Status Update
I've let August slip away with only five entries here. Here's hoping September will see more frequent updates.
Many many things have happened since I last posted. Let me explain.
No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
The Job
Several months ago, I applied to various and sundry tech jobs through dice.com. One of them, ViaWest, responded to my application asking me to come down and take a skills assessment test as part of the pre-interview process. It was 15 questions as I was told to expect to take 15 minutes filling it out.
All were multiple-choice, and some of the questions were ridiculously easy, such as "A customer complains about having trouble receiving their email. They are able to send email and browse the web without problems. What settings would you ask them to check in their mail client? A) POP3 settings, B) IMAP settings, C) SMTP settings, D) Internet Connection Settings" Only answer C has to do with sending mail.
Some were a bit trickier, like "Circle all that apply. Which of the following are listed in the output of the command 'ipconfig /all' under Windows XP"
Overall I spent 7 or 8 minutes on the test, checked my answers, handed it in and left. The receptionist explained that they have no openings at the moment, but the hiring people like to have candidates ready so the openings are not vacant for long.
Weeks went by and I wrote it off, figuring nothing would come of it and feeling a bit silly for driving ~25 minutes each way for a 10 minute test.
I focused on what needed doing to get things together to get a loan to start The Gamers' Bookshelf, a retail store selling role playing game rule books, board games and accessories.
A little over two weeks ago, Mike & I were talking about next steps for the store, and whether it wouldn't be better to start it as an online store, establish the business, then go to the bank and say "See! We know what we're doing! You'll totally get your loan money back." Our discussion was interrupted when I got a phone call. Ben from ViaWest would like me to come down for a pre-interview interview.
We discussed my background, experience, the job requirements, brief company history, and went over my test. The only questions I missed were the three "circle all that apply" questions and he gave me partial credit for answering them correctly before he told me the answers. Then we went on a tour of the datacenter, one of four in the Denver area. They have additional datacenters in Portland, OR, somewhere in Utah or Idaho, and one in Texas, I think. It sounds like I may bounce around the Denver ones for a bit until I settle. I would be one of the guys in the Network Operations Center (NOC), answering support calls from business customers and assisting customers on-site, maintaining the integrity of the internal network, and other fun stuff. The position is called Solutions Engineer, but Ben acknowledged it's a bit vague and misleading as a title. He said mine was the best test score he'd seen recently, and noted he would have hired me right away if there were a position available. He put in the paperwork to promote one of the Solutions Engineers and was waiting on it to be processed, so he expected an opening "soon:" anytime from a week to a couple of months. I bade him farewell and walked to my car with a hopeful step, but made plans to get another job anyway, just in case.
Last weekend was Lauren's birthday, so in preparation for that I went to a couple of book stores to find a book she wanted. She wanted the hardcover edition, but since the paperback had come out, every store I went to only carried the paperback and could order the hardcover to be delivered in about a week. This was, of course, too late to have it in time for the party, so I opted for a gift card instead. But, of course, I can't just go in to a book store, grab something, and leave. I have to wander around a bit. I found the Jim Butcher section of shelf, and picked up Storm Front, book one of the Dresden Files. I'd been curious about the series since watching the TV show years ago. Turns out the pilot of the TV show covered book one reasonably well. The book was more interesting, more background and more plot lines, but the show got the basics: wizard protagonist works with lady cop on strange murder case, demons summoned, wizard protagonist being watched by wizard antagonist because protagonist killed a guy with magic in self defense and now the antagonist is waiting for him to do something similar to justify execution as punishment, hilarity ensues.
I fell in to the book and read the last half of it last night, finishing around 2:45AM. I looked at my phone and said "You'll make noise in a few hours..." and turned the alarm off. I thought for a moment as I put the phone back on the shelf next to the bed that it would have been easier to turn the ringer volume to "off" so it wouldn't make any noise, but let that thought drift away as my head hit the pillow.
