It begins

Training for Seattle-to-Portland bike race. I already made this ride with Alex and want to do it again:

I just wanted to go the distance

Before we left for Montana last week, I did manage to finish the Seafair Torchlight Run 8K.

The course takes runners along the Alaskan Way Viaduct, through the Battery Street Tunnel, and down Fourth Avenue along the Torchlight Parade route before finishing at Qwest Field. I high-fived about 100 cute kids lined up along Fourth Ave during the stretch run.

Running along those streets was a lot of fun... I love downtown Seattle, and this was a unique opportunity to experience it in a different way. I finished the race in 0:49:45.9, only 99th out of 109th in my age group, because I'm tremendously slow. But hey, not bad for a first try!

A gross misappropriation of the talents of Parliament Funkadelic

I can only describe the Mariners' association of the phrase "FUNK BLAST" with home runs as "really unfortunate."

This one's for mom

Happy birthday to my mom. She is the best mom, and she will assuredly make a smooth transition into being the best grandma.

We've already sent her a physically tangible birthday present, but here's a high-tech online bonus present for her, which I will share with all our loyal furdell.com readers: an hour-long clip from KOL-AM radio in Seattle, from 1962, right around when the Century 21 World's Fair Expo goodness was going on (the same event that gave us the Space Needle; note: I almost just typed Space Noodle). I don't know if she listened to this station, but nonetheless it's a cool memento of old-school Seattle.

(Technical note to mom: these are big files, 30 MB each, so you'll probably want to download them at school, save them to disk and copy to a USB key. Then you can bring the USB key home and import the files into your iTunes library, and listen to them there or on your iPod.)

Track 1
Track 2

That opening jingle on the first track always makes me happy. We ARE the number one-derful people in Seattle.

Happy Valentine's Day (from Washington Mutual)

Kimberly and James went cross-country skiing

Up around Stevens Pass way. Cross-country skiing is a ridiculous cardiovascular workout; I'm lucky I can move my shoulders to type this right now.

We took a break at one point and sat down on a bench, and I stuck my skis in the snow. Shortly thereafter a friend came along and visited us, and luckily I had my camera available.

Don't know what kind of bird he is, though. Because that's not the kind of thing I know.

James' personal top 5 favorite musical acts from 2006: a special Seattle countdown!

I was excited to find out that remastered classic episodes of American Top 40 with Casey Kasem are being run each week on XM Satellite Radio (which I can pick up through DirecTV). Episodes from the '80s are run on XM's The '80s channel (aka '80s on 8), Thursdays at 10 p.m. and Sundays at noon; The '70s channel (7) runs '70s episodes Wednesdays at 10 p.m. and Saturdays at noon. All times Eastern.

One year after getting an iPod (shhh... don't tell Microsoft or they'll force a Zune on me), I still haven't "ripped" (scare quotes) all the American Top 40s I own. There's still a good full day of ripping left to get them all in the system. It's hard to find people to trade episodes with, so these AT40 "Flashbacks" are the next best thing.

Meanwhile, we're coming up on one year in Seatown, which surely has some of the best radio stations on the planet. KEXP gets a lot of love for hitting me with a ridiculous amount of great indie rock, and C89.5, while repetitive and run by high-school kids, easily fulfills my required "beats per minute" quotient. I went to the trouble of making an "iMix" on "iTunes" of certain Seattle songs I really "iLiked," but then they removed my #1 choice from the store, so I'm forced to tell you, in Furdell.com-standardized top-5 form, what "my favorite musical acts what I learned about in Seattle"... are.

These aren't acts that necessarily debuted in 2006... in fact, chances are I was late to the party. In all cases. But I'll still always think about my first crazy year in Seattle when I hear these songs. (That's the best thing about music... its power over memory, and its ability to draw you back in time to the first time you heard a certain song.)

In honor of Casey Kasem, I'll include the Wikipedia link for each musical act, which will tell you more than you knew you wanted to know about each one... just like Casey did back in the day.

