If cartoon characters had skeletons...
Nice weekend, doing setup and strike for Koinonea's Groundtempo party, and enjoying the vibe in between. We got to the party around 11pm, and left around 4am...almost got pulled over by a pair of concerned/bored CHP troopers: due to a miscommunication about how to use the FasTrak transponder, we went through the FasTrak lane at a stately (and legal) 25mph, but without doing anything about paying the toll. I accelerated swiftly out of the gate, as usual, and about 1/4 mile onto the Bay Bridge, I changed lanes, and by the time I got into my new lane, I looked in my rear view and there was a pair of suspiciously cop-shaped headlights maybe six feet behind me. Many years ago I had some asshole cop on Cape Cod pull this trick, and I sped up, to 55 in a 45 zone, which then gave him an excuse to pull me over and tell me I should have pulled over to let him pass rather than speed up. (How do you diplomatically tell a police officer, "Sorry, moron, I thought you were a drunken psycho and I wanted to get as far away from you as possible"?) So, having learned my lesson, I tapped my brakes a few times and gradually slowed down from 65 to a stately (and legal) 55. They moved to the left and pulled alongside us; I looked at them; they looked at me; I kept driving; I looked at them; they looked at me and drove on ahead. Well, whatever.
I love the times I try to look innocuous while driving. I'm a well-groomed white guy in his late 20s, driving a small Saturn. Not exactly a target for the police.
I'm looking forward to this job nonsense being over and done with. I have my second round with Company B tomorrow afternoon. I've gotten a lot of background on one or two of the people interviewing, hearing from both my contacts and the company staffing guy that this is the critical, more technically-intensive interview. One unusual thing about this process is that I'll get useful feedback even if they don't make an offer: when I asked the staffing guy if he'd gotten feedback from the first round, he said everything went well, though the hiring manager was slightly concerned I might not be senior enough (I'm suspecting that means years of experience rather than skill or judgement, but I don't know). I've never encountered that sort of forthrightness (as opposed to honesty) in a company: normally everything in a hiring process is all very vague and allusory and hence free of legal liability. By all accounts, this is normal for Company B.
I have some ideas of where I want things to end up, but I want a choice between the two, dammit. So I'll go in, and I'll be myself, and they can make their own judgements. And then, finally, it'll be over.