Amy

I'm getting tired of the "Not enough experience" excuse after interviews. I've been programming since I was 9, have a degree in Computer Science, and 10 years professional experience as a web developer. You'd think that was enough experience for a web developer position.

Two days ago, one of my recruiters calls me. She says she's working on a position that sounds like it would be great for me, and the guy at the company is eager to meet with me. The company is way further away than I want to work (Hillsborough, NJ - about 1.5 hours away) but I agree to the interview. Its a PHP/Mysql job, and I remind her that I don't have professional experience in PHP, just using it on my own the past few years. She says thats fine. So I go there today, and the interviewer starts by saying he just got my resume this morning, and he doesn't think I'm experienced enough, and he wish he knew before I drove all the way there. So he interviews me but it seems almost like he feels like its a waste of time. He has a techie guy with him who asks me PHP/CSS questions. I pretty much got the PHP questions right, but I was rusty on the CSS. He didn't bother with the harder PHP questions though because it seemed like the other guy just wanted to end the interview.

Why are companies so hung up on professional experience in specific languages? How do you get the professional experience in a new language after losing a job programming in obsolete languages, if no one will hire you?

In my last interview, which was a phone interview, the interviewer seemed rather impressed with my background, but then I found out later than I didn't get the job because he said I wasn't experienced enough. But at least this time I don't have to wait wondering whether I got the job. While he didn't say I didn't get it, it was pretty obvious from the start that I wasn't getting it.

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I laugh whenever I see this job posted again. Today it showed up in my daily email from CareerBuilder:
Web Technology Specialist - (PL11026)

Apparently littlesam is irreplaceable. But they shouldn't have ditched me!

If anyone out there in South Jerseyland is looking for something to do tomorrow (Dec 17) night, come see me and my choir perform the Christmas musical, "Repeat the Sounding Joy". Stop by Laurel Hill Bible Church, 1260 Blackwood-Clementon Rd. (next to Shop Rite) at 7:00pm. See http://www.laurelhillbiblechurch.org/location.html for directions.

Cool site. I think I'll grab some recipes for Christmas dinner.

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/

Just a thought, and note to myself. I should grab my some of forum avatars, or make some, or something.

Isn't the election over yet? I just got my third phone call from Joe Piscipo telling me to go vote. And there seemed to be extra commercials last night during Heroes, in order to accommodate all the candidates' ads.

My new video card came today, and I can play NWN2 without any problems. I played around on System Requirements Lab, and my computer should meet not only the minimum requirements, but also the recommended requirements, for any game out there now.

One problem though - the video card (or its fan) is loud! It sounds like there's a waterfall on my desk.

Here are the results from some more quizes at http://www.gotoquiz.com/ Since the quizzes look like they can be written by anyone, some, like the South Jersey one, are pretty stupid. But I'm bored (see the NWN2 post).

( See my quiz results, hidden to make this post shorter )

I found this on the same site as the accent quiz.



Edit: OK, there is a South Jersey quiz but its pretty lame.

Saw this on another blog. I was amazed since they didn't ask how to pronounce "water".

What American accent do you have? Your Result: Philadelphia Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak! If you're not from Philadelphia, then you're from someplace near there like south Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington. if you've ever journeyed to some far off place where people don't know that Philly has an accent, someone may have thought you talked a little weird even though they didn't have a clue what accent it was they heard.
The Northeast
The Midland
The Inland North
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

I downloaded a pirated copy to see if it will run on my (2 month old) computer. I couldn't get past the copy protection warnings, and since it at least started the main menu, I decided to go buy a legal copy. Got it installed, downloaded and applied the patches, and I'm ready to go. So I start it and it turns out it won't run the game because of my integrated video card. Now I'm really pissed because I picked out this computer on Tiger Direct using their interactive helper, and I chose the option that I wanted a computer that could play the latest games. So I ended up ordering a $135 video card (a GeForce 7600 GT). For everyday use this computer is great though. But I'm really in the mood to play a good game right now, which is why I paid full price plus tax for the game at Game Stop instead of ordering it from Amazon. But now I have to wait for the video card.

When I looked at the weather forecast this morning and saw it was going to be the last nice day for a while, I decided I needed to go *somewhere* today. So I took the Patco Speed Line into Philadelphia. It was a great day to just wander around with no destination in mind.

Unfortunately, one of the shopping bags I was carrying around my wrist set my watch forward 70 minutes without me knowing it, and I left to come home earlier than I needed to. But the bags were getting heavy and my feet sore, so it was time anyway. I was wondering why it was still light out at 5pm and the train wasn't jam packed. It wasn't until I got into my car and saw the time in there that I realised what happened.

Send your friends a Monk-e-Mail. My mom keeps using this to send me emails, and has been having too much fun with it.

Nothing like a good Cubbies "Snowball Fight" to get me giggling like a little kid.

Unfortunately my eyes are throbbing from earlier today and I now have a headache.

The new TV season started and I'm bored by it already. I guess with being out of the house most of the day, I don't feel like sitting there watching TV. I wish I could just stop watching even my favorite shows. Oh well.

The highlight of my day was that my direct deposit finally started. Now I got weekly deposits into my checking account. Yay! Money good!

2nd Choir practice of the year is in 55 minutes, and I gotten two colds in the past 2 weeks. It seems to never fail. I had a sore throat or a cough the entire first year I was in the choir. It has nothing to do with singing, just bad luck.

I didn't think any shows that I watch were starting until next week. Luckily I checked the TV listings tonight. I want to watch a lot less TV now that I'm out of the house for most of the day. We'll see what happens now that the new shows start. I haven't watched TV since the finale of Treasure Hunters on August 22, which was a week before I started work.

Tonight started my second year as an Awana Cubbies leader. We had seventeen 3 & 4-year-olds. What fun! Three of my four from last year returned, and I got a new boy that I had in VBS that I requested to be put in my group. I didn't realize what I was getting myself into. Last year I had three girls and one boy, but now I have two of each, and two boys together are trouble.

Altogether the kids were well behaved tonight. Last year we had almost all new kids, so lots of 3-year-olds. This year we had mostly returning kids, and only five new, and my new boy is 4 1/2. So having a class of mostly older returning kids probably made things easier.

My last attempt at a blog got lost when I reformatted the hard drive of the computer it was living on. I don't know what I'm gonna write in here or it anyone is going to read it.

I guess I have to find some "friends". LiveJournal says that they're sure I have to have a few friends.