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Courtesy of my brother-in-law at his place last evening:

• Have someone else do all the cooking, leaving you to quaff Red Stripe
• Use some tasty home-made rubs
• Eat steaks made from the Grand Reserve champion steer at the recent Fair
• Cook steaks on a $2000 Traeger Grill over apple wood pellets

Hard to go wrong with that recipe.

I just posted a new video on my Viddler page, this time some clips of a flight I took last night from San Diego to Imperial and Brawley airports. There’s more of a narrative at the post there, but since I know many of you don’t read it I thought I’d also post the video here in case you wanted to see it.

The mount that I bought for this flight was too big for the dashboard so I had to hold the Flip in my hand, so there are no takeoffs or landings – need two hands for that! It’s a bit shakey, and the propeller looks really spooky in the shots, but it’s a new video so what the heck! I’ll try for a better solution next time.

Another year, and here we go again. Green everywhere, people proud of their 0.0001% Irish blood (and that’s just the Guinness they plan to drink this evening), suddenly everyone wishes they knew Gaelic. Argh, enough already. Most people claiming Irish blood probably have an equal amount of (insert other European country here), why is no one going crazy for BoyWithFingerIntheDyke day? Dutch beer is sooo much better than Irish, anyway – a double victory!

So I’m telling you again people, stop it.

At the end of our interview we ask our candidates to do a simple software design on the white board; yesterday’s candidate was so confused by the idea that she never even took hold of the pen, let alone stand up out of her chair. This is like interviewing potential home designers and saying could you sketch where the furniture would go in the new TV room. You’d expect them to draw a square and put some marks or words like ‘sofa’ or ‘table’. Maybe they would ask you questions – what furniture? Do you have a preference? You would not expect them to just stare at you and say they nothing.

I phone screened all three applicants this week and something I had been concerned about in advance was language difficulties – all the candidates were Indian. All three had spoken clearly and succinctly on the phone so it was a shock to meet them in person and find that we could all barely communicate. And it wasn’t just me, my co-interviewers (both Americans) could not understand them (or they understand us) either. So we’ve come up with a conspiracy theory. The phone screens aren’t the candidates at all, we speak to some well-spoken and knowledgeable person who gets through that hurdle, but then the real person shows up and it’s a totally different experience.

Anyway three interviews this week, all pretty much the same. Three more next week but they are from a different agency so I have hope of a higher quality.

Gormless: stupid, brain-dead, like a total moron etc.
Here comes Nerius with that gormless look on his face.

(Yes, we really have a guy here called Nerius).

I’ve been involved in interviewing contractors at work, we’ve been looking for a bunch of Java web application developers and I’ve probably been involved in 7 interviews so far. Part of the interview is to do some on the feet thinking, to design a small component. I don’t care about the end result so much as the thought process. With the exception of two people, all the candidates were rubbish. Everything else would go great but come to do any real thinking and it’s a disaster.

The resumes had me jealous of the experience and cool projects, but I have to wonder what these people are actually doing. Is the candidate pool in the tech world really so poor? It does give me hope that I can find something else when the time comes – if I can get my less-exciting resume through the phone screens….

One more onsite interview tomorrow, and if she is no good then its back to phone screens. Ugh.

Introducing Honey Bear, starring Oki the Okapi and, of course, a guest appearance by Sharkie the Shark.

Calling Garp – are you ready for your closeup??


:: Schmap Anchorage Fourth Edition: Photo Inclusion

Emma Williams,
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides

If you click on the link, and hover your mouse over the entry for the Clarion Suites, you’ll see Schlepp and Bea in all their glory.

Except it’s Thursday and I’m too sick to make my own puppet theater this week. Yesterday was the Brit Awards, the UK’s premier pop music award show (and since UK pop is the world’s best, make that the world’s premier pop music award show) and I’ve spent some time digging out clips from YouTube. I am sure these will all soon be deleted due to their undeniable copyright infringement so get them while you can.

I love this one: The Klaxxons and Rhinna do “Umbrella”, cool lasers too.

Mark Ronson won Best Male award or something, despite the fact that he doesn’t do his own stuff:

And in case you didn’t get enough Amy, here she is solo. I love her to death but when she sings live it’s like she sings her own random timing and the band has to be adept at changing tempo to match her. And in both this performance, and the one above, she seems obsessed with the length of her skirt.

Finally, you might be saying “what about Kylie?”. Yeah, she won International artist and performed but frankly she looked horrid and it’s a terrible song (if you can call it that) so I’d rather we just moved along….

I swear, it was just an ordinary evening; no one saw this coming.