Owen B. Mehegan's Journal

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I was working on my car with Nick and under the hood I found a dead bee. It looked like it had landed on the engine, wings spread, and then died. I thought it was alive for a moment. Later on I realized, it was a bee in my bonnet.

I got a job doing QA for Six Apart. I start Monday, which marks precisely 3 months of unemployment. I'm glad it's finally over.

The job hunt is definitely starting to get to me. I've been out of work for over two months now and, in spite of having lots of leads and interviews, I haven't gotten a single job offer yet. That in itself wouldn't bother me that much; finding a job that's a good match for my skills is pretty difficult, and almost all of the places that have turned me down have had valid reasons for doing so. The thing that's making me crazy is the pace of the process at most places. Multiple phone interviews, one or more on-site interviews, and a lot of space in between them all is the norm. It's sometimes hard to get people to follow up and tell me the status of things, which makes me feel helpless, and that's not pleasant.

I've tried to fill my time with personal projects and stuff, and I've gotten a fair amount done, but I'm starting to get bored with it all. I can see clearly why retirement isn't always such a blessing for some people. I need the structure and challenges of work to keep my mind sharp. Otherwise the temptation to just sit on my ass and watch TV is too great.

One thing I have gained from this predicament is a greater appreciation for the government support network we have in California. I'm sure it has its flaws, but within a day or two of being laid off I was on the dole, and I started receiving checks a couple of weeks later. It's not a lot of money, but it really makes the difference for me between freaking out about my situation and not. Of course having Catherine here to split the rent and bills and otherwise generally be supportive is also a great help.

In an effort to make myself feel a bit better, here's a list of useful stuff I've done since getting laid off:

Practiced my guitar a lot more and gotten much better
Worked on my scooter
Cleaned the hallway carpet where Catherine spilled a cup of concentrated laundry detergent
Put up a coat hook and whiteboard

Uh OK, that doesn't sound like that much, but when you add in job hunting and interviewing, it's been a fairly good use of my free time. Of course there's also been a decent amount of screwing around on the internet and watching TV, but hey, I have to keep morale up somehow.

If you're over the age of 25 and you're sad, this will surely cheer you up. Under 25s, you're on your own.

Thoughts on my grandmother. ( Read more... )

_Seriously._ Is it _THAT_ hard to set a fucking timer when you start doing laundry and move it all through the machines in a timely way so that, oh I don't know, _someone else can use them without inconvenience?_ Particularly when you live in an apartment building with only one washer and dryer? Apparently not. Apparently it's easier to a) not own a laundry basket, and thus leave your dirty laundry in a gigantic pile _on the garage floor_ b) just wash and dry it whenever you feel like it and not worry about whether this annoys anyone else c) shake the lint and crap off your newly dried clothes (sometimes 2-3 days later) after an annoyed neighbor leaves them on top of the dryer because you didn't come back for them and don't even leave a laundry basket nearby (see a). People like you give bartenders/aspiring screenwriters a bad name.

My photos and movies from my last Australia trip are online here if you want to take a look at them.

Time between getting engaged and hearing Catherine whisper, "My precious" to her engagement ring: 4 days.

The answers in this Ask Metafilter question are hilarious.

I've taken to reading a personal finance blog called Bad Money Advice. The following comes from a post today about timing the market. I thought it was amusing:

It has been said that the four most dangerous words in investing are “this time is different.” When the market is very cheap it is nearly impossible to convince yourself that it is a good time to buy, even if in hindsight every other time it was that cheap it had been a great time to buy. Because when push comes to shove you are sure that this time is different. You worry that this time the world really is coming to an end, that capitalism is dead, and that your kids better start studying Chinese if they ever want to get a job. Then the market goes up, the dust settles, and you feel like an idiot.

It's funny the things you notice when you're home all day during the work week. I had forgotten about this other world of people that don't have regular jobs. Last time I had any notion of it was when I worked Wednesday to Saturday back in Boston, and had Sunday-Tuesday off. It was fun being able to go to the DMV on a Tuesday at 1pm and have there be no line. But now I think, what the hell did I do all day when everyone else was at work? I sure wasn't doing much to improve myself. I didn't go to a gym or work on software projects or anything. I think I just surfed the web and watched TV. Pretty lame.

My living room windows afford a 75% spectacular view of downtown San Francisco, and a 25% weird view of the kitchen of my neighbor across the way. I used to have this strange non-speaking relationship with the woman who lived there. I would see her on the street or on the bus sometimes, but we never talked. I always thought I detected the look of recognition on her face when she would see me. City living is weird that way.

