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[KeithHernandez]

Gluten dude, that’s not good for ya.

[Carlos del Vaca]

A mattress sale as a fundraiser?? Who is going to buy a mattress from kids standing on the street? What's wrong with a bake sale?

I gather some local purveyor of mattresses does it as a community service thing. Like they have their trucks at the school, so the kids are trying to get people to go to the school and buy a mattress off the truck. I think it's dumb as hell, but they've been doing it for years so I guess it works to some degree.

[theinevitable]

Yeah I just can't imagine it. With mattresses you don't get the guilt factor of "oh hell may as well buy a box, it's for the kids." Hm

[theinevitable]

Dang.

I'm getting towards the final stretch of my coding program. I have a project getting closer and closer to working and then I'll make a pretty functional website for it and have something to share with people.

Two big confidence boosters today:

1. An experienced web developer I worked with on something with 2 months ago expressed surprise that I had not had a coding job before-- he said he could tell I didn't know web stuff but the way I approached things made him think I knew my shit otherwise. This is also good because when we worked together I felt panicked and was trying desperately to keep up.

2. I went to a happy hour for people interested in urban planning data/programming and ran into a woman I knew from another team at my old job. We talked about what I'm up to now and my plans afterwards and she smirked and said, "think you'd want to work on my team? We're hiring..."
They were hiring for another job on that team 6 months ago and I didn't apply because I was sure I was not qualified. But she said it sounds like based on what I've been working on in this program I could be a good fit.

There's also a Policy Research position open at the mayor's office, focusing on data policy (privacy, sharing between agencies, etc) which seems right up my alley.

[theinevitable]

Job interview monday, trying not to get too excited. But I'd really like to get it.

[AugustWest]

You got this!

[theinevitable]

I got too excited.

...

I didn't get it.

Ugh. Fuck. Finding jobs to apply to sucks. I think I've got the actual applying down pretty well and I've gotten fast at adjusting my resume and editing relevant parts of the cover letter. But almost every job listing just sounds awful to me.

[theinevitable]

Very ironic: I got excited that I finally figured out how to run an NGINX server for my app, and then tried to log onto TOUAMB and saw a lovely NGINX error.

[wombat]

I don't have anything to say, but I just noticed that the board has come back from the dead after I thought this was maybe the time I was going to have to give up on it, so I felt like I had to post something.

[theinevitable]

Very weird job situation. My old boss (the better of the two, but he was still telling me I seem unhappy and should pursue other interests) sent my resume to people hiring for a job at the mayor's office. It's an 18 month contract to work on data stuff for Census outreach, which is pretty relevant to my old job. I had an interview and it was really odd... it felt like they were trying to convince me to take the job, rather than me trying to convince them to hire me.

On the one hand, I would have been really excited about this job a year ago. It would be a pretty high-profile job for a data person, it pays more than my old job, and my data analysis would be helping direct millions of dollars in media buys (?!?!?!). I could spend this year continuing to practice programming stuff on the side and be in a better position to find something when I'm done. Maybe I could even find a way to use some of my new programming skills-- like making interactive displays or creating databases for our work.

On the other hand, I think I could go the rest of my life without looking at another spreadsheet. The old bosses, for all of the things they were wrong about, were definitely right that I was not happy doing that work. And frankly, I do not think I am very good at it. I don't think experience doing more Excel spreadsheets really adds anything to my resume, and I don't know if doing it at the mayor's office matters to anyone outside of government.

Maybe an underlying part of my personality here is that I lose interest in things once I move past the beginner stage. Learning new things and feeling a whole new field open up is really energizing to me. I think that's part of why programming is so appealing, each new problem I face involves learning new tools and techniques, reading lots of documentation, etc. Based on the program I did I think this mindset is common to a lot of programmers, people see new challenges and learning new technologies as a perk of moving jobs.

[wombat]

OMG IT'S BACK AGAIN.

This time I was sure it was time to learn how to move on.

[wombat]

Someday it's just going to be you and me.

[theinevitable]

Wow!

Crazy thing today: someone from my programming program just posted that they're leaving their apartment and they wonder if any of us want to take over the lease. It's the same rent as my current place, in a way "nicer" (more central, better transit, near better grocery stores, etc) neighborhood in Brooklyn, with way bigger bedrooms.

The catches:
- moving sucks
- I'd have to find a roommate, although I'm sure someone I know will leap at the chance
- It's actually a 3 bedroom... the way they made the rent so cheap is that they subleased the third, small bedroom out three months at a time to people attending our program from out of state.
- my girlfriend lives 2 blocks from my current place...

[AugustWest]

Someday it's just going to be you and me.

Maybe.

[AugustWest]

It's baaaaaaaack.