FreeBSDGirl

... is awesome.

Holy crap. I keep meaning to update, but then I get distracted by any one of the million things happening in my life right now.

I attended the 2008 FreeBSD Developers Summit along with BSDCan in Ottawa, Canada. BSDCan is like Christmas for me. I love going, and I look forward to it all year. I get to see a lot of friends that I normally don't get to hang out with, and I miss them a lot. There was some awkwardness, however. A few years ago, I made a rule for myself that I would never, ever date someone affiliated with FreeBSD. It sounds like a good idea in theory, but I knew it would end badly if ever put into practice. Last year, I broke that rule. It was just a fling: nothing serious. He was at Dev Summit and BSDCan though, and it was tense trying to avoid him. Maybe I didn't end the relationship in the best way, but there's not much I can do about it now. I related this story to Leslie, adding my signature phrase "There is no sex at the BSDCan." She then busted out an awesome modified rendition of Chris Rock's "No Sex in the Champagne Room".

I met up with Leslie at BSDCan, which was a huge relief. When I stood up at Dev Summit and looked around the room, there was one other female, Diane Bruce. BSDCan itself usually isn't much better. You don't know the meaning of the term sausagefest until you've been to a BSD convention. When I showed up at BSDCan's opening ceremony, I saw Leslie sitting in the middle of the room. Yay! Another female. She introduced me to her friend, Emma. Very cool chick. We three girls hung out together most of the conference. As much as I love talking about FreeBSD with random people, I'm just a lot more comfortable hanging around girls, especially these girls. No one will ever refer to them as "such-and-such's girlfriend". As a female in tech, I've got to say that's one of the worst things I could be referred to as. Hello? I am not an accessory.

Now, on to the big announcements. I've officially joined the FreeBSD Marketing team. Yep, that's right. I'm now randi at freebsd dot org. Most of my friends know how much I've wanted to find my place in the project. It's been very important to me for a long time. I was so happy that I escaped back to my hotel room to jump up and down and squeal like a girl. Thank god no one saw that. I doubt that anyone else has quite reacted to joining the project like I did.

I've got a few projects in the works right now. Soon, I'll be setting up blog.freebsd.org. Sure, we've got release notes and such, but wouldn't it be great if we had a blog where we could pimp our accomplishments? Talk about what we're currently working on, projects recently completed. ZFS got like a one line mention in the release notes. That's a bunch of crap. How are people supposed to know about it? I know that not everyone bothers reading release notes. I'm even willing to admit that sometimes I don't bother reading the whole thing, either. I guess that's going to have to change, now.

I'm also helping plan MeetBSD California, where we will be celebrating FreeBSD's 15 year anniversary. Setting up a conference is challenging, especially on a tight budget. Know any companies that might be interested in helping sponsor us? Want to get on the mailing list for conference info? Drop me a line at the new email address.

Igor's moving out next weekend, so I'm busy packing all of his crap. I'm trying to prepare for living on my own, something that I haven't done in a very long time. I bought a pink toolset from Amazon, and I think I'm going to get a cat. Isn't that what single girls do? I also bought a PS3 last night. I'm not sure if I'm impressed by it or not. The game selection is a bit lacking. I picked up Heavenly Sword (chick with a sword, how can you go wrong there?), Uncharted, and Guitar Hero III. Any recommendations?

Grand Theft Auto IV came out yesterday, and of course I bought it. I've always been a fan of the GTA series, although I never got into playing it. This was the first in the series that I could see myself wanting to play, and I was really excited to get home and get started. I didn't get all that far since I get home rather late at night (I work in San Bruno, live in Sunnyvale. You do the math), but I definitely see the appeal of the game.

It was obvious that this game was going to be controversial. It's not rocket surgery to draw this conclusion. Just check out the Ladies of Liberty City video. People are already talking about how horrible this game will be for our youth - how it promotes violence. Some fucktard stabbing some other dude in the neck while waiting in line to get this game just gives them more ammo. I doubt we're ever going to convince Jack Thompson that video games aren't the antichrist, but maybe I could find him another cause.

Remember those tickle-me-elmo dolls that came out a few years ago? There were many stories about adults - fine outstanding members of society, mind you, not the ghettoscum that's creating headlines about violence with GTA IV - being violent in their attempt to get a tickle-me-elmo for their kids. If a tickle-me-elmo can take a normally responsible, caring, loving parent and turn them into a foaming at the mouth, violent fucktard, then clearly we have a problem, Mr. Thompson. Sesame street is terrible for children! It's encouraging violence in their parents, their role models, and something must be done.

