Opportunity knocks

So, this popped up in my texts last week:

I have no earthly notion who “Eddie” might be, but he’s not even trying. I mean—he’s not even going to the same effort as the hundreds of South Asian recruiters whose emails start with “I hope you’re doing well” before they pitch you a contract job for which you have no qualifications located five states away.

An undefined “opportunity”—job? MLM? investment?—is not enough to get me to do anything but report spam and block.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Tech support

A couple of months ago, my HP Spectre laptop started going wonky; symptoms included the power cable being loose in the USB port, and it kept getting worse.

I called around to a few local computer repair places. One told me they’d be happy to take a look, for $159, and then repair. Another said that there was only one place in the area (well—in Alexandria, across Fairfax County from me) that might be able to do that kind of repair, because the power ports on HP Spectres are welded to the motherboard, and that’s a tricky repair.

So I called that place, and the geek who picked up the phone was in his absolute element, being able to nerd-splain to me what such a repair involved. The key elements for me were that the operation would take at least a week (I was headed out to the Balkans in days), and the cost was not fixed. Coud be $this, could be $$$that, depending on what they needed to do.

So I ended up sending it to HP, where for $453 they replaced the motherboard (warrantee expired in April, one year after I bought it). I have to say that their service is fine—they did what they said they would do, when they said they would; they sent me super packing materials for shipping (including tape to seal the box); seems like it’s fixed.

(Fortunately, my previous laptop was still operational; that’s what I took with me on the trip.)

But hear me out: they replaced the motherboard. That means I have to reinstall everything—ev er-y-thing—on my machine. I moved all the files off before I shipped but they stripped all the apps, as well. I had to reinstall Office365; have to find and reinstall Bitdefender, Slack, Dropbox, SnagIt—even my bloody printer driver (which, between Microsoft and HP, is driving me batty). Also—I have to log into everything once again, meaning I have to remember, find or reset every single one of those passwords.

Furthermore—why has everything (Chrome, Firefox, Outlook, File Explorer) gone Darth Vader? They're all in dark mode, and I have to hunt out the settings to change them back to light. Plus, I had to stop Word and Outlook from feeding me predictive text. Ugh.

Technology is, as Dylan Thomas said of politics, bloody awful.

 

 

Climbing out of Hell

So, my tech issue got solved, but not by anyone in the Megalithic Software Company’s IT organization. I literally was ready to schlepp my laptop over to my yoga instructor’s house, because her husband is a computer genius, when I IM’d a summary of my situation to the actual in-house IT guy at my company (the one that was acquired by MSC). He told me what docking station to order from MSC, and he was right.

It arrived Tuesday; I managed to connect all the appropriate cables and I now can see stuff on the 27” monitor.

(I still can’t get the laptop to recognize the Bluetooth headset, but that’s a fight for a different day.)

 

 

Tech hell

I spent three hours yesterday trying to connect a 27” monitor to my Megalithic Tech Company corporate laptop. That includes trying to follow the IKEA-level instructions and then on a chat and then a call with MTC’s IT support. Guy kept trying to get rid of me—go to this web site and do that; no—I told you, the monitor has power and is connected to the laptop. Oh—then go there and do this; no—I told you, it’s connected.

He finally initiated a call, again trying to fob me off on some goose chase, even bringing someone else on the call, who started by telling me to connect the monitor via the cable.

Three cables came with the monitor: HDMI/HDMI (I have no HDMI port on the laptop or the docking attachment), USB-C (no more available Type-C ports on the laptop & all ports on the docker are Type A) & Type-C to Type-A. I used that last one, but the laptop absolutely doesn't recognize that a monitor is attached. The only display that shows up in what Chrome OS is pleased to call a settings menu is what’s in the laptop lid.

Tech Guy’s last take was to send me to a public site to do a “hard reset”, which should have taken at least 30 minutes to repopulate the machine. Nope—just like a restart, instant.

