ben brantley’s blog

Last night, Kathy and I decided to go on a dinner date to the mall. We’re not big mall people, and we certainly had no desire to participate in the rampant consumerism, but we thought it would be fun to wander around and just hang out in a “normal” place for a few hours.

One thing we noticed is that there were quite a lot of people in the mall but not very many people in the stores. In other words, the walkways were quite crowded and boisterous, but one step inside a clothing store and it was like you were in another world. Only the game store, the Apple store, and the Christmas store seemed to be doing much business. You don’t need a subscription to the Wall Street Journal or even my friend James’ Baseline Scenario to figure out that retail is in the poop bucket.

The other fascinating thing I observed, and decided would be the inspiration for this post, is that the Swarovski store had on prominent display its marquee, limited-edition piece: a giant crystal rhinoceros. Now, we really like Swarovski crystals. We even visited the Swarovski store in Austria a while ago, right down the road from the official Swarovski Factory. We don’t actually own any of the stuff, but it’s fun to look at. But, really, you gotta ask yourself: what kind of crystal designer would decide that the holiday 2008 key piece would be… a rhinoceros?

I can just imagine the thought process:

“Hmm, well, let’s see. We could do an abstract design. Or maybe some kind of flora. Nah, let’s do a big mammal. How about a giraffe, reaching for the heavens? Oh, wait a minute… what about a rhinoceros?”

Wonders never cease. (It’s $3,750 if you’re ready to punch in your credit card number now.)

Whenever I stop writing in my blog, you should know by now that I’m either (a) really busy and traveling a lot or (b) tired of writing or (c) both. The hiatus over, really, the past six or seven weeks is mostly because of (a) and only a little (b).

It’s supposed to be wintertime in Ned, but the weather hasn’t really shown that to be the case. I can’t count on two hands the number of days in the last 30 when the National Weather Service puts a snow icon on our forecast but the actual result is the total opposite. Okay, we had two inches of meager dustings over the past few days, most of which sublimated away. Except for the part that landed on our (warm) roof, melted, drizzled down off the roof, and promptly froze onto the rocks in front of our door. It’s really cool; all the rocks are there, coated in a translucent sheen, but they can’t move an inch because there’s ice in between them. I haven’t seen it like that before. Simple pleasures.

Poor Kathy had a GI tract bleed of some sort and had to be rushed to the emergency room and then admitted to the hospital for, of all spans of time, Thanksgiving. To add insult to injury, she wasn’t even allowed to eat for most of that time! Just some liquids and an IV drip. (Zamba advocated for her own IV drip, of course, since there’s only one thing she enjoys more than food — water.) I had the fun time of hanging out on an incredibly (and I do mean that) uncomfortable folding “bed” with her for her all-expenses-mostly-paid three-night stay. By Thanksgiving night, I basically gave up and broke down and got a hotel room down the street at our old favorite, the Outlook.

I think the most interesting thing I experienced was the completely dead ghost town that was Boulder on Thanksgiving. It was a total riot. I knew I could count on IHOP to be open for my brunch, and that was an adventure in itself since Thanksgiving day noon meals at the only open restaurant in the city generally select for a unique group of patrons. I was surprised to find several families with small children, the usual gangs of college kids (not all of them go home for Turkey Day), and a mish-mash of other strange, poor people who had no one (or, perhaps, chose no one) to spend the holiday with. Me, I had my wireless internet, so I was content.

Even worse was trying to find dinner that evening. I resolved not to return to IHOP (I think the non-breakfast items are a considerably more questionable affair at these joints), and poor Zamba spent about 40 minutes cruising all around Boulder with me. I mean all around. I went way out of the way in several directions. I kind of thought at least one or two of the fast-food joints would be open, and I was resigned to having my first McDonald’s cheeseburger in an immeasurably long time, but even the American Standbys were boarded up for the night. I figured I’d cruise the college area, filled with restaurants, where no doubt there’d be a sandwich shop open: nope. The only thing that was open was the little convenience store, which I know only sells pre-packaged sandwiches (ugh, those come veggies and condiments). Not surprisingly, there were dozens of kids in there hanging out and goofing off. I figured the pizza joints would be open, even if I would just have to order and take it away to eat… Papa John’s? No. Pizza Hut? No. Local place? No. Finally, after all of those 40 minutes were consumed, I just happened by the Domino’s and saw a glowing “Open” sign. Hallelujah!

