insisted when I questioned that fact. Of course, she didn’t refer to the previous conversation.)
She enjoined me to call her after the interview so she could “follow up with the client”.
Well, when I hadn’t contacted her by 1330, she rang and reproached me: “I said for you to call me.”
Yeah, whatever. I gave her a brief summary of the meeting—I thought it went well but HM has only just started the interview process. (In fact, I saw another candidate had signed in with Reception a couple of hours before my appointment.) And she said hoped to get back to us sometime next week.
(I did leave out the little bits about the HM giving me her card and taking down my phone number; I knew SH would have a cow over that.)
I don’t know what SH was hoping to get out of me—she kept pressing me for indicators that I’m the chosen one, and there was nothing to give. Most interviewers are very evasive about that sort of thing. And I have no idea what she means by the phrase “follow-up with the client”, because obviously she hasn’t had any conversations with the client at all (she doesn’t even seem to speak with the account manager) and she wasn’t going to do anything on Friday anyhow.
We now return control of your television set to you, until the next episode.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Making history
Well, hmm. The History Channel has decided not to air a docudrama on the Kennedys because it doesn’t “fit” their brand. Evidently the point of contention is that it has fictional elements and thus doesn’t meet the network’s exacting standards for historical accuracy.
Lord love a duck—the cable franchise that brought you series called “Ancient Ink”, “Pawn Stars” “Ice Road Truckers” and “Axe Men” has standards? Independent of the ones for churning out dreck at the speed of knots and stuffing 18 minutes of commercials per hour of “content”?
Historicity hasn’t been an issue for THC or any of its sister channels, including A&E, Bio or History International
How does a show called “Dog the Bounty Hunter” or “Hoarders” constitute either arts or entertainment? Since when was biography restricted to films on paranormal experiences and bios of mobsters and celebrities (some of whom aren’t yet in their mid-20s)? And, as for HI…it’s mostly recycled crap from the other two, with the addition of "The Naked Archaeologist".
So it’s really amusing that THC is claiming some sensibilities around the veracity of any of their programming, much less of DBOF (Drama Based on Fact, as they used to say at CBS).
I don’t really care whether some Kennedy Cabal “got” to THC to stop any scandal; I’m not sure what dirt this production could have dished that hasn’t already been shoveled by DBOFs in the past. And I’m not worried that this is a first-amendment issue, because I can’t see how what gets broadcast on any channel could be considered free speech, anymore than what Apple or GM put into the marketplace would be. It’s all about product, positioning and packaging.
It would have been interesting seeing Greg Kinnear as JFK, though.
Lord love a duck—the cable franchise that brought you series called “Ancient Ink”, “Pawn Stars” “Ice Road Truckers” and “Axe Men” has standards? Independent of the ones for churning out dreck at the speed of knots and stuffing 18 minutes of commercials per hour of “content”?
Historicity hasn’t been an issue for THC or any of its sister channels, including A&E, Bio or History International
How does a show called “Dog the Bounty Hunter” or “Hoarders” constitute either arts or entertainment? Since when was biography restricted to films on paranormal experiences and bios of mobsters and celebrities (some of whom aren’t yet in their mid-20s)? And, as for HI…it’s mostly recycled crap from the other two, with the addition of "The Naked Archaeologist".
So it’s really amusing that THC is claiming some sensibilities around the veracity of any of their programming, much less of DBOF (Drama Based on Fact, as they used to say at CBS).
I don’t really care whether some Kennedy Cabal “got” to THC to stop any scandal; I’m not sure what dirt this production could have dished that hasn’t already been shoveled by DBOFs in the past. And I’m not worried that this is a first-amendment issue, because I can’t see how what gets broadcast on any channel could be considered free speech, anymore than what Apple or GM put into the marketplace would be. It’s all about product, positioning and packaging.
It would have been interesting seeing Greg Kinnear as JFK, though.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)