Then, I was to order a new cable. Well, when I did that (using the link TG gave me), I got a reply saying I should go to a different site to order the cable, but I have no idea what to order.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to work on a 14" laptop screen, with an alien OS, in the shadow of a 27" monitor. Ugh..

 

 

Gratitude Monday: back to work

Pursuant to my discovery that my company laptop was trying to kill me, IT sent me a new one, for which I am grateful. As you can see: the lid closes, and no gaping maw in the lower case:

I will have to spend some time today transferring files off my old machine to the new one (I swear, all Microsoft OneDrive does is hide my data). And then ship the old one back to IT, where I presume it will be given a humane finish.

That’s my gratitude for today: less-than-lethal technology, just about on-demand.

 

 

Help me

Having spent more than two hours on support lines for Comcast and Netgear, I’m thinking that today’s earworm should be from fairly early Beatles.

The fact that you’re reading this post means the calls were—eventually—successful.

 

 

For the what?

This year, stress balls were big in RSAC swag. In addition to clouds, polar bears and other manifestations, there were these sumo wrestlers:

Rhinos:

And fat lederhosen-clad guys:

I did not understand what was up with that—but it turns out baramundi is a software management company headquartered in Augsburg, not the barramundi fish. (They claim the lowercase all one word name is derived from the Spanish "para el mundo", "for the world". Even so, it’s a reach.)

I didn’t even want one, but it was the last day of expo, and companies absolutely toss their swag at you on that day so they don’t have to pay to schlep it home, so I took the two the guy at the booth pushed at me.

And I’ve already been spammed by them.

Gratitude Monday: those who make it work

Well, here I am, back from RSA Conference 2020. It was quite a week, and there are a couple of things in particular I’m grateful for today.

First is the army of service workers it takes to put on a conference of this size. All the cleaners—especially this time, what with coronavirus and all; the food workers; the trash emptiers…

All no doubt low-wage contract labor for Moscone, with few (if any) benefits. The ones I saw were mostly non-white and over-40ish.

Also, the ones brought in by the various exhibitors to pizazz up their booths—making margaritas for this one, lattes for that; baking cookies on the spot (which were not handed out to Expo-only badge holders, BTW). I did not see one crabby-looking person, and the latte I got was just as pretty as any coffeehouse’s:

And the hotel housekeepers, God bless ‘em. You could not pay me enough money to clean up after someone else, so I always leave a fiver of the local currency and a thankyou note after each night of my stay. For the first time ever, I got replies. Tuesday’s:

Wednesday’s:

  

Thursday’s:

(Yes, I left a fiver and a note for whoever cleaned up after I left on Friday, too.)

The other object of gratitude today is the confraternity of product management. The one party I was really looking forward to was the “Luxury Whisky Tasting” set for Thursday night. Wednesday I was at a lunch event and chatting with a couple of fellows who are also PMs. I thought the company one worked for sounded familiar, so I said I thought I’d signed up for a party they were hosting. He got an odd look on his face and said they were holding a whisky tasting.

Yay!

But—a lot of people were going to get no-room-at-the-inn emails.

Damn.

But, he suggested we connect on LinkedIn, and he’d send me the suite number on the sly (it was being held in my hotel). And indeed, late Thursday he emailed me the info and suggested that there might be room later in the evening.

So I held off until about 45 minutes before end-time and then shot up. Man—the aroma of that nectar filled the lobby as I got off the elevator. My PM pal escorted me in, and I had one of the best times ever at a conference event. It wasn’t just the whiskies; it was the conversations as well. Cyber sec folks are very congenial; even more so when they’ve wrapped themselves around some single malt.

They’d run out of the Belgian whiskey by then, but I tried the Japanese, Welsh, Israeli and Scots stuff. The first did not suit my profile, but the others were divine.