Now there's someone new living there, and so far this week they've been around during the day every day. I think it's a guy, but I make a point not to stare. I just catch movement out of the corner of my eye when I'm at the computer. Is he unemployed too? Or maybe he's a wealthy retired dotcommer. Or he just works from home.

There's also a guy across the street, who I'm used to seeing on the weekends working on his awesome-looking orange BMW 2000 (with fat black racing stripe). This week I made a new discovery: he's out there all day every weekday too. I need to go over and introduce myself: "Are we both unemployed and passionate about old, orange, European vehicles? Ring my bell if you ever need to borrow a torque wrench or anything."

After walking out of the office Tuesday for the last time, I called Nick because I figured he would be more than happy to blow off his own work to drink a beer and commiserate with me. I was right, and we made a plan to meet up ASAP. Just as I started walking down the steps to the subway, the clock struck noon, and the weekly test of San Francisco's outdoor warning system commenced. This consists of a long siren blast, followed by a voice saying, "This is a test of the outdoor warning system." I cracked up, and texted Nick (knowing he can hear it at his house), saying, "It's the unemployment siren!"

I've been meaning to make a blog post because a lot has happened lately, but I've also been too busy. On the other hand, I don't think there's anyone left who reads this that I don't already talk to pretty regularly. I'll write more later, in reverse chronological order, but I'll start with the big news: I got laid off today. That's never happened before!

Hi5 was going to run out of money in June if we didn't get more funding, and so I've known for awhile that I was on thin ice. No matter how good of an employee you are, when there's no more money you're out the door. My position was not as vital as some, so I wasn't surprised to be among those who got culled. I survived one previous round of cuts, plus some more targeted fat-trimming (i.e., you do nothing, we can't afford to employ you anymore so we're replacing you with someone useful). I was a bit surprised that there were more layoffs at all. We were told a few weeks ago that we had gotten two funding offers, and were just negotiating terms with them. I knew better than to count my chickens before they were hatched, but I was more optimistic than I had been prior to that. Apparently the deal was, Hi5 couldn't get the funding without agreeing to some major cost reductions. We've already cut everything else we could in terms of hosting, bandwidth, business trips, etc, so we had to start cutting into "valuable people that we really don't want to lose," as our CEO put it.

I got a bit of severance pay, and my benefits will be good through April, so I'm just going to get on unemployment and start pounding the pavement. A few people have already said they have leads, so maybe I'll get really lucky and land on my feet quickly. If not, luckily, Catherine is still employed and we can cover the bills on just her paycheck. It's a role reversal that I wasn't expecting just now, but it's really the saving grace of the whole situation. If you know anyone who's looking for a Perl or Python software tools developer, let me know!

More on other topics to come...

If you've ever scoffed at the idea of an airplane making a "water landing," or thought that the idea of a life vest under your seat was just useless security theater, read on.

Santacon 2008
Once again, for the fourth year running, I donned a $19.95 Santa suit and spent a day wandering the streets, parks, and bars of San Francisco with (by some counts) roughly 1199 of my closest friends. This year's inner circle included Nick, Lauren, Kate, Muncus, Conor, and Scuba.

Those of you who have been following along at home may already be familiar with Nick's "shock box." For those who aren't, it's a party game of sorts that Nick built, copying something he saw while on a weekend jaunt to Tijuana, Mexico. You hold onto two metal handles connected by wires to a wooden box, Nick flips a switch and then turns a knob, and you are zapped with up to around 300 volts of DC current. It's not enough to do any damage but it's fun to see how much you can take. He brought it to Santacon two years ago, and I gave him the theme Santa name of Tesla Claus. Try searching Flickr for that. Prior to last year's 'Con, Nick went looking for the box and discovered it was missing. Without enough time to build a new one, 2007 was a disappointingly electron-free year.

This time around, determined to make a better and more terrifying shock box, we got started early. Nick had the circuit design in his head already, and spent some time building a new box for it out of plywood. As he did so, grinding and splintering the crap out of the wood until it looked like an eight-year-old's birdhouse project gone wrong, he came to the realization that the more half-assed the box looked, the more scary it would seem. Taking to this idea with gusto, he scorched the outside of it with a butane torch, melted the switches, and generally made it look like something out of the Junior Mad Scientist's project book.

