Skillz Te$t

Today I had my the second interview "test" of my life. 17 years ago I had applied for a job at Convex and one of the interviews was with a group of programmers who spent an hour or so grilling me on everything I claimed on my resume. I had to write programs or functions in C, sed, and awk, evaluate the order of computation for an algorithm, and other computer gymnastics. I guess I passed because I was offered the job (which I turned down).

Today's interview was a screening interview for a consulting company. But it wasn't conducted by anyone at the company that might hire me. It turns out that there is at least one company whose major business is conducting technical interviews. They questioned me on AIX/Unix, project management, SDLC, leadership, SQL, C, Perl, and Korn shell programming. It was a bit nerve-racking.

I was surprisingly nervous the instant the phone rang. I didn't have a really good handle on what they might be testing me on because I've never seen a job description for the position. Plus, I've never done a technical interview on the phone, or at least not one that had been advertised as a "test". So I think it was all just so different that it was a bit discombobulating.

I think I did okay, though I stumbled on a couple of (hopefully minor) questions. The interviewer will send a report within a couple of hours and I hope to hear from the potential employer in a few days.

Update — 23 January:
I just got a call from the (in-house) recruiter and I passed the test. I have an interview next week.

The Great North Texas Blizzard of 2007

This closed schools across the DFW metroplex. To be fair, that's ice pellets, which can be tricky to drive on. Indeed, the traffic reports on the radio are very short: "accident every 100 yards on all highways and major surface streets."

But still, it lacks the visual impact of the recent snowstorms in Colorado.

Fraud! Chicanery!

If you think that public school is full of thugs and other ne'er-do-wells, well, I think you're right. And now I know why! It's because they teach kids to be dishonest.

I know, I didn't believe it at first, either. But today 1 of 2 came home and told us that he had to forge an old letter. He was to make it look as if written on parchment and singed in some fire long ago. His teacher gave him manila paper to write on. He had to use black ink and write like a girl. Then he had to crumple it up and burn it.

Here's the result:



I'm aghast!