And I’d never have had that opportunity had I not chatted with my new PM pal the day before. (I learned that the company had had 650 replies to their announcement. They gave 250 the lucky golden suite number, figuring about 40% would actually show up. More than 200 did; they were lined up down the corridor by the time the party officially started.)

So here’s to the professionalism of service workers, the generosity of PMs and the discovery of new worlds. Much, much gratitude today.

Happiness is...

I’m heading home from RSAC, and I have to say I am more than ready. I’m also very, very glad indeed that I should be able to start the hyaluronate injections next week.

I’ve learned lots, lots of which I need to organize and report on. But I’ll leave you with these pix of happiness sponsored by a company called ThreatQuotient. Each year they bring in puppies—adoptable puppies—from local shelters.

Also, apparently, an adoptable pig this year.

That's an FBI dog checking out the pig:

Steps: a skosh over 7,000.

Peace out.

Champagne and socks

RSAC, Day Three. Steps: >9300.

Started out the day synching with my Amsterdam colleague (who’s in Pune this week), and then went to a Courageous Women in Cyber brunch held at a Brazilian restaurant across the street from Moscone that’s been taken over for the week by one of the companies.

They were pouring Veuve Clicquot, so I had a glass. The speaker was very good, too.

(Side note: why does Microsoft spellcheck recognize veuve, but not Clicquot?)

At the conference, I sat through enough demos (operative term being “sat”—seriously, I’d have stuck out a revival meeting if I got to sit) to take back to the hotel eight more tee-shirts, a travel umbrella, a wireless mouse, a wireless charging pad, a $5 Starbucks card and a pair of socks. I also attended a talk on using AI and machine learning for digital forensics.

Additionally, I went to a lunch at the Children’s Creativity Museum. I could not eat, due to the brunch, but I ended up having quite a good chat with a couple of product managers from other companies.

By evening, however, I bagged all the parties except the one hosted by the competitor that was such a snot to me on Tuesday. I reckoned they owed me a drink. And maybe some loose talk.nThen I went to dinner with some colleagues, including the SVP. When I got that invitation mid-afternoon, I thought it might be a career-limiting move to decline.

I need your thoughts and prayers, folks. There’s still another full day of this to go.

Competing interests

Day Two of RSAC; steps: more than 12,000. Here’s Moscone South just before the Expo opened:

I mooched around the halls for much of the day, channeling my inner blonde asking competitors questions about their products. Mostly I got away with it. Dave, a sales engineer with one company was mansplaining things no end. Then his colleague Kyle, having apparently looked at my badge, started asking questions about my job. Kyle clearly did not hold with sharing info.

Guy from another company flat out told me, “You’re a competitor. We’re not going to tell you anything.”

Well, joke’s on him, because I’m going to their sponsored party tonight. They haven’t disinvited me from that.

Also, we’ll crush them like a bug.

Speaking of parties, I limited it to three last night. I only went to the third one because it was the personal-via-LinkedIn invitation to the event at the fancy steakhouse. Also, it’s within staggering distance of my hotel and the other two parties. I bagged number four.

And I had to mess with JIRA tickets when I got back in the evening.

Security socials

Day One of RSAC. Kind of proto-day, actually. Yesterday they were finishing up the seminars and such. The keynotes, talks and expo open today.

Actually, yesterday evening there was a boozy-foody preview of the expo, and I did a reco to pinpoint my target competitors. That counts as one of the five parties I hit. I had to bag three others, because enough is enough. By the time I got to number five, even though it was held at a bar with premium liquor on offer, I was guzzling sparkling water, because two parties earlier the other premium booze place made a margarita with 2/3 tequila and Cointreau and a splash of lime, so that was me pretty well gone. Even though I didn’t finish it.

These were just the events I could walk to.

I can’t tell you how sorry I am I missed the CyberTacos party. It was at a tequila bar, which I’d purely love to experience. I’d have splashed out for an Uber ride, and there was another thing going on within walking distance of that. But a girl’s gotta know her limitations.

