September 2004 Archives

I had a job interview today with another agency. I was pretty confident walking in, not too nervous--generally a very competent and comfortable interviewee, I typically find it even easier and less stressful when, as in this case, I have the luxury of not strictly needing the job for which I'm interviewing--and thought I was well-qualified, an excellent fit, and reasonably prepared, albeit I'll be the first to admit I didn't spend the extra time in preparation this past weekend I might have, and that I had intended.

It was the worst interview performance of my entire life.

It wasn't just bad, it was embarrassingly and stultifyingly bad. During the interview, I kept wondering if I should just apologize for wasting their time, bow out and cut all our losses. Afterward, I spent lunch and the subway ride back to work feeling genuinely sorry for the hour of their lives those four interviewers would never get back, and thinking wistfully of the two hours of annual leave I'd spent to cover the time away from the office.

On a personal level, I think they found me likable and engaging enough, and I quite liked them. And trying to be as objective as possible, I believe I'd be a really great fit for the position and for the organization, and that it would provide me a challenging learning experience for me and them a valuable addition to their team.

But I choked. I don't think it was entirely my fault--the position description notes that the incumbent will be responsible primarily for expertise in high-level function X, in an office that also engages in separate (though highly interrelated, to be sure) high-level function Y, but practically their entire line of questioning went to my experience with, technical knowledge of, philosophy about, and recommendations for implementing Y instead of the expected X. I just wasn't able to shift mental gears smoothly or quickly enough. The real tragedy is that while I know X inside and out, I've also had plenty of experience managing Y--as part of a specialized task force at another organization I co-authored a 20-chapter report about it some years ago, and have been responsible for developing and implementing Y at other organizations since. It's not something I've done in the past two years in my current position, and I hadn't expected it to dominate the questions, and I was about as far as possible from fresh or convincing. But I was aware from my research that Y was part of the office's responsibilities more generally, so I definitely should have been better prepared to discuss it intelligently.

Who knows? Maybe it actually didn't go as badly as I thought--years ago I had a day-long series of interviews at a company in Seattle, beginning at 7 in the morning on a spring day in which a freak East Coast Blizzard kept me grounded until very late, such that I arrived in Seattle and at my hotel at 4am (already 7am according to my internal clock). I was so numb I couldn't even remember what I said or did that whole day, and collapsed at 4:30pm certain that the day had been an unmitigated disaster--then two days later they called and offered me the job (I didn't accept it, for unrelated reasons).

And I was the first person interviewed for this new position--which at least lets me manufacture and maintain the comfortable fiction that on paper, at least, they had found me the best-qualified and wanted to schedule me first--so maybe time, conversations with subsequent candidates, and the natural defense mechanisms of the human mind will cause them to block out the more horrible aspects of today's experience.

Otherwise I'll have to change my name and enter a brand-new career field at the very bottom and preferably in another country, in order to avoid the shame and embarrassment of someday potentially running into one of these interviewers on a cross-agency task force or in a DC restaurant.

What is it with the influx of Christian-focused spam I've been seeing in my inbox recently? I'm getting flooded with information about Christian online dating services and Christian mortgage companies, among others. Today, for example, an email with the subject line "Jesus Loves You. Refinance Now" informs me that ChristianMortgageUSA.com, "Your Leading Advisor With Biblical Values" and "based on Christian lending principles" (pay no attention to the usurer behind the curtain), can show me "the Way!" (exclamation point theirs), while ChristianDebtSettlement.org uses images of a cross and an open bible as part of its promise to help me settle my debt for up to 70% less of what I owe--oh, and they like those exclamation points too--as there's apparently nothing quite so Christian, after all, as trying to get out of paying people only 3 out of every 10 dollars I owe them. Well, at least it makes tithing much less onerous.

Some days the emails from these "Christian" sources is second in volume only to the porn spam (addendum: oh, and also subordinate to the pharmaceutical spams)--and no more welcome.