For the past two days it's been sweltering in my apartment. I don't get the whole "We're in North California so we don't need air conditioning" thing. It's been in the mid 80's. The mid freaking 80's. This may make me sound like a wuss, but let me remind you, I've got servers in my living room. While it's only 85 outside, it stays well in the 90's in my apartment until the middle of the night when things finally start to cool off.

I think I'm going to buy one of those window unit air conditioner units. I live on the second story, and I've never installed one of these things before. I can already play this disaster out in my head. I'm going to try to put it in the window, and it's going to fall two stories to meet its demise on the asphalt. This will not be good times. I'm willing to admit that I'm a fairly clumsy person. I have my moments of grace, but they are few and far between. Installing a window AC unit will not be graceful, I can assure you.

Until I get around to doing this, some of the servers are getting powered off. Both incubus and trollop have already been shut down. I thought about shutting down succubus, but that's my NAT server. I *could* let our SMC cable modem do the NAT for us, but that just seems so... unprofessional. Lame. Pedestrian? Whatever. All of my servers act as great heaters in the winter (P4 supermicros) , but this isn't so convenient for summer time. Mother nature, hello? April is not summer. Make the heat go away.

For those of you that have shells on incubus/succubus, you probably won't be able to access them until I get this AC unit installed, which won't be until the end of May. I've got too many expenses before then (BSDCan, Baycon, Dell XPS). I have to go furniture shopping in a couple of months when Igor moves out. All I own is a computer desk and a bed. I don't have any idea where I'm supposed to buy furniture around here. I am not buying it from Ikea. I wish the west coast had Rooms To Go. They may have had furniture that I'd label as throwaway, but it's better than Ikea and they had a neat delivery service. Any suggestions for good furniture stores in the south bay that deliver?

I was trying to explain why people should twitter to a group of geeks that don't live here, and I came to a sickening conclusion. I am turning into one of the Silicon Valley Borg. In light of this realization, here is my guide to becoming one of us (or rather, warning signs depending on how you see it).

1. Start reading Valleywag. It's a casual affair at first. You check it once every week or two. Maybe you only search for references to your employer. After a while, you add it to your RSS reader.
   
2. You start recognizing names. Names of people that no one cares about unless they also live in the valley. You may not have had a clue who Robert Scoble or iJustine was before, but now you're following them on...
3. Twitter. You can't adequately explain to anyone that doesn't use Twitter already why it's a good idea, but you can't help but create your own account. You start out only updating a few times from your web browser, but then you discover twhirl. Now you've got instant updates of Scoble, your friends, and...
4. Gizmodo, where you're scouring anything related to cell phones so you can figure out what's going to set you aside from all of the local iPhone wielding weenies. The iPhone is so trendy, it's untrendy. After all, you're watching Gizmodo and Valleywag for rumors as to when the 3G iPhone is going to be released. 60 days is what they are saying now. You're going to laugh at all the people with their 2G iPhones. Clearly, you will be superior as 2G is not nearly enough G's. You need those G's to send... uh... lots of text messages to update your twitter status! That is, until you start feeling dissatisfied with Twitter. Tweeting just isn't enough for you, anymore, so you create an account on...
   
5. Tumblr. You get confused about what you're supposed to be posting where, especially if you already have a blog entirely separate from all of this, so you try to post different content to each site until you run out of things to talk about entirely. In an attempt to drum up content that you think would be relevant to your valley peers, you sit on BART thinking about Mahalo (which, lets face it, no one really cares about), Yahoo!/Microsoft mergers, expensive escorts, and...
6. Facebook. As soon as you get home from your job which is probably at Google, since they seem to employ a good portion of the tech force here (let's hope you're not at Yahoo!), you start browsing jobs at Facebook, because you know it's the next big thing. You don't know how they are making money, but most people said the same of Google, too. How many people are driving around in expensive cars here due to getting on on the GOOG stock early on? Sadly, Google stock is starting to tank, so it's time to drop it like it's hot.
7. Update your twitter status, check to see if you have any new friends on Facebook, then go to Valleywag's happy hour. Pretend to recognize everyone there. Eventually, you will. That's when you should really start feeling scared. After enough time, you'll have forgotten that there is in fact a world outside of Silicon Valley. Don't feel bad - from what I remember, you won't be missing all that much.
   

I hate things that pop up, specifically on web pages. Not just pop-up advertising, but when you mouse over a link and then there's a little floating box that shows some "helpful" information, or maybe a miniaturized version of the page that is being linked to. It blocks the text I'm trying to read. I never click on anything in the floating box. I know how to open links in a new tab, thank you very much.

