No longer directly relevant for me, but I know a lot of my FL are job-hunting.

That awkward bit at the end of the interview, when they say "do you have any questions for us?"
http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/5-questions-great-job-candidates-ask-interviewers.html
There's some interesting ideas there, and worth reading the comments as well.

It didn't start that way. It started with my mum calling me to see if I was all right, since I hadn't updated LJ for ages. Yes, my techophobic mum.
( so here it is )
And since then, I've been in work, and loving it. May post about that later - but for now, I have a job!

I'd intended to do a nice long photo-filled post about the joys of seedlings, chatting to neighbours, healthy exercise, Wot We Found in the Garage, and donating Useful Things to Rumania. Thanks to a streaming cold, I do not have time for this, so I'll leave you with this link as a hint, and the word "Thursday". (looks like the link changed? try this one)
edit again! they keepo changing the product ID! it's a "AMMACO MARTINA 7 SPEED", and they need their DB and websitre redesigned!)

My next bit of homework for my career consultant is to list all my friends and contacts, with a note next to each saying in what way they can be useful. I am not used to rating my friends by their usefulness. That's not how I think of them, and not what they're for. Meeting in 2 hours time, 30 min drive away :(

.... a job based mostly in Lamberhurst does have certain logistical complications. It could, in theory, be commuted. Train in and out of London via London Bridge, about 2 hours 20 min, then pick up the car I'd left in Tunbridge Wells and drive the rest of the way (16 minutes, says Google Maps). I'd be getting the 5:45 from Biggleswade, Dave could drop me at the station on his way to work when he was on early shift. I'd get home about 8pm. £45 train fare, before we look into things like season tickets.

Or, I could drive the whole way: here Google Maps says about 2 hours, but fails to notice that we're talking about the M25 in rush hour. 100 miles each way, my car does about 50 to the gallon, 4 gallons a day... 18 litres, or thereabouts.... let's say £1.20 a litre because I'm feeling pesimistic... a bit over £20 on diesel.

Or, we could relocate. That isn't a cheap area to buy in, IIRC :(
Edit: I didn't RC. Just looked it up using this site and found several places bigger than what we've got, and costing less. Hmmm....

And Dave probably wouldn't get a job, not easily. That's more of a problem.

Oh well, we'll see what they make of the technical test I emailed back earlier today. I had fun doing it, anyway: its good to know I can still dive into "coding coma" when required.

It seems that every time I look at a job description, it has TLAs in it. Some make sense: if they want me to know about "XML", fair enough, that's the precise technical name for it. Sometimes the abbreviation is a registered trademark for a specific product - again, fair enough.

But there's usually a string of extras, methodologies and so on, and every time, I Google them, only to say "oh, that! been doing it for ten years, since when did it need a fancy name?"

The latest is a job which requires "Hands-on experience of ETL development". Googling takes me to Wkipedia (as it often does), where I am told that "ETL" means "Extract, transform, load". To go into more detail:
* Extracting data from outside sources
* Transforming it to fit operational needs (which can include quality levels)
* Loading it into the end target (database or data warehouse)

Well, duh. Yes, done a lot of that. But again, since when did that need a mysterious abbreviation? And why that abbreviation: the concept is one I learnt while looking at Jackson Structured Programming: think in terms of data. What have we got, what do we want, how do we get from one to the other? "JSP": only now, if someone talks about JSP in a job spec, they mean "Java Server Processes" - probably. It might, in certain contexts, be a Joint Service Publication, if I went back to dealing with engineering software for the MoD.

And there's the problem. If everyone's inventing TLAs for the most basic processes, what happens if they mean something quite different by a TLA from the meaning I know for it? I am reminded of a comment to a friend's post about the abbreviation "Ind." as used to describe a meat pie: "individual", "industrial", or "indigestible"?

It seems that one reason I've had problems getting hold of the agent who was supposed to be putting me in for my dream job was that he was too busy changing jobs himself. Said dream job has now gone.