There's apparently no movie, no matter how classic or celebrated, for which the experience of watching can't be improved by doing so alfresco, in a park, in the company of a few dozen queens and their friends.

Last night, Jeff and I went to the Washington DC GLBT Center (actually, DC has no physical GLBT Center, but this organization is attempting to establish one) and One in Ten "Screen on Stead Park" outdoor screening (from a laptop and DVD player, projected onto a giant inflatable movie screen, which offers some pretty cool geek-appeal) of the newly digitally remastered The Wizard of Oz. As Jeff noted back in July, we went to a similar GLBT Center-sponsored screening of Sordid Lives.

Both experiences were a lot of fun--people bring picnic dinners and snacks, sit or lie together on blankets under the (admittedly faint and few) stars, relax and socialize together in an environment where you can hold hands or lean against your partner without concern, and feel relatively free to add some degree of audience participation in the form of shouted jokes and comments (though the latter less so last night than at the previous movie). Sordid Lives was an intentionally camp movie, with gay characters and subplots and seemingly aimed for gay audiences, but The Wizard of Oz, only incidentally and in its historical context largely from its association with Judy Garland a "gay" movie, nevertheless offered an abundance of opportunities for audience comments and laughter at unintentional double-entendres (or, as George Bush might say, "intennuendos"). The Tin Man and his need for repeated oilings was one source of amusement, as were the "sissy" comments and gestures of the Cowardly Line. One of the biggest laughs of the evening, unsurprisingly, was the Scarecrow's comment that while one direction at the crossroads is "a very nice way" while the other is "pleasant," "of course, people do go both ways."

This was the Center's last "Screen on Stead Park" event for the year, but they've promised monthly screenings next year from May through September. We had a lot of fun at both movies this year, and definitely are looking forward to future screenings. Jeff wasn't even a fan of The Wizard of Oz from his earlier viewings, but quite enjoyed last night's.

Just as I was starting to become bored with my springtime gaming addiction, City of Heroes, The Sims 2 was released about a week ago.

This remake of the best-selling PC game of all time, The Sims, offers pretty much the same gameplay as the original, with a few updates--Sims now age and eventually die, have overriding life aspirations to fulfill in addition to their ongoing needs, and can pass on their appearance and personality to their offspring through a simulated genetics. While I was hugely addicted to the original Sims for a long time, I'm not sure that these updates to the game will hold my attention for long. The ability to very specifically customize your Sims, though, is very nice, permitting an infinite customization of their appearance; you can tweak dozens of elements of their facial structure--overall shape, brow, nose, eyes, mouth, chin. With just a few minutes work, I even created passable representations of Jeff and me, and moved them into a gorgeous split-level lakeside modern home in the SimCity 'burb of Pleasantview.

And that brings me to my favorite part of the original game--building and furnishing the Sims' homes--which is where the new version really shines. The original game was very limited; homes could be one or two stories, and were quite constrained in architecture. In the new version, homes can have up to five levels, can be built into and on hilly terrain, and can utilize foundations and decks to build split-level structures and even sub-levels (I've modified one home, for example, to have a swimming pool in the basement). I'm populating one street of Pleasantview with a variety of modernist homes into which I've moved the Sims I've created--our sim doppelgangers live in one, the Cuirs (another gay couple, Tad and Chad) in another, and the LeFays (elf princess Morgana and her twin pointy-eared sons Kieran and Breandan) in a third.

It's strange to watch Jeff's and my little sim clones interact with one another; they continue to develop little idiosyncrasies and habits that are--at least for now--oddly engaging and even endearing. They're very affectionate, and spoon when they're sleeping; they've also, on their own, adopted the corresponding sides of the bed Jeff and I use in real life. Last night the two of them showed up at the Cuirs' house to welcome them to the neighborhood, yet before long they ended up in a separate room talking to each other rather than interacting with their hosts, which hit eerily close to home.

What's even odder, though, is when Jeff and I start adopting and imitating the habits of our virtual doubles. Sim-Thom has this habit of making the "How You Doin'?" double finger-pointing gesture whenever he walks by another Sim, and I've found myself mockingly adopting it on occasion at home. Life imitates art?

