What Big Eyes You Have!

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

And now, the news...

I am laughing rather than crying about this confluence of crises that is tearing apart the order of the financial world we thought we knew. This laughter is a matter of personal choice, and it is not ha-ha funny laughter. It is hoarse-throated, uncomfortably loud, and not at all jovial laughter.

Congress is shocked (really?) that the invisible hand of capitalism has reached its hand so far into the cookie jar, and tried to take so much from the people at the bottom of the food chain, that the jar is on the ground broken. So, lightning-quick, to the rescue, Congress develops razor-sharp legislation to help the criminals gather up all the cookie bits and leave us sitting in the shards of glass. Nice. "The only way we can save the system is to give them all they were grasping for and more" is the message I am getting from the televised (corporate) media. Solution: stop watching television.

What's a poor boy to do? Not at issue. Some sources of news that have really helped me inform myself into such a state:

Democracy Now - Thomas Geoghegan on "Infinite Debt: How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed the Economy"

Amy talks with Thomas Geoghegan from Harper's, see the recent article in Harper's (April 2009) if you have access. Essentially, with unlimited interest rates permitted by lawlessness, there is no longer an incentive to have low rates and a culture set up for everyone to succeed in paying the loan back. If you can get enough money from those just barely capable of paying you back, you can afford a lot of defaults!

Democracy Now - “The Zombie Ideas Have Won”–Paul Krugman on $1 Trillion Geithner Plan to Buy Toxic Bank Assets

The darkness is growing before my eyes...

Harper's Magazine - It’s Deja Vu All Over Again: Wall Street and Bill Clinton

Mommy, make it stop...

Mother Jones - Panning Geithner's Plan

"There's no place like home, there's no place like home..."

We are fortunate to have an LP radio station is Spokane, KYRS, with a wide array of opinions on public affairs and great music shows as well. I support KYRS and encourage you to give some shows a listen, and consider whether you could support this grass-roots information effort. Michael Reid has a show, "Does that answer your question?", that I have found uniformly insightful to the point of boredom (not really, sorry for the left-handed compliment, Michael). He just always nails it. Check out his blog too. Oops, that is really hard to log into. I am not sure he has it set up correctly yet. I will try to get that info to him. Definitely in the category of people I would like to have coffee or lunch with.

Well, thanks for letting me brighten your day!

I waited a week for this?

So, as promised, the folks at PNNL got back to me on Wednesday. It was not completely positive, nor was it completely negative, I guess like so much of life...

Unfortunately it appears that all of the managers I met face-to-face were not sold. The implication was not clear. I would really like to know what didn't sell them, or sold them in the wrong direction. My conscience is clean at least, I was honest, enthusiastic, and up front with them. I guess they were looking for someone else.

The manager that was interested in me was from the teleconference to Washington, DC. I should explain that there was mention of her in the agenda, but not that she was looking for someone to go to DC for a long time. It was portrayed that her group operated from Richland and did support work to DC. What materialized was, she might want to send me to DC for a long time, if I am interested in only that apparently. The other managers that seemed enthusiastic about me when I met them just did not show up at the table when it came time to walk the walk. I am feeling like the victim of a major bait-and-switch. I am sure that was not the plan, but it feels that way just the same. I was willing to consider the DC option if there was the promise of something else along with it, the type of work that the other managers discussed as at least a part-time responsibility. But apparently they saw something missing, or deficient in my character, or whatever, I just am sick and tired of second-guessing.

I am somewhat demoralized, but I know that this is just one opportunity, and there is other stuff out there. It's OK to just be demoralized now and again, right? It can be a constructive emotion as long as you don't hang out there too long.

I guess the ball is still in my court, I could offer to go to work for less money if they give me a chance to do the things I want to do. I could offer to go to DC, but what happens after that if those guys didn't like me? They said it will take a week to decide if they want to make me an offer yet. I am tempted to tell them to stop the train, and kindly explain what scared them off so I can learn from my mistakes. I am not making any final decisions today...

Is the worm turning?

Humor: it gets you through everything... Read the Funny Times, if you can afford to. I cannot afford not to.


I wish I had my brother's understanding of the I Ching, the taoist art of divination, so I could comfort myself in times of transition. I do have the book, but I have not dedicated myself to it for years like him, listening with a quiet heart, for the sound and direction of the flow. It is one of the many things I really respect and treasure about Robert. He is going through much more significant changes in his life than me, and doing it with tremendous grace, and I have a lot to learn from his example.

Take a read through his blog if you are curious...

I had interviews with a seemingly vast number of people yesterday at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. I was interviewing for the position of project manager basically. There would be a bit of travel potentially, which I don't mind. There was also the potential for a temporary posting in D.C. for up to two years, which is also fine with me and Connie. I am pretty sure I struck the right balance of self-advocacy and humility to get my message through clearly.

The format was like so: the first thing was an hour long presentation of a slide show with questions, about me, my education, career to this point, with description of technical accomplishments, and where I saw my self going; then the panel interviews, four of them with different groups that could potentially use me, since it is a matrix organization that reorganizes itself around new tasks like immune cells if that makes sense.

