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September 24, 2005

still here

i haven't gotten tired of this yet. just in the middle of this hellacious product release which has spawned a lot of my work-related posts. it is supposed to be out end of september. so i should be more able to post then.

Posted by spoof747 at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2005

career manifesto

. . .I was going to post about the Giants game first, but life intruded and dropped this stream of thought into my brain. . .

We were invited over to Steve and Hanh's new pad on the weekend. We got to a nice tour of the new place and were treated to a yummy dinner as well. Although the night ended strangely because Steve was a lifesaver and noticed a flat tire on our car that we had to get CSAA to come out and fix. All in all, it was a fun time.

Of course work intruded because I had a conference call exactly at 6 which ended up running overtime and I was standing outside with an earbud on my cell phone while everyone was more or less waiting for me inside. It actually turned into a fairly contentious meeting, because some people didn't check their e-mail beforehand and everyone just simply didn't want to be there.

This naturally led me to go into my work bitch spiel while there, and that lead to talk about where I should go and what kind of job am I looking for. I threw out Google as a place I wanted to go, and was asked why I wanted to go some place where even the janitors are rich and there is going to be conflict between the haves (pre-IPO) and the have-nots (post-IPO).

Having started off my work career in the dot-com era, I admit that I am pretty spoiled by those high-flying times. It was only just a few years ago that the Bay Area was the place to be when it came to jobs, and people came streaming in from all over because they heard this was where you came to make money. Venture Capitalists were throwing money at just about any idea and companies run by college grads with barely even a business plan were valued at $100 or more a share on the stock market.

All this cash flying around led to some pretty cool perks and things. Even the small things like having lunch and dinner provided (and not just pre-packaged swill, decent food with some variety) or just having free food around was a nice thing (for my wallet, not necessarily my waistline). Other companies went farther and had regular outings. At one company, we had a Sega Dreamcast and a ping-pong table. At another company, we had 30" LCD screens on the walls, and a Sony Playstation in one of the conference rooms. There was the legendary slide installed at Excite, and the gourmet chef at Google (which is still there).

It was great to be a consumer too. We all had extra cash in hand because of the economy and the environment. And these companies were throwing out all sorts of deals just to get noticed. People would practically pay you to take their product. I remember trolling through coupon sites where promotions would be run every month, sometimes several times in a month. You could combine offers, there were no expiration dates, and people were trying to sell just about everything online.

It was a grand time to work here and I don't know if we'll ever see anything like that again. I view it as a sort of democratization of the work environment that led to a lot of beneficial changes, some of which been rolled back in recent times, others which have stayed. The casual style of dress that was popularized during this time has remained, although you don't see T-shirts and shorts too much anymore, at least it hasn't gone back to suits and ties. And there were a lot of younger people who did strike gold during those times and are now in positions to make decisions.

While I know it is unrealistic to find a company who lives by the dot-com rules, I am looking for at least the following things:

I want to find a job where they share the value of "working smarter, not harder" Not a place where you've got an eagle-eyed moron watching what time you clock in but leaves early so they have no idea how late you stay.

I want to find a place where I'm working with smart people, good people who I can trust to take care of something. I don't have enough of these where I currently am, hence my mentality of taking too much on because I am trying to help the project succeed as a whole.

I want to find a job where there is an environment in which I can continue to learn things, not be so busy that I'm just treading water.

I want to be somewhere where they do (ok at least try to) recognize people who work hard and reward them appropriately. Not based on how many asses you kiss or how brown your nose is. When you get 2 movie tickets as a thank you for huge amounts of unpaid overtime, its a nice gesture, but its only a gesture.

I'm still hoping I can find that kind of place here. If its any consolation, I think that this is one of the few places that you can still find places to work like this, simply because people here are so ingrained in the culture of innovation that grew out of Silicon Valley.

I hope.

Posted by spoof747 at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)

September 10, 2005

2020 Olympian

Purely joking, but in that sports vein, we took Naomi to her first football game last Saturday and followed that up with her first baseball game this past Thursday. All in all it was fun, but also served to remind us that we're going to have to limit our carefree sponteneity, temper our enthusiasm, and apparently, start living the lives of grown-ups (well, as much as possible).

Saturday:
Thanks to Gil, we had ourselves vouchers to the season opener of Cal football, against the Sacramento State Hornets. While I was never really a big Cal football fan during college (the Gilby years -- can you blame me?) and I didn't go to a single Big Game (not counting the one I watched from Tightwad Hill), I have exercised my alumni rights and become an avid follower of the current Cal team, and He Who Turns Out First Round NFL QBs Like No Other, Jeff Tedford. Last year showed a lot of Cal faithful that this was a team to be reckoned with on a national level, and after reloading with a nationally-ranked recruiting class, Cal is expected to do some great things this year, at least by Cal fans (Nationally, people are giving some leeway due to the departures of Aaron Rodgers, JJ Arrington, and nearly all of the starting Defensive Line and Linebacking core.)

It was with this that Jenn and I decided to try to sandwich in a day up in Berkeley with Gil, Marisa, and some other friends and watch the season opener. It was supposed to be a nice, easy blowout, but it would be a chance to see the new Cal players, and hopefully see a lot of highlights, since Sacramento State is a Division I-AA school (and apparently one who didn't do too well football-wise last season). Due to the spiraling costs of gasoline, we also decided to take BART in. Pretty risky stuff, considering we were taking along our child, of whom we had no idea how she would react on BART.

as you can see, she actually took it all very well and was quite agreeable for the 40 or so minutes it took us to get to Berkeley. Unfortunately, we had missed the train we wanted, so we got to Downtown Berkeley only 15 minutes before gametime, Gil waiting with our tickets (since he couldn't go in and then come out to give them to us), and a long uphill slog to get to Memorial Stadium. Our lack of recent exercise really showed here, and we huffed and puffed all the way up. Hopefully we were able to sweat off a few pounds as well. Gil took pity on us, and met us near Latimer and helped take a load off by helping Jenn carry her bags. Naomi was busy enjoying her vantage point from the Baby Bjorn that was strapped to me. We missed the first Cal touchdown and then settled in.

