Resistance is futile

Lately I’ve noticed that Google is going all nanny about things, because I’ve been getting notices of potentially “suspect” activity, like they’re trying to be helpful and respectful of my privacy and security.

What’s interesting to me is that the “suspicious” activities involve only devices and properties that aren’t owned by Google. First it was this notification that someone had logged into my Gmail account from…Firefox; on Windows:

I particularly like the part where they tell me they “were unable to determine whether you have used this browser or device with your account before.” Because I’ve been using precisely that browser and that device for more than three years.

Then, on the advice of a techie friend, I downloaded the Outlook app onto my iPad (and don’t even get me started on the number of hoops that iTunes made me jump through to download a free app), and fired up my Gmail account:

Again—that same unknown browser/device wheeze. Yes, the application was new (not the native iOS mail interface I’ve been using for the last seven months), but they’ve certainly seen that device before.

I think that what got up their nose was the fact that I wasn’t using Chrome in the first instance (they’re forever urging me to get “faster access to Google” by downloading Chrome; even though I already have it installed; and you can’t turn off that importuning), or an Android device in the second. It’s kind of sore loser-ish, which doesn’t really suit a company that already has more money and customers than God.

But I guess that’s how they got that way: by playing hardball and annoying the spit out of you until you acquiesce.

Kind of like a four-year-old.

The library mystery

I do a lot of my library borrowing based on book reviews and recommendations for books and movies from friends. Since my days haunting the Reston branch of the Fairfax County Library system, my habit is to read a review, reach for the laptop and put whatever it is on hold. This obviates the need for checking that I have a fistful of little scribbled-on scraps of paper when I go to the actual facility.

I place holds even if a library near me has the material on its shelves. Because—see above about scraps of paper. Plus, I reckon it keeps library people in employment.

Anyhow, often by the time a book or movie is ready for pickup, I’ve forgotten all about it. Especially if it’s a new material and I’m number 245 in the queue for the 43 copies (as I was for The Grand Budapest Hotel). So it’s a little like opening a Christmas gift when you’ve passed around a wish list. You’re not entirely surprised, but you’re still glad to see it.

However, a few weeks ago I was completely nonplussed to go to the reserve shelves at the Cupertino Library and find...this:

Because it’s a historical novel, set in the 12^th Century, during the war between the Empress Matilda/Maude and King Stephen in England.

The thing is, I have no earthly notion why I put it on reserve. If I’d passed it in a bookstore I’d never have picked it up, much less bought it. I don’t read novels except for detective fiction; I don’t even read any of the latter except for police procedurals. I did, in fact, read the series of mysteries about Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters, which are set in that period. But that was in the last century and I’ve moved on from then.

Also, I don’t know the authors, and I can’t imagine what possessed me to go after it. Someone must have recommended it to me, but who? And why did I think I wanted to read it? Was it the protagonist being a 12-year-old redheaded archer? Was it because it was billed somewhere as a mystery (even though everything was predictable)? I just do not know.

As it happens, it was an okay read—I mean, it was interesting and all, until we got to the last act. Then the plot was resolved in a completely manipulative and inorganic way so quickly that I thought maybe they’d lost the lease on their writing space and had to get the hell out before the bailiffs showed up.

So that’s my novel for the year out of the way. Normal service has resumed, as I’m starting Peter Longerich’s biography of Heinrich Himmler. I don’t have to worry about any plot twists here because this stuff is way weirder than any novelist can cook up.

The bald truth

While perhaps not entirely true, this is indeed indicative, and somewhat related to yesterday’s post.

Library resources

The Santa Clara County Library District (SCCLD) is apparently performing a system software upgrade, which is taking four days. Starting Sunday, 31 May, and going through Wednesday, 3 June, you can’t do anything online (which includes my major activity: putting materials on hold).

You can walk into the actual libraries and physically get books and stuff, but evidently checking them out involves handing your card over to a staff member for some sort of quasi-manual process.

Everything’s closed/non-operational on Wednesday. Normal services are slated to resume on Thursday.

So I made sure to go in on Saturday to pick up some holds and stock up on extra books to tide me over the four days of famine. I went home with seven items, but these two ought to keep me going.

Gratitude Monday: Making 'em laugh

On this Gratitude Monday I’m grateful for a couple of things related to a job interview I had last week.

First of all—I had a job interview, with a company that develops interesting software and seems to have a pretty balanced (read: European) approach to the work-life issue. I await next steps with interest, even though I’m pursuing other opportunities in my pipeline because I’ve learned that it ain’t over until the fat lady has sung, taken her curtain calls and left in her limo.

But second, the portion of the interview with the HR person was very interesting, because she mostly wanted to know what kind of a human I am, with an emphasis on what I might bring to the company in the way of fun.

(I did tell her about organizing a going-away party for a colleague, which included a cow. And I told her for free that it’s not that easy to milk a cow.)

She inquired whether I’m still in contact with any of my former colleagues, and what they might say about me.

Well, thinking about this on my drive home, I recalled something that I wished I’d mentioned.

A couple of months ago I posted on Facebook that I’d won Best Table Topics at my first Toastmasters Club meeting. (There were only five people at the meeting, okay, but still…) One of my ex-workmates, JH, immediately asked, “Did you make them laugh?”

Well, I hadn’t—the topic was have you ever been to China, or if you hadn’t what would you like to see. I had no trouble waxing poetic about Shanghai, which has always seemed to me to be the most alluring, exotic city on earth.

But it did make me feel good that the first thing JH thought was that I make people laugh. We worked in a highly stressful environment and it’s not at all a bad thing to be known as someone who can lighten the atmosphere.

So in my follow-up email to the HR person, I mentioned this. It can’t hurt to let them know that not only do I know how to have fun, I can help other people do so, too.