About a dozen people took in the presentation, four of them were young wallflowers who asked no questions and gave no comment. Inscrutable techno-introverts. Who knows what they thought... the manager types were engaged, and asked good questions, that always helps with the energy. The youngers had 3-5 years of experience, the older set tended to be in the 20-30 years in the lab range.

The mission of Battelle, the non-profit that runs the lab, is pretty cool. They essentially are there to use technology to improve living conditions on the planet for all creatures. They have turned down money in the past, big piles of it, that would have been used to develop technology for purely destructive purposes. Not that they never do defense-related work, but they are not bomb-whores like SAIC.

I interviewed there (SAIC) once, in Austin, TX. It was surreal, discussing the projects they were involved in. " Do ya want the frickin' lasers or not? Bwah-hah-hah-hah!!"

Battelle felt completely different. They treated my with respect and curiosity, the best I could have hoped for. They wanted to know if I was a fuel cell guy, or a guy who had worked on fuel cells. I definitely see myself as the latter at this point. It is not the only thing I will ever be good at, it is/was a means to develop a skill-set. I really see myself as an energy person, particularly alternative energy when it fits.

One of the managers was looking for a big chunk of my time if hired, to modernize military facilities with alternative energy resources to give them partially un-interruptable power, and so that they would be "net-zero" energy within a decade or so. Not a bad goal, and a great opportunity to sharpen my skills in the wind/solar portfolio. Brian J., are you listening? I am going to have a lot of questions...

I hope.

I am hoping like I have not in months or even years. This feels so right. I should either get an offer or not, by Wednesday, so they are not leaving me swinging in the wind. It would have been great to stay in Spokane. It would have been great if zengineers had taken off. But none of that has happened, and in this society, you have to work or you are perceived as nothing.

So I will find a way. I hope this is it.

Hagakure

"There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.
Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it were somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this fact. But grasping this firmly, one must pile experience upon experience. And once one has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point on, though he may not always bear it in mind.
When one understands this settling into single-mindedness well, his affairs will thin out. Loyalty is also contained within this single-mindedness."
- From the 2nd Chapter, Hagakure, Yamamoto Tsunetomo

A Prime Birthday

So, Saturday I turned 43. My last prime birthday was 37, so this was numerically significant. I had a terrific day, Connie got our friends Dinesh and Vineeta to watch Natalie and Kai, while we watched the "Watchmen". Later, we had some great food (Indian, of course!) and cake at Dinesh and Vineeta's place and headed home after. The movie was very true to the terrific comic book by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. I enjoyed it thoroughly and really appreciated Connie hanging with it through the really gross parts... really gross. See it in a big theatre if you can. We hardly ever go out to the movies, with the little kids factor and the no-job factor. Here are some pictures from the day -

Connie, fixing my cake, and Kai turning on the early morning charm...He was watching a cartoon with me, so this was an amazing amount of focus to summon. Natalie having some breakfast and being just generally amazing. The girl is wise and cool beyond her years sometimes, but frequently bursts into tears over the injustice of it all.There isn't really a good one of me. That's OK. It was a good birthday.

I tend to be very reflective and introverted on birthdays, same at New Year's Day. I am not sure why. Maybe it has something vaguely to do with being born during Lent, though we were not very religious growing up, and almost all my siblings are Jewish, though some went to catholic schools back in Texas when I was a baby. I think Lent is one of the few spiritual rituals of constructive value in the whole Judeo-Christian tradition. A time to think about doing with less? A time to peel back the onion layers of "personality"and get back to a truer self? A time to find core values? Revolutionary stuff, amazing it wasn't snuffed out a long time ago. So, like it or not, I am a Lenten soul. It fits rather well with the whole Hamlet thing. This period of unemployment has been a really long "Lenten" journey into myself. Not always enchanted with what I find, but I am always finding something. Interview day after tomorrow, I hope I can present the right balance of information, feeling, and insight to make the sale. I am ready for this particular Lent to be over.

Dear John Letter

My fastest rejection on record. I am moving past it with record speed as well. Life is too short for whining.

Dear John,

Thank you for your interest in Brand X. We enjoyed having the opportunity to meet you and discuss your credentials.

Although you have an impressive background, we have decided to not move forward at this point. We felt that our current needs do not align with your experience. However, as I mentioned in our interview, we are growing. There may be a more closely matched position in the future. I would like to keep your information on file for future opportunities.

Again, we appreciate your interest in Brand X. We wish you the best of luck in your job search.

In retrospect, I knew they were not the team for me before my seat was warm. It was the vibe of it, baby. I am not sure whether this means I was over-qualified, or they did not like me, or some combination of the above. Word on the street is, the VP Eng of Brand X was literally fired from MegaFuelCell Company Brand U for being such a major difficulty that no one could work with him anymore. Not surprising.

On to the next opportunity, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, WA. I am hoping the team there will be more respectful and accepting of bigger personalities. I will probably hide my fire a bit more too. So hard to figure out who to be sometimes. First instinct is me. But like George Costanza, sometimes you need to go opposite to get what you want, or need, or something in between.

The stakes are getting higher, as Connie reminded me (it was already in my mind, we are scary in synch lately). This is my last remaining solid opportunity, barring serendipity striking.

