"SmoothwApple"

So here I am, once again only a day later writing in my blog. This time it's post second interview at Apple Computer and while waiting for them to call to tell me I've been hired. I never even thought I was even remotely qualified to work for such an organization to begin with. The staffing service contact guy said he thought I did pretty well, I don't really know though. How in the world they called me based on my resume that didn't include "the company" I don't know. What local cable companies with famously bad customer service have higher hiring standards that Apple?! Bah.

So today the staffing service will call me if Apple is at all interested. The staffing said I did ok, maybe he says that to everyone to make them feel better; I really don't know. It would be nice to be told I did really badly and don't bother waiting for the call because it won't come so I could get on with my life and not missing my class at the JC that just happen to be having a mid term today. Starting about 10 minutes from the time I'm writing this as a matter of fact. Bah, what does it matter? I sent the teacher a note via email letting him know I had an interview with Apple and I didn't know if I could make it to class but I might but I might not blah/blah/blah. So he'll let me take it later or he won't. Of course if this staying him pays off and they hire me I won't be attending class again anyway so it matters not that much to me.

And again maybe it's just my inferiority complex working over time but I really didn't think I had much chance to be considered. Not much chance through the phone interview, not much chance through the "study session" and not much chance via the panel interview I just finished. I just realized I can't ever share this blog with any Apple employee in the unlikelihood they hire me. I'm certainly glad they decided to consider me, that's the best thing that could have happened to me. If I had to guess probably they won't hire me, as I don't usually match up to someone else when it comes to this.

During this interview I just got back from I did try to smile and show some of my personality however subtle and/or subdued it may be. As I was explaining about "the call center experience at a small local ISP I didn't mention on my resume" I did manage to get a little bit of a reaction out of some of the panel. The old story about the old lady who REALLY wanted IE 5.5 for Mac even though MS only makes up to IE 5.0 or 5.1 whatever and how no matter what I simply could not convince her that such a thing does not exist and there was nothing I or anybody else at the ISP could do about it. Also the time one of the accounting people said she was very impressed how I showed up and left at a consistent time every day, implying I had some sort of option in the matter that I was unaware of. I think that got some sort of reaction out of them, maybe a smirk and a "wow". So this could be an indicator maybe I left an impression and they'll remember me come call to new employee time. Or maybe not.

I'm still in shock I was considered, I mean really. Now I will discuss another variable I have here. I got this hair cut about 5 weeks ago and I didn't really like it. So yesterday before the study session I went to this real live barbershop and got it re-trimmed to look good. Actually it turned into a flat top which isn't necessarily what I was looking for but the general shape of a flat top was there so that's what I got. It's amazing how much a good hair cut can have on the way person is perceived or looked upon. As I have noticed from having what I would call not a very good haircut. So I'm sure the recently trimmed flat top had a hand in getting as far as I have in the process.

So what have I written, three or four pages just on this interview about absolutely nothing? Writing is certainly a good way to vent feelings, frustrations etc., isn't it?

Update...

Well it's now the next day, and no one has called me. I'm assuming this means they're not going to hire me or the staffing company lost my name yet again. How hard is it to keep track of a candidate's name? I'm sure they didn't lose it. Just wouldn't surprise me if they did. So now I guess I'll try cheering myself up.

For instance I was watching this old re-run of Night Court the other day, it was perhaps the first episode with the short lived comic from the Soviet Union Yakoff Smirnoff (I don't know how to spell that); you might know him from in soviet Russia car drives you and similar sort of lines. Well in this episode of Night Court Yakoff is describing what it's like in the USSR to Bull, the bailiff. He tells Bull to close his eyes and says "imagine you're in downtown Milwaukee, no matter where you go you're in downtown Milwaukee...you can get in your or fly for thousands of miles and no matter what you're still in downtown Milwaukee..." finally Bull grabs the sides of his head and yells "STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!!" and runs screaming from the room. That was possibly the best Night Court ever. The best one I've seen anyway.

That was one of the best-written shows ever. In fact I can name a lot of well written shows: NewsRadio, The Simpsons (up to season 9), Futurama, Family Guy, The Practice, 24, well that's all I can think of off the top of my head. Several of these shows, at the very least NewsRadio, Futurama and the Family guy, are actually what I would call "writer's shows" or "shows for writers". Lot of jokes included only a person who's dealt with the frustrations of creative writing could possibly appreciate.

The Family Guy for example had a lot of apparently wrestling with dumbing-down episodes to appeal to a broader audience or staying more the way it already was and thus "staying true" to the idea that made the show original and creative to begin with. Futurama also had a lot of references to "low level awards, like writing".

NewsRadio had something similar, expressing frustration with the competition of the show being a lowest-common-denominator shock effect sort of thing while NewsRadio was much more sophisticated, do such things as using terms like "strata various" and "ambidextrous" without stopping to explain what they're talking about. They also did a reference to the old UN images of the USSR representative banging his show on a desk and yelling, "we will destroy you". I think that was from the UN, I don't remember. Anyway not many would get the reference and there was no attempt to stop and explain. That's what I call "not dumbing it down to the lowest-common-denominator".

Ok lets change the subject. I decided I was going to do one of two things: create a series of different floppies set up differently for my Dachstein LEAF router. You see this is a Linux-based floppy that acts as a router/firewall for my network connection to the Internet. There is convenient web browser interface to control everything, I have to go into that particular computer and edit a "network.conf" file if want to play certain games or start an FTP server. This is really, really annoying as I have to try to set it up, test it out, if it doesn't work go back in and edit it again, see if it works, repeat. So I thought I would make a bunch of different floppies, each one with a different configuration and depending on what I wanted to do I would insert in that floppy, reboot and use it; setting the router back to a normal no ports floppy was I was done.

That I heard about a similar project called Smoothwall. This one requires a hard drive and a lot more RAM but it has a lot more features such as a web browser interface to opening/forwarding ports, easy setup of a "DMZ", not to mention some kind of intrusion detection software built in. Only problem is I can't get it work. I can bring up the convenient web interface, so I know that parts working, just can't do anything else like connect to the Internet for instance. I mean this thing even has a built-in Java-based SSH client and I can reboot the system for the web browser. I mean it's nice! But why won't it work?! I know it should work because I can't put the floppy back in and reboot and the Internet abstemiously works again on my computer. Try it from Smoothwall on the HDD and it doesn't work.

Well I just spent several minutes talking to a Smoothwall expert in an IRC channel and slowly realized since Smoothwall swaps the IDs of the two NICs (the that communicates internally and the one that communicates with the Internet) my ISP was preventing me from connection to the Internet because the other NIC obviously has a different MAC address. So now I'll try simply putting each NIC in the other PCI slot to see if that works. I'm so excited! And Apple wouldn't hire me :).

Well this has been a long enough entry so I think I'll go now.

  ¶ 2:22 PM