Arlington County has issued a press release entitled "Arlington Encourages 20 and 30-Somethings to Get Involved with Youth."

ARLINGTON, VA. -- Are you a 20/30-something looking for ways to get more involved in Arlington? To engage and inspire local youth? To participate in social and community activities that don't require a commute to DC? The Community Role Models' Volunteer Forum on Youth Services is for you! Learn more about how to get involved as a mentor, a coach or a homework buddy. Get to know some of the local groups that are working with our youth to make Arlington the awesome community that it is. Get inspired and gain some new ideas on how YOU can make a difference.

On Sept. 29, come to the Arlington Central Library, 1015 N. Quincy St., at 7 p.m., and learn how to get involved. Representatives from local non-profits, service groups and youth-serving County programs will answer your questions and tell you more about their programs and services. All are welcome. ...

Background

Since June 2003, a small task force of civic leaders, county staff and young adults has met regularly with County Board Member Walter Tejada to discuss and brainstorm ways to engage Arlington's young adults in civic activities that provide healthy models for Arlington's youth. During the County Board's Jan. 1 organizational meeting, Tejada announced the Community Role Models (CRM) that is "aimed at engaging our young adults, 20- and 30- somethings in mentoring and other civic activities" as part of the Board's 2004 civic engagement initiative.

At 42, apparently I'm no longer capable of "engaging and inspiring" the youth of the county while providing them a "healthy model." Presumably, I'd just be bugging them to come and polish my walker or change the batteries in my hearing aid, or boring them with stories about life before the Internet.

While lately I haven't been doing as much personal blogging here on elf-reflection, I've been doing a better job of continuing to post items to my quicklink blogs over at Dude, Check This Out! In addition to the two from which I include headlines on the elf-reflection home page--serendipity, my primary Dude blog [XML], and sputnik, which is focused on modern art, architecture and style [XML]--I have several others as well:

• Diversions: the games people play, linking to information about toys and games, with a specific focus on online games [XML];
• My Prius blog, with links to news articles about Toyota's hybrid car [XML];
• Activism: left is right, my links to political articles and commentary [XML];
• Collage, about paper arts and crafts [XML]; and
• 1962: it was a very good year, a collection of links to web sites and articles about events from the year I was born [XML].

Back in March, I'd posted about other Thom Watsons I'd heard or learned about. On Monday I followed a link from one of the progressive political blogs I read to a blog I'd never before seen, by a Tom Watson (without the h) in New York. From his biographic information I discovered that he and I share a number of commonalities: both Ivy-educated (he at Columbia), both current or former dot-commers (he's CIO for a philanthropic-based dotcom in New York), both with communications backgrounds evntually leading to IT careers, both bloggers, both tending left politically, etc.

He's been blogging for a while, but I only just came across his site on Monday. Imagine my surprise, then, when today I received an email from him, apparently from his discovery of my 1962 blog to say hello, noting that he was another Tom Watson born in 1962, and pointing out the same common interests and backgrounds.

Sometimes it really is a Twilight Zone world. It's one thing to recognize that given the world's population, there are a lot of people that will have similar experiences, interests and backgrounds, and similarly that--especially in my case, given that neither "Thomas" nor "Watson" are uncommon--other people share your name, but it's still a little eerie to discover that there's at least one other person with the same name, born the same year, with roughly similar professional backgrounds, life experiences and philosophy.

He even has a Van Dyke. However, we're not completely interchangeable: I don't have the wife and three kids nor, as far as I know, does he have a boyfriend, so vive les differences

This morning the alarm clock woke me from a series of dreams I was having in which old classic TV shows were somehow skewed. I can't recall the specifics of the other shows about which I was dreaming--I do remember that they included The Flintstones, which I think had some sort of Queer Eye crossover with Fred being made over by the Fab Five, and Bewitched, among others--but the last one I'd been dreaming of had featured Marlo Thomas as That Jeannie, with the independent, feminist-minded and sensibly dressed Jeannie Marie--who lived in a hatbox rather than a bottle--referring to Major Donald Nelson as "Mister" rather than "Master," and refusing to use her powers to conjure up meals--with a "flip" of her hairdo--or blink the house clean.