And that is when I made the fatal mistake.

First play we sat down to watch, Cal got to the Sac State QB and forced an incompletion. Forgetting I had my daughter in my lap, I cheered for the play.

Loudly.

And right in Naomi's ear.

To no one else's surprise (except my own), Naomi scrunched up her face and started crying. Not the small, "I'm tired" cry, more like the full-on Bawling Cry. Jenn thinks its because it probably sounded to her as if I was yelling at her. While I tried to explain that since it was a defensive play and not an offensive play, and therefore I didn't cheer as loudly as I might, she didn't really buy it, and from that point on, Naomi was on edge. Anytime the crowd cheered loudly enough, Naomi would start crying again. Gil was trying to be respectful, but when he made noise, Naomi would startle and out the tears would come. Finally, she exhausted herself and went to sleep, but that was only a short reprieve. It didn't help that there was quite a bit of sun shining on our section in the Blue Zone, and we found out later that Naomi was actually uncomfortably hot in addition to deaf in one ear from me. We stayed until the 3rd quarter, with Cal up 17-3, we made our exit, as I also had a prior obligation I needed to get to.

It was a beautiful day out in the sun, but exhausting to run first up to Berkeley and then back out to meet up with people on the Peninsula. It would have been tiring even without needing to take care of Naomi. And she sure made her displeasure felt later in the evening. At Angela and Evance's house, she started to cry and would *not* stop. I tried every trick in my book and no effect. The only thing that worked was letting Jenn carry her. Maybe she was mad at me because she thought I yelled at her.

i'll post about the giants game next time.

Posted by spoof747 at 10:08 PM | Comments (0)

September 09, 2005

cool

It's hard to remember how it felt before
Now I found the love of my life
Passes things, get more comfortable
Everything is going right

And after all the obstacles
It's good to see you now with someone else
And it's such a miracle that you and me are still good friends
After all that we've been through
I know we're cool
I know we're cool

We used to think it was impossible
Now you call me by my new last name
Memories seem like so long ago
Time always kills the pain

Remember Harbor Boulevard
The dreaming days where the mess was made
Look how all the kids have grown, oh
We have changed but we're still the same
After all that we've been through
I know we're cool
I know we're cool

Yeah, I know we're cool

And I'll be happy for you
If you can be happy for me
Circles and triangles
And now we're hanging out with your new girlfriend
So far from where we've been
I know we're cool
I know we're cool

C-cool, I know we're cool
I know we're cool

- Gwen Stefani

you're right, this does fit nicely. thanks for the short note.

Posted by spoof747 at 11:28 AM | Comments (0)

September 06, 2005

sucks to be me

I had a post all written up last week where I told a little story about how I nearly lost it with my consulting boss and my onsite boss. A little informal complaint session on my part turned into a full meltdown where i yelled and had to get a lot of things off my chest. I ended up not completing my story about that because things seemed to look up and, with the three day weekend, I was content to try and enjoy 3 days without worrying about work at all (and luckily work cooperated with that)

then I get a call today (well actually it came to the house, so Jenn took it) telling me that I would not be offered a job that I have been interviewing for (I won't mention where).

Now everything seems grey and gloomy again.

Not that I would have taken the job. It was still even money, at least in my head, depending on how much they would offer, along with the hours requirements. If there's one thing I really want right now, its to do something as close to 9-5 as possible. But at the same time, finally finding out, after a few rounds of interviews, that a door has been closed to me is very discouraging.

And herein lies the crux of my problem.

I may have 9 years of experience in my chosen field. I may be a very quick learner. I may even be considered as being very good at what I do.

But I do not have a degree in this field. And I also have low self-esteem, and a pattern of not handling failure very well. This is a bad mix. While it does drive me in some sense to continually prove myself, it is also the same thing that gets me taken advantage of, because deep down, I don't feel that I am fully qualified for what I do. I may know that I am, but I don't feel I am. And that makes a difference when I negotiate things like my salary and when I walk into job interviews. I present myself well, but I always feel like I have to compensate for that perceived gap.

And also, having low self-esteem means you fly high when things are going well, but you tend to crash when your house of cards comes tumbling down. It was great when I first heard about this job opp. It was brought to my attention by someone who had worked with me in the past, so it was nice to know that I had enough of a reputation that he would think to talk to me about this. But ultimately, it wasn't enough to get me the job, and now it doesn't mean jack that he liked me since I didn't get the offer.

I guess the most discouraging thing at this point, is that this opp was actually a bright spot in my day, because of the crap I am currently dealing with. Now I no longer have that to look forward to as a possible way out. Are there other ways out? Sure, but who can say if I will be met with the same type of rejection?

This sucks.

Posted by spoof747 at 10:56 PM | Comments (1)

September 05, 2005

note to self

Naomi laughed when I played "peek-a-boo" with her. It was the first time that it actually worked on her.

Posted by spoof747 at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)

September 02, 2005

please

pray for the people of New Orleans. because i've been so busy at work, i haven't had time to watch the horrible tragedy unfolding on television, but the images that are coming from there are incredible, and it hits you that this is happening here in this country, that people are begging to be saved and rescued. flipping through the channels tonight, i saw a father holding up a 3 week old baby who looked to be in bad shape, yelling that he has no milk or formula for this child. absolutely heartrending.

please pray for the survivors.

Amazon Honor System link to American Red Cross Hurricane Relief

Posted by spoof747 at 02:59 AM | Comments (0)