Blackcap Blog

Published at 15:49 on 30 August 2015

It’s not unusual for programming jobs to have programming tests as part of the interview process. What is strange is for a job that was advertised as being back-end coding having its biggest, toughest question being to code an AJAX web page.

After six slow hours, I’ve gotten the thing to satisfy two of the three requirements, and I think that’s about it for me on this one. Six hours with Javascript is about five hours too many for me, and if doing such things is really pertinent for that job, I don’t want it anyhow.

But really, if front-end stuff is that important to you as an employer, why not simply advertise the job that way? (Would an orchestra advertise for a tuba player if they really wanted a violinist?)

Published at 18:48 on 27 August 2015

A month after I got laid off in the midst of having some work done on my home, I finished the work today by completing the painting of my bedroom. Actually I spent under a month on finishing the work myself, because the first week post-layoff was spent taking a break and decompressing.

Now I’m ready for another break, of sorts: I’ve done very little hiking in the past month, because I’ve been preoccupied with playing home handyman. Right on cue, it looks like we’re heading into a rainy spell, which may well end up being the end of the summer dry season. Oh, well; so it goes. Hope the early rain makes for a good mushroom season (last time we had a lot of rain in early September, it was epic).

Published at 14:01 on 24 August 2015

1. Homax (the main brand aerosol texturing compound) is very touchy stuff. Changes in temperature or the pressure of the propellant in the can radically affect the texture you get. This means: a) always do a test coat on cardboard before using it; just because you got the nozzle adjusted properly yesterday doesn’t mean you will get the same texture on the same setting today; b) because of all the test coats you make, don’t expect to get anywhere near the patching coverage advertised on the can, c) you’ll have to throw out the can before it’s empty, because it will get to the stage where pressure is ramping down so fast that you can’t get consistent results even on a small patch.
2. All the above said, it’s still much cheaper to texture your own patches than to pay someone else to do it.
3. The water-based texturing compound is to be preferred. Not only does it stink far less, it dries slower. If you get a nasty surprise, it can be scraped off before it dries with relative ease.
4. Premixed mud is easier to use than trying to get all the lumps out of some powder you have to mix with water.
5. That said, there’s reasons to fiddle with the powder. For openers, quick-setting “hot mud” is only available in powder form. I just bought a bag of it to do the last two patches in my house. Reason: they’re high up, and I had to rent a large step ladder to reach them. Thus, the bother of mixing my own and the expense of buying another kind of mud (when I still have plenty of premixed left) pays for itself because I’ll be able to return the ladder far earlier.
6. Hot mud is quick-setting but not quick-drying. I.e. when it first sets it will still be damp, and you won’t be able to sand it without your sandpaper quickly clogging. It still takes 24 to 36 hours for hot mud to dry. The solution is to use a drywall knife or paint scraper to shave excess mud off. Save sanding for the final step, after it’s all dry.
7. Be sure the mud you buy has the words “lite,” “light,” or “easy sanding” in it, particularly if it’s hot mud (which is notorious for setting up as hard as a rock otherwise).
8. Hot mud comes in various set times, from 5 minutes up to 90 or more. I chose 45 as a compromise between being able to mix it and work with it without feeling rushed and rapid turnaround for the next stage.
9. To the best of my knowledge, hot mud is only available in ridiculously large batches. I had to buy 18 lbs of powder, of which I will use only a fraction. (But, to reiterate, that expense still paid for itself.)

