Adventures in Job-Search Juggling   ...   100% true stories , from_the_archives
thu 2005-oct-20 15:03:28 pdt   ...   permalink

In July of 2001, I was looking for a job. Here's an email I sent one day back then:

So I finally tried out something a friend of mine had suggested for how to get the nice people at TiVo to notice me.

I went to the TiVo headquarters about 11:45, armed with bean bags, clubs, resumes, and a little sign that says "SOFTWARE ENGINEER FOR HIRE" clipped to my shirt. I stood in front of the the main lobby, and started juggling five balls. A few people walked back and forth between the two buildings (whose entrances are right next to each other, on the corners of the two buildings), and seemed to look at me somewhat amusedly... I said "how's it going" to a few of them, but they didn't really respond. After five or ten minutes, a guy comes out -- looks like an engineering type -- and he comes up to me and says "what do you do?" I said "mostly java, server-side stuff", we said a few more things, he introduced himself as Richard, and then he said "I'll go see if I can get some engineering managers out here". Woohoo!

So he brought out four different people (one, then one, then two), which was convenient because I'd only brought four copies of my resume! I talked with them about my background and stuff, and they all four seemed pretty impressed, like they would certainly be interested in having me in to interview, except they're in a hiring freeze. D'oh. Interestingly, Richard said that it was the VP of HR that had told him, "there's this guy juggling out there, you gotta go talk to him!"

One of the last two guys gave me a tour. They're pretty small, but it looked like a cool, fun place...

So all in all, it was pretty much as successful as I could have hoped for, except for the damn hiring freeze. They all said they would hold on to my resume... One said he guessed it would be a month or two before they'd be able to hire anyone. Sigh.

So anyway, I think what I need to do now is go back through the other companies that I sent my resume to and never heard back from, and consider using this approach at each of them!

I didn't in fact ever hear anything back from the TiVo folks, and I also didn't in fact ever try again to exploit my juggling skills to get a software job. But hey, made for a nice story.

the vast unicycle conspiracy   ...   100% true stories , unicycle
tue 2005-may-03 16:34:30 pdt   ...   permalink

This is getting kind of weird.

So last tuesday, as I was unicycling along at Stanford, one of the horde of bicyclists going the other way said to me, "Why are there so many people around on unicycles?" Not at all the type of question I usually get asked when I'm unicycling along. I looked at her kind of startledly and said, "uh, I wasn't aware that there were so many people around on unicycles!" There may have been more to the exchange than that, but not much, as we were going opposite directions. A little odd, I thought, but that's not the weird part.

( it gets weirder... )

odometer   ...   100% true stories , odometer , video
mon 2005-feb-14 23:24:00 pst   ...   permalink

Today my car's odometer crossed the 200,000 mile mark. Last week I cleverly reset my trip meter at 199,800, so all the digits rolled at once -- simultaneously to 200k and 200. And so naturally, I documented the event.

( odometer video )

where's your other wheel?   ...   100% true stories , unicycle
tue 2004-sep-28 12:02:29 pdt   ...   permalink

As I was unicycling along, I saw a guy walking a bike which was missing its front wheel. I said to him, "Wow, people usually tell me I'm missing a wheel."

crash on the freeway   ...   100% true stories , signs
wed 2004-jun-30 12:52:06 pdt   ...   permalink

Northbound 101 in Santa Clara about noon, I saw the aftermath of a crash. Great America's electronic signboard apparently runs Windows, and so, naturally, is prone to failure. You could see an ad in the background, but covering up much of it were several dialog boxes. Of course I was driving, and so didn't manage to either read the dialog or get a photo. Oh well.

counterexample   ...   100% true stories
sun 2004-may-16 15:16:26 pdt   ...   permalink

I'm sitting in a cafe. A cute blonde teenage girl says to me, "I love your hair!" She's wearing a t-shirt that says "I [HEART] NOTHING".