I’ll spare you the rest of my incredibly quiet, boring Thanksgiving. I give Thanks because poor Kathy healed up just fine and is back home, safe and sound. In light of that positive outcome, the springy beds and questionable dietary choices were but a minor inconvenience.

More to come, promise.

Today I had to come to Los Angeles for a total of two hours to do some Very Important Work. Even though my flight was delayed, I’m flying between two pleasant airports on planes that, interestingly, aren’t half-filled in either direction. This makes for relaxed travel despite the occasional snafu.

I’d originally hoped to make it home today on the 11:30am return flight, but my 2 hours of work ended up taking 2 hours and 15 minutes, and that was just enough that I was sure I wouldn’t make it in time. Instead, I found myself with two hours to spare and the chance to visit my favorite SoCal eatery, In-N-Out burger. I popped the GPS into high gear and made my way to the closest one en route to the airport, and guess what I found?

A combination In-N-Out and Chick-Fil-A. Now, not only is it interesting that these two restaurants — one classic, family-owned, California chain and one classic, family-owned, Georgia chain — are cosituated, but they also both have two dashes in their names. (This makes them excitingly difficult to into aforementioned GPS, by the way.)

So I could get my artery-clogging fill of two delicious restaurants if I really wanted. However, since have many of the latter in Colorado (including on my well-worn path to the airport, no less) and none of the former, it was an easy decision to employ the classic mixed strategy. I got the sweet tea from the Southern Chain and the burger from the West Coast Chain.

Now, if you think that’s impressive, you should wait until I tell you about the combo In-N-Out and Krispy Kreme I found. Next time…

Last weekend we did a 10k walk in Boulder for the CROP Walk, an annual fundraiser for local, national, and world hunger relief. Someone took a picture of part of the group… and we’re identifiable:

(Hint: Where’s Zamba?)

This year’s coloration has been as good as I’ve seen it. Some people say that summertime moisture promotes better fall colors. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I can say that it’s fascinating to me how much variation there is in the hue shift. For example, the ridgelines around where we live have many aspen groves that are probably within two days of peak (plus or minus) all around, here at 8,200 feet. Two thousand feet lower, you’d expect that warmer weather and a later coming of Winter would defer the color change for a little bit… but no, many of those trees are already well past it and have dropped some or all of their leaves. Then, if you look out in the yard, our own aspen are still mostly green with just a few splotches of yellow here and there! It’s so weird.

I think that’s part of what makes it fun to go “chasing” the color. I’ve only had two short, sweet ventures with the cameras so far. During last week’s chase we I made the mistake of suggesting we bring Zamba, and that turned out to be a drag because she wanted nothing to do with staying in the car while we hopped out (and back in) every ten minutes. After the second time she jumped out the window and came wobbling across the highway, we had no choice but to button up the car and put up with her pleading stares.

Today I went by myself. This was partly because I wanted to move quickly; partly because I had this inspiration to try to get into Zen Seeing Mode; and partly because I could take two cameras and fire away with both of them, eliminating lens changes. I traipsed through several fields filled with the last gasps of various flora, brought half their seedlings home on my pants, (note to self: don’t plow through fields with corduroy) and even found a few interesting shots. My select ratio — the number of pictures I edited afterwards compared to the number of frames I shot — was 15:120. My keeper count — the ones I think could realistically print and hang on the wall — was about 2.5. 48:1 for 120 minutes of shooting is a pretty productive result for me. I’m happy.

One of the biggest reasons we left Los Angeles is because there are no seasons there. Another is that we wanted to live in the mountains. The combination of the two, then, is a a powerful validation of our choice to pack up and move away from all our friends and our home base of, collectively, 16 years. There are times when I wonder, should we be somewhere else? And it is the radical transition that comes every September as Fall that I think most clearly vindicates our decision and answers that question. It’s a blessing to be here.

