Friday, November 06, 2009
"Break"
¶ 8:11 PM I've decided to take a break from writing by writing. Which seems strange on some level but since the writing is so different I think it will work.
No I didn't get the job I mentioned from the last post. The one I figured since I didn't hear I must not have got it. I didn't think I did and the more time went by the more obvious the flaws in my interview became apparent. Although I imagine there were just a lot more people who interviewed and where so much more qualified. Maybe in a different era I would have gotten in.
I did eventually interview up at the ski resort on Wednesday, but first I spent two days at the court house waiting to find out if I was going to be picked for a jury.
Obviously I'm not going to discuss the case, any details or even the county I was in. I will say it was really long and boring and wish I hadn't have had to do that. I sat in the court house from 8am or so until 3:00 or so not doing much of anything besides sitting. In fact they actually found the whole jury plus two alternates but made us all still sit there and wait anyway while they picked a third. It was very, very pointless. At best were were there for theater at that point. On the bright side I don't think I'll be called again for at least a year. One can only hope.
I was some what fortunate the ski resort was willing to re-schedule the interview around my unfortunate jury duty times.
The interview I thought actually went well, or at least well compared to my other recent interviews. I gave my regular rather "unique" answers to the standard sorts of questions. I got the feeling I unfornately finished kind of on the weak side. The interviewer was sure to emphasize the amount of snow that would be involved and how much work would be involved shoveling snow and that it would snow and a lot and they'd have a lot of snow. I was getting the impression there will be snow inolved.
I had noted my interviewing mojo had apparently left me over the course of active employment for two years but I think with this most recent interview said mojo may be starting to return. Slowly but surely, the verbal jujitsu or "ninja interviwing" methods are coming back. Which is good considering i do in fact want to work. Things like the detailed answers and the unique answers I assume will stick out in the interviewer's mind.
Of course there is still at least one variable in the formula that has not played out: she said she'd call my references. And I happen to know all my references will have rather positve things to go on and on about me when she calls. Which is good. If the interview didn't sell here I can only guess the references will really put me over the top. Especially the one in particular. He'll really go on and on.
I did actually right the references, all four of them, an email. In fact for the first time I sent the email to all four at once with an apology about that at the end. Well it was more of a "let me know if I shouldn't do that in the future" note at the end. I wrote them and mentioned where the interview was and that they could possibly be recieving a call sometime in the next week. Actually I don't really know it will be in the next week I was mostly guessing about that because it sounded like a reasonable amount of time post-interview. In conclusion, I've decided my official label is "cautiously optimistic".
The real reason I wanted to do a post right now was because my application idea was starting to loop in my mind agian and usuallythe best way to fix such an issue is to write it out. At least that's worked before.
I want to write a program that would be able to be pointed at a directory structure that contained lots of different applications as well as possibly registry files and windows updates all organized specially and so forth. The app would scan the directory structure and add everything to a database. A database that would eventually be in XML format. Whether this happened with the first scan or the xml was created later I will have to decide at a later date. An eventual goal would be to have a batch file the same name as the folder of each of the applictions with the command line to silently install each application (more specifically a CMD file).
Once this database was created the list of applications will be accessible either all at once or in different categories along with each application's silent install parameters. The user can then check off each desired application/update/reg entry/etc. and generate an XML file of this information.
Then either the same application started up in a different mode or a seperate app would be launched and install the applications silently one by one, reading the information from the XML file.
The issue of the actual application repository would be a seperate issue. It would be designed so the user could actually create this repository manually on the same machine or it could be accessed by a UNC address.
In theory a feature could be added to put in the http or ftp path to the latest version of an application if the user knows the name of the file and a non-changing path to said application. Then either an FTP script or a wget command line could be used to go out and grab it.
I am currently imagining this as a "HTML Applicaiton" with the .HTA extension since it would be guarenteed to be open source and easily verifiable.
The second app I was thinkng about would take in a text file containing PC names, one per line, and perform an action on each one in sequence. First it would check for a ping, then it would check and see if the C$ share was accessible and then if both of those two things worked move copy or edit or delete the file or files in question or perform which ever action. A bonus would be it generating new text files listing the non-pings, the non-C$ accessible and the successfully done PCs. For actions it would probably have either a list of action then can be peiced together with check boxes, radio buttons and similar or simply a box that asks for the command line to be executed against each PC in the list. Or possibly both.