Eventually it came time to put the circuit together. "What would make it seem more scary?", he wondered aloud. We briefly considered trying to find a way to make smoke come out of it on command, but ultimately abandoned that idea. "What about a jacob's ladder?", I offered. For the uninitiated, a jacob's ladder is the type of thing you see in mad scientist laboratories, with the spark that climbs up a pair of wires while making a "zzzzzap" sound. Nick was sure there was no way you could make an effective one without regular 110v house current, but I had seen some plans for a battery-powered one in an electronics magazine I used to subscribe to. A little Googling produced the result and, after inspection, Nick approved of the design. To Radio Shack!

I'm continually surprised at how, even in this day and age, you can still walk into Radio Shack and buy electronics components to make everything from a crystal radio to, well, a jacob's ladder. While rummaging through their bins, I even found that they sell an RFID experimenter's kit made by none other than Joe Grand, aka Kingpin, of the L0pht. While there we also picked up some knife switches, fuses, and a flashlight bulb/socket to put on the top of the box, just for visual effect.

Cutting to the chase a bit, the resulting machine looked so disturbingly dangerous that we almost worried people wouldn't be willing to try it. Although Nick wasn't able to get a full jacob's ladder going, he did have a nice high-voltage arc that he could turn on at will, which made the requisite "zzzzzap" sound. He put the finishing touches on it the morning of Santacon.

We left the house on the morning of Santacon, dressed as appropriate, with Nick carrying the shock box slung over his shoulder. We didn't even get 100 feet from Nick's house before we were stopped, not by a fellow Santa but by the mail carrier. She had a package for Nick to sign for. This took a couple of minutes, what with the box he was carrying and so on. At NO POINT during this exchange did the mailwoman bat an eye, look at us weird, or ask... "Why???" TISF.

Farther down the hill we encountered our first "test subject." A non-Santa woman said, "Why are you guys dressed up like that?" I gave the standard response of, "We're going to a Santa conference." Catching sight of the shock box, she said, "What's that?" Nick replied, "Here, hold these," a statement that would be repeated innumerable times throughout the day. She regarded us warily and asked, "Are you Scientologists?" I just about died laughing, literally doubled over, but Nick took it with little more than a grin. After assuring her that we didn't belong to a cult, or at least, not a very dangerous one, she took the proffered handles and Nick zapped the crap out of her. She dropped the handles, laughing, and we went on our way after shouting, "Merry Christmas!"

Passing Castro station we encountered a cop in the midst of a traffic stop. We hoped we could pass by without arousing his interest, but he spotted us and said, "Merry Christmas." We replied with a "ho ho ho" or something, and then he saw the shock box and said, "What are you, Suicide Santa?" Er, no officer!

In the Mission we encountered Conor and Scuba, right after a random woman said to us, "Conor with the mustache said to tell you he's here!" It turns out Conor had gone to get more liquid refreshment, and told people, "If you see a guy carrying a dangerous-looking wooden box, tell him..." We proceeded to drink our way through a passing rain shower, during which time Nick repeatedly said, "Hold these!", to anyone who gave him a second glance. And I have to say, you'd be surprised at the limited range of reactions people have to a guy in a Santa suit with what looks like a torture device strapped to his chest commanding them to grab onto the two metal handles that are connected to it. About half just go for it without any hesitation. One quarter react with suspicion but are quickly convinced by a few, "Come onnnnn! It doesn't hurt!", type comments. Peer pressure, perhaps? The another quarter of them just totally refuse. After awhile it became apparent that the shock box Mk.II is rather less "juicy" than the original. Even so, people got a lot of laughs out of it, and Nick discovered a new trick. Give one handle to one person, the other to another person, turn the juice up a ways, and then reach out and touch both their necks. Hilarity ensues.

The following is a list of quotes related to these shocking experiences:

"It's Tesla Claus! Noooooo! He got me two years ago!"
"No, no, fuck you. I did that last year."
"I thought it was a theremin!"
"You're a fucking archetype. You're Zeus."
"What sort of Santa time machine is that?"

We had a lot of fun roaming the city, and the 'Con was well-organized this year. It had grown so huge that the organizers divided it into three routes. We did the Mission/Castro route, and there was also a Haight street route that merged with us later, and then a classic North Beach/Fisherman's Wharf route that merged with us near the end. Some highlights were the snowball fight in Dolores park, the bouncy castle in Duboce park, and various dance parties in the street, touched off by the guy riding a huge tricycle with a sound system on the back. We ended at the Yerba Buena gardens near the end of the night, but security quickly kicked us out. We were getting hungry, so we ate dinner at Mel's Diner as true Santarchy overcame everyone. "Every Santa for himself!", was the last Twitter message we got.

