But first, a little post-Christmas cheer

Part 2 of the English version of Chiharu’s Christmas story.

Home again warm again

The furnace guys came out Monday morning, determined that it was toast, and scheduled the installation of a new one for Tuesday morning.

Which meant I spent Monday afternoon enlarging the path to the street into something wide enough to get my car out (and their truck in). I only went as far as Home Depot to pick up two space heaters, which they still had a few of. I only really needed them for one day, but I can always put one in the garage to keep it above freezing out there, and the other one will be useful occasionally.

I also bought some softener salt, and the cashier was concerned that I might try to use it as ice melt, which everyone is completely out of. I reassured her that it would only go into the water softener, but didn’t bother explaining that it’s going to stay in the trunk of the car for a few days to put some weight over the rear tires for traction.

Tuesday morning, I was spreading some of my remaining salt on the driveway to ensure there weren’t any icy spots for the furnace guys, and they showed up just as I finished. Start to finish, it took them four hours, which left about two hours for the house to warm back up 15 degrees before I picked my sister up at the airport.

I’m not going to try to clear the rest of the driveway today, just widen the lane a bit and scrape up whatever the wind has blown back over the previous work. I’m much too sore to do another whole 75-foot-long lane, and it’s too cold out there.

And add more salt. Which I now have plenty of, after finding one brand in stock at one store (Lowes). I’m storing it in the trunk of my car for extra traction.

(the shiny new Z Image base model is primarily designed to be used to create fine-tuned models, so it’s difficult to use directly, and can be disappointing compared to the effortless goodness of the Turbo model)

TL/DR: exactly one year and six days after getting RIFd by Pure Storage, I started a new Senior SRE position at Proofpoint.

At the beginning of April, half of my team, half of the people in related teams, and a bunch of other folks in the business unit (~95 total) were informed that our positions had been eliminated, and that we had a month to find other jobs inside the company; if that didn’t pan out, we’d receive a severance package. There were maybe three US-based openings for us all to apply for; none of them were remote, and probably a third of us had been.

I’ve made vague mention about this over the past N months, but what I didn’t say was that it happened last April, and I’ve spent most of a year banging my head against automated applicant screening systems that kept me from speaking to an actual human being.

Here’s the 90% experience:

1. found brand-new posting on LinkedIn that I’m easily qualified for.
2. applied (which often involved creating accounts on their job sites).
3. received automated rejection email.

If I applied on a Friday night, it wasn’t unusual to be rejected by Saturday morning.

Here’s 90% of the remaining 10%:

1. found & applied.
2. spoke to recruiter and seemed to hit it off.
3. never heard from them again.

Of the ones that reached an actual technical interview, one involved a sufficiently obscure skillset that they were unlikely to have more than a handful of qualified applicants, but they ghosted me and still haven’t hired anyone five months later.

Another sounded very interested and promised a fast hiring process, but dumped me a week later in a bland form email.

Special honorable mention to ServiceNow, to which I was twice referred by senior directors, and twice ghosted.

Special dishonorable mention to the Indian contract recruiters who got my cellphone number and called me multiple times per day for on-site contract positions in Cincinnati (1-hour drive) and Akron (3-hour drive). One recruiter even had his manager call back and explain that it was definitely contract-to-perm, which is almost always bullshit.

The Proofpoint recruiter was friendly, engaged, and excellent at communication and scheduling, so by the time we got to the offer, I had a positive impression of their professionalism. It didn’t hurt that my first technical interview was with my evil twin. Or perhaps I was the evil twin; at least, I’m the one with the beard. 😁

Lessons learned:

• LinkedIn is an utter shitshow of a social media network, but still better than other job sites. You think Twitter’s “For you” algorithm is bad? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
• LinkedIn Premium promises far more than it delivers, but fortunately I got it at Microsoft-alumni pricing.
• Seriously, it’s so fucking trendy that it offers AI assistance in pitching yourself to recruiters, which is an incredibly bad idea.
• So now a lot of job listings explicitly specify “no AI in resumes or cover letters”.
• All the massive tech layoffs have resulted in companies defensively deploying highly-automated screening, because many people will apply for everything.
• Screening software cares about certifications; hiring managers don’t.
• Get basic AWS/Kubernetes certifications, even if you have no interest in that kind of job; they’re like crack for screening software.
• Positions advertised as “remote” are often still limited to specific cities/states/regions. This may be disclosed in the posting, but usually not.
• The Dayton area has plenty of tech jobs, 90% of which are tied to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and require security clearances.
• You need to already have those clearances to apply.

So, what was it like being out of work for a year? Boring, mostly, but at least I was able to spend time with family. And unpack some of my stuff in sensible ways.