I had dreamed a new theme song as well, though by the time the snooze button went off the second time, I could no longer recall the words to it.

Yes, my computing environment at home is Wintel, and I've continued to use Microsoft Outlook for email to this point just as a matter of course. Apparently, there's a known--though not widely publicized--bug in which once your personal folders file (by default the outlook.pst file) reaches 2Gb in size, it immediately and always becomes corrupted; this is an absolute limit. Once that happens, there's no way to repair the file without suffering a loss of data; you have to use a hex editor or similar tool to truncate a fairly sizable chunk of data from the end of the file, and then run a repair tool on the resulting smaller file. At the end of this process, you might end up with a new folder that does not include all of your original data, and you have no control over what messages or contacts or calendar information might have been irretrievably lost (well, perhaps not irretrievably if you're willing to spend a few hundred dollars for specialized software, of if you have an Exchange server, but there doesn't seem to be a reasonably practical or affordable solution for the home user).

Worst of all, in a default installation of Outlook, there's no warning as the personal folders file is reaching the 2Gb limit. There have been patches that--while unable to allow Outlook to address personal folder files over 2Gb--are supposed to provide this warning feature, and prohibit downloading any new mail or composing any new once the file is approaching the file size limit. I had that patch installed. It didn't work.

Several years worth of mail messages--carefully organized by theme and/or sender--were in my outlook.pst file that got corrupted two nights ago when it hit the file size limit, about which I wasn't even aware (or I'd have moved files into multiple pst files in order to avoid the problem). I've been working since then to try to recover as much as possible, and I did manage to get all but about 10Mb of the file back, after several attempts that seemed to create usable files but that still became re-corrupted after a few minutes to a few hours; fortunately this didn't affect any of my current unanswered mail, since now that I'm using IMAP I keep all of that on my mail server, but I have no idea which archived messages from the last four or five years of my life--messages from my late father or love notes from my boyfriend, maybe--are now just digital flotsam on this hard drive.

It's probably not really that dire; most of this information isn't important to anyone but me, and even then generally only with sentimental value. I also have an uncorrupted copy of my mail folders on my old computer from just two months ago, so worst-case scenario really is that I've only lost some messages I've saved since then. And information I keep only on a single computer, with no backup, is as good as toast anyway. Even so, I'm still frustrated that 1) this problem, though acknowledged by Microsoft, isn't well-publicized, especially given the certainty that it will occur when the file reaches 2Gb and that there's no way to resolve it without losing data once it does occur, and 2) the patch that was supposed to prevent me from being able to reach 2Gb, and which I diligently applied (I went back and checked my update history), didn't actually work.

Any recommendations for a better Windows-based email client?

Well, well, well... I really didn't think they'd go this far, and certainly not so overwhelmingly, but in a lopsided 22-2 vote last night the board of the Log Cabin Republicans actually has decided not to endorse President Bush for re-election.

[New York Times: Gay Activists in the G.O.P. Withhold Endorsement]

In a statement afterward, Patrick Guerriero, executive director of Log Cabin Republicans, cited exit polls showing that more than one million gay men and lesbians voted for Mr. Bush in 2000. That included 45,000 in the pivotal state of Florida, which Mr. Bush carried by roughly 500 votes.

"Some will accuse us of being disloyal," Mr. Guerriero said. "It was actually the White House who was disloyal" to those gay voters, he continued. ...

A depressing article in last week's Washington Post notes that conservative, religious Americans are breeding more rapidly than their liberal, secular counterparts, who aren't having enough children to offset natural population decline. It goes on to state that, since "most people, particularly if they have children, wind up with pretty much the same religious and political orientations as their parents," America's future will be more solidly one of conservatism and religion.

