What's been going on

Obviously, this blog has been silent for the last few months. However, it has come to my attention that my public is demanding new entries and is sick of reading "Horror in the Morning" over and over. Whatever. I thought it was pretty good.

I've had a few issues to deal with since my last entry on February 19 and, not to put too fine a point on it, the daily ups and downs were not anything I wanted to put out on the interwebs.

To summarize, after the Corporate Sociopaths closed our office in hopes (unfulfilled I believe) of further enriching themselves, I spent the late winter and spring feverishly preparing for job interviews. This is no joke in the software engineering world. Interviews usually consist of hours of questions on every conceivable topic related to the field e.g. coding skills (writing code on a whiteboard), software testing, dealing with coworkers, thinking on your feet, occasional math questions, and sometimes brain teasers.

In short, no matter what your job experience is, no matter how much your current and past supervisors respect your work, you must prove yourself anew in each interview.

Failures, I've had a few. Sometimes I knew the interviewers didn't see what they were looking for. On other occasions, I thought I had nailed the interview but was turned down anyway. In one case, I never heard boo after what seemed like a good interview for a position for which I was eminently qualified. In another, I heard through the grapevine that the advertised opening was not real and the job was predestined for someone who had been contracting at the company for years.

When I finally did get a job, it was after two half-hour interviews with very few technical questions. Go figure. I think the lesson here is that it's all a crap shoot but preparation is (usually) essential to avoid being screened out.

In more pleasant areas of life, I started bass lessons, stopped for a few months due the above-mentioned interviewing crapapalooza, and restarted in late summer. It's a lot of fun and I can already see some of my bad bass habits changing for the better. Also in the music field, our PhilharmoniaNW conductor of 24 years quit on us suddenly in May and I have spent many an hour as a member of the conductor search committee looking for a replacement. We instituted a nation-wide search and have narrowed a field of over 30 down to 4 very impressive applicants. We will be auditioning them throughout this season and will select our new leader in April or May. We are currently auditioning Adam Stern who is really really good and seems very eager to join us. Our first concert with him was a few weeks ago and, in my opinion, we played better and with more gusto than we have in years. And Adam's selection of Vaughn Williams' music for Job was difficult as all hell but, in the end, a revelation.

I had some great hikes this season most notably with my dear Anna to the Mt. Fremont Lookout near Sunrise in Mt. Rainier N.P. and, on the west side of said park, to Tolmie Peak with the Mountaineers. The hike to Tolmie Peak featured some of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen anywhere and the weather was perfect; clouds, sunshine, and fog made for incredible lighting effects on the lakes and mountains. It was as close to a spiritual experience as I am ever likely to have. In fact, it was sort of a reset for me (to quote the theme of the Seattle Times' obnoxious editorial series this election season) and helped me get past a lot of the pent-up stress and bad feelings that had built up over the last several months.

But enough of the self indulgence. More later.