Around 10:30 the phone rang. Ben was calling me back to schedule an interview with the Regional NOC Manager, Chris, who would make the hiring decision. Thursday afternoon at 3PM in Aurora (a little over half an hour's drive away). I thanked my past-self for turning off the alarm and not the ringer. About an hour later Chris called me to confirm our meeting and ask a few non-technical questions: Are you available to work at any of the Denver facilities, did Ben explain the shift rotations (he did), when would you be available to start, will we find anything in the background investigation (which I gave consent and filled out the paperwork for -- some of the servers host data and/or sites for government agencies; I didn't sign a non-disclosure agreement, so they didn't tell me anything more than that), etc. Both Ben and Chris noticed I had lived/worked in Portland, OR and noted they have a datacenter there, in Hillsboro actually, a neighboring city just South of Portland proper.
I don't imagine the interview going poorly; they'll ask me technical questions and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to answer them, or at least say "I don't know for certain, but I would search these key words and phrases
online." I know they don't expect me to know everything; that's what their training is for.
The Convention
Nan Desu Kan is a hair over a week away. A few new costume pieces have arrived in the mail recently, and I picked up a new shirt and bow tie last week. Slowly adding more and more to my steampunk costume, and there's a steampunk gathering on Saturday, 10 AM, near the registration tables. Should be a lot of fun. I seem to have forgotten to pre-register for the convention though, and of course pre-reg closed weeks ago, so I'll be there bright and early Friday morning to get a badge.
Crafting Skill Increase!
In a fit of pique a few weeks ago, we tore out the wooden deck on the front porch. The wood was splintering and cracking with age anyway. Mostly we tolerated it because it seemed like a lot of work to tear it out. And it was. We found that it had been constructed largely of pressure-treated lumber that should not have been exposed to the elements, and was covering the original cement porch and front steps that had sunk four to ten inches at some point in the past. Now the front of the house looks nicer, and has a big step up to the front door. That was really more deconstruction than construction though.
We borrowed a carpet shampooer and cleaned the carpets, then decided to rearrange furniture since it was all moved about anyway. We ended up getting rid of the TV stand that had been the entertainment center in the basement and put up three adjustable shelves to hold the video game consoles and dvd player. The TV is a flat screen mounted to the wall. While moving my shelves of DVDs off the carpet, I went the lazy route and moved them full of DVDs. Two of the three shelve survived. The third was a cheap piece of crap I hadn't really been happy with since I put it together the first time. It barely survived the ten block move from Erik's house to Mike & Amy's house, and only survived the move from Portland because I took it apart and packed it back in its box. We went to Home Depot and picked out lumber for two projects: building me a new DVD shelf and building Amy a book shelf to hold her collection of books. Until now, most of the books have been living in boxes either at her parents' house or under her bed.
I didn't actually do any of the cutting or drilling on my shelf. Mostly I picked out the wood and suggested a design. It ended up being four feet tall and three feet wide, with five shelves spaced dvd-height apart, with thin dowels in the back to prevent the dvds from being pushed through. Mike learned a couple of good lessons from building my shelf: Measure Twice, Cut Once, and Never Trust Cuts You Didn't Make. Most of the shelves he cut were close to 34 inches. One was 36, and when we tried to force it in, figuring the vertical board was warped, it yanked the screws out of three other shelves. Mike remeasured and recut the problem board and everything went together like clockwork. I think it looks fantastic and even putting my video games on it, I still have almost a full shelf of empty space.
Game Store Update
Mike and I have discussed it and have come to the conclusion that starting The Gamers' Bookshelf as an online store makes the most sense. We can store the inventory at the house to start with, or at a near-by self-storage lot if need be. The website would essentially be free since we can do all the work to set it up. It opens up a broader audience, since we'd be dealing nationally instead of locally. We can also have an etsy-like section where crafters can sell their wares through our site. Some possibilities for the latter include jewelery, custom figures, terrain pieces and custom made terrain boards for tactical games like Warhammer, costumes and costume accessories, and adventure modules. We figure we can start the store this way with no loan, in our spare time, for less than five or six thousand dollars. And if the site doesn't work as well as we thought it would, we can recoup much of our cost by selling the inventory to other local stores.
In other news, Alternia Comics is still going, new stuff almost-daily. Part of my problem with writing is I got used to writing in restaurants, which is expensive to do regularly, especially while unemployed, so I haven't done it, and the frequent updates quickly drained my backlog of short stories. At restaurants, I don't have other bits of my life to distract me: no laptop, DVDs, video games, people to talk to, etc. just my pen and the blank page. I haven't been able to recreate a similar space in the house. I've gotten writing done, but not as much as I used to while I went out for lunch and writing almost every day in Washington.