Conservative site Lucianne.com posted a link to a news article about President Clinton's bypass surgery. Many of the responses exhibit a truly horrific degree of hatred and inhumanity. Some of the worst examples:

I at least hope he lives long enough to see JFK AND Hildabeast go down in flames. Then he can go down in flames, metaphorically speaking.

I hope his big honkin' bible is printed on asbestos so he can carry it with him.

sorry, I cant muster any sympathy. I'd feel the same if they said Saddam was gettin [sic] bypass surgery. It's a waste of time and money.

My prayers are for all those he lied to, hurt, and misused.

I wonder if this is heart damage from snorting cocaine.

Where can I send a happy meal?

Do us all a favor, Clinton. Take herself with you!

Sorry.

No, I take that back....I'm not sorry...Take McAuliffe, too.

I TRULY hope he doesn't die the ignominious death he has earned for himself! The death of the very first elected president to be IMPEACHED!

That's really too bad. I feel sorry for those with heart problems. Say hi to your friend Vince on your way down. I understand he's still in the waiting area.

Right on #56! I think of this waste of human life not as a past president (and I use that term loosely), but as a lying, self-centered trader [sic] that the United States and world will be better off without. By the way, how's Carter's health?

It is going to be a wonderful weekend.

Fair enough... I won't however wish Saddam, Castro, and their ilk the best of wishes for a speedy recovery when feeling poorly. I'm sorry, but I think of Clinton as just another Communist and rapist with blood on his hands.

forgive me...I do wish him well...In the w(h)ell that the traitor deserves. That includes his waterboy Kerry, too

The Clinton's [sic] have earned our cynacism [sic]. In fact, the timing of this 'heart' problem so close to the Republican convention is sure to be suspect.

There is nothing wrong with denouncing an utterly corrupt traitor who severely damaged our country, even when he is sick. Would we praise Hitler or Stalin on their deathbeds, or wish them well. The faster bubba clintoon goes to Hell the better off this country will be, so I'm rooting for that much sooner than later.

Considering that Clinton is a viscous [sic]professional con man, why should anyone believe this story? Do you not think that this story is a sympathy ploy (the con artist's favorite ploy) done because Kerry is tanking?

[Via AndrewSullivan.com]

Jeff's not the only one with new toys. During my blogging hiatus, I bought myself a new computer too, a [ed. note: Gene, you might want to stop reading now, lest you lose any respect you might still have had for me] Dell Dimension XPS (3.4GHz P4, 2Gb RAM, 240Gb HD, 256Mb Radeon video, DVD burner) gaming PC, and a really sweet 20-inch flat panel display. The system kicks ass, especially for online 3D gaming. I also bought my nephew, who just went off to college this past Saturday, a wide-screen Dell laptop as his high-school graduation present. (His college recommends Dell, and offers priority service for students who purchase through their program with Dell; I've consistently had good luck with their products, so I went with them again.)

And last week I got the new Motorola v710 phone, Verizon Wireless's only current Bluetooth-enabled handset. It doesn't quite live up to the hype that preceded its release (more about that below), but I'm really very pleased with it nonetheless. I know many of you don't like Verizon, but it's the only national carrier from which I can get a signal both here in the Washington metro area and at my mother's house in the Virginia mountains and along the entire route between, and I can even get a signal inside my office (whereas the Sprint and ATT users generally have to go outside) and in the Metro, so it's the best choice for me.

The good points: First of all, the phone is attractive. Some users have complained that it's too big, but I have no complaints. It's my first clamshell phone, and though I wasn't sure I'd like that form factor, I really do. The displays are very nice, especially the large internal screen. Typing aside, which isn't particularly easy on any cell phone, it's actually usable for reading text and browsing the web.

The speakerphone is amazingly good. The sound quality is clear and crisp. Given that the speaker otherwise is hard to position just right in order to hear when held to the ear, this is a cell phone that actually works better as a speakerphone than in its normal handhelf configuration. The speaker-independent speech recognition, too, works remarkably well, and notably better than the voice recognition of the Prius, which is so bad to be practically useless.

