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howeirdLotsa stuff today.
All Hands Meeting
They have not had one in months. The routine is everyone gets together, they serve soggy pizza (which I don't touch), go over the company financials, lie about the future of the company, lie some more about the recent past of the company, and announce any major staff changes. Major meaning VP level or above. Nothing special today except the company's founder is quitting. No wonder I kept seeing him out in the parking lot on his cell phone. He's taking a job at Yahoo. He is a lovely person, and for that reason I am saddened to see him go. But on the professional side I have many rude things I could say, but won't since this is a public posting.
Four Parcels from Thailand!!!!
A couple of weeks ago I received the first three parcels I'd mailed back to myself, and had expected to see one a week this month, but I guess the boat only leaves once a month, because all four remaining packages arrived yesterday, and I picked them up this afternoon at the apartment office. Unlike the first set, these had their original string wrapping and seals intact, and had no customs inspection sticker, so I guess customs wasn't the reason for the delay.
What was inside, you ask?
Parcel #1 mailed from Silolm station in Bangkok 11/15, and contained a big stash of cloth from Sukhothai. Three dress-sized pieces of black muslin embroidered with patterns which remind me of Pennsylvania Dutch art, and two gorgeous Thai silk dress pieces. Another package contained some dirty laundry - T-shirts I'd bought and worn there and a couple of shirts I had brought from the US. Also in the package were three "pakamas", which are cheap cotton print lengths of cloth which men use as half-sarongs. I'll have to haul out the sewing machine and hem them before I put them in the washer.
Parcels #2 and 3 were mailed from Thung Lo station in Bangkok on 11/16 and 11/17 respectively, and between them had the Thai silk suit I'd bought there, which included two pairs of pants and two long-sleeved and one short-sleeved shirt. I think I am missing one short-sleeved shirt, but I'm not sure, because the silk shirts are a similar color and texture to the cotton ones I had made in Phuket. There was also some dirty laundry, which included a couple of shirts I'd brought with me and a White peasant's shirt.
Parcel #4 was mailed from Karon station on Phuket 11/24, and included mostly T-shirts, and a couple of pairs of silk lounge pants (or maybe they just look like silk.) Also buried in there was a Hills Tribes silver necklace which I had planned on carrying back with me, but decided it wasn't worth carrying around China.
I'll have photos of the pretty stuff some time Real Soon Now.
Job Prospects
Got four calls from recruiters today. One was for a position at NVidia similar to ones for which I had previously applied, and have heard zilch about even though I have two friends who work there who have tried to put my resume in front of the right people. I think I found out why I'm not getting a callback from them - the recruiter said they were paying about half my current salary.
Numbah two was some bozo with a thick Indian accent on a horrible phone connection, with the same idiot line about having a job opening he would like to send my resume to "the manager" but he could not give me a job title or job description. I told him to lose my number. This is the fourth time I've gotten this same kind of call.
Three was a woman who read me a job description which she was sure I was a prefect fit for, but she obviously doesn't understand that "automation engineer" means "programmer", which I am not. At least not professionally.
And the last one was the best, a recruiter at a company which I have been bombarding with my resume for years called to set up a phone interview. The company is walking distance from my apartment, but they were sold to a firm in Joisey, so the phone call will be from a manager on the Right Coast. I am jazzed about this one, since it's QA for a company I know, and they have lots of neat toys in the video editing area.
Perl Before Swine
Perl class tonight was almost as disorganized as it has been for the past 2 weeks. Or has it been 3? To recap, the first night the teacher moved us to a new classroom on the other side of campus after the first hour, because he said he had the other room for the last 18 years, and it was "all set up" for him and his Mac laptop. Except it wasn't, and he wasted most of an hour hooking things up.
The following week we showed up at the new room to find a class already in there and a sign on the door that we were back in the original room. Another 90 minutes of futzing around with the computer hook-up. He had to call in a lab tech to get him marginally running. He told us he would arrange to have us meet in the room across the hall from the one we moved to last week, and to meet in the original room then walk over together.