Between the accidentally-generous severance package (paid out at my full California salary, not the 75% regional adjustment for Ohio), a decent stock price for my RSUs, the lower cost of living, and the large amount of equity I’d built up in the California house (that sold for nearly twice what I bought the new one for), I had no financial worries, and could have gone another two+ years without a problem. Which I did not want to do.

I’m glad to be back in the saddle, and I’m glad to be part of a team of cool and quirky technical people again. As I said to my interim manager when he was announcing the RIF (interim, because my actual manager, his manager, and his manager were also being RIFd that day), I’d love to work with that team again, but probably not under Pure’s management.

Specifically, the VP-I-won’t-name who sent out a group email meant to reassure the remaining staff in his division, before our accounts were disabled. He said, “I was able to preserve the majority of the positions by moving them to different locations”.

Not the people, the headcount, and the locations were Prague and Hyderabad. And we’d just spent most of a year participating in the interview panels for the Prague folks we were told would increase the size of our team. To really rub it in, I was often the deciding vote in the panels, so I didn’t just train my replacements, I picked them!

Signature required…

10 AM: “Your package is almost there!” (scheduled delivery 9:15 AM - 12:15 AM)

1:15 PM: “In Your Area” (scheduled delivery by 7 PM; not-so-live-map shows the truck four blocks away)

2:15 PM: “Almost There” (not-so-live-map has been showing the truck circling the area for the past hour, making right turns only, while staying at least four blocks away)

3:15 PM: “Almost There” (NSLM shows it 14 blocks away in the opposite direction, just leaving an under-renovation public pool)

4:15 PM: “Almost There” (“stay on target”, 10 blocks away, other direction again)

5:15 PM: “Almost There” (ditto)

6:15 PM: “Almost There” (ditto)

6:35 PM: “Delivered!”

(the “live” map refreshes only when Safari force-reloads it due to excessive memory use; basically, the truck has been in a 1-mile orbit around my house all day long, and the depot it came from is less than 2.5 miles away)

Meanwhile, in job-related news…

Once the background check was complete, my start date was set for this coming Monday. Today, they shipped out my new work laptop. This is sufficiently solid news to justify a small celebration; the real one doesn’t happen until I have direct deposit and the healthcare plan set up. Anyway, I’m firing up the deep-fryer to make wings tonight.

(…after a brief kerfluffle where Workday failed to email me that there were pending pre-employment tasks to complete, and I had to look up the SSO-bypass URL in order to get in and discover them for myself)

• 7:00 PM - 3 boys (oldest in full riot gear)
• 7:10 PM - 5 boys (dressed as teenage boys)
• 7:35 PM - 2 girls (matching one-piece hooded reindeer pajamas)
• 7:45 PM - 1 very little princess, escorted by mom

I’m actually impressed I got that many, on a cul-de-sac without streetlights. With a sidewalk that ends just past my house. Which has a steep 75-foot driveway. And it was 38°F and quite windy.

I’m glad I bought some candy. Even gladder that I didn’t buy the 60+ pounds I used to buy for my house in California. I’d have been giving away multiple pounds per kid, which would have set unrealistic expectations for next year. 😁

(the first group explained that they always go to my street, since it’s full of well-off people of grandparent age. fair)

Things I’ve found while going through boxes in the garage:

• first-edition AD&D books and modules.
• first-edition GURPS books.
• a lot of computer games I don’t remember ever owning.
• an entire box of autographed Playboy magazines, which was only surprising because I thought that one was upstairs in my office…
• at least one box from each of my previous full-time jobs (OSU-CIS, Synopsys, WebTV, Digeo, and Ooma), containing nothing worthwhile.
• Basic Foil Fencing, second edition (I took a class from the author… in 1985).
• multiple copies of Windows XP, 7, and 8, several copies of Office, and one copy of Windows Me.
• the last known copy of Dave’s Comic, in which I was cast as a wing-obsessed drummer in a Spinal Tap cover band who helped save the world from an evil department chairman.
• wow, I bought a lot of pr0n mags back in the day. Or inherited, anyway; I’m pretty sure some of it was my dad’s, which is not the legacy I expected. (amusingly, Wikipedia redirects “girlie mag” to a page listing things as diverse as GQ, Maxim, Black Enterprise, and Gay Times; that’s some fine editing there, Lou)
• three Southern Knights graphic novels, which for some reason were mixed in with the British pr0n mags.
• 3 boxes of random magazines and catalogs unopened since 1993, which must have been packed up by one of my friends, because why? And why did I keep moving them? (seriously baffled here; some of the catalogs were addressed to people I’ve never met living on streets I didn’t recognize)
• boxes of old bills, sitting next to the cross-cut shredder that was never able to keep up.
• several boxes of CP/M-formatted 5.25-inch floppy disks, which aren’t even mine. I think they’re my brother’s.
• two sets of jumper cables.
• about a dozen sliding rails for 1U rack-mount servers.
• a 1U rack-mount server (okay, this was on top of the boxes, not in them).
• CD jewel boxes, with inserts but no CDs (those are in the 100-disc changers on one of the shelves…).
• CD jewel-box inserts, with no cases or CDs.
• CDs, with no jewel boxes or inserts.
• a coffee mug from a defunct book store in Dayton, Ohio, which means it’s been following me around for more than 30 years.
• remember when Adobe products came with nice big manuals? yeah, I found a lot of those.
• Creative Sound Blaster installation floppies.
• CD/DVD install sets for every Mac OS X release up through Snow Leopard, including several betas.
• at least four different types of obsolete computer memory.
• my mostly-complete set of U&LC, which I’d thought was upstairs in a closet.
• a Nirvis DXS.
• 10 copies of a single issue of Celebrity Sleuth magazine, because it contains nude photos of my friend Carmen Berg, shot by me.
• a user’s manual for OS/2 Warp.
• issues of Journal of Irreproducible Results from 1972, 1973, 1974, and 1992.
• two large boxes full of laserdiscs.

