Random Traffic Through Nick's Brain

These are the runs I’m considering this summer / fall.

1. If you want to run one (or more) of these with me, ping me. I like running ‘with’ friends.
2. If you have any suggestions for other runs I should consider, please comment or email me.

The Let’s Run, Have Some Fun & Be Fit Summer Race Series at 4.2M are a bit short for my liking, but I’m up to running them if someone runs with me.

If I actually want to run a marathon, I should consider the Boston Fit Marathon Training Program.

Sue’s trying to convince me to run a Muddy Buddy with her.

I probably shouldn’t consider a triathlon this year since I can’t swim well enough.
Maybe next year. TriFind.com has a Massachusetts-specific page.

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style="margin: 0 0 2px 7px; display: inline; border: 2px solid black; float: right; width : 99px; height : 150px;"
alt="Photograph: Japanese Flag Through Ferry Window, Tokyo, Japan, March-April 2005, © Nick Varacalli."
title="Japanese Flag Through Ferry Window, Tokyo, Japan, March-April 2005, © Nick Varacalli."
/>This is a partial list of my job search activities. Things of note it doesn’t include:

• Conversations with recruiters or companies to set up interviews.
• Networking with friends and former co-workers about opportunities that they might know about, either at their own company, or otherwise.
• E-mail conversations with companies that never got to the phone-screen stage.
• Some notable names that didn’t go anywhere: Thompson, Wellington, Charles River Development, Microsoft, Google.

• In the end, there were only 4 opportunities that I seriously considered / was excited about. Got offers from two of them, could’ve worked something out with one, and got dinged by the last one.
• I got dinged a lot for being rusty. I console myself that I wasn’t excited by any of the places that dinged me.
• I found myself giving up on interviews when I answered a question the interviewer posed me and really didn’t get my answer because it didn’t fit the narrow range of answers they were expecting. When I was younger I might have tried to ’show them the way’ / engage them in debate. I guess I’m at the point in my life (where there are a lot of opportunities out there, and interviewing costs me time away from Alex and money for babysitting) where I can’t be bothered to school people just for schooling’s sake.
• People looking for a job should ask me about any of the companies I have listed here. I don’t think I’m willing to be fully forthright with my opinions in a public way that will follow me around for years.
• As unprofessional as I feel at times (Dammit Jim, I’m a person, not a professional), I feel that there are a decent number of companies out there that are much worse. On the other hand, there are some great companies, and people staffing those companies who went through great lengths to make the process pretty painless.
• The recruiters I worked with this time around were great. If you’re a techie looking for a job, I have a number of them I could refer you to. Ask and ye shall receive.
• While I can’t / won’t point out companies that I was unhappy with, I can note that I got great impressions from Adesso, HubSpot, Tamale, and VistaPrint.
• In the end, I’m going back to work for VistaPrint. They simply made me the best offer.

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s our overactive geekiness…

• Pie In The Sky: The illusory prospect of future benefits OR a state of perfect happiness; utopia.
• Pi In The Sky: Going blind noticing that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of the sun is three and a bit.
• e In The Sky: More natural, realistic, transcendental prospect of future benefits.
• Eye In The Sky: Part of me knows what you’re thinkin’.
• i In The Sky: All in your imagination.

• … that for the 2^nd time in as many years, we’re both unemployed and looking to buy a car.
• We’re getting blood / cholesterol tests today. Dina cooked us a pound of bacon for supper last night.

• Today was Dina’s last day. She’s now going to do the stay-at-home parent thing.
• My job hunt is over, I accepted a job offer today. I start in July. More details to follow.

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alt="Photograph: Boston Public Library View, Boston, 2005-09-17, © Nick Varacalli."
title="Boston Public Library View, Boston, 2005-09-17, © Nick Varacalli."
/>My job search is (hopefully) coming to a close. Here are some of my notes to myself for posterity.