Published at 10:35 on 20 August 2015

I’ve actually had pretty good luck doing my own drywall patching so far. I’ve learnt three significant secrets:

1. If you’re not a pro, you have the choice between doing a slow job or a bad job. Naturally, the former is by far the better choice. So expect it to take a while. Applying the mud isn’t easy and will take some time for each coat. Often, you’ll botch it right near the end and basically have to start over. That’s OK, you’re not a pro. Just try again. Moreover, don’t think you’ll get things finish-ready after feathering out three or four coats; expect several more touch-up stages. Expect to do a fair amount of sanding. It’s taken over a week for me to complete each patch (largely because I have to wait at least 24 hours for the mud to dry between each stage).
2. With practice, you can learn to remove mud and leave a decently-neat surface. By contrast, it’s virtually impossible to apply mud neatly. Even the pros don’t attempt that. If you watch a video of someone finishing a drywall patch on YouTube, you’ll see that what they do is apply significantly more mud than is needed at each stage, then carefully remove the excess to leave a neat surface.
3. One of the most difficult patches is an interior 45-degree corner. Unlike 90-degree corners, they tend to be gradual and not sharp. Not only are there no tools out there to directly form such corners, trying to form one freehand with a straight knife is (by contrast with a sharp corner, which is tricky but doable) virtually impossible. The solution is to make your own tool. I used a piece of thin, stiff polystyrene cut from a salad mix container lid. I took care to cut one edge as straight as possible, then curled the plastic as I held it, making a gradually-curved edge to use to smooth the mud and make it match the existing corner curvature.
4. It’s also exceedingly difficult to match texture. It’s noteworthy that many pros don’t really attempt to: their solution to patching a textured wall is to sand and retexture the entire wall. But I took it slow and blew a good chunk of my can of texturing compound just fine-tuning both the texture setting and my technique (I textured scrap cardboard cut from old boxes). While my two completed patches don’t match perfectly they do match closely enough that I basically have to know where the patch is and get a foot away from the wall to discern the difference. That’s good enough for me.

Published at 10:55 on 19 August 2015

I’m seriously pondering adding a new category and recurring feature for sleazy recruiters to this blog. It would be restricted to obviously sleazy recruiters. Even though my experience indicates it’s generally a sleazy crowd, an individual recruiter would have to demonstrate actual sleaze to be listed.

Examples would include:

• Misrepresenting a job to me (in the rare case where I follow up and am in a position to learn this),
• Misrepresenting me to an employer (again in the rare case when I follow up),
• Spamming me about a job that in no way relates to my experience,
• Spamming me about systems administration jobs in reference to résumés which explicitly rule such things out (as some of mine do).
• Spamming me about jobs that are not in the Seattle area, despite all of my résumés indicating I am not willing to relocate.

I’m still pondering it, but leaning towards actually doing it. I plan on naming names, both firms and the people at them who spam me. So long as I report accurately, this is not libel (which has to be both false and disparaging, mere disparagement does not count).

Because, if you don’t want people to make disparaging speech about your business, you shouldn’t act in ways which, if accurately reported, harm it.

Published at 20:49 on 14 August 2015

It’s been a hot and very dry summer. It’s been very unsettling how dry and dusty the woods have been. Sword ferns and salmonberry bushes are withering and dying. I have never seen that happen before in the quarter-century I have lived in the Pacific Northwest.

At 3:00 AM this morning I was awoken by a thunderstorm. It passed, then another one woke me. And another, and another. By daybreak, four thunderstorms had passed. This is an approximate count, because I eventually incorporated the thunder into my dreams, dreaming of a day on the island with multiple thunderstorms. And in my half-awake state, it was hard to distinguish dreams from reality.

Alas, the rainfall from those four storms didn’t amount to much: only .10 inches.

Shortly after noon, Thunderstorm No. 5 announced its presence in the distance with low rumbles. The rumbles grew louder and the sky darker. Checking the NWS radar showed a large blob of echoes slowly (very slowly) working its way in my direction. Would it make it here, or would it fizzle first?

I was not to be disappointed. It took tantalizingly long, but the rain progressed from just lightly spitting to light rain to moderate to heavy at times. The thunder and lightning kept up for over two hours straight, and then the rain lasted for at least three more hours, gradually diminishing as the storm shifted direction, gradually weakened and moved its way west.

Final total for the day: 1.30 inches. The woods are fresh and moist again. All in all, one of the most satisfying rain storms I can remember.

It’s not enough to end the drought, but it did cut the summer dry spell in half, which I believe will really ease the impact on the struggling vegetation.