Steps: more than 11,500. And it’s not a full conference day. I am properly glad I brought that muscle roller stick. I put it to use on the soles of my feet.

Going dark

One of the products I manage involves data from (among other places) the Deep Web and the Dark Web. For the unfamiliar, the former basically comprises sites that aren’t indexed by web searches—so they could be perfectly legit, but behind a login. The Dark Web (a subset of the Deep Web), on the other hand, can’t be reached via Safari or Firefox; you need specialized browsers, like Tor. And once you get there, it’s basically a cesspit of illegality and depravity.

The Dark Web is where you can find, buy and sell hacked data, stolen credit card numbers, social security and other national ID numbers, weapons, drugs and a lot of things I don’t want to think about. It’s 8Chan on PCP.

I spent an hour or two on my product the other day, looking around some of the information that’s been pulled from various Dark sites. Let me emphasize that I was not on the Dark Web, I was just looking at various emails, forums, paste site data (where hacking code can be found) and miscellanea. The small snippets I saw were enough to make me want to shower with a steam hose and steel wool.

I commented “that Dark Web is one crazy-ass place” to two of my colleagues, both of whom have spent time in certifiable hellholes collecting combat pay. They both assured me that it’s no place they want to return. One told me that some sites fend off lurkers (who don’t have the right password) by running images of things he wouldn’t even describe.

People, man—there is no bottom.

Day two: eggs and orgs

Turns out that Tuesdays in my employer’s office in the People’s Republic is free lunch day. I don’t know who the caterer was yesterday, but apparently the event was delayed because “they didn’t bring enough food”. From the number of aluminium trays of brioches filled with egg/sausage or egg/bacon, breakfast burritos, fried sweet potatoes, bacon and other miscellanea “enough” apparently refers to a sufficiency to feed an army corps. (The theme was breakfast for lunch.)

Even so, the organizer’s message reminded people to be “portion considerate” for those who couldn’t get there on the dot.

I also figured out both the Peet’s cappuccino and the Nespresso espresso machines in the kitchen, more or less. And I tried the watermelon/lime flavored water. (Meh.)

Workwise, my manager walked me through some organizational things, and I attended a weekly update meeting, which gave me a super introduction to the breadth of cyber security this group covers, as well as to many of the people in the group. Jeez they’re smart.

I like it here.

Gratitude Monday: I get by...

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve had two job interviews, one faux-electronic and one with an actual hiring manager. I wrote about the “video interview” a few days ago.

And, BTW, since writing, another objection to this format has arisen in my mind: while it’s true that given every candidate the exact same questions to answer, within the exact same parameters (time to prepare response, time limit for response, number of retries allowed) does give the appearance of an egalitarian approach. But it doesn’t eliminate any inherent bias on the recruiter’s part. Appearance, ethnicity, speech patterns—any number of things can spark a negative—even if unconscious—reaction in the viewer of the video, and your chances go straight to the bin. They haven’t solved any problems of diversity by this approach.

Well, nevermind. It’s Gratitude Monday and I’m not focusing on how pissed off this ploy makes me. I’m grateful that when I prepped for both these interviews, I had friends (who started out as colleagues) I could call on for expertise and encouragement. (The real-human interview was for a marketing job, and I needed some guidance on the vocabulary. Turns out I’d done much of what’s required; I just hadn’t known the official terms for it.)

In both cases, I went into the interview feeling much more confident. In the case of the video interview—meh, it turned out to be only about a 3 on a scale of 1-10 of ghastliness. But my friend’s guidance alleviated a considerable amount of my anxiety and made it easier for me to just crack on with it. In the case of the 60-minute call with the VP of Marketing, I spoke with assuredness and ease, which doesn’t happen all that often, because of getting a crash course from another marketing VP.

So—here’s to friends who come through in the clinch. I hope I’m that kind of friend, too.

New form of hell

If you’re not in a job search you may not know about the “video interview”. But it’s a thing.