Now that I've written all this out (again) I think I feel better and I can get back to my novel. Or maybe this just drove me more toward working on these apps instead of the novel. Either way.
No I didn't get the job I mentioned from the last post. The one I figured since I didn't hear I must not have got it. I didn't think I did and the more time went by the more obvious the flaws in my interview became apparent. Although I imagine there were just a lot more people who interviewed and where so much more qualified. Maybe in a different era I would have gotten in.
I did eventually interview up at the ski resort on Wednesday, but first I spent two days at the court house waiting to find out if I was going to be picked for a jury.
Obviously I'm not going to discuss the case, any details or even the county I was in. I will say it was really long and boring and wish I hadn't have had to do that. I sat in the court house from 8am or so until 3:00 or so not doing much of anything besides sitting. In fact they actually found the whole jury plus two alternates but made us all still sit there and wait anyway while they picked a third. It was very, very pointless. At best were were there for theater at that point. On the bright side I don't think I'll be called again for at least a year. One can only hope.
I was some what fortunate the ski resort was willing to re-schedule the interview around my unfortunate jury duty times.
The interview I thought actually went well, or at least well compared to my other recent interviews. I gave my regular rather "unique" answers to the standard sorts of questions. I got the feeling I unfornately finished kind of on the weak side. The interviewer was sure to emphasize the amount of snow that would be involved and how much work would be involved shoveling snow and that it would snow and a lot and they'd have a lot of snow. I was getting the impression there will be snow inolved.
I had noted my interviewing mojo had apparently left me over the course of active employment for two years but I think with this most recent interview said mojo may be starting to return. Slowly but surely, the verbal jujitsu or "ninja interviwing" methods are coming back. Which is good considering i do in fact want to work. Things like the detailed answers and the unique answers I assume will stick out in the interviewer's mind.
Of course there is still at least one variable in the formula that has not played out: she said she'd call my references. And I happen to know all my references will have rather positve things to go on and on about me when she calls. Which is good. If the interview didn't sell here I can only guess the references will really put me over the top. Especially the one in particular. He'll really go on and on.
I did actually right the references, all four of them, an email. In fact for the first time I sent the email to all four at once with an apology about that at the end. Well it was more of a "let me know if I shouldn't do that in the future" note at the end. I wrote them and mentioned where the interview was and that they could possibly be recieving a call sometime in the next week. Actually I don't really know it will be in the next week I was mostly guessing about that because it sounded like a reasonable amount of time post-interview. In conclusion, I've decided my official label is "cautiously optimistic".
The real reason I wanted to do a post right now was because my application idea was starting to loop in my mind agian and usuallythe best way to fix such an issue is to write it out. At least that's worked before.
I want to write a program that would be able to be pointed at a directory structure that contained lots of different applications as well as possibly registry files and windows updates all organized specially and so forth. The app would scan the directory structure and add everything to a database. A database that would eventually be in XML format. Whether this happened with the first scan or the xml was created later I will have to decide at a later date. An eventual goal would be to have a batch file the same name as the folder of each of the applictions with the command line to silently install each application (more specifically a CMD file).
Once this database was created the list of applications will be accessible either all at once or in different categories along with each application's silent install parameters. The user can then check off each desired application/update/reg entry/etc. and generate an XML file of this information.
Then either the same application started up in a different mode or a seperate app would be launched and install the applications silently one by one, reading the information from the XML file.
The issue of the actual application repository would be a seperate issue. It would be designed so the user could actually create this repository manually on the same machine or it could be accessed by a UNC address.
In theory a feature could be added to put in the http or ftp path to the latest version of an application if the user knows the name of the file and a non-changing path to said application. Then either an FTP script or a wget command line could be used to go out and grab it.
I am currently imagining this as a "HTML Applicaiton" with the .HTA extension since it would be guarenteed to be open source and easily verifiable.
The second app I was thinkng about would take in a text file containing PC names, one per line, and perform an action on each one in sequence. First it would check for a ping, then it would check and see if the C$ share was accessible and then if both of those two things worked move copy or edit or delete the file or files in question or perform which ever action. A bonus would be it generating new text files listing the non-pings, the non-C$ accessible and the successfully done PCs. For actions it would probably have either a list of action then can be peiced together with check boxes, radio buttons and similar or simply a box that asks for the command line to be executed against each PC in the list. Or possibly both.
Now that I've written all this out (again) I think I feel better and I can get back to my novel. Or maybe this just drove me more toward working on these apps instead of the novel. Either way.
