Category: Personal

Sorry for the late start to posting today. I had to go to the doctor to take care of the flesh eating bacteria. Well, OK, that’s a bit exaggerated, but I’m prone to sebaceous cysts, and every once in a while one gets infected. When that happens, it’s painful and nasty. But it’s provided a bit of a lesson on health care costs. See, like most people, I had no idea what it costs to see my doctor, because insurance has always paid for it.

Cost 45 bucks to see the doctor, and 4 dollars for the sulfa antibiotic he prescribed. It cost more to get my car inspected last month. Now granted, as some point that cyst is going to need to be removed, and that’s sure to cost more like 10x this amount. But the cost of kicking the can down the road a bit, until I get established with the next job and get on their health plan was a lot less than I expected it to be. Granted, because I was paying cash, the doctor gave me a break on his usual rate, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up making more doing a cash transaction than the office usually makes dealing with insurance companies.

Either way, hopefully the sulfa drug will take care of it. I was surprised to get prescribed that, given that this class of antibiotics has been around since World War II. But it turns out sulfa drugs are actually effective against most strains of resistant staph, which is apparently becoming uncomfortably common in community acquired infections. You want to really be frightened, the pharma industry isn’t really doing much in the way of looking for new antimicrobials. Because of the dangers of overuse, doctors are prescribing them less often, and the market has been getting smaller. In addition, if you do put a new class of antimicrobial on the market, you’re probably guaranteed to be a last line of defense, when all other antibiotics fail. This limits the market size and destroys the incentive to invest in the R&D, and antimicrobials are a tougher class of drugs than most. That’s a shame, because sulfa drugs have a high incidence of allergic reaction. While I’m pretty sure I had this class of sulfa drugs as a kid, I’m not 100% sure, so I’m hoping I tolerate it well. As much as medical science has advanced, it’s a real shame to have to rely on class of antimicrobials dating from World War II to deal with the modern drug-resistant bugs floating around out there.

Just to update everyone on the job situation — I have accepted a position at a new employer. I will start sometime in the next few weeks. While I have managed to keep the blog up, and be very busy at work before, I have little idea how this new job will affect my schedule. Needless to say, starting a new job is going to require extra effort. It is my plan to use WordPress’s scheduling feature to get some posts up before work in the morning, add a few over lunch, and then do a few more when I get home, according to roughly the same schedule I did before when I was working.

Needless so say, I’m happy my period of unemployment will soon be at an end, even if I’m nervous and apprehensive about starting a new job. I am hoping for the best, and that it will be a challenging job, and that the work will be interesting. I’m moving back into the engineering space a bit. I am at the same time both excited and nervous about that. I appreciate everyone’s support over my job woes, and hope you’ll be patient if the blogging schedule gets a bit out of whack from having to put in some extra time to come up to speed at a new job.

Bitter, putting on a sweater, “It’s really starting to get cold.”

“Well, the furnace doesn’t kick on until it drops below 66 degrees,” I note, “But it should stay warmer in here because of the computers running.” Putting my hand over the running machine, “Though, they aren’t doing much now so it’s not putting out much heat.”

Bitter quips, “Maybe you should try to get a link from Glenn Reynolds so it will work harder, and generate more heat.”

“Think Glenn would be responsive to a pitch that goes something like ‘Hey, I need my server to work harder so we’re not so cold in here. Could you spare a link?'” I ponder.

“If an Instalanche doesn’t make the server put out enough heat, Fark probably would,” Bitter notes.

“Hmm,” I ponder, “using computers for both communication and heat? I could probably sell it as a green jobs initiative and get a fat check from the Obama Administration. It could also be a recycling initiative for all those old AMD chips that take heat sinks the size of the Eiffel Tower.”

Posting yesterday was light due to a job interview in Philly. It went well. It’s a very good fit, and I think it would be a great work environment. I interviewed with another outfit Monday, and it also went well. Both are outfits that interviewed me for other jobs, turned me down, but have brought me back to consider me for other positions. So I am happy about that.

But the company I interviewed with Monday just has clues here and there that it might not be a great work environment. There are certain warning signs you can kind of pick up during the interview process, and I’ve been getting those kinds of vibes. It’s little give aways that kind of let you know that people aren’t all that happy and relaxed. If you’ve never been on the other side of the table, interviewing people for a position in an environment you know is miserable, you might not know what I mean. I could be completely misreading the situation, but I just have a gut feeling. If not for that, the work sounds pretty interesting, and it would get me back into engineering and out of IT, which is an interesting proposition, but not something I’m completely sure I want to do yet.

The place I interviewed with yesterday seems to be a happy, relaxed place to work, and I’ve been favorably impressed with the people I’ve met during the interviews. The outfit is extremely stable, so for once I would not be worrying every month that I might not have a job the next month. I’d have some people under me, so it would get me some better management experience than I currently have. But this is a large employer, and I expect they will not be able to move as quickly as the other outfit. I believe that the other outfit is progressing toward an offer.

So the job that puts off some bad vibes is likely to plunk cash on the table before the job that I think I would really enjoy. But when you’re unemployed, cash on the table is cash on the table. So what to do? My inclination is to proceed with the offer, and set a start date to mid-November. That will hopefully buy enough time to see if the other opportunity can be progressed to an offer. If they can move quickly enough to telling me their intention is to hire, I will withdraw from the other outfit before my start date. It’s a bit of a shitty thing to do, I think, to accept a job then pull out before you start, but it’s probably better than starting and quitting after a few weeks.

