...!?...

What. The. Fuck. As evidenced by my last post, I didn't think it would actually happen. And it fucking happened. This is very demoralizing. I've had lots of thoughts about it, about how my feelings about my esteem of (and the value of) America and my feelings about race have shifted, but I'm not sure if I'm up to going into any of it now. Maybe later. Instead of focusing on the horror, I think right now I'll just go back to the dull details of the day to day. I can handle that. I deleted facebook from my phone. Prompted by the big thing, but it's not just that. I've had thoughts about it for a little while now. The way it seems to be affecting how I process information and my thought patterns. I might get on it from my computer now and again, but I don't need that streaming from the reach of my pocket constantly. At least not for now. I also don't like the addictive pull of it as well. So yeah. Didn't get much sleep Tuesday night. I had hope early on which slowly dwindled but I couldn't go to sleep til it was over. There came a point when she had to get Michigan and Pennsylvania both to win and they were not looking good. One was close enough that maybe it'd turn but both didn't seem likely. But I stayed up. At least until Pennsylvania fell and there were only six points left that he was definitely going to get. I went to bed, but I didn't fall asleep right away. I woke up a lot through the night after I finally fell asleep anyway. At one point I heard two solitary firecrackers outside my house and I knew that had to be the official moment. And fuck whoever that was for celebrating this shit. Also, fucking fuck the fucking electoral college. If I didn't say that when dubya was elected, I'll say it again, fucking fuck the fucking electoral college. And I'll say it once again for the new guy, fucking fuck the fucking electoral college. It seems to really help out the worst motherfuckers who can't even win the popular vote. Less people voted for you, but oh here's the fucking presidency because! Anyway, I surprisingly didn't feel as tired yesterday as the day before. I guess the sleep I did get lined up with my cycle. But it was as weird bad day. I was in this training most of the day that wasn't even much of a training so that was fine. I conducted my first interview with a potential new employee and member of my team. They're actually hiring for a few positions on different teams, but my team is one of them. That first interview yesterday was okay. I was a little put off because my first question was pretty much just tell me something about your favorite technology and why you like it. Open ended, just to hear what they say about developing and listen for some technical things to hone in on more. So he gets to pick whatever he wants to talk about and the thing he picks he gets wrong. He talks about the restful framework and how it makes it easy to manipulate data without direct queries. Seems like he was thinking about hibernate (maybe he'd used spring which I think has both under its big umbrella), but restful services have nothing to do with that so that answer didn't bode well for me. I picked John to interview with me and he thought the guy did well, but after that first question I was a bit not there with it. Anyway, I know what it's like first starting out so I didn't wanna be too hard on him or anything. What else? Not a whole lot else. Went home and had a production deployment. Not as crazy as the last one, but one server had a space issue and that added a bit of extra time. Overall it was two hours. Spent the rest of evening with Mary Beth, comforting each other. Actually got some sleep last night so today was better. I had two more phone interviews today in the afternoon. The first one was pretty weird. We called and he didn't answer the first time. Called a few minutes later and got him but the first thing he said was his phone battery was low and he couldn't find his charger and how long would the interview last? Then it was difficult to hear him throughout and he seemed distracted. The alarm on his phone went off twice. He seemed pretty good with his answers when you could make him out. It sounded like he was on speaker and his voice was a bit distorted. At the end while we were wrapping up and Sharon (the manager on the call) was talking, the line dropped. I guess his battery died. Felt a little bad, but he felt pretty unprepared. Sharon was pretty much like "what the fuck was that?" The last interview was really good. This guy's been programming for almost thirty years. Seems a little weird he'd be in fasttrack on the surface, but the job he'd been a for a long time was on some proprietary stuff for telecommunications and didn't end up being a transferable skill so he joined the program to learn some newer technologies. He answered well and seems pretty well rounded. Actually, he'll probably be placed in a position on another team that opens up before the one on my future team will (next year). That'll be good for him though. That's the possibility anyway. I started in on the new .NET code today. Now have an idea of what I need to do. Mostly stumbling around though. But no fret. I'll get the hang of the new environment soon enough.