Which is what happened this week, and he only wasted 30 minutes on the computer hook-up. Reasonably good lecture, 4 hours with 10-minute breaks. He handed back our first homework assignment, marked up way more than I expected. And way differently. In class he's this frivolous, light-hearted guy with an active sense of humor and prone to go off on tangents, so I'd written my source code accordingly. And he marked me up for being too verbose, and for doing some fancy things which he had encouraged us to do during the lectures. When it comes to coding, he wants no frills, just boring code. Okay, I can do that. It's a lot easier.
The class ended with the announced quiz, which was a repeat of one of the homework items, except with a different formula. Pretty bogus - it was more about decoding a math formula than it was about writing in Perl. Which was another thing about the homework mark-up - he didn't want to see formula elements plugged into variables, he just wanted the numbers. I'm not going to ever be writing code to do math with, and that's not what Perl is for, so I'm miffed at this. I may drop this class and just go self-study.
All Hands Meeting
They have not had one in months. The routine is everyone gets together, they serve soggy pizza (which I don't touch), go over the company financials, lie about the future of the company, lie some more about the recent past of the company, and announce any major staff changes. Major meaning VP level or above. Nothing special today except the company's founder is quitting. No wonder I kept seeing him out in the parking lot on his cell phone. He's taking a job at Yahoo. He is a lovely person, and for that reason I am saddened to see him go. But on the professional side I have many rude things I could say, but won't since this is a public posting.
Four Parcels from Thailand!!!!
A couple of weeks ago I received the first three parcels I'd mailed back to myself, and had expected to see one a week this month, but I guess the boat only leaves once a month, because all four remaining packages arrived yesterday, and I picked them up this afternoon at the apartment office. Unlike the first set, these had their original string wrapping and seals intact, and had no customs inspection sticker, so I guess customs wasn't the reason for the delay.
What was inside, you ask?
Parcel #1 mailed from Silolm station in Bangkok 11/15, and contained a big stash of cloth from Sukhothai. Three dress-sized pieces of black muslin embroidered with patterns which remind me of Pennsylvania Dutch art, and two gorgeous Thai silk dress pieces. Another package contained some dirty laundry - T-shirts I'd bought and worn there and a couple of shirts I had brought from the US. Also in the package were three "pakamas", which are cheap cotton print lengths of cloth which men use as half-sarongs. I'll have to haul out the sewing machine and hem them before I put them in the washer.
Parcels #2 and 3 were mailed from Thung Lo station in Bangkok on 11/16 and 11/17 respectively, and between them had the Thai silk suit I'd bought there, which included two pairs of pants and two long-sleeved and one short-sleeved shirt. I think I am missing one short-sleeved shirt, but I'm not sure, because the silk shirts are a similar color and texture to the cotton ones I had made in Phuket. There was also some dirty laundry, which included a couple of shirts I'd brought with me and a White peasant's shirt.
Parcel #4 was mailed from Karon station on Phuket 11/24, and included mostly T-shirts, and a couple of pairs of silk lounge pants (or maybe they just look like silk.) Also buried in there was a Hills Tribes silver necklace which I had planned on carrying back with me, but decided it wasn't worth carrying around China.
I'll have photos of the pretty stuff some time Real Soon Now.
Job Prospects
Got four calls from recruiters today. One was for a position at NVidia similar to ones for which I had previously applied, and have heard zilch about even though I have two friends who work there who have tried to put my resume in front of the right people. I think I found out why I'm not getting a callback from them - the recruiter said they were paying about half my current salary.
Numbah two was some bozo with a thick Indian accent on a horrible phone connection, with the same idiot line about having a job opening he would like to send my resume to "the manager" but he could not give me a job title or job description. I told him to lose my number. This is the fourth time I've gotten this same kind of call.
Three was a woman who read me a job description which she was sure I was a prefect fit for, but she obviously doesn't understand that "automation engineer" means "programmer", which I am not. At least not professionally.
And the last one was the best, a recruiter at a company which I have been bombarding with my resume for years called to set up a phone interview. The company is walking distance from my apartment, but they were sold to a firm in Joisey, so the phone call will be from a manager on the Right Coast. I am jazzed about this one, since it's QA for a company I know, and they have lots of neat toys in the video editing area.
