Saturday, April 18, 2009

Obligatory follow-up post

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Re: job interview

I prepared well, dressed employably, showed up on time...

and completely failed to exude any personality whatsoever.  I was pretty wooden throughout.  I've always been a bit of a chameleon.  When dumped into situations where I'm with people I don't know, I tend to mirror them.  It's how I get along with so many different kinds of people.

I think one of the best things an interviewer can do is to start the interview with an innocuous comment as an icebreaker about the weather or something.  Then the second best thing they can do is ask an open-ended question that's fairly easy to answer - something like "what were your main tasks at your last job and what did you like about it?"  Everybody has an answer to that question but more importantly, it gives people an opportunity to talk.

The worst thing an interviewer can do after introducing themselves is read off a script in a very clinical voice and ask you to describe yourself with three adjectives.

They said they would be letting everyone know their decision by Friday or Monday.  It is entirely possible that the other candidates didn't do as well as me, or that my awesome references will counteract my boringness.  I'm definitely capable of doing the job.  I'm even convinced that it would be pretty ideal for the summer.

I've already rehearsed my rejection speech.

Re: new computer

I love my new MacBook Pro.  Love it.  Last time when I bought a computer I went cheap and that was a mistake.  It ran out of memory fairly quickly and didn't have enough RAM to run everything I needed open at once.  I was determined not to do that again so I probably spent too much.  No regrets so far.

This thing is fast, makes my photos look great, and I never thought I'd say this but I love the touchpad on it and use it a lot more than my mouse.  It took a while to get used to, and when I turned on the computer for the first time, somehow clicking wasn't enabled and I had to plug in a mouse to get through the startup.  

I have spent most of my evening customizing all the settings and it's fun.  I love the way you plug stuff in and it all seems to work without being installed.  I also love that it's integrated with flickr. Maybe I'll leave it at that. I could give you an entire boring list of the things I love, but that's what it would be - a long boring list.

I still need to get a bunch of software for it though.