After dinner we caught a cab to the Anon Salon where one of the three after parties was slated to start an hour hence. With time to kill we had a drink and dessert at a newly-opened bar nearby, and then went up to the party. Nick went to the Anon Salon after party the first year we did Santacon, but I wussed out on it because it had rained the entire day and I was cold, wet and tired. He came home at 4am, and regaled me the next day with tales of DJs, funk bands, and pole-dancing slut Santas. This year I had to see it for myself. In the end, though, it was a bit lame. Maybe with three after party options the crowd wasn't big enough to reach critical mass. We warmed ourselves by the propane heaters on their roof deck, then bounced around to techno on the dance floor for awhile, but after waiting in vain until after midnight for a possible reprise of the aforementioned funk band, we gave it up and went home.

All in all, a very successful Santacon, much more so than last year's, that's for sure. Now we put away our felt Santa suits, vinyl Santa spats, and portable electrocution machines until the red-clad demon awakens again next December.

Click here for the full gallery of photos, plus three videos at the end.

Ho ho ho!

This is a public-service announcement.

I have a JetBlue award flight which expires sometime in mid-April, and I won't be able to use it before then. I just can't. No vacation time, trip to Australia planned, etc etc. If you could make use of it, I would sell it to you for half of the regular ticket price for whatever dates you would want to use it.

Let me know if you're interested.

I don't know why, but I find videos of cats being terrorized really hilarious.

Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective.

If you've ever done anything with a database, this will be pretty damn funny to you. If you haven't, just skip it.

And in other news...
The Pig Roast and the scooter purchase have been the main news of late, but there are a few other tidbits that I might as well cover, and then I'll be up to date again.

Catherine moved back from Australia at the beginning of September. To say that this was a momentous occasion would be putting it mildly. The basic situation is, she's here on a tourist visa which expires on December 23, and she has until then to find a job. Her field is auditing and accounting, but although she has over seven years' experience at a big consulting firm, she hasn't gotten any offers yet. She has had a fair few interviews, and the two most recent ones seem fairly promising, but time is growing short. If she doesn't have an offer in hand within the next couple of weeks, things are going to be pretty annoying and complicated.

If she does get an offer, the employer has to file some paperwork with the Department of Labor, and then Catherine has to make an appointment at a US Consulate office which can process visas. That in turn requires leaving the country. There is an office in Vancouver, so that's a likely candidate, though there is also some chance that she would just go home to do it, if time and airfares rendered it reasonable. It's hard to know how long all of this would take. I would think anywhere from two weeks to a month.

If she doesn't get an offer, she needs to leave the country by the 23rd, but could then come back in again on another 3 month tourist visa. She has to leave to a "non-adjacent" country, though, and re-entry is at the discretion of the immigration officer at the airport. Weekend jaunts to Panama are probably frowned upon for these purposes, so odds are she would go home for Christmas and maybe all of January too, and then come back and make another go of it. We'll see. Our fingers are crossed.

In related news, a crazy sale on airfares, three days only, caused us to spontaneously buy tickets to Australia for March. They were two for the price of one. Pretty sick. The Melbourne Grand Prix will be on during the time we're there, so hopefully I'll get a chance to see that.

I've seeing a physical therapist for the RSI (think carpal tunnel, but this is different) I've had for several years. This is the first person who has checked me out and thought there was anything wrong. I go in once a week for massage, hot wraps, and various other things, and I also do a lot of stretches during the day at work. It seems to be helping some, but it's a very slow recovery process. I'm trying not to get discouraged; it would be amazing to have comfortable use of my damn arm again.

I've also started taking guitar lessons, FINALLY. I've talked about it for years, and even gone so far as to buy an acoustic guitar (my cousin sold me his old one). Then recently someone recommended a music school in San Francisco, and I've started going there every other Wednesday. I've learned a few chords and the basics of some songs I know, and it's been a lot of fun so far. My teacher is a good guy, somewhere around my age and in a band himself. I need to be more diligent about practicing, but I can see I'm improving bit by bit, so that's cool.

Work is going pretty well. Some days are really frustrating, but I'm learning a lot and moving in the direction I want to go. They're making me learn Python because it's the language everyone else on my team knows. I wish I could spend more time getting good at Perl before changing languages, but Python seems to be growing in popularity, and it's been around for some years already. It seems more likely that it will serve me well at future jobs, so I'm grumbling but learning. We had some layoffs a few weeks ago, and I'm a little nervous about my own job security. My boss has said that he considers me pretty much invaluable, but I know he wouldn't be the one making the decisions if they decide to let go any more people. Hopefully I can weather the storm.

I'll be in Boston from 12/21 to 12/29. Hope to see some of you then.