No, it’s not a Skype session with a recruiter or hiring manager, it’s a series of questions posed to the candidate, who has to respond on camera—you give the HireVue application access to your web cam and your audio. If you don’t happen to like how you appear on camera or what your voice sounds like, it’s misery on a stick.

But it’s a cheap way for recruiters to screen out applicants while giving the appearance of caring. It's all handled by software, like their applicant tracking systems (ATS), so it's basically no cost. They put you through it before they even drop a dime for a phone call.

(Okay, there are mitigating factors—primary one being that everyone “invited” to the video interview gets asked the exact same questions, so everyone has the exact same opportunity to respond. There’s no human intervention on the recruiter side—distraction, interpretation, etc.—so there’s an equality in the process. But it’s disconcerting to answer questions in a vacuum, and on top of it to have to record yourself. Ugh.)

I actually bailed once on a job I was lukewarm about in the first place because they wanted me to do the video interview. This time, I felt I needed to give it a go. The invitation came on Monday, and it was good for three days.

I had a long conversation Tuesday with a friend and former colleague who now works for this company, and she talked me down from the ledge a couple of times. I researched the hell out of “HireVue” and “video interviewing”, as well as my usual on the company. I could have strung it out for another day, but I decided to just get it the hell over with.

Yesterday afternoon I resentfully put on makeup and “interview” tops—cashmere sweater and jacket—although I kept my at-home sweatpants. (They were all shades of grey, anyhow.) Because long ago my BFF had assured me that whenever one of her friends wore a scarf to an interview, she got the job, I added a scarf from Liberty of London. I set up with a neutral background behind me, whizzed through the practice questions and just bit the bullet.

The questions were not outrageous—why are you interested in this company, what’s your take on product management, what’s your proudest accomplishment, blah, blah, blah—I just would have preferred giving my answers to a human. (It occurred to me afterward that I could have invited a friend over, sat her across from me and spoken to her over my monitor. Next time.)

I pretty well ripped through them, hit Submit, then scrubbed the makeup off. It’s in the can, for better or worse.

Next.

Excellence in recruiting /s

Every time I have to dust off my résumé, fire up the networking chat lines and calculate how much I need in salary (given the difference in benefits), I just want to puke. Because at some point I’m going to have to deal with recruiters.

Seriously—I’d rather face an auditor across a grody IRS table than talk with another recruiter.

But hey—them’s the breaks, so at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing I did my best. “My best” included putting my dusted-off résumé into the conference database (although that was more so I could get invitations to company events, really) and stopping by booths to chat with the mix of recruiters and worker bees who staffed them.

But that also triggered a raft of mostly system-generated come-ons, like this one from ADP:

My employer uses ADP to manage time reporting, benefits, payroll, etc., and it is an abomination to God and man. ADP is what you get when you have convinced yourself that you have no competition, so you can make user experience from hell and slow-moving organizations will go on paying you for it.

I’m betting their “talent acquisition team” used their software to send out this post-conference enticement for which they could not even fill in the GHC name:

 

ADP could not innovate its way out of a paper bag, and they're kind of pants at proofreading their emails, too.

I have so much more of this to endure.

More hopping

Day 2 of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. I demo’d the Magic Leap One mixed reality product before having a get-to-know-you chat with a recruiter from Portland.

WRT the former, it’s an interesting approach for the person with the devices to show up ten minutes late and then denigrate me. (When I responded to her query on what I do by telling her what I do, she said, “You’ve got the marketing spiel down really well.”)

Right.

Went to a sit-down lunch hosted by Wayfair, which was nice enough until one of the co-founders sat down at the table. Until then, the blonde from Google had been held in check, but he seemed fascinated by every detail (and she did go into every single one) of her work, her love for Wayfair, her fiancé, and probably more; I zoned out and tried to control my resting bitch face.

The upside of the event was one of the appetizers was filet mignon on toasted baguette slice that was marvelous, and an Aperol spritzer, which was stunningly good.