I could keep going, but I think you get the point. Friday will be the first junk-trunk visit; that’ll free up enough space for me to finish staging everything that goes into the POD.

(picture is unrelated)

House status: mine.

Now deploying… Yatta!

(fun fact: there’s a reason this song feels a lot like classic Morning Musume (and, no, that’s not a flattering look for any of them, especially with the aggressive ring-lighting), right down to the woo-woo-woo bit; same guy)

Shifting the closing date to the beginning of March set my first mortgage payment for the end of April, which means I’ll only have one month of paying for both houses if the old one sells quickly. Fingers crossed the current rabid housing bubble continues until at least June!

Anime status: crunchy

Sony is consolidating Funimation into Crunchyroll, not, as many feared, the other way around. There’s a list up for things that have already moved over, although most of them are dubs.

Dictionary status: undead

Slashdot has a headline about “animal-free dairy milk”. I expect woke dictionaries have received their marching orders, and soon the definition of “dairy” will always have been at war with Eastasia.

(free-animal dairy is unrelated)

Pokemon status: Japanese

I decided to step back from the do-it-again-stupid final boss fight in Arceus for a while and start a second run-through on my Switch Lite, in Japanese. It’s refreshingly difficult compared to Sword/Shield, where the game was so linear and the menus so fixed that you only had to recognize maybe 10 words, and then you could play through to the end in any language.

Arceus, on the other hand, has a variety of RPG-ish side quests, many of which gate access to features of the game. For a simple example, the inventory at the general stores is expanded by turning in specific items. As a result, in any language you’re not fluent in, you’ll need to lean on a site like Serebii to figure out the helpfully-numbered requests.

The most interesting thing about the Japanese version is that they didn’t have room to include the damage/accuracy details for your attack moves on the combat screen, so you have to actually remember what they do, making the game a bit harder even if you do read Japanese.

“If you see something this big with eight legs coming your way, let me know. I have to kill it before it develops language skills.”
– Londo Mollari, home inspector

Note: I would be lying if I said I never shouted and swore during the events that follow, but I managed not to swear during the phone calls, and merely “increased the intensity of my voice” when relating certain key pieces of information to the lender’s representatives. Feel free to imagine the rage-fueled ranting in my hotel room that frequently occurred before and after each contact.

Banality, as some might say, after the cut…

(demi-chans are unrelated)

more...

Status: successfully appraised at a value that matches the (brief) mortgage. All I’ve got left to do in the next few days is submit a copy of my latest bank statement and the home-insurance policy info, and they can finish underwriting the loan.

Time to get serious about packing and pitching!

“I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘B’.”

“Boxes.”

“Right. I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘M’.”

“More boxes.”

“Two in a row.”

“And that’s when I shot him, your honor.”

“I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘E’.”

“I–I give up.”

“Oh come on.”

“This better not be what I–”

“Even more boxes!”

I can’t show you pictures of the new place, because all the ones I have at the moment are now on all of the real-estate sites, so it would be trivial for someone to figure out where I live. And then cross-reference with move-related blog posts that reveal when it’s full of stuff and unoccupied. Except by the seven half-starved rabid wolfhounds, of course.

(sadly, it’s unlikely that any wolfgirls will be streaming games from my new place, although there is a deadbolt on the basement door (“Daddy’s got a place for you, and the door locks from the outside”))

(okay, the deadbolt was actually to keep people out of the basement, because the former owner stored a quite extensive and valuable coin collection down there)

(and did I mention that the basement has a bit more square footage than my current house?)