Advancing...

I had an interview yesterday for a job I’d really love, one that would make excellent use of my liberal arts bent and my communications background. It was a panel of six, although since I’d already spoken on the phone with the hiring manager and the HR manager, only four of them really asked me questions.

They were every one of them smart, articulate and deeply committed to their organization and the success of this new program. There was not one twenty-something hotshot engineer-master-of-the-universe convinced that he alone will be responsible for the next [Google, Uber, Facebook, whatever].

So I was not sitting at the Cool Kids Table, trying to maintain the attention of ADHD sufferers who find their mobile phones more compelling than what I have to say. They asked good questions and seemed to appreciate my answers. And now I’m waiting to hear about next steps.

Here’s how much I want this job: I wrote thank-you notes. On note paper. And delivered them to the guard at the organization’s front desk.

Foreshadowings of the silver future

About twelve years ago I did an images research project for a consortium that was opposing the D.C. Metrorail project to build the Silver Line as an elevated train going through Tyson’s Corner, eventually to Dulles Airport and beyond.

My job was to find images of elevated rail transit in various settings. Naturally, the idea was to find pictures that looked awful, because the clients were supporting the idea of sending the Silver Line underground instead of above. But the thing was—it was hard to find anything that didn’t look nasty and ugly, because that’s what elevated rail lines look like when imposed on existing urban settings.

Yesterday, en route from Dulles Airport to downtown D.C., the section around Tyson’s was every bit as repulsive as those photos I gathered all those years ago. Damn. I mean—for a total of less than $12 I saved myself a $70+ cab fare, but what a complete blight on the landscape.

Really sorry that happened. But there you go—you get what you pay for.

Not much of a Yahoo

I’m on a couple of Meetups that use Yahoo Groups to communicate, so every few months I have to fish out my Yahoo account password and log in so I can download files that have been shared.

Every time I do I recall one of the many reasons why I long ago stopped using it. Including this collection of spam, which (whatever you might think about Google), I never see in my Gmail queue:

Seriously—what sort of sad, sad individual would even click on those things? I need to be hosed down with disinfectant just for looking at them.

The mean streets

As you know, I often wonder about the stories behind things I observe here in the Valley They Call Silicon.

And there’s so much to observe.

Although I don’t see it as often as I did in Seattle, I do run across the odd bit of stuff pushed out onto the sidewalk in front of someone’s house that the residents are hoping someone will take away. Sometimes they put a sign on it:

Sometimes not.

Either way, not much of a story to construct, really.

But this one—a surgical mask and a pair of tighty-whities…

I’m having rather a good time with that one.

Gratitude Monday: Passion personified

It’s such a career-management cliché these days to talk about “your passion”. (Around here in the Valley They Call Silicon, “passion” is starting to be replaced by “superpowers”, as in “tell us about your superpowers”, instead of “what’s your passion?” But it’s still the same kind of buzzwordery.) And you get overwhelmed at networking events by people beetling around jamming business cards into your hands and babbling about being passionate about [insert cool tech du jour here].

It really starts to wear one out.

But listening yesterday morning to Marsha Barnes tell NPR’s Rachel Martin about buying a school bus so she could take her expertise on personal financial management to wherever it’s needed (in the greater Charlotte, N.C., area), I was infused with joy. Not only because she’s giving people information crucial to their ability to live independently and well, but also because she so clearly loves what she’s doing.

I loved the part about her having to learn to drive the bus…after she bought it. I love that she created a mobile office so that her clients interact with her in a professional and private environment that customers of the investment banks in downtown Charlotte would recognize. I love that she can see this as a scalable model for any place where you can park a bus.

The woman is not telling us about her passion, she’s living it, which is thoroughly evident in the energy, enthusiasm and joy that fills her voice. And I’m grateful that this week in particular started out with the inspiration of Marsha Barnes.