Published at 09:18 on 5 August 2015

Just had a phone screen with a Seattle employer that lasted all but a minute or so.

Reason was the second question asked, which had nothing to do with technical competence. It had to do with a (very conservative, East Coast-ish dress code), which is something of a surprise to run into on the West Coast.

And no, I am not interested in such things. First, I find such garb physically uncomfortable. If I’m distracted by (lack of) physical comfort, my concentration and thus my job are negatively affected. Why would I want to limit myself like that?

Second, such apparel is expensive. Expensive to purchase, and expensive to maintain (dry cleaning doesn’t come cheap). So such a requirement basically amounts to an additional tax on my salary.

It’s not just me, either. I don’t abide by many stereotypes of software geeks but the above sentiments would probably be echoed exactly by the vast majority of software professionals.

Which brings up a third, yet more insidious reason to avoid the place. There’s basically two kinds of people that such dress codes screen for:

1. People who enjoy dressing up like that.
2. People who put up with dressing like that because it means getting a job of a sort they otherwise couldn’t.

Those in category one are basically harmless. So Joe or Jane Programmer enjoys dressing up in business suits? So what? If it makes them happy and they do their job better as a result, fine. Dress codes are something of a plus for this crowd as it lets them work on the West Coast, enjoy dressing up, and yet avoid this problem.

Those in category two are the problem. They’re at the place with the dress code because a huge chunk of everybody else in the programming field is not, thus removing more technically-competent competition from the picture.

Prevailing attitudes amongst software geeks mean this crowd probably ends up being in the majority. That my interviewer ended up asking this question very early in the process indicates it’s a show-stopper for many candidates, which validates my suspicion.

Why would I want to limit myself by working with subpar talent?

Published at 22:00 on 4 August 2015

List a job that I would otherwise want, but make the only way to apply for it be to fill out a web form that demands you supply an expected salary range.

It’s almost as bad as demanding you furnish your salary history. Particularly if, like the two jobs I just ran into this for, it’s either a public-sector job or one at a nonprofit. The former typically have more generous benefits packages and less generous salaries. The latter typically have less generous salaries. In neither case is simply plugging in a market-rate number (of which I have a fair idea) appropriate.

In this case, the nonprofit’s mission is such that I’d be willing to take less money in return for my work being particularly socially valuable. But, I have no idea what their budget is. So my choice is to either sell myself short by putting in a low number that they will take advantage of, or to sell myself short by putting in something higher that will scare them off from interviewing me, even though if the job is appealing I’d be willing to bend on that figure. There’s no way to specify that latter fact, either, of course. A number and just a number must be entered.

A similar conundrum exists for the public-sector job. The easiest solution is for me to just pass on both and move on to someone who doesn’t use such sleazy tactics. Which is probably just what I will do.

Published at 21:04 on 1 August 2015

The best thing that happened on the Deer Park camping trip was the new experience of being on a mountaintop as the sun set.

I’ve been on mountaintops many times, but always as the part of day hikes that involved the goal of getting back to the trail head before nightfall. This time, the summit was only 1.2 miles from where I was camped, most of the route back was on a road, I had a light and spare batteries with me, and the moon was nearly full.

So it was easily possible to stay until the sun had completely set, which is exactly what I did, watching the colors change on the mountain slopes, the fingers of darkness creep up the walls of the valleys, and the sky turn colors in the west.

It was a new and magical experience, and the light from the moon meant I didn’t even need to use my light on the way back to camp.

Published at 15:12 on 26 July 2015

Did a little ritual today: went through all my clothing and rooted out all the swag with my old employer’s name or logo on it (they were fond of issuing such things, particularly T-shirts). I made two exceptions: one older T-shirt, issued back in the era when the company was true to its stated values and a great place to be working for (and which had a retro 1980ish design I always really liked), and the hoodie that I was issued when I was first hired.

Goodwill Industries lets you assign your own value on their receipts. I chose $1/shirt, because they usually sell for at least that much in thrift stores.