The bad points: The camera in the phone sucks. Advertised as a "high-resolution 1.2-megapixel camera... with the same high standards of a stand-alone digital camera," the quality of the resulting photos nevertheless just doesn't cut it. The photos are fine when viewed on the internal display, so they work well for associating a person's picture to their phone number, which then displays when you receive an incoming call from that number, but when transferred from the phone to my PC and viewed full-size, they were of embarrassingly poor quality.

And the Bluetooth is a mixed bag. Partially crippled--it's still unclear whether inadvertently by Motorola, in which case a patch is rumored for sometime this month, or purposely by Verizon, in an alleged (and not unbelievable, given their history) attempt to force users to pay for services that otherwise would be free and easy using Bluetooth--the phone includes only the hands-free and headset Bluetooth profiles so that it can successfully be used with a wireless headset or with a Bluetooth-enabled car, like my Prius. However, it doesn't support the Object Push Profile, so you can't transfer files to and from the phone using Bluetooth, but must use either a separately purchased--and hard to find--Transflash card, or by paying Verizon for message transfer and airtime fees. Moreover, this means that the phone also can't share its directory with other devices, so there's no way to get its directory information into the Prius. Effectively, then, while I can use the Prius's speakers to listen and talk on the phone, I either have to dial the number from the phone itself--pretty much defeating the purpose of a handsfree mode in the first place--or else dial the number manually on the Prius's phone pad, which automatically deactivates when the car is in motion. So I'm hoping that a fix for this is indeed forthcoming from Motorola.

The phone also allegedly functions as an MP3 player, but since 1) it only has 10Mb of RAM and I don't yet have an expansion card; 2) with the crippled Bluetooth, there's no apparent way to get MP3s into the phone's RAM other than via expansion card; and 3) I already have a 40Gb iPod; I don't really expect to use this functionality anyway. I also haven't explored the video capture capability, but I suspect the quality will be no better than the static images taken by the digital camera.

On the other hand, intellectually at least I know my life really isn't so bad. I have a stable, decent-paying--if not especially satisfying, creative or challenging--job; I own my own condo, which continues to appreciate in value almost obscenely; I can afford to travel, eat at nice restaurants, give to charitable causes and buy all the amenities I need and nearly all that I think I want, for myself and the people I love; I have a wonderful family and a fine pet; and I'm in an amazingly strong relationship--something I had come to believe wasn't really going to be in the cards for me--with Jeff. I'm loved by my friends and family and, I think, generally respected and appreciated by my colleagues. I really should be grateful, content and secure.

But I'm a spoiled, middle-class, white American male. I guess I just want more, dammit.

Recently I've been feeling somewhat dissatisfied, disaffected, disengaged and unmotivated, and at the same time mildly anxious--about my health, my future, my career, the direction the country is headed under this administration and the likelihood of four more years of eroded civil liberties, loss of trust and respect in the international arena, and growing authoritarianism and unilateralism--though not overwhelmingly anxious about any one thing in particular. My sleep lately has been troubled and fitful, punctuated by dark and ominous dreams, dreams of death, destruction, violence and storms.

Is this just my mid-life crisis? In the past year both my dad and my grandfather have died; is that double-shot of coming face-to-face with mortality primarily fueling this existential drama? Or maybe the 20th-year Harvard reunion I decided to forego, but whose passage nonetheless left me feeling like a failure, in the realization that I've accomplished nothing worthwhile; created nothing of lasting beauty or significance in the intervening two decades; neither discovered nor exercised any useful talent or skill; only rarely having made or sustained any true connections with other human beings; and even, despite years and years of soul-searching, introspection and self-examination, actually understanding less and less about who I am and what in the hell I'm doing?

Believing as I do that this is all we get, why have I done nothing better with my time and my life? And yet, even in this moment of rare recognition of the uselessness of this kind of self-indulgence, it's still all I seemingly can manage.