Author: Zingblog 2

The Devil You Know

Not too long ago I took a job with an ad agency as a consulting software developer. This was not the first time I worked in advertising. Many years ago, I co-founded Radical Media’s interactive division back in the 1990’s. (Technically they were a media production company, but alot of their clients were ad agencies, including the one I took a job with, and there’s alot of overlap) and I did all sorts of fun and exciting and groundbreaking stuff there. Since then I’ve done freelance ad jobs here and there. It’s actually surprising how little the ad business has changed in twenty years, the corporate culture and all. Stuff that was innovative back then is just business as usual now.

Being a temp position, so there’s no telling how long it’d last. In orientation they gave us alot of feel-good propaganda about how great advertising is, a lovely coffee table book and all, and really who would expect anything less. Good that they really cares about visual design, and to be able to use my design skills, and nice that they’re small enough so you can talk to people on your own floor if there’s some kind of tech problem. The place was totally chaotic however, in a sort of sleepy, hurry-up-and-wait kinda way. I spent three days waiting around for a computer, using various loaners. The computer they finally gave me was messed up, so I spent two more days trying to get it working before giving up and getting another one.

When I got on a project, they threw two other new hires onto the same piece of work. It was not deep but it was wide, and they really wanted to get it done fast as possible. Must’ve been money at stake with the client, so from their perspective this was a sensible way to do it.

The entirety of the work was tweaking CSS to make the site match the comps. Problem was the CSS, which was supposed to be hierarchical in an OO sense, was really a tangled mess. On top of that, there were hundreds and hundreds of auto-generated files that were not under .gitignore, so every time you checked in code there was a shitstorm of conflicts to wade thru. So with six people working in parallel, we all kept overwriting each other’s changes. I never lost any of my work, but most of the others weren’t as careful. Fixing any of this was out of the question cuz it would’ve blown the deadline.

On the third day our git repo exploded and work ground to a halt. The devops guys restored by the next morning. Fun fun fun.

So we worked thru the weekend. By this time we were completely off the script, so I literally spent a whole day with creative director, with him going “move that 10 pixels down” and me making the change in the code, and then him going “hmm, no, move it 5 pixels up.” He seemed a little put off by me questioning why their process wasn’t better. Like I said, the industry hasn’t learned anything in twenty years.

Then Monday the deadline came. I spent another day doing some minor fixes, and that was that. We spent a couple days chilling waiting on a new project. I spent my time reading up on git to see if I could avoid another gitpocolypse in the future, and on responsive frameworks for CSS.

Then we got a new project, a web site for some investment bank portfolio services. Again very CSS-heavy, with some animated charts’n’graphs and things. They gave us access to the git repo, but told us not to start work just yet, as the account people were still working things out with the client. A couple days after that they the deal fell thru and at was that. Of course they thanked us profusely and sincerely hope they can work with us again. And so it goes.

OrigaMIT and AMNH Holiday Tree, Part III

So the day after I got home from my trip I spent a day volunteering helping put up the annual Holiday Tree at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, since I was dropping by to give them my models anyway. It was a great experience. I’ve been contributing models to the tree for years know and have gotten to know the people who run it. Last year Talo took over as director, and he likes my work.

This year he asked me to make a pod of Elephant Seals in a variety of poses to be featured in one of the hero displays at the base of the tree. I folded them a few weeks ago, going as far as I could before they became 3-D, and finished them after I got back from OrigaMIT. I figured they’d need to be wetfolded, but once I was done the sculpting they were just fine, and held their shape. The two largest ones were about two feet long, so it was it was a bit cumbersome packing them up for transport.

There’s no convenient way to get to the museum from Metro North, so I ended up getting off the train in Harlem and walking thru Central Park (one of my many recent walks to random places in the city; more on that later). This was longer than I expected, but it was a great day for a walk. Once there, I found a whole cache of models I’d folded in years past, which was a fun surprise. So were among my best stuff, while others show how far I’ve come as a folder. There was one old Elephant Seal in particular – I’d designed it just fro them – that I totally reworked to be more like the newer ones.

I also got to see more of the secret part of the museum than ever before. If you know where you can just open semi-hidden doors and go right in. The OUSA office is in basement, and I’ve been there plenty of times, but the underground, working part of the museum just goes on and on like a catacombs, all 19th-centrury stone a ironwork. They’d set up a photography studio in some crypt in a sub-basement. I’m glad I had a guide or I’d have never found my way back. There’s even a cafeteria for museum employees and volunteers, that serves the same food as the public cafeteria, but at 1/3 the price. They told me I could go there whenever I’m in the museum if I want.

