Flutterby™! : Eric Rants 2000-12-25 17:38:50+00

Eric Rants

2000-12-25 17:38:50+00 by ebradway 4 comments

Check the comments for a general rant on life...

I stayed up late last night watching Man on the Moon, the Andy Kaufman story. I was actually surprised that Jim Carrey didn't play Jim Carrey acting like Andy Kaufman... Anyhow, I'm digressing. I slept in this morning - until almost noon and decided I had better do some therapeutic writing just in case this oversleeping is a sign of depression. I've been told it's more common over the holidays, but I don't feel particularly depressed. In fact, I feel pretty good. I'm planning to spend the day working on the bathroom I'm remodelling. Maybe that's why I'm writing this... I have to remodel a damned bathroom. What's worse is after this one I have two more to go and a kitchen to knock out. I'm doing this to try to get my house ready to sell. I'm selling my house because I need to move to a job market where I can actually find work. The reason I can't just sell the house I've owned for eight years, during which the property values have skyrocketted, is that I've had to take out a few extra mortgages to float me during periods of unemployment because I live in an area where the job market sucks for tech workers. So now I'm trapped and the way to escape is through sheets of linoleum flooring, countless tubes of caulk and gallons of paint. Work shall set you free! Another reason for the rant is that in the last week I got turned down for two jobs in Boston. Before last week, I never was turned down for a job that I actually interviewed for. I think I've managed to make myself just unpalatable enough to scare away some employers. The first job was at Fidelity Investments as a IS Security Consultant. They spent three months courting me via email and flying me up there. Their HR person even told me they were ready to make an offer and gave me the details fo the offer. The next day they claimed that head-count issues made them change the position to contract at $75. I don't want contract work right now... The next job was at Magic Hour Communications as 'Director of Internet Development'. They seemed like a nice enough shop and just a few minutes away from Harvard (the reason I'm looking in Boston and not the Bay Area). But they felt that I was too likely to try to do the work myself than manage the other programmers. That's is a possibility since their programmers were very green and I have trouble not designing solutions assuming my skill level. Next week I'm probably going up to interview with mGen for a Lead Programmer position. This sounds more promising. They are looking for a Lead Programmer type for their Perl/Oracle/Linux based on-line training system. I like their choice of technologies better than Magic Hour (NT/IIS/ASP) or Fidelity (AIX/Solaris/Entrust PKI). They do use Sun for their Oracle servers but that only makes sense (Oracle develops on Sun so the bug fixes come out for that platform first) and SGI for their streaming media. I like the fact that they are comfortable mixing platforms to get the best-of-class solutions. Unfortunately, they are located in Foxboro, MA, which is half-way between Boston and Providence, RI. That would be great if I was a New England Patriots fan - but I don't care for football regardless of the team. So, who knows? I think if this lead doesn't turn out, I'll probably slow the job search, focus on selling the house and working on AMIS/Qdebit stuff. Once I sell the house I could conceivably just move and find a job later. I have been wondering if I'd be better off moving out West for a while. I've been looking in Boston because of the Harvard Extension School. I checked Stanford and UC Berkeley - neither of them have comparable programs...

Umm... Last I heard, it's better to sell a house as a "fixer-upper" than to do a remodelling job... What if the new owners want something to be different?

A certain amount of painting and sprucing up can be very helpful around this area. It isn't a good idea to get "creative" with the choice of paint colors but a nice coat of off-white paint on the walls never hurts. Replacing wornout vinyl floor coverings can be helpful if it is limited to small areas. From the market that I've looked at here in Chattanooga, a fixer-upper is just shy of being condemned.

I can't afford to move the house out of the 'fixer-upper' category. The best I can do is make everything look clean and convince the buyers that they can focus on the fun stuff - like refinishing a hardwood floor or restoring the plaster walls - rather than replacing a rotting bathroom floor or doing plumbing out of necessity.