• Bring a compact digital camera when interviewing. I’ll be going to a lot of places I don’t normally go to. There’s usually something interesting to photograph.
• One recruiter notes that the financial firms that pay the best in Boston are Risk Metrics, Fidelity, Thompson, Charles River Development, and Wellington. I didn’t interview at any of them.
• Useful web sites:
  • LinkedIn. Very useful, lots of good leads.
  • jobs.joelonsoftware.com. RSS feed filterable by zip code. Where I got one of my final two companies.
  • Monster. The biggie job board. Never got around to using it since it has a reputation of having a lot of chaff. I had enough leads otherwise.
  • Career Builder. Another biggie job board. Again, never got around to it.
  • BostonWorks. The Boston Globe’s job board. More locally focused. Never got around to it.
  • ITA Software. Reputation for doing interesting things, hiring smart people, and having a hard interview process. Again, never got around to it.
• It took me a while to get my résumé into a decent state. Friends were very helpful in whipping it into shape content-wise. I also improved my résumé typography. The main thing I didn’t do, suggested to me by a friend:
  

  The importance of stressing the value added. That is, “What was Company / Institution X able to do after you got there that they weren’t able to
  before?” I think this is one thing that your current resume is sorely lacking. Was the company or its products able to suddenly process
  twice as many transactions? Roll out all of your products on time and under budget?

• Questions to ask the interviewers. Start of interview:
  • When the interviewer inevitably asks, “So, why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself.” respond, “Well, first why don’t you tell me a bit about the job so that I can tailor my answer to your particular needs right now?”

  End of interview:

  • What would the first three goals be for the person who takes this job?
  • What are the biggest hurdles to overcome in this position?
  • What type of person do you think will be most successful in this position?

What a hodge-podge. At some point I’ll post my interview schedule. I have to figure out how to anonymize some of them so I can freely comment.

• src="http://www.varacalli.com/pictures/misc/Boston-Trinity-Reflections-2005-09-11_small.jpg"
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  style="margin: 0 0 2px 7px; display: inline; border: 2px solid black; float: right; width : 100px; height : 150px;"
  alt="Photograph: Trinity Church Reflections, Boston, 2005-09-11, © Nick Varacalli."
  title="Trinity Church Reflections, Boston, 2005-09-11, © Nick Varacalli."
  />Some recipe ideas:
  • Crème Brûlée Balls. Scoop some, well, crème with a melon baller. Sprinkle sugar on top half. Torch. Turn over. Sprinkle sugar. Repeat. Mmm.
  • Bacon Brûlée. Crisp some bacon. Cover with sugar. Torch. Inspired by SP’s caramelized bacon this weekend. Dina notes that I’ve had this idea before. Unsurprising I guess.
• I’ve heard of celebrity voices used for advertisements, video games, and animated movies, but this is getting too much. Beth Israel Hospital has Stephen Hawking doing the voice for their automated parking payment machine. Yes, I’m going to hell.
• This is the first week in ages that I’ve stuck to my run schedule. Rest on Monday. 5.8M with stroller on Tuesday. 4×1M repeats on Wednesday. Rest on Thursday. 6M in 1h9m on Friday. 4M with stroller in 43m52s on Saturday. 11M in 2h17m on Sunday. Sunday’s run was surprisingly easy, and I’m not really in that much pain or soreness today. Yesterday was the first time since I registered for the ½ marathon that I’ve felt confident that I could run it without killing myself.
• There is a HD-DVD Processing Key on the loose on the internet. I will not reproduce it here. I just find it amusing that in trying to suppress a specific 128-bit number, it’s becoming ubiquitous. Plus, I’m wondering what digits of pi (or e) they will have to censor in order not to publish the key.
• Wednesday last week was a big day. We finally got the ball rolling on life insurance. We made a decision to move (more on that later… but if we’ve helped you move in the past, we’ll be tapping you for help sometime in the next couple of months… trust me, it’ll be easy). I decided on which of two jobs to take (and have since become indecisive again). We made some other big decision (though I now forget what the decision was about).