Perl Before Swine
Perl class tonight was almost as disorganized as it has been for the past 2 weeks. Or has it been 3? To recap, the first night the teacher moved us to a new classroom on the other side of campus after the first hour, because he said he had the other room for the last 18 years, and it was "all set up" for him and his Mac laptop. Except it wasn't, and he wasted most of an hour hooking things up.
The following week we showed up at the new room to find a class already in there and a sign on the door that we were back in the original room. Another 90 minutes of futzing around with the computer hook-up. He had to call in a lab tech to get him marginally running. He told us he would arrange to have us meet in the room across the hall from the one we moved to last week, and to meet in the original room then walk over together.
Which is what happened this week, and he only wasted 30 minutes on the computer hook-up. Reasonably good lecture, 4 hours with 10-minute breaks. He handed back our first homework assignment, marked up way more than I expected. And way differently. In class he's this frivolous, light-hearted guy with an active sense of humor and prone to go off on tangents, so I'd written my source code accordingly. And he marked me up for being too verbose, and for doing some fancy things which he had encouraged us to do during the lectures. When it comes to coding, he wants no frills, just boring code. Okay, I can do that. It's a lot easier.
The class ended with the announced quiz, which was a repeat of one of the homework items, except with a different formula. Pretty bogus - it was more about decoding a math formula than it was about writing in Perl. Which was another thing about the homework mark-up - he didn't want to see formula elements plugged into variables, he just wanted the numbers. I'm not going to ever be writing code to do math with, and that's not what Perl is for, so I'm miffed at this. I may drop this class and just go self-study.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-25 10:07 am (UTC)My MUN (Model United Nations) team was just assigned Thailand! May I use some of your photos so my students can see the traditional clothing?
It’s going to be interesting to see what information we can get of the web about Thailand in Romanian. Fortunately my kids are also fluent in Russian. (Or I can translate English)
Our committees are HIV/AIDS, Human Trafficking, and Environment.
I'm looking forward to it!
Thanks :o)
Meggan
PCV Moldova
no subject
Date: 2006-01-25 03:46 pm (UTC)In my current industry we "do lunch," sometimes I think I prefered the pizza.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-25 03:56 pm (UTC)Thanks for visiting. Sure, feel free to use any of the photos.
For info on Thailand, the best site is Tourism Authority of Thailand, which is available in a multitude of languages, including Romanian - odd, but I don't see a Russian link. Hmmm.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-25 04:01 pm (UTC)Funny, but the last start-up I worked for before this one we had wonderful food, courtesy of Mountain View's Castro Street being wall to wall ethgnic restaurants who all did a lot of take-out business with the Silly Valley companies. If we worked past 7 any night there would be good food for free. The only time we had pizza was when Microsoft came to make the official announcement that they were buying our company. The MS idiots thought any free food would be a treat.
When our group moved to MS, our manager got them to cater a buffet for us every night, but MS catering quits at 5 pm so we would only get re-warmed food, and it was usually not very good. We were the only engineering group on campus which had this arrangement, I think.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-25 04:44 pm (UTC)In my current industry (which I need to keep on the quiet) there are folks who have business dinners that frequently involve $300-400 bottles of wine and all the stops pulled out. This is usually frowned upon if it goes on too much. I think the topper though is a former CEO at a former company who would arrange for "female companionship" for some of the out of town guests. This was also before my time, but I knew the secretary who used to set up the date.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-25 05:41 pm (UTC)"korpkun"
can't get Thai to work, so I did it phonetically... I think.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-25 05:59 pm (UTC)Anyhow, you're very welcome, and please let me know how the project goes.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-25 06:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-25 06:49 pm (UTC)Glad you like the background. Something happened when they changed the LJ user addresses, my background got changed from a photo of the cats on a quilt to some default thing of glaring yellow with blue text saying "click here". Somehow LJ just decided to ignore my settings. So while I was there, I figured I'd point it at one of the pretty Thai embroidery close-ups, and tile it. And added a gaudy animated banner.
dirty laundry
Reminds me of a long-ago email chain where women were asked to add their favorite replies to men's bad pick-up lines. One of my favorites was "Sorry, I need to spend Quality Time with my socks." Though my favorite remains "I have to floss the cat".
But I was amused sending dirty laundry back home. My only regret is after the first three parcels, Customs stopped inspecting. Coincidence?
:-)