5. M.I.A.

It's the 2000s, and while we don't have flying cars yet (so disappointing), we do finally have Music of the Future: lots of electronic squeals and a robotic-sounding drum machine, fronted by a female rapper of Sri Lankan descent. Sometimes, that's as annoying as it sounds, but it also works to produce some awesome beats every so often.

Favorite songs: "Galang" is the best example of what M.I.A. is about; Andrew and Julia are partial to "10 Dollar", which is definitely her most dance-friendly song (and has the most hilarious fan-made YouTube video of anything on this list).

4. Mylo

Mylo's album Destroy Rock & Roll accomplishes its stated task quite nicely. I guess this is what happens when you force your kids to listen to '70s Gold throughout their childhood; they turn into '00s-era mash-up artists who use "Bette Davis Eyes" by Kim Carnes, and "Waiting For A Star To Fall" by Boy Meets Girl as their palette.

Favorite songs: Said mash-up "In My Arms" is classic, but best of all is Doctor Pressure, a mix of Mylo's own "Drop the Pressure" with Miami Sound Machine's "Doctor Beat." Sheer lunacy.

3. The Knife

Holy crap, The Knife is weird. It's a Swedish brother-sister duo that puts out strange-sounding, heavily electronic songs. The sister does most of the singing in high-pitched English, with a heavy Swedish accent. But once you get past the weirdness, the melodies really take over your brain and don't let go. I guess they're kind of like Bjork, but good.

Favorite songs: Their newest album is Silent Shout, but so far I prefer Deep Cuts, which I've only been able to find via iTunes. "Heartbeats" is a great song that kicks off that album, and "You Take My Breath Away" is my favorite track of all.

2. Neko Case

Oh, Neko Case... your music is so very sad. It's Veronica Mars-breakup sad, that's how sad it is.

"In the end I was the mean girl, or somebody's in-between girl. Now it's the devil I love; and that's as funny as real love."

Seriously... super-sad.

Neko's stuff has sometimes been labeled as alt-country; her songs have amazing depth, with lush storyscapes. And they might make you want to take a bottle of valium. So be careful.

Favorite songs: "Maybe Sparrow" and "Hold On, Hold On." I need a hug...

1. Blue Scholars

"Blue Scholars in the place to be; we've got one DJ, and one MC. And that's it. (That's it.) That's it. (That's it.) C'mon, put your hands up if you're feelin' this shit."

My musical tastes tend to change every few years, and I think they could easily be skewed toward indie hip-hop, with Seattle's Blue Scholars as a touchstone. They're the antidote for mainstream rap; instead of focusing on wealth/booty/crime/look-how-awesome-I-am, Blue Scholars celebrates life, liberty and the proletariat; MC Geologic's raps are heavily political without being accusatory, and DJ Sabzi's samples are amazing.

And Seattle's not the most... um... urban-feeling city ever. In fact, it's pretty white, especially considering my last two cities were Atlanta and D.C. Seattle is downright Scandinavian in comparison. But when I'm walking around downtown with Geologic rapping on my headphones, I can't help but feel at least a little bit street.

Favorite songs: "The Ave" from their self-titled debut artfully name-checks all the streets off University Way in the U District, instantly recalling what it's like to be a college student; and "Southside Revival" from The Long March focuses on local racial boundaries and politics, with Geologic flawlessly rapping the intelligent and tounge-twisty lyrics ("I've heard a few heads say that hip-hop is dead; not it's not, it's just malnourished and underfed"). You'll have to check out their shit on MySpace to hear that one.

Until next time: Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the booze.

Hey, I'm sort of doing it

Skiing, that is!

Over the holidays, Andrew invented a new word while we were all watching the insipid Bob Saget-hosted game-slash-reality show 1 vs. 100.