I was disappointed by the afternoon’s roundtable for senior women that GoDaddy hosted. The topic was “Should I Stay or Should I Go”, and again, the discussion was hogged by one woman who gave us the rundown of her entire career. Every. Single. Job.

By the time I’d made an appearance at three of the seven evening parties I’d accepted, I was ready to call it a night.

On the plus side, I’ve not had to watch any of the shitshow in the Senate, and for that I am deeply grateful.

Hopping at Hopper

Okay, Day 1 of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. At time of writing, I’ve been on my feet (operative term “on my feet”) since 0620, and it’s 2102. As they say in the old country, I’m shattered.

I had one complete waste of time interview with a Big Three management services company (seriously—their intention was clearly to hire software engineers directly out of college; I shouldn’t have been asked to interview. But having done so, they shouldn’t have put someone in front of me who literally had no idea what she should be doing, much less how to handle someone who didn’t Fit The Profile. Furthermore: if all someone can do is talk about their work with the IRS—in very limited terms—don’t put her in front of candidates you might consider hiring to work with other agencies. Duh). And I had a possibly useless conversation with someone from a company I’m interested in. Although, if the only person you have on the booth who can talk about product management is focused on only just-out-of-college prospects, you aren’t serious about hiring product managers.

I also had an informal chat with a recruiter and a product manager for the US Digital Service, which came about because the recruiter somehow matched my name from the GHC résumé database with an application I’d submitted in 2014. That was interesting; ball’s in my court as to whether I reapply.

Interestingly, I’d been informed that a former colleague would be attending GHC, and she DM’d me when I live-tweeted part of the opening keynote, asking if I wanted to get together with her. Well, not particularly, but if I can, sure. (I only mentioned the “sure” part.) So blow me if, in the early afternoon, as I was heading into the speed mentoring session, I didn’t come across her right next to the elevator! I mean—23,000 people at this flipping conference; what are the odds?

The evening was spent at five company-sponsored parties. I bagged one I'd accepted (Lyft’s) and accidentally crashed another (Nordstrom tech’s was right next to the IBM experienced professionals one in the Hyatt). I learned my lesson from Tuesday evening, when the bartender at one event made the most vile Dark & Stormy ever; D&S should comprise Gosling’s rum and ginger beer. This had Meyer’s (which, in itself, is not a deal breaker), and some concoction of maybe ginger extract, something else, and sparkling water. It was utterly disgusting. (Then I went to the HubSpot event where they claimed to be serving the Perfect Margarita. It was not. I dumped it.) Last night, I had a glass of perfectly acceptable white wine at the Lesbians Who Tech (sponsored by Goldman Sachs), while I chatted with a young man still in college who made a herculean effort to be sociable, so well done, Matt; then a Jameson’s at the Cisco Disco (photo below); then club soda at the Publicis.Sapient event; and almost a glass of (warm) prosecco at the Nordstrom do, which I carried into the IBM shindig. (I didn't finish the wine, did drink the one finger of Irish and left most of the prosecco.)

(Cisco Disco being in Texas, those are of course cowboy hats.) 

And so to bed. Another long day today.

Houston: We have a thing

Well, alrighty then—I have made it to Houston, to my hotel and to the convention center where this morning (starting at 0645 for a volunteers orientation) I shall be joined by 22,999 of my closest friends for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

It’s going to be a whole thing.

But, as you know, I always try to stay alert for local color. And Monday night I was on my way back to the hotel from a local tech women meetup when I became aware of a whole lotta bird sounds, close by the House of Blues (where there’s some GHC-related event tonight. Or maybe tomorrow. I seriously forget). Here are a couple of stills:

And here they are in action.

I do not know what variety of bird they are—open to enlightenment from my birding friends. They struck me as unusual, although they certainly seemed right at home.

Anyhow—I closed out the evening by noting the moon over the convention center.

It’s a whole thing.