Since they’re volunteers they don’t work that fast, and so I had some time in the afternoon to go up an take a tour of the hall of dinosaurs and some of the other exhibits. I came up the stairs instead of the elevator, and finally found out how to do the dinosaurs coming in at the beginning instead of the middle. The only disappointment is that the Whale Room was closed for some corporate event. Ah well I’ll be back there in December to teach.

It was a day of much walking and heavy lifting, so I took the train from the museum back to Grand Central. I was able to take a single train right from the museum to 42nd street and 6th avenue, which is pretty close.

It Keeps Changin’ Fast and It Don’t Last for Long

It’s been a extremely busy time for me the last few weeks, and today is literally the first time I’ve had a chance to rest in a month or so. So now there’s lots to catch up on.

First of all, earlier this month Lizzy celebrated her sweet sixteen. She’d been planning the party for months, making lists of everything. There was food and music with a sound system and custom playlists and dancing and fancy dresses and shoes and a cake and a ceremony lighting up the sixteen candles with Lizzy appreciating the people in her life. Very touching. My parents and brother came into town, and Jeannie’s family was there too, and lots of friends. Nick had to work late, and Martin had a long drive home and had to leave early. So they just missed each other. Even so, thanks everyone who came and shared a special night with us.

Now Lizzy’s gliding into the grownup world without skipping a beat. She’s getting her first bank account, her passport and her driving learner’s permit. She just got her first job, singing a choir at the church where she does her singing group. (My first job at sixteen was changing lightbulbs in a department store.) It’s not alot, but it’s not a heavy commitment either. She’s making at least as much singing as I am making playing bars with my rock band.

She also seems to be getting a bit more serious about learning the piano. But now hearing someone else playing it make me realize it needs a tune-up.

I’m putting together a photo gallery of the party, but may be a while before I can finish it. Meanwhile here’s one photo. And in completely other news, Michelle’s basketball team won their first game of the season today!

The Devil You Don’t Know

I recently had to turn down an offer for a bank job. It was tempting – it seemed like a very cool project, right in the sweet spot of my skillset, a combination of front-end and full-stack, of JavaScript, Java and API design, on the same scale as what I’d been doing in Platform Engineering, and a good opportunity to learn about the finance industry.

However, the pay wasn’t great, no better that I’m making now. But the real problem was it was thru a headhunter. All seemed okay until the bank decided they wanted me and the headhunter made me an offer. When it seemed like an offer was in the offing they actually asked “should I just accept whatever offer they make?” Seriously? Then he came to me with the offer and wanted me to say yes on the spot.

Naturally I had questions and concerns. It was a temp-to-hire position, so the main issues were around the move to the staff position. Jeannie was in a similar situation a year ago: they told her it’d be a six month contract-to-hire, but then they dragged it out for a year, and then when they offered her a staff position the salary was lower than what she’d been promised. I told all this to the headhunter (same agency btw), that what I really care about is the staff position, the temp position is just a speed bump, and I wanted to negotiate the terms of the staff position upfront. He’d mentioned a 3 to 6 month contract and a VP level staff position. Imagine that, me bank VP! And my kids’ friends all think I’m a hippie. But dude wouldn’t offer anything more solid than his “expectation”. When I pushed he wouldn’t budge, nor commit to anything firm. Dude insisted I give him answer by the next morning. The time came and went. Meanwhile I talked to the guys at the bank directly, and they were talking about up to 18 months as a contractor and an as-yet-undetermined staff title.

So I had to pass on that one. Headhunter dude was then like “well if you change your mind let me know.”

Plus the commute was kinda long anyway. Ah well.

Let it Roll Baby Roll

Another successful show last night from the LEFT HOOK. This was at the River Roadhouse in Hastings, and local venue that’s known for having live music. Nice, comfortable place in a divey kinda way. Had a bunch of friends come out, plus a moderately sized regular crowd. Would definitely go back.

We’re getting good at the load-in, setup, soundcheck, and tear-down. I know what I’m doing with the PA pretty comfortably now, and am working on tweaking the EQ and FX to suit the room. Next gig I’m gonna start training Michael to help with that, since he’s the lead singer and it’ll go twice as fast. Also this night Gus played his electronics, since by the end of the last show his hand was pretty swollen. Didn’t sound the same as real drums, but it sounded good, and we were able to mix it into the PA with the vocals no problem.