It aint' all bad...

My beautiful and wise counterpart prompted me this morning, as I was finishing making her and Natalie's lunches, and was getting breakfast ready for the kids. She said something like,

" you should reflect on the positives that have come out of this. You are so much more connected to your family, you participate in the household life,..."

Of course, she is right. My snotty first instinct was, would you settle for two negatives? But yes, I have really loved the opportunity to decompress, to synch with the rhythm of my family's needs and wants, to do the children dropping off and picking up, to make sure everyone has a lunch, a dry nose, a smile if possible...

It has been great. No lie. If zengineers would just get 50% more business, I could probably sustain this. Perhaps indefinitely. So, I work on the web design skills that will make people linger at my site, and learn what I have to offer. I work on keeping my one great customer happy, so that there is at least that. I work on keeping Connie happy (only within my sphere, you can never make someone else be happy...), because when she is I am moreso. And lately, I work on re-achieving some measure of body-mind-spirit connection, because that is something I am remembering from deep within, how good it felt to be a practicing yogi, not in tune surely, but moving toward it. Mixed results: I am getting stronger, my wind sucks still, but my head feels like a well-swept room. Empty how I like it. GTD is helping me keep it that way as well.

Anyway, it is not all angst and doom. I just need to cop an angle... I am going to work on getting a little somethin-somethin from this stimulus package.

A strange discovery...

I actually like being around other people. I do better when I am not alone. Why is this? Connie would be the first to tell you that I don't actually like that many people, but given the choice between being alone and among people I don't like that much, I usually take the option of being in the group.

I get more work done at the coffee shop down the street, when it is noisy and full of people, than I do sitting alone in my kitchen or home office (which is a bit like Harry Potter's bedroom under the stairway, cozy). I do not need to be interacting with the people, although I do sometimes just for the extroverted hell of it.

Yahh, so, had a fuel cell company interview the other day in Portland. Company X is looking for a senior fuel cell systems engineer, which as it happens, I am. I thought ( ha-ha-f*&%ing-ha!) slam-dunk, go in there and show them who you are, be honest, be kind, be knowledgeable.

Did not quite work out that way. I had prepared about a 1/2 hour slide presentation, sort of a photographic synopsis of my career, a visual resume if you will. They had been nice enough to agree to this being the first thing I did that day. The HR person, T., by the way was incredibly nice. We had had a phone interview a couple of weeks before, and I really felt good about Company X in general (incorrectly) based on that interaction.

When I got there, I met a few of them, among them the hiring manager, C. He was younger than me, maybe thirty-five or so, not hideous or deformed in any way. But something seemed a little weird about C. from the start. It might have been his habitual scowl, that only deepened as I gave my presentation. By the end a few others had left for a teleconference, and it was just him. As a very empathetic person, I could feel his loathing at that point. This was confirmed later by a third party that overheard him cutting me up in the cubicles. The presentation had emphasized my leadership roles, my outgoing personality, my wide range of technical skills.

I then had 1/2 hour with just him. I answered his questions, asked some of my own, for me it was a slightly painful experience because I could feel his discomfort with the interaction. This engineering manager was painfully introverted. My third-party insider had confirmed that he worked seven days a week, had no family, no kids, no close friends, no girlfriend, no pets, no attachments except Company X. I began to think of the Peter Principle, and wondered how this department would ever effectively grow with the company, under his stewardship. He was so threatened by me, my personality, my background, that he was dissing me before I left the building!

I finished the interview set, thankfully everyone else was a bit more open-minded and balanced if not exactly extroverted in each case. I am not saying everyone should be. Not at all. But balance is good, and not scowling at extroverts is good too. I am guessing his mom was way out there, embarrassed him all the time like ours did. Who knows...some people are just not born to interact effectively.

I had been told that the engineering group (I assumed that meant C. and the VP Eng.) would be taking me to lunch. After the last interview I waited for them... and waited. By twenty after noon, it was painfully obvious that C. had just blown me off. Really unprofessional.

Whatever, I went back through Portland on my way to the airport, to have lunch and stop at Powell's Technical Books, my absolute favorite geekplace. I should have felt great. It was a warm sunny day like I hadn't felt in many months. Instead I felt hollow and beaten, by that little shit C. Because no matter how much the HR person, no matter how much the other three persons liked me, in a situation like that, the hiring manager will have an effective veto, particularly if he can summon up a concise statement about why I am the biggest asshole he has ever met without saying it that way. I think he is a clever enough person to pull that off. So, at Powell's I joylessly selected a few tech titles and magazines, and headed for the airport.

Which brings me back to the present. Alone. In the Harry Potter office. Feeling sorry for myself? Not quite. Just not sure what is next on the agenda, what else to try...Perhaps I am too honest, perhaps I need like my brother Robert said to "hide my fire" better. Perhaps I have to find a calling that rewards and respects my nature, rather than expecting me to be diminished to avoid threatening mediocre minds. That gives away the punch-line, one of my favorite quotes -

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds" - A. Einstein

Yeah, I know, John, you are no Einstein. But that does not make it any less true...