For the past year, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of my time at work trying to hire new people. It just takes forever. And good results (like, actually hiring someone) are hard to come by. I think mostly this is because, for this job, we need people whose skills lie at a unique intersection. Not only must they be good presenters and comfortable working with people of all different types and temperaments, but they also have to possess deep technical knowledge and confidence. Unfortunately for me, of the handful of people out there who do both really well, they pretty much all have good jobs already.

Anyway, I’ve probably interviewed an average of about three candidates a week for the last six months, some overseas (for international roles in our satellite offices) and some here in North America. Along the way, I’ve gotten very good at quickly figuring out whether someone is viable, and I’ve also been exposed to all manner of silliness and deceptive tactics people use when trying to get their respective feet in the door. I’ve also ceased being surprised when people do amazing things like, uh, not being there to answer the phone at the scheduled time. (Talk about unprofessional!)

Today’s experience was extra funny, however, so I thought I’d use it as an excuse to write this exposition about one of my Least Favorite Job Activities.

This afternoon I had an interview with a candidate from London. He had already been vetted and approved in the non-technical dimensions through interviews with some of our employees in the UK. However, since our London office doesn’t currently have another person in this role, that means they also don’t have someone who can do the technical evaluation any justice. Lately, that’s been falling to me, which of course means in each case that one of us always gets to enjoy a phone call at an obnoxious hour.

Anyway, after a few botched attempts with cell phones and long distance provider issues earlier this month, we finally got it set up for real this week, and the applicant is set to call me right after lunch my time. I learn a few hours beforehand that he had a job snafu that was going to interfere with his schedule a bit, but that he would attempt to make the call from his cell phone. It turns out that that worked out fine, and, when he introduced himself, he apologized for needing “to switch phone lines in about 15 minutes when I reach the house.” No problem, I thought.

After some brief introductions, I launch immediately into the first, fairly straightforward technical question. I’ve given him a simple programming problem description and asked him to talk me through how he would write code to solve the problem. I get my first warning flag immediately when he starts out by saying, “Well, you see, you have to understand where I’m coming from. I don’t write computer code every day. I can work with ‘adapters’ and ‘interfaces’ when necessary, and I can look stuff up online or learn it from a book as needed.”

The minute an interviewee starts making excuses for not being able to write college freshman-level code — and especially if they go down the obfuscatory path of talking about higher-order abstractions like adapters and interfaces and methodologies — it’s incredibly likely that he or she will not pass the interview. Moreover, I especially don’t like it when candidates for a sales position cannot directly say, “I don’t know the answer to that.” I think even non-technical people aren’t dummies. It’s patronizing and risky to be evasive when you’re asked about something you just don’t know or you don’t understand. Double buzz for this dude, right out of the gate.

About fifteen minutes later, we’re still muddying our way through this basic problem. I’ve given up on him already, so I’ve switched modes and am generously giving out the steps that lead to the answer so that, well, at least we have something to talk about. (And maybe he learns something to boot.) As I’m waxing philosophic about some part of the problem or other, though, I get the impression that he has arrived at his destination and that he needs to accomplish the phone switch-e-roo that he warned me about earlier. I shut up for a minute to give him a chance to speak, and sure enough,

“Err, yeah, I’ve made it to my in-laws. I need to drop my daughter off inside, and then I will try to call you back. I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to call you back, but I will try.”

Only twenty minutes have passed in our scheduled hour, and for some reason I pretend that I’d enjoy filling out the whole hour, “Great, we’ll pick back up with this in just a minute then!”

“Um, yeah, I’m not sure… do you have more availability later in the day?” (Keep in mind it is already nearly 9pm his time.)

“No, I’m afraid not. I do have the next thirty minutes that we’d scheduled.”

“Well, okay, um, yeah, I’m not really certain if I’m going to be able to get to another line. I might just need to contact the recruiter and let him know.”

Let him know what, pray tell?, I think. “Okay, well, I understand. Do the best you can, and thanks for your time.”

I guess it’s a good strategy for you future interviewee-ers out there: preface your call with the warning that you “need to switch phones” halfway through, and then use that as a way to bail on the call if you think you got in over your head! I thought it was hilarious. I immediately started writing my summary email to my colleagues in London, and I went ahead and hit Send right away after adding that I was willing to wager 100:1 that he wasn’t going to be “finding another line.” So much for that interview!