With or without a cow.

User experience

Is there anyone out there who’s used Skype and actually believes this?

No, I didn’t think so.

About that customer experience...

I haven’t given you any tales from beyond the job hunt horrorfest lately, have I? No? Oh, alright, then. Here’s one.

A while ago a friend reached out to let me know that there was an opening in their marketing department that might be a good fit. And indeed it was—product marketing in a very interesting vertical (using data analytics to improve enterprise customer experience). There were a couple of stretch areas, but it was truly within my capabilities, and I’d have totally knocked it out of the park for them.

My friend very generously gave me some inside scoop on the organization and passed on my CV and cover letter to the hiring manager with his recommendation. Shortly after that a recruiter contacted me to set up a phone interview. (There was a bit of a glitch there—after I replied to her email she called me as though introducing herself and claimed not to have received my response. But…stuff does happen.)

I had a 30-minute call with the hiring manager, who is personable and professional, someone I’d be very happy to work with. I sent my follow-up email and basically let it go, because I’ve learned that it doesn’t pay to get too emotionally invested in these things. And sure enough—there was nothing but crickets for two weeks.

So I was somewhat surprised to subsequently receive another call from the recruiter, in which she informed me that she’d “had feedback from the team”, and that they were going to concentrate on candidates in Georgia and Virginia (where they have offices), with specific skills.

And anyway, my expected salary was beyond what they’re looking to pay.

Well—fair enough. Any of those criteria is legit. The job posting did say that it was a remote position, but employers are entitled to change their minds about…well, pretty much whatever crackbrained thing they want. Also—skills is skills, and they want what they want, even if what they want isn’t what they said they want.

However, I rather mildly observed that it wasn’t clear to me how I could be outside their pay range when we hadn’t had a discussion about salary at all.

Silence.

“Didn’t we have a phone call about this?”

No—the only conversations we had were about setting up the call with the hiring manager. (The original one and the rather frantic one she made 26 minutes before the scheduled call to ask me if I knew I was scheduled to talk with him, because she’d never actually confirmed with me.)

Silence.

“Well, this is just what the team is telling me.” (Keep in mind that I’d spoken with only the hiring manager, who did not in any respect strike me as possessing multiple personalities, and it’s not at all clear to me in what world a team consists of a single individual.)

Now—please see above about this company being in the “customer experience” field and just consider the irony of having this chick fronting for them. Yeah, yeah, I know—customers are one thing, prospective and current employees are another altogether.

At first I gave her a pass because she sounded young and out of her depth, but according to her LinkedIn profile she’s been a recruiter for 14 years, so I have no explanation other than incompetence. In which case I wonder how she stays employed.

But hey-ho. Here’s some advice, chickie, which I know will be beyond your understanding: I appreciate being notified of the status of my candidacy; that isn’t a given these days. But don’t try to embellish your story with facts that can be easily disproved.

Breakfast of losers?

The Telegraph ran a story last week on a study that indicates that chocolate cake at breakfast may help with weight loss.

When you drill down past the headline, it says that a “slice” of chocolate cake as “part of a balanced breakfast” is what the unnamed researchers are talking about. (It’s not clear to me whether this Professor Daniela Jakubowicz, of Tel Aviv University, was involved in the study or is just commenting on it. But I purely admire a journal called Steroids.)

There’s a lot about this that I don’t get.

First—what’s this “as part of a balanced breakfast” stuff? Chocolate cake is a balanced meal; it has cake and it has icing. That’s perfectly balanced.

But secondly—they keep throwing out the number of 600 calories for this allegedly balanced breakfast. If a slice of chocolate cake is 300 calories (which is the number the Telegraph is using) that leaves you 300 for…what? Two eggs and three slices of bacon are 450.

Okay—a bowl of oatmeal is 160, but I’m not eating that without cream and a little brown sugar. I’m also not eating an entire meal of nothing but carbs.

So, what do they want? A cup of Greek yoghurt and half a grapefruit? I’m just not getting this.

But while we’re here—let’s open the discussion on apple pie.

Canned Spam

This variant of the old “click on this attachment to find something to your advantage” spam appeared in my queue the other day:

It made me wonder if there are high school nerds in Dubuque or Biloxi using Google or Bing translate to compose similarly bad emails in Russian or Urdu or Yoruba to try to catch those people unawares?

Displaying respect

Back in the deep-dark bowels of history, in the 1960s, it was quite customary for householders to fly US flags on some holidays. My parents put out a pair on either side of the front porch on Memorial Day, Independence Day and Veterans Day. (For some reason Flag Day didn’t make the lineup.)

I used to love taking the two flags out of the coat closet, where they lived, unfurl them and slide the staffs into the holders affixed to the wooden pillars that flanked the front steps. They hung at a slight angle, so that you could see the beautiful, clear colors even if there was no wind.

We never hung them out in the rain, and we were careful to take them down, furl them tightly against the staffs and return them to the coat closet at dusk. Those were the rules.

It occurs to me that I hardly ever see flags flown in residential areas. I almost don’t expect it here in the Valley They Call Silicon, where people have their heads down disrupting technologies, shifting paradigms and being thought leaders, much too busy to consider acts of sacrifice by the men and women who go in harm’s way without thought of The Next Big Thing. Except as consumers of their killer apps.

They spend big bucks on Christmas light displays and Halloween extravaganzas, but hanging Old Glory is just too much of an effort. Plus—un-hip, you know.

(Also—more than 35% of the population around here is foreign born (a good portion of them on H1B visas), and therefore perhaps not particularly inclined to engage in displays of flag wavery.)

So I was rather heartened, on my walk around Mountain View, on Saturday to see this amid the carefully-groomed landscaping:

Respect.