No Blogging Until Monday
I am off to my two job interviews over the next two days, so no blogging until Monday.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 3:24 PM (Permalink)
|

 
The Howard Dean 8-Ball
Everyone remembers these little toys from grade school. Turns out Howard Dean has his very own. Ask it a yes/no political question and see what it turns up!





Hat Tip: Outside the Beltway

posted by Director_Mitch @ 9:07 AM (Permalink)
|

 
Interviews and Pre-Negotiations
I have been entertaining job leads for the last several months, two of which have resulted in interviews this week. It is interesting to see how the pre-interviewing and early-negotiation process is taking place at each company since it points to very different attitudes and cultures:

Company A - This job lead was the result of a networking conversation with a Sr. VP who asked me to send in my resume. This position is not "officially open" and is not listed anywhere in the company.

The process has been fairly slow. I sent my resume in late October and it wasn't until this week that the ball really got moving. The main sticking point was the fact that I could not relocate, so the company has okayed for me to work remotely in SoCal.

Their HR department has not been involved anywhere in this process. Pre-negotiations for title, responsibilities and salary have all been directly with the hiring manager. My meeting with HR is after the interview and will be just an overview of benefits.

From this perspective, I believe this company, although a large corporation, is being run more like a small organization with HR being a support function. The discussions and attitudes of the people involved have pointed towards an entrepreneurial "get the job done" mindset which is closer to my own attitude.


Company Q - This job is an open position that is listed on their web site. I was first contacted for the opportunity by their HR department, who had my name in their database from two years ago (so they did some serious data mining to get a hold of me).

All discussions, scheduling, arrangements and pre-negotiations have been with HR. The title is non-negotiable. I had the initial phone interview with the hiring manager, who agreed I was a good fit, and the follow-up to bring me in and the scheduling all took place through HR.

So in this instance, HR is driving the process, sheltering the hiring manager from negotiating anything should he really want to bring me in. This structure and process is more typical of large organizations, pointing to a bureaucratic mindset that dots the i's and crosses the t's, even if this means not getting something accomplished.


I am keeping an open mind for both positions since there are other considerations ranging from basic salary issues to future career planning, and I will go over the decision process here as this progresses.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 2:06 PM (Permalink)
|

 
Comment Problems
I have had problems viewing my comments today, so I assume there is an issue with my comment server. If you have questions/comments, feel free to email them to me at director_mitch@yahoo.com and I will post on them if appropriate.

If the problem isn't fixed by tomorrow, I will change my comment provider.

Update: I may have to change tomorrow. Blogspeak currently has the current sentence up on the site:BlogSpeak is currently down because the bastards that host it decided to suspend my account. I do not know as of yet when this situation will be resolved.

Another Update: My replacement attempt didn't work, so comments are down for now.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 8:57 AM (Permalink)
|

 
CES Followup Questions
In the comment section in the post below, Jim Carson asks some good followup questions about consumer electronics.

1. Why do HDTVs typically NOT have a tuner built in? (I'm just looking at the armada of personal electronics in my entertainment center, and the last thing I need is another frickin thing to plug in.)

For the record, Samsung and others did announce and have on display HDTVs with built-in tuners, but the main reason for the separate box strategy is the fact that HDTV and flat panel TV buyers are overwhelmingly cable and satellite users.

The hope from the TV manufacturers was that the "set top box" provided by the satellite and cable companies would provide the HDTV decoding and output to your TV, essentially turning your TV into a "dumb display" that would require fewer electronics, thus making it cheaper. This is happening slower than expected from the HDTV manufacturers, so you need a "tuner" that takes your cable or satellite signal and then decodes it (over-the-air reception is a separate can of worms I won't go into here).

Of course the satellite and cable guys will EVENTUALLY provide HDTV ready signals, at which point you can ditch your tuner. Or if you spend extra for the set with the built-in tuner, and when you get a HDTV set-top box, you can figure out how to bypass the internal decoder (I assume a bypass is included with these sets, but am not sure).

I think this brings up the whole HDTV transition issue. Besides cable/satellite decoding, I would need to have an HDTV Tivo before I upgraded to HDTV. Then I would have to upgrade my DVD player to HDTV (or have a bimodal one so I can keep my current DVD library). Like every other format conversion, making the switch will mean a significant investment (which is why I alluded below to this being a strategy of the consumer electronics market in general).


2. Will the blue light DVDs have a coherent standard, e.g., none of this +R, -R, -RAM nonsense?

Hey, this is the consumer electronic industry, so there MUST be two competing standards for companies to fight for domination. It's just the VHS/Beta battle being fought over and over again. The two standards coming out of the lab are:

AOD - Advanced Optical Disk - This is the Samsung/Toshiba entry for the battle

BD - BlueRay Disk - This is the Sony/Phillips side of the battle

Keep in mind that - at this time - blue laser readers are NOT backward compatible with your current red laser DVDs, so you would have to replace your whole library (more upgrading!). I assume, however, that one or more of the companies above is working on a "bimodal" player that will have two lasers in it so that it is backward and forward compatible.


3. Are there any interesting advances in read-write storage (e.g,. hard drives)?

I didn't notice this at the show, but I wasn't looking for it. Like the semiconductor industry, however, the diskdrive industry has followed its own "Moore's Law" of increasing integration at smaller formats, but at a MUCH faster rate than computer chips. The multimedia players below were 80G, and I assume they were with 1.5" or 2" drives, so I would assume that the integration curve for hard drives hasn't flattened yet.


Update: I have confirmed that at least two companies are working on "red/blue" DVD players that will have both a blue laser for new DVDs and a red one for legacy DVDs. They will, however, use a single lens, so a the blue laser will simply be added to the existing optical pick-up.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 10:00 AM (Permalink)
|