During the course of the game, each player receives three opportunities to receive assistance from the mob, known as "helps". They are "Poll The Mob", "Ask The Mob", and "Trust The Mob". Each player can choose which of the 3 helps they would like to use at any point in the game.

I noted that "helps" is not actually a word, but merely an attempt to copy lifelines from Who Wants To Be A Millionaire without actually using the word "lifeline". Andrew proposed that "helps" be replaced with the more-trademarkable noun "helpamagoos", which everybody liked better (and, unfortuantely for 1 vs. 100, we invented it first).

I went to Snoqualmie Pass last weekend, and dared to ski on the blue-square (i.e. medium difficulty) trails "Top Traverse" and "Alpine", at a not-very-good weather time (freezing rain made the terrain very slippery). The slope was steep, and I wound up falling and losing a ski, which wouldn't normally be a big deal, except I have trouble getting back up on a slope (blame my poor 31-year-old non-flexibility). Even when I was able to get up, it was super-difficult getting my skis back on. Either the skis would travel downhill without me, or I would slide downhill without my skis. (A helpful snowboarder nicely delivered one of my rogue skis to me.) So, of course, I'm crawling around on the ground like an idiot while more expert skiers are sailing by me with no problem.

It was then that I decided what I need is one helpamagoo per skiing session. Kind of like when you're playing a racing video game, and you crash up and fly off the road, the game helpfully deposits you back on the track, car completely intact. That's what I need while skiing to minimize embarrassment.

In the meantime, I am highly enjoying my birthday present, new skis. I don't think I'll be doing any difficult black diamonds this year... I'm quite content to stick with green circles. Green circles are my friend.

Keep watching the skis!

Strip Generator is way too much fun

Here's what we did today...

The library of the FUTURE!

The Seattle Public Library is awesome, and not just because it looks like something out of Blade Runner:

But also because it has this book:

Now I know exactly how many months of food I'll need to stockpile when the Y2K bug renders all our vital computer systems useless.

Yes, Leonard Nimoy wrote the foreword. And yes, he does end it with, "Live long and prosper."

Oy.

This is for everyone who, when I told them I was moving to Seattle, joked that I hope I like rain

The sunset view from my balcony:

It's been beautiful for the past two weeks. Suck on that, jerks!

The perils of Seattle

Yes, it's a sea lion on top of a Prius. I have a feeling that this is Seattle in a nutshell.

I can't wait. The move is 17 days away. Watch out for JAMES, SEA LIONS!

Why this week was crappy for me, personally

Reason 1: Arrested Development was cancelled today. Nobody watched it like I told you to. Taste the sad.

Reason 2: Microsoft doesn't want to hire me. Damn you Billy Gates!

Yes, I had an interview out there in Redmond, Wash. a couple weeks ago.

I knew it wasn't going to be easy. And, in the past, I've sometimes felt unprepared for the pop-quiz portion of software engineering interviews. This time, I was determined to be prepared.

Microsoft's interviews are notoriously difficult; they fly an army of people into Seattle every day, but make offers to only a small fraction of those people. A day of interviews at Microsoft is like running the gauntlet. They schedule you to talk to three or four different people, and if those people all like you enough, you eventually get passed on to the hiring manager... the big boss. (Come to think of it, it's kind of like a video game.)

Microsoft's philosophy is to look at as many people as possible, and try to find the ones who have the best potential, and they would much rather score someone as a false negative than a false positive. As a result, you can get weeded out in a hurry; if they send you home after only a couple interviews, that's a bad sign. So my mission was to do my best to stay alive and not get voted off the proverbial island. (Has Survivor been turned into a proverb yet?)

Before I left, I prepared myself as best I possibly could. I researched the coding questions I was most likely to be asked, and practiced them in C. I brushed up on C++ and object-oriented programming, and did my best to study up on testing procedures. I even picked up a copy of How Would You Move Mount Fuji?, which is full of famous logic questions (even though Microsoft has moved away from such questions).