Many many things have happened since I last posted. Let me explain.
No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
The Job
Several months ago, I applied to various and sundry tech jobs through dice.com. One of them, ViaWest, responded to my application asking me to come down and take a skills assessment test as part of the pre-interview process. It was 15 questions as I was told to expect to take 15 minutes filling it out.
All were multiple-choice, and some of the questions were ridiculously easy, such as "A customer complains about having trouble receiving their email. They are able to send email and browse the web without problems. What settings would you ask them to check in their mail client? A) POP3 settings, B) IMAP settings, C) SMTP settings, D) Internet Connection Settings" Only answer C has to do with sending mail.
Some were a bit trickier, like "Circle all that apply. Which of the following are listed in the output of the command 'ipconfig /all' under Windows XP"
Overall I spent 7 or 8 minutes on the test, checked my answers, handed it in and left. The receptionist explained that they have no openings at the moment, but the hiring people like to have candidates ready so the openings are not vacant for long.
Weeks went by and I wrote it off, figuring nothing would come of it and feeling a bit silly for driving ~25 minutes each way for a 10 minute test.
I focused on what needed doing to get things together to get a loan to start The Gamers' Bookshelf, a retail store selling role playing game rule books, board games and accessories.
A little over two weeks ago, Mike & I were talking about next steps for the store, and whether it wouldn't be better to start it as an online store, establish the business, then go to the bank and say "See! We know what we're doing! You'll totally get your loan money back." Our discussion was interrupted when I got a phone call. Ben from ViaWest would like me to come down for a pre-interview interview.
We discussed my background, experience, the job requirements, brief company history, and went over my test. The only questions I missed were the three "circle all that apply" questions and he gave me partial credit for answering them correctly before he told me the answers. Then we went on a tour of the datacenter, one of four in the Denver area. They have additional datacenters in Portland, OR, somewhere in Utah or Idaho, and one in Texas, I think. It sounds like I may bounce around the Denver ones for a bit until I settle. I would be one of the guys in the Network Operations Center (NOC), answering support calls from business customers and assisting customers on-site, maintaining the integrity of the internal network, and other fun stuff. The position is called Solutions Engineer, but Ben acknowledged it's a bit vague and misleading as a title. He said mine was the best test score he'd seen recently, and noted he would have hired me right away if there were a position available. He put in the paperwork to promote one of the Solutions Engineers and was waiting on it to be processed, so he expected an opening "soon:" anytime from a week to a couple of months. I bade him farewell and walked to my car with a hopeful step, but made plans to get another job anyway, just in case.
Last weekend was Lauren's birthday, so in preparation for that I went to a couple of book stores to find a book she wanted. She wanted the hardcover edition, but since the paperback had come out, every store I went to only carried the paperback and could order the hardcover to be delivered in about a week. This was, of course, too late to have it in time for the party, so I opted for a gift card instead. But, of course, I can't just go in to a book store, grab something, and leave. I have to wander around a bit. I found the Jim Butcher section of shelf, and picked up Storm Front, book one of the Dresden Files. I'd been curious about the series since watching the TV show years ago. Turns out the pilot of the TV show covered book one reasonably well. The book was more interesting, more background and more plot lines, but the show got the basics: wizard protagonist works with lady cop on strange murder case, demons summoned, wizard protagonist being watched by wizard antagonist because protagonist killed a guy with magic in self defense and now the antagonist is waiting for him to do something similar to justify execution as punishment, hilarity ensues.
I fell in to the book and read the last half of it last night, finishing around 2:45AM. I looked at my phone and said "You'll make noise in a few hours..." and turned the alarm off. I thought for a moment as I put the phone back on the shelf next to the bed that it would have been easier to turn the ringer volume to "off" so it wouldn't make any noise, but let that thought drift away as my head hit the pillow.
Around 10:30 the phone rang. Ben was calling me back to schedule an interview with the Regional NOC Manager, Chris, who would make the hiring decision. Thursday afternoon at 3PM in Aurora (a little over half an hour's drive away). I thanked my past-self for turning off the alarm and not the ringer. About an hour later Chris called me to confirm our meeting and ask a few non-technical questions: Are you available to work at any of the Denver facilities, did Ben explain the shift rotations (he did), when would you be available to start, will we find anything in the background investigation (which I gave consent and filled out the paperwork for -- some of the servers host data and/or sites for government agencies; I didn't sign a non-disclosure agreement, so they didn't tell me anything more than that), etc. Both Ben and Chris noticed I had lived/worked in Portland, OR and noted they have a datacenter there, in Hillsboro actually, a neighboring city just South of Portland proper.