I’m curious if any readers have had experience with this situation, on either side of the table, and what you think the best policy is? You begin to understand why employers are wary of the unemployed. I have to wonder if it’s not so much the stigma of the person being let go by someone else, so much as that unemployment makes you consider doing things you’d never do looking to switch jobs. I have always held myself to high standards, and this is not a natural thing for me to do. Do you tell the one employer they are a second choice? What if the first choice falls through? I’m afraid I’m not going to be relaxed until I’m settled in a job.

I’ve never been terribly inclined to decorate for Halloween. And while we might have an inordinate amount of pumpkin in our pantry this year, I don’t really do the whole pumpkin decoration thing. This or this would be about the closest I would come to that tradition.

Until now.

Turns out that Colonial Williamsburg makes pumpkin carving patterns for patriots. My favorites? The quote & the cannon.

I’m seriously thinking about getting a pumpkin this year just to try these out. It’s a lot better than our neighbor with the inflatable Death carriage.

It’s been John Philip Sousa Week over at Old Picture of the Day blog. He’s been featuring old photos of the March King, and some of his marches. Yesterdays march was one I was not previously familiar with, but it’s fabulous for one of Sousa’s lesser known marches:

If that doesn’t supplement your morning coffee, I don’t know what will. I have an interview late afternoon today, with a company that makes a network monitoring product. This job would involve more low level programming, basically writing, analyzing and debugging device drivers under FreeBSD. I’d also be doing a lot of performance analysis, and development work on high-performance storage arrays. If I understand what they are looking for correctly, which I’m not sure I do, this job would take me back more into the engineering realm, My last position was more high-performance computing, general IT, and some high-level programming, supporting pharmaceutical research.

I’m trying not to pigeon hole myself. I’m willing to look at jobs that are different, even if it means a substantial pay cut, if it gets me into an interesting career path. We shall see.

My apologies for the lack of posting. Just got another rejection, this time from the academic institution I had applied to and gone to an on-site interview with. It was one of those jobs in a different field than I’ve worked in previously, but in a somewhat similar kind of role. I was attracted to the academic environment for its stability, and for the fact that I’d continue to work with researchers (who have very different IT needs, and bring you more interesting problems). The downside is the pay isn’t that great, but I’d trade pay for stability and a research environment.

I think I was the top candidate when I went in for the interview, but there was one other candidate who came along and had the exact experience and background they were looking for, so then it would seem my lack of direct experience in this field became a problem for them. My guess is at that point I became the number two candidate, but they didn’t want to get back to me until the other guy accepted or rejected.

So now I’ve pretty much exhausted all the jobs that looked interesting. Now I need to move forward looking for work. I am doing some part time contracting for my former employer now, but its not nearly enough to pay the bills. Not even enough to affect unemployment. But it does look better on the resume to say I’m doing some part time contract work for the previous employer. I’m trying to get the message across that I wasn’t let go in a round of cutting, but that the company actually close, and I was one of the last remaining people when it did.

I’m still in good financial shape. I’m not really concerned about that. But needless to say I don’t like being out of work, and not knowing when I may finally land a position.

Tam’s wikihole adventure yesterday morning, in regards to the world of Sid and Marty Krofft, took me back. Some of my formative childhood experiences were from one of their shows, namely Land of the Lost. Looking at the date on those, I was probably picking up reruns a few years after it originally aired. My sister and I had a stay  home mom, who’s stay at home mom gossip circle were the ladies by the kiddie pool at the local swim club.

There were two shows I’d throw fits over missing if we were dragged to the pool. One was Star Blazers, and the other was Land of the Lost. We were fortunate to be early adopters of VHS technology, which enabled my mother to set the primitive timing device to record my shows, and get me to the pool with minimal complaint. Sadly, I don’t think I kept any of these recordings, but for those of you of a different generation, thanks to the miracle of YouTube and internets, you can find it here:

I had a horrible little boy crush on the Holly character. I can remember being young begging my parents to take me to a place regularly advertised on TV in the Philadelphia area, Crystal Cave, in Kutztown. As a small child, I was convinced if I could get to these caves, I could unlock the secrets that would allow me to control the universe, bring on the Sleetak/Dinosaur revolution, and be with Holly forever. Eventually my parents relented, and we went. I was thrilled with anticipation. When I got there… no friggin pylons. In case you’re not sure what I’m saying here, there were no friggin pylons! What kind of lame-ass place calls themselves Crystal Cave, and no only are there no pylons, there aren’t even any damned crystals. No Sleestaks, and definitely no dinosaurs. The secrets of the universe turned out to be pretty damned lame to me as a young kid.

I’ve been in caverns since, but I’ve never been back to Crystal Cave. Maybe it’s time to go back and give it another chance.

Just got rejected by my top choice. Got three phone interviews in. The good news is that I won’t be commuting to New York, in all likelihood. The bad news is that of the remaining two, one I have not heard from one in some time, so I’m guessing that’s a no go at this point, and the fourth is the job I lined up if all else fails. It’s not one I really want to take.

The conclusion I’m coming to in all this is that it sucks to work for someone else. Regardless of what happens from here, I need to start developing side income. Long term I don’t want to have to depend on others to keep my head above ground.

The icing on the cake of all this is we could end up getting a bonafide hurricane coming through these parts. Winds here wouldn’t top 80mph, in all likelihood, but these storms tend to drop a metric crap load of rain, and bring winds high enough to knock out power. My basement is dependent on electricity in order not to become an indoor swimming pool, and I can’t stomach the thought, right now, of writing off 250 bucks worth of food in my fridge and freezer.