Musically we’re continuing to get tighter. We didn’t add any new songs this week, but we reversed the first and second sets, since we noticed that our second set always seem to be the best in terms of energy and flow, and it’s usually when the place has the most people. This turned out the be the case again last night. There was a cute girl near the front singing along to Blue Oyster Cult.

We ended up not playing our third set cuz Gary got a weird cramp in his hand. Ah well, still a good night. Again, more audio and video coming soon, so watch this space. Meanwhile, our players will have chance to recover, and tomorrow it’s back to booking more gigs, so watch this space for that too!

Net Gain

Last night the Left Hook played a return engagement at Fisherman’s Net in Pelham. It was a really excellent show, good crowd, and the sound keeps getting better and better. This was also Gus’s return to gigging out after he broke his arm. He’s been getting stronger every week at rehearsal, but the show is three full hour long sets. And to make matters worse he missed the last practice before the show cuz he was sick with food poisoning. Bad gyro, poor guy. Ah well he rose to the occasion.

We added six new songs to the set: Fire by Jimi Hendrix with Gary on lead vocal, Right Place Wrong Time by Doctor John (whose lyric is the origin of the phrase Brain Salad Surgery, BTW), Higher and Higher by Jackie Wilson, Drive My Car from The Beatles, Rock’n’Roll Stew by Traffic, and Kid Charlemagne by Steely Dan with me singing lead vocals. All of them are winners and keepers. We got a few compliments specifically on the Dan number, which is good because we had been doing Pretzel Logic earlier, but decided to drop it cuz we thought it wasn’t going over well. Now we know for sure we can really kick a Steely Dan song. Bodhisattva here we come!

The second set in particular seemed on fire from start to finish. A good roster of songs, well performed, good energy flow, crowd engaged singing and clapping along, even getting up to dance. I think my singing was really on last night too. The first set was good overall too, but had a few minor clams as were still getting warmed up. The third set is better than it’s been, mostly strong, but that’s where we put the tunes that aren’t as well rehearsed or we’re considering dropping. Last night we made it most of the way thru okay. In the Midnight Hour and Mustang Sally were a bit rough; we hadn’t rehearsed them since the last show. Guess they’re first on the list this week.

Audio and video coming soon. Meanwhile be sure to come out and see us at the River Roadhouse in Hastings next Saturday. Sure to be better still!

Back in the Saddle Again

For the last few weeks Left Hook has been rehearsing with Gus on electronic drums while his arm heals. And while individually the drum sounds sound, well, electronic, when he’s playing and the band is goovin’ it sounds just fine. This last week Gus went back to playing a real kit, and man it just sounds so much better. All the time we spent during the hiatus working on parts and dynamics seems to have really paid off.

Meanwhile I’ve been trying to book us more gigs. I’ve visited a half dozen or so local bars and dropped off a CD and got the name of the guy who books bands. Unfortunately these guys tend to be hard to get a hold of, so I’m running down the list calling ‘em back every few days. So far no luck, I figure sooner or later one has to pan out.

Also been getting back to the studio in recent weeks. I have two current work-in-progress originals, Soul on Fire and To Be a Rock. I spent the last couple sessions cleaning up the rhythm section and editing up the vocals to make a complete basic track. Fro SoF I was happy to hear the vocal performance I laid down back in the spring was really killer. For TBaR not so much, so I laid down a new lead vocal over the weekend. This song has some vocal harmonies, layers and counterpoint, with a big build toward the end. I don’t know if I have everything I need for that, cuz toward the end I just sketched in the parts, but I might.

One More Time

And so the endless summer slacking comes to a close. We ended with a nice trip to the Maryland beaches. Nature hikes, water parks, swimming in the ocean, a couple fancy dinners, very nice. Jeannie and I are discovering we all have more fun if we let the kids go off on their own. The traffic was terrible both ways, but we had some good tunes. Jeannie bought some old CDs by the Canadian power trio Triumph, which I hadn’t heard in years, but still stand up quite well.

The kids are finally back to school tomorrow. Google wants to set up another phone meeting, presumably to either tell my goodbye or bring me in for round three. If it goes well I’d like to get back into doing R&D. My hope dark-horse hope is to become their in-house expert on computational origami. Trying to figure out how to pitch that they need one of those.