A Beautiful Day and Career Counseling from the Pointy-Haired Boss

Pam and I made every excuse we could for one more errand out in this sparkling, crisp (sounds like a soft drink) day. All of that rain has resulted in flow­ers and green every­where, and we could see moun­tain ranges to the North from Broad­way that I don’t think we’d ever seen before, or at least not this well.

We got lots of odds and ends, and in gen­eral, pre­pared for Pam’s trip that will take her to our old haunts in Boston, her brother’s fam­ily in West Spring­field, Mass­a­chu­setts, and a final stop in Min­neapo­lis for the STC (Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion) Con­ven­tion. She’ll be on the road for nearly 3 weeks. I hope none of her Koi die while under my care.

As for me, I get to con­tinue my job search, which has con­tin­ued with help from friends and a new career man­age­ment com­pany that I’ve signed on with. The lat­ter has involved lots of def­i­n­i­tion of career goals, com­pil­ing ‘nar­ra­tives’ of my work accom­plish­ments to date, and meet­ings with my assigned con­tact at their offices. I leave off names and com­pa­nies here for a rea­son: The meet­ings, and my inter­ac­tions with this per­son are not going as well as I would hope. Why? As it turns out, the per­son who is to be my advo­cate, coach and adviser at this com­pany is decid­edly non-technical. Really non-technical, as in not know­ing much about the Inter­net, Com­put­ers, the Web, or any­thing remotely related to Tech­nol­ogy. This has proved…challenging to me and is fairly trou­bling. After all, how can some­one advise you on your career if they have absolutely no under­stand­ing of what you do to begin with?

Case in Point: At our last meet­ing, they brought up their Sav­ings and Loan’s web page on their screen, turned it to me and asked point-blank: “Is that all you do”? I was a lit­tle taken aback. “Yes, I answered, after a moment of silence where I held back the urge to lean across their desk and punch them in the face, “But that’s not all of it. It’s like ask­ing a Fur­ni­ture Designer if all they design is chairs.”

While it’s a good thing for me to make sure that I can relate to a non-technical per­son (which is not some­thing I usu­ally have a prob­lem with; I’m a self-admitted geek but I am a result of a Lib­eral Arts Edu­ca­tion), I have to say that rewrit­ing my resumé so that all of the tech­no­log­i­cal ref­er­ence are either elim­i­nated or sim­pli­fied is not some­thing I would have done on my own, and I won­der if it’s going to serve me well. Will I have a ‘David for Dum­mies’ ver­sion of my resumé that I trot out for some­one who I think will give me a blank look if I men­tion the words ‘User Inter­face’? Then again, how would some­one like that ever be inter­view­ing me for a job in the first place?

On Tues­day, I am to appear for my meet­ing in for­mal job inter­view attire. Accord­ing to their rules, that’s a dark suit and tie.

Techies in Van­cou­ver: When was the last time you appeared for a meet­ing in suit and dark tie? It’s not that I don’t have one, or haven’t worn one in my life, but it seems to rein­force the idea that these peo­ple have no freak­ing clue what­so­ever what tech cul­ture is like.

If this con­tin­ues to irk me and inter­feres with my job search, I may request a dif­fer­ent per­son to work with, which may prove a bit uncom­fort­able for all con­cerned. Nev­er­the­less, I’m going to give that some seri­ous thought. In the mean­time, it’s back to my old resumé, which I’m try­ing to use to cre­ate more ‘nar­ra­tives’: “Once upon a time, there was a need for a click­able HTML pro­to­type…” (*Doh!*)

Social Butterflying

Last night was the Blog­ger Meetup, and despite the Canucks game going on (a few kept in touch via wire­less), we man­aged to talk about other things besides hockey. This time, Isabella was able to make it, and did some play-by-play Twit­ter of the group to Robert San­za­lone, a fel­low Van­cou­ver blog­ger now liv­ing in Japan. Jan posted a list of every­one who was there with links to their blog, and John (along with Jan) took some snap­shots (I wish my mouth hadn’t been full of Chorizo (spicy, and now, at least I know how to pro­nounce it properly).

Tonight, it’s VanUE. The only prob­lems with all of these nights out is that I’m away from Pam a lot (and she’ll be gone for nearly 3 weeks start­ing next week!), and con­sum­ing more beer (bad for the waist­line). Good thing I got my taxes done, so that’s not keep­ing me from net­work­ing. They say that when you’re a job seeker, this is an impor­tant activ­ity, and at least this one is easy com­pared to some of the other things you have to do (rewrit­ing and rewrit­ing resumé, research­ing com­pa­nies, prepar­ing for inter­views etc.)

Oh well, out into the rain again!

Sometimes it All Comes Together

Things have been going well for Van­cou­ver. Last night, our beloved Canucks man­aged to beat the Dal­las Stars, and won the first set of play­offs in the final 7^th game. It was make or break, and they made it. The cel­e­brat­ing on Rob­son Street was so loud and long that I sus­pect a lot of peo­ple are head­ing into work sleepy-eyed this morning.

Yes­ter­day was a picture-perfect day, with mild breezes, sun and a few scat­tered clouds. Before the game started at BC Place, I met up with Mark, a Com­puter Sci­en­tist vis­it­ing from LA, whom I’d met through my arti­cle in the LA Times. While we tried to chat over a few brews, the groans and cheers of the crowd would punc­tu­ate the evening (I got home before the rev­els started). As the game-winning goal was made by Trevor Lin­den we heard the cheers from the whole city from our bal­cony in False Creek. A slew of hang­overs was prob­a­bly made just bit worse by the return of rain today.