I don't imagine the interview going poorly; they'll ask me technical questions and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to answer them, or at least say "I don't know for certain, but I would search these key words and phrases
online." I know they don't expect me to know everything; that's what their training is for.
The Convention
Nan Desu Kan is a hair over a week away. A few new costume pieces have arrived in the mail recently, and I picked up a new shirt and bow tie last week. Slowly adding more and more to my steampunk costume, and there's a steampunk gathering on Saturday, 10 AM, near the registration tables. Should be a lot of fun. I seem to have forgotten to pre-register for the convention though, and of course pre-reg closed weeks ago, so I'll be there bright and early Friday morning to get a badge.
Crafting Skill Increase!
In a fit of pique a few weeks ago, we tore out the wooden deck on the front porch. The wood was splintering and cracking with age anyway. Mostly we tolerated it because it seemed like a lot of work to tear it out. And it was. We found that it had been constructed largely of pressure-treated lumber that should not have been exposed to the elements, and was covering the original cement porch and front steps that had sunk four to ten inches at some point in the past. Now the front of the house looks nicer, and has a big step up to the front door. That was really more deconstruction than construction though.
We borrowed a carpet shampooer and cleaned the carpets, then decided to rearrange furniture since it was all moved about anyway. We ended up getting rid of the TV stand that had been the entertainment center in the basement and put up three adjustable shelves to hold the video game consoles and dvd player. The TV is a flat screen mounted to the wall. While moving my shelves of DVDs off the carpet, I went the lazy route and moved them full of DVDs. Two of the three shelve survived. The third was a cheap piece of crap I hadn't really been happy with since I put it together the first time. It barely survived the ten block move from Erik's house to Mike & Amy's house, and only survived the move from Portland because I took it apart and packed it back in its box. We went to Home Depot and picked out lumber for two projects: building me a new DVD shelf and building Amy a book shelf to hold her collection of books. Until now, most of the books have been living in boxes either at her parents' house or under her bed.
I didn't actually do any of the cutting or drilling on my shelf. Mostly I picked out the wood and suggested a design. It ended up being four feet tall and three feet wide, with five shelves spaced dvd-height apart, with thin dowels in the back to prevent the dvds from being pushed through. Mike learned a couple of good lessons from building my shelf: Measure Twice, Cut Once, and Never Trust Cuts You Didn't Make. Most of the shelves he cut were close to 34 inches. One was 36, and when we tried to force it in, figuring the vertical board was warped, it yanked the screws out of three other shelves. Mike remeasured and recut the problem board and everything went together like clockwork. I think it looks fantastic and even putting my video games on it, I still have almost a full shelf of empty space.
Game Store Update
Mike and I have discussed it and have come to the conclusion that starting The Gamers' Bookshelf as an online store makes the most sense. We can store the inventory at the house to start with, or at a near-by self-storage lot if need be. The website would essentially be free since we can do all the work to set it up. It opens up a broader audience, since we'd be dealing nationally instead of locally. We can also have an etsy-like section where crafters can sell their wares through our site. Some possibilities for the latter include jewelery, custom figures, terrain pieces and custom made terrain boards for tactical games like Warhammer, costumes and costume accessories, and adventure modules. We figure we can start the store this way with no loan, in our spare time, for less than five or six thousand dollars. And if the site doesn't work as well as we thought it would, we can recoup much of our cost by selling the inventory to other local stores.
In other news, Alternia Comics is still going, new stuff almost-daily. Part of my problem with writing is I got used to writing in restaurants, which is expensive to do regularly, especially while unemployed, so I haven't done it, and the frequent updates quickly drained my backlog of short stories. At restaurants, I don't have other bits of my life to distract me: no laptop, DVDs, video games, people to talk to, etc. just my pen and the blank page. I haven't been able to recreate a similar space in the house. I've gotten writing done, but not as much as I used to while I went out for lunch and writing almost every day in Washington.