Published at 19:57 on 19 September 2011
The purpose of this trip was to interview for a job at Humboldt State University in Arcata, CA. Humboldt County is one of those places I’ve fallen in love with on my travels, and it would be something of a dream to live there.
A dream because high-tech jobs are practically nonexistent there (and in pretty much any of the other rural areas of the Northwest I dream of moving to). So it was hard not to fantasize during the time between being informed they wanted to fly me down for an interview and the interview itself.
Alas, it seems pretty obvious from the course of questioning during the interview that they want someone with significantly more Oracle database experience than I have. And since Oracle experience is easy to find, odds are very high they’ll find it in one of the other finalists.
Well, at least I get a couple free days in redwood country out of it, and the icing on the cake is not having to move yet again (which I’d still do in a heartbeat if I got an offer, of course, but it’s something that definitely made the job opening a mixed blessing and not an unadulterated one).
Published at 15:18 on 17 September 2011
And with this we conclude the flurry of “new blog” posts, as I am packing to depart Seattle for a few days and probably won’t be able to post until Wednesday or so (in the name of keeping my load light, I’m not taking my laptop computer with me).
Published at 09:32 on 14 September 2011
I recently applied to a job from an employer that used Careerbuilder to manage their job applications. As part of the application process, it requested my résumé and demanded that I either enter my current Careerbuilder username and password or register for an account.
So I did the former, without thinking of the possible consequences. And sure enough, Careerbuilder saved the copy of the résumé I just uploaded, which of course didn’t have the explicit message telling insurance companies to go away at its start. Surprise, surprise: the spam from insurance companies is baaaaaack.
Of course, sleaze outfit Farmers Insurance has been uninterruptedly spamming me several times per week for over a year and counting now. They’ve long since earned a spot in my spam filter, and I recommend that anyone who hates spam should avoid doing business with them like the plague.
Update: If you Google “farmers insurance spam,” it is fairly easy to see that I am not alone, and that this firm’s sleaze extends far beyond being an unrepentant spammer.
Published at 16:31 on 13 September 2011
It was a process fraught with difficulties, both in converting the old blog to a new format (something I essentially gave up on), and in getting this blog hosted (there were a number of hiccups in the process, you should have been seeing this message on Saturday). And there’s still a fair amount of configuring to do.
Ah, well. The main part of the deed is done at last.