Tomor­row night is the Blog­ger Meetup, and I sus­pect that our cel­e­bra­tions will con­tinue, although some­what tem­pered by the fact that it’s not over; the Canucks now have to go on to face the Ana­heim Ducks, and will be doing so that evening just as we’re sit­ting down. (I’m sure we’ll know the play by play, either from TVs or the Wi Fi con­nec­tion).

The Canada­Line
Today I came across this video via Pacific Metrop­o­lis, who track this sort of thing, that details the new mass tran­sit sys­tem that is cur­rently the rea­son that they are tear­ing up much of down­town and Cam­bie Street (as well as the air­port, I sup­pose, but I haven’t seen that myself). As it shows, It will make Rich­mond and the Air­port about a half an hour from Downtown’s Water­front Sta­tion, which is the con­nec­tion to North Van­cou­ver (and ulti­mately by motor coach, Whistler) via Seabus and the other towns to the east via the Sky­train system.

It’s a typ­i­cal, cheesy cor­po­rate video, with some truly awful stock music and overly plas­tic nar­ra­tion, but you can get the gen­eral idea:

Frankly, if this is what the taxes that we’re fil­ing (due in 6 days and count­ing) are going toward, I’m more than OK with it. Yeah, I know, I know, there are lots of folks here who aren’t thrilled with the Canada­line, and fought against it (and I sus­pect that it really wasn’t pretty the way it was pushed through). I say, let’s make the most of it. Finally, peo­ple will be able to get from the Air­port to Burn­aby (and even Sur­rey) with­out burn­ing an ounce of gaso­line. And with <a href=“http://www.vancouvergasprices.com/retail_price_chart.aspx” target=_blank”>local prices at the pump around 1.18 per liter, as well as the usual Global Warm­ing argu­ments, being ahead of the curve on mass tran­sit can’t be a com­pletely bad thing.

I remem­ber the videos and praise for the Big Dig back in Boston, but I always hated the idea of a road for more cars, built under the city. So much money and so much engi­neer­ing (and cor­rup­tion) merely to build a high­way? What were they thinking?

I Still Love Vermont (Again)

Patrick Leahy, Con­gress­man from Ver­mont, takes Attor­ney Gen­eral Alberto Gon­za­les to task for the Maher Arar case in a Sen­ate Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee Hear­ing. It’s good to see some­one in the US Gov­ern­ment real­iz­ing that Canada (as well as the rest of the world) some­times won­ders what has hap­pened to the USA that they thought they used to know. It’s cer­tainly not the kind of coun­try that now sends a Cana­dian cit­i­zen off to the Syria because they sus­pect that he might be a terrorist.

We knew damn well if he went to Canada, he wouldn’t be tor­tured! If he were held, he would be inves­ti­gated. We also knew damn well if he went to Syria, he’d be tortured.

Here’s the whole exchange:

Some­one here the other day told me that the US today (as it relates to Canada) was like ‘Some­one had stolen away your big brother and replaced him with some­one that you don’t rec­og­nize any more.’ With peo­ple like Gon­za­les run­ning things, it’s no won­der that they don’t rec­og­nize the US. I cer­tainly don’t.

BTW, for those out­side Canada who don’t know of the case, Maher Arar was a Cana­dian cit­i­zen who was stopped at JFK air­port, sent to Syria to be tor­tured and later was found to be com­pletely inno­cent. He got a for­mal apol­ogy from the Cana­dian gov­ern­ment, along with $10.5 mil­lion in dam­ages. Say what you will about Harper, he’s no snake like Gonzales.

Inescapable

I thought I knew how a city could get when its home team was fight­ing its way toward a cham­pi­onship. I lived in Boston dur­ing that remark­able 2004 World Series vic­tory that ‘reversed the curse’, etc. There is still a sec­tion in the Boston.com web site that may end up immor­tal­iz­ing the event for the next 86 years — which was the length of time between the two World Series tro­phies — if they have to. For all I know, there are prob­a­bly folk songs about the Sox of ’04 and hun­dreds of new baby boys chris­tened ‘Johnny’, ‘Jason’ and ‘Manny’.

But for Cana­di­ans, Hockey seems to be more than just a sport. It’s a glue for coun­try, includ­ing the new cit­i­zens (and landed immi­grants), maybe because we all agree that Canada invented the sport, and deserves to be the world cham­pi­ons in it, even if things haven’t always worked out that way.

Add to that, a tro­phy drought of sim­i­lar length to the Sox. Van­cou­ver, who have not won the Stan­ley Cup since the ‘Mil­lion­aires’ won it back in 1917–1918, is notice­ably hockey crazy, even for Canada. You see the cars every­where, with the flags all over them. Today at the mar­ket I couldn’t help notic­ing more than a few guys wear­ing Canucks Jer­seys. The CBC is run­ning a photo con­test of the cra­zi­est Canuck fan (you know, the ones who do the whole face-paint thing). If the team does win the cup, they are esti­mat­ing a $2.1 mil­lion cost in Police pro­tec­tion to keep all of the cel­e­bra­tors from run­ning amuck. Speak­ing of costs, tick­ets for tonights game were going for $320 for a pair from scalpers.

Some of my fel­low Van­cou­ver blog­gers are also pod­cast­ers. One of them was high­lighted for their increas­ingly pop­u­lar pod­cast, Crazy Canucks. Check out the spot on the local TV sta­tion at John’s other blog: John Boll­witt blog or his wife and co-podcaster, Miss604. I think they’ve tapped into a real vein of Hockey Madness.

I write this after the home team lost in over­time. It seems that every time I watch they lose. So I’m not sure I’m going to watch the next again on Sat­ur­day, when they are away in Dallas.

As for the sports bar own­ers. I’m sure that although they do want the Canucks to win as much as every­body else, they’d much rather stretch this ini­tial set of play­off games with the Dal­las Flames to the full seven. Noth­ing crazy about that.