I'm an obsessive highlighter/clicker I click and drag and double click on random text as I read it. I don't know why. I hate this behavior in other people but I can't seem to stop myself from doing it. I'm noticing more and more blogs that actually do something when I double click on random text, like search for it. I hate those blogs. I never visit them again.

Is this the Web 2.0 that people keep telling me about, because it's really annoying and I want it to stop. 

Now that I've grinded my cooking skill for the past 6 months, I'm ready to re-enter the workforce on Monday. I've accepted a position at IronPort, which means I'm a Cisco employee. It's a 100% FreeBSD position. Hooray to not selling out at a Linux job! :)

I don't actually think any of my friends use twitter, but I created an account anyways. I've been so busy lately interviewing, finding a new place to live, and playing WoW that I don't really have the time (or more likely, energy) to blog long updates.

I've got a Blood Elf Hunter on Emerald Dream. It's true what they say - hunters are EZ-mode.

Igor and I are more or less over. There wasn't excessive drama, just irreconcilable differences. Note to self: never date a Russian ever again. Also, only date people that believe in deodorant. I always thought this was implied. Apparently, it's not.

All you guys living in the bay area that don't wear deodorant, this is for you: It's true, it doesn't get hot here. The most strenuous thing you do is type at 100wpm. You change your shirt daily. You might even shower daily. NONE OF THIS MATTERS. You still smell. It's not a manly smell, it's a gross smell. What is the purpose of this? Do you plan on getting the smell horrid enough that you can bury some chicks face in your pits, causing her to pass out so you can drag her home as some sort of fucked up mating ritual? You aren't a caveman. You're in IT. You're like the anti-caveman. You can't club a bear and drag it home for the woman to cook, so the least you can do is smell nice. Wear deodorant. Get some goddamn cologne. This is ridiculous.

I went to NANOG in SJC. Not the actual conference, but the after-parties. Four people played with my hair. It was very strange. Here are some photos.

I'm thinking of getting a miniature poodle, dying her to match my hair, and naming her Organic. I met some chick in Austin that did that for a living. I remember her telling me about a dog she dyed to look like My Little Pony. That's kind of awesome, in a slightly disturbing way.

There's an unfortunate stigma associated with IT recruiters. You can't even mention the word "recruiter" in a room full of geeks without half the population rolling their eyes. I've been optimistic, up until now.

Some recruiters don't care enough about the quality of their work to bother reading my resume in full; why else would I get so many emails about .NET positions? One recruiter even had the gall to tell me he knew I didn't fit any of the 10 positions (including full descriptions) below, but could I please forward it to any of my friends that might be interested? This email was 15 pages long. He wanted me to do his job for him and read through all of this stuff? Sorry, but no.

The job market in CA is nothing like what I was used to in GA. There wasn't really that much IT in GA, so you took what you could get. Here? It's the land of the plenty. You really can pick what you want to do and what kind of company you want to work for. There's a trade-off, though. The number of recruiters is directly proportional to the number of jobs.

Yes, there are a lot of quality recruiters out there. I've been lucky enough to deal with quite a few of them. They are having a hard time contacting me, however, since I've had to stop answering my phone. One particularly persistent recruiter called me 15 times in one day. Just this morning, a single recruiter called me 6 times in 3 minutes. He didn't leave a voicemail until the 6th call. I'm getting (on average) about 10 recruiters trying to talk to me about 15 jobs every day. I know this is really nothing to complain about, but sometimes I really don't want to answer the phone. One time I was on the phone with one recruiter, and another one kept calling and hitting my call-waiting for the entire conversation. Argh!

Were you one of those dicks that doesn't understand that one voicemail is adequate? Then take heed. I'm not the only one that's angry about this. You'd get a lot more respect if you followed a few simple rules.

Rule #1: Read the resume in full. Read the job requirements in full. If it isn't a match, stop here.

Rule #2: Email the candidate with a complete job description before attempting to call him/her. This is key. I hate it when recruiters try to describe a job to me over the phone. It's easier having a full list of requirements up front.

Rule #3: Wait 24 hours after sending the email before trying to call the candidate if you haven't yet received a response. If there is no answer, leave a voicemail.

Rule #4: Do not call over and over and over and over and over and over again. All cell phones have a 'Missed Calls' function. We can also tell how many times you've called. Patience is a virtue.

If you're one of the recruiters I've been dealing with and you haven't done these things, then rest assured, I'm not angry at you. I'm just angry at the people that are giving you a bad name.