I was nervous the day of the interview, as usual. This would be an even longer and arduous process than normal interviews, but it would also be a good test of how well I had prepared. One by one, I talked to members of the Office Business Application team, who were looking for a "Software Development Engineer in Test" (that's a diplomatic way of making "software tester" sound almost as cool as "software developer", even though it's clearly not).

My first interview was with "Altaf", who asked me a question I had prepared for: reverse a string (of words) in place. Mysteriously, I knew how to code it up quickly on the whiteboard. Later, when "Hamesh" asked me to eliminate the duplicate elements of an array, and "Brett" asked me to find missing element in an (n-1)-element array of distinct integers from 1 to n, I was again mysteriously able to come up with solutions (ahem... had some practice on those too). After answering some hypothetical questions from "Clodagh", I made it to the Big Boss... "Anu". I was excited about getting that far... I made it all the way to the end!

It felt like a miracle. Altaf, Hamesh, Brett, Clodagh and Anu. (Heh... "Brett.") I felt like I had set them up and knocked them down. Getting past the technical quizzes is the tough part; I can talk about myself in an interesting and engaging fashion for hours if I can just get past the damn tests.

Sadly, it wasn't meant to be. Getting turned down for a job is tough in any case, but this one really hurt because the degree of difficulty was so high, and I really thought I had nailed it. Microsoft told me they would "move quickly" on a decision, but wound up taking two weeks before giving me the bad news. Maybe that means I was close to landing it; I really have no idea why, in the end, they didn't want me. And that's the most frustrating thing of all; I'd really like to know whether I did some to screw it up in the end, or if there were just other candidates who were better qualified.

Not that it's all bad that I won't be working there. The primary benefits were obvious; they would cover relocation, and I would gain experience in Windows programming and testing, two areas where I really haven't had much experience at all (which also could have been a factor). There were some major red flags going up as I researched employment at Microsoft. Most troubling is the stack-ranking system they have for employee reviews; they grade on a curve, which means somebody always has to get the shaft (and it's usually the new guy). It makes for a less-than-comfortable work environment. Plus, lately, a lot of their smartest employees have jumped ship, worried that the software behemoth is focusing too much of "defense" (i.e. protecting its monopolies) and not enough on "offense" (i.e. innovation and promoting new ideas). Not that I think I would have been one of their smartest people if they had hired me, but I still found it interesting that former long-time employees feel like Microsoft's best (and most interesting) days are behind it.

So anyway, I'm disappointed that it's back to the drawing board on the job search. That's the other reason getting an offer would have rocked... because looking for a job SUPER-SUCKS. It's especially hard in my field, because it's not enough that you have x years of experience or attended y university... you're expected to prove yourself anew to each potential employer. Over the past several weeks I've worked on practice problems, programming quizzes, sample projects, and even an I.Q. test (really!) to prove my worth to various hiring managers. I've done nearly as much coding over the past month as I did all year while having a programming job (sadly, they didn't really give me a whole lot of work to do).

For example: this was a project I did while applying for this job. They said it should take two-three hours; it took me about 10 hours to get it right. After sending it to them, they almost immediately rejected me. Here's another piece of code I worked on for another company's programming test; it was so difficult I wasn't even able to finish in time. This is annoying, not only because it reinforces my low self-esteem, but because doing this work eats up a lot of time, and it's just demoralizing when all that work turns out to have been fruitless. My latest opus is this tic-tac-toe program, which I can only hope will impress the company I wrote it for: "Tic Tac Toe Industries." Hopefully they'll be impressed that my computer player always tries to select the center square first; Andrew calls that the "James gambit."

(OK, that last part was a lie; he actually called it the "Picard manuever." Damn you, Jean-Luc! Always outshining me!)

At any rate, it was great hanging out with Andrew, and it was great being in Seattle. It really reiterated to me how much I love it there... I would love, love, love to move there. Here's hoping somebody will be willing to hire me long-distance.