You know it has to be some sort of omen.
It is widely considered bad luck if a black cat crosses your path. But what is the superstitious equivalent of a wild turkey crossing your path?
I was driving to pick Geoff up this afternoon, and on a street running between our creek and the Merrimack river, a turkey stepped out in front of my truck. I saw him/her/it from quite a ways off, and he/she/it showed no concern that a large red truck (that thing got a HEMI in it?) was about to squish it. I slowed to a stop. It meandered along.
I hate when you don't get the nod or the wave when you let someone cross the street or turn in front of you. This turkey -- didn't nod or wave. Stupid jerk.
Yesterday's interview went very well. I know I'm not going to get that job offered to me.
You can tell during the interview, when they are asking you specific questions about your basic knowledge and each of your answers are
- "No, I haven't had to use that yet"
- "I haven't learned it..."
- "I have a book on that but haven't...."
I am 80% of what they are looking for.
I interviewed with a nice guy J., who seems to be 20 and very tech savvy. I would work most closely with him. We had good rapport, but... I'll bet he's thinking I'm not the girl.
He asked me if I visited their website and understand what the company does. I did and I do. I explained what I thought it was all about and he told me I was 100% correct. I interviewed with one of the the principal owners, the husband in a husband/wife business team. He's tech/sales/marketing. She's HR/payroll/accounts payable & receivable. If I get a phone call from her, that means they're considering an offer. So far, the phone ain't ringin'.
My only hope is that they take me seriously when I say "I may not know 100% of what you want me to know, but if you hire me, I'll work at a lower pay rate than someone fully proficient, and in no time I'll be your gal."
Cross fingers and toes, but know it probably won't be the case. Why would they pick 80% when 100% probably walked in the door right behind me?
Enough about work and jobs.
Yesterday I had a fabulous meeting with CM in regards to the course we'll be teaching this summer. It's going to be a lot of fun. We worked up the course reading requirements, we also pounded out the topic outline, what each of us will be in charge of covering.
The class is called "Information Technology, Society and Culture," and it basically is an examination (briefly) of the history of the internet, communities, security, what was it like before the Internet, what should we postulate will happen in the future. Nice.
It is a five week summer class, asynchronous in nature except for the required chat room visits, which will probably be on Monday nights from 7pm to 9pm. Depending on how many students enroll in the class, we are going to break the students up into groups of 5, and each group will have an assigned 1/2 hour stint in the chat room. Each week we'll mix the groups up so people get to sort of know one another.
We are going to require that the students start a blog, and CM and I went over the layout and ease of use of journalspace... he thinks that'd be the best starting point for the kids because of its incredible ease of use and the fact no one needs to download any software or have any design knowledge.
I'm obviously covering the "communities" end of things -- what are netizens, what is nettiquite, what constitutes a community, how has the Internet impacted real live meatspace relationships and other issues. I have people I'm going to interview (perhaps even you!) and there are several readings I'll be assigning to go along with the content. CM will cover the historical aspects of things.
CM and I both agreed that the topic of this war will play into things deeply. Recently I saw someone quoted as saying what CNN was to the first Gulf War in 1991 blogging is to this war. With the first war, people got to watch it all on TV 24/7, now they can do that and get online and argue about it.
We'll have them read Gibson's "Necromancer," Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," and Douglas Coupland's "Microserfs."
Why Frankenstein? Aaaaah -- here's where CM's whack logic comes into play. Is technology (not just the Internet, but science in general) like a Frankenstein monster, something created out of pure experimentation which turns horribly wrong and destroys its creator? Hmmmmmmmmmm. Food for thought. We'll also give them extra credit for renting and writing about Metropolis, the Matrix, some hacker movies, and ... this is funny, the USA networks original movie "The Pirates of Silicon Valley," if they have it anywhere for renting... like Blockbuster or something. While many think the film version is grossly inaccurate, Anthony Michael Hall makes a wicked awesome Bill Gates... and Noah Wylie, wow. His Steve Jobs performance was ... amazing and bizarre.
CM is so much fun to hang around with. We had a lot of good discussions and laughs. He thinks Dave Grohl rocks on fire, too. The only downside is that I got paid to do all this last summer. I got paid well, too. So now it's time to pay the piper, I guess.
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