Glad That's Over

Highlight of the day was a job interview at 3. Got there on time, it is a hole in the wall upstairs off an alley in San Mateo. I expected more. No receptionist, this is a startup without structure. One of the people I was supposed to speak with was off in a corner, and called me over, but the first person on the list was in a conference in a back room, and did not come out for an hour. Pretty rude. The job was not a good fit, but I could have done it easily.

Got out of there at 5, which cost me a 4:30 phone chat with a recruiter who has a better fit at Cisco. Did not want to fight rush hour traffic, so walked around town looking for a Thai place. Google maps found it for me. Friendly place called Thai Satay. Wanted soup but they only serve table-for-4 sized soups. The satay was okay, but the peanut sauce was bland - needed to add red pepper oil to make it palatable. Pot Thai was nasty - they use tomato paste or watered down ketchup in it.  And big soggy rectangles of tofu. And tail-on shrimp. Really good service, though. They seem to get Thai-speaking Americans in there regularly.

Traffic was stupid on the way home, lots of assholes playing drive too slow in the middle lane but block anyone who tries to pass. Lots of slow traffic for no reason except lemming syndrome. Frustrating.

Stopped for gas on the way home, it's up 15 cents from last week. Home, changed out of my interview pants. Noticed I wore some of my dinner home on my shirt. Both cats were yelling to be let outside, but it was raining hard and while raining cats would not bother them so much, the dogs part would.

Email from the interviewer telling me I was one of their top two candidates, but they chose the other one. Whew!

Also voicemail from the recruiter whom I missed due to the interview delay, and email from another recruiter asking me to call about a Sr. QA possibility. Probably another automation engineer gig, but I'll call anyway.

And a Linked-in connection request from someone who claims she worked with me at Netflix.  Looked her up, she is an HR staffer there. I was a contractor and had no contact with HR, so no, she doesn't get to be a connection.

So things are moving along in the job hunt, much faster than last time, with more prospects.

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While I was vegging before leaving for the interview, I listened to the 2-CD set of the 10th anniversary concert version of Les Miz at Royal Albert Hall. I mostly bought it to hear Lea Salonga's Eponine. Her rendition of On My Own was worth full price. Judy Kuhn is spectacular as Cosette, and I thought I had never heard her before, but she turns out to be Florence in the original Broadway cast of Chess, and I am in love with her version of Someone Else's Story and I would take her half of the duet in I Know Him So Well over Whitney Houston's any day. Did not know she was the voice of Pocahontas in the Disney film. Salonga was the voice of Jasmine and Mulan, so three Disney princesses for the price of a double album. Or is it just two?  The second to last track has Valjeans from around the world doing a tag-team rendition of Do You Hear The People Sing? in their various languages. The Japanese guy did it with a French accent, which was bizarre, the Teutonic guys didn't bother, which was vomit-worthy. But all in all it is something glorious to listen to.

Plans for tomorrow:
Stay warm & dry. Talk to recruiters.