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I think later today I may go sit through United 93. I'm not sure how that one's going to play.

So, sigh. Back to working. It's hard to go back when you've been off, as I'm sure most of you can relate. I wish I was in the position Darin is in - he's going to bail on his job (which he absolutely detests) in the next month, and take about a year off to do things that matter to him. He can afford to do it, so I say, more power to him. I am freaking jealous.

Of course, I'd forgotten what an anxiety-ridden, depressing, sometimes soul-crushing week it can be - I was pretty much a morose wreck all weekend, and I spent all day in the apartment yesterday with the shades drawn, splayed on the sofa with the pups napping in my lap, watching Season 4 of Angel (a brooding show if there ever was one).

Of course, I realize how lucky I am. My search lasted a whole week - and there are people in this country who endure this for months without getting a bite. I'm grateful. And I'm getting a raise! Can't beat that. I start in a couple of weeks. For those of you interested in how that impacts the musical productivity, and more specifically the budget for the new Half Zaftig album, it looks to me that come June we'll be able to make our last tracking push and be mixing by mid-July. So... release sometime in September-ish? That's still summer, right? I said summer for the new album, that's makeable.

WHOOOSH. That is the sound of this big dope finally relaxing and feeling good about the forseeable future again. I was having nightmares about sleeping in dumpsters - ridiculous, I know. Maybe now I can go back to having no dreams at all.

You know, that Angel was a really good show in it's own right, once you get halfway into Season 1. As soon as Wesley Windham-Price shows up, everything came together. Good stuff.

I am loving the new Flaming Lips album. I've never bought any of their stuff before, but since they were getting so much press for this new one, and they'd been on my "To Check Out" list for so long, I finally bought the new album without hearing a note of it. The first track made me smile wider than any song has made me smile in many, many, moons, and the second track is almost as good. Then the record turns into a Pink Floyd album, but that's OK with me. I really, really like it. Good to know.

Which brings me back to all this interviewing crap: there's not one software job I've ever interviewed for that I thought I could not do the work involved. The main reason for that is I get to see the job descriptions before I speak to anyone, and I don't bother talking to people for jobs I don't think I know enough to do, even if they want to speak to me based on the resume.

I hate interviewing. I hate having to pretend I really care about these projects, or even this work. The truth is: the first person that doesn't seem like a complete ass that will pay my rate, who doesn't work in an office where the commute would be unreasonable, I'm gonna take the gig. I do this for a living. I don't wanna talk about career plans. You got a job needs doing? I can help with that. Your checks don't bounce? We're good.

I also hate being asked irrelevant questions. They are usually on "technical" topics, when they're trying to get me to prove I know what I say I know. I'm sympathetic - they don't want some total rube coming in, but that's the nice thing about hiring a contract worker: they'll know very soon if I suck, and if I do, they can fire me, no questions asked. But anyway, the inane questions. Here's the thing - knowing how to get work done, but not necessarily knowing the exact technical details behind what you're doing is the state that most developers I know are in. Some of them, yes, they are really "into" this stuff, so they read books about coding for fun, and so they know all about the where's, the what's, and the why-for's. I don't really give a shit, because the simple truth is, learning that stuff has never helped me get my work done. If I need to know that stuff, I do what every other developer I've ever worked with does: I hit Google, and I look it up. There is so much to know about software development, and so much of it changes so fast, that there's an awful lot of information out there that I keep on a "need to know" basis.

I also hate "resume miners." These are people that REALLY carefully go over every nuance of your resume, looking for things that don't match up. My resume has gotten so long that I've started leaving off a lot of my older work experience, because frankly most of that stuff isn't relevant to the jobs I do now. But there's always some joker that reads the introduction and says, "Well, you say here you've been developing for nine years, yet you only have epxerience listed here that goes back to 1999! What happened before then, HMMMMM?"

Stupid asshat.

There are some good opportunities popping up, some of which would be here in Seattle, too. I think I'll have a new gig sewn up before another week goes by. But I sure do hate this process. And what are blogs for if not to complain about petty bullshit? Right?

SIGH. This essay in Salon struck a chord with me today.

I replied that nothing would make me a happier fellow than to do that very thing - but there is the whole problem with there being a large continent between here and there - something that is increasingly expensive for an outfit such as ours to traverse. I suggested that if there only was in existence some sort of "Matter Transporter", so that we could simply "beam" ourselves over to Vermont instantly, we would be there post-haste.

Well, Mr. Gaito went to work. Here are the RESULTS.

Yes, sports fans - the time has come to get off my duff and get back to bringing in some more bacon. I had been content with the idea of wiling away the month of April the same way I dispensed with March, but that all went away after I spent part of yesterday afternoon getting my corporate taxes done for Q1/06. While there, I heard them working on my personal income taxes for 2005, and they said something that made my blood run cold: methinks I have a potentially very large Tax Bill Of Death heading my way.

I don't know this for sure yet, I haven't seen the final return. But I have a very bad feeling about this.

So, "pop" went my brief Bubble O' Happiness and Leisure - I updated the Monster resume yesterday and today I was inundated with phone calls from recruiters. I have my first interview scheduled for Thursday, and I expect more to materialize over the next week. The good news is that I'm very in demand, at least to be talked to - and there appear to be some good gigs on THIS side of the lake, so I might be able to dispense with most of the commute. That would be sweet.

I sure do hate interviewing, though.

I'll spend tomorrow reviewing the areas of C# nomenclature that I know I tend to get tongue-tied about when asked to scribble them on a white board. I won't do too much cramming, though - after all, it's not that I'm trying to learn stuff I don't know, I'm trying to figure out efficient ways of explaining that I know something to someone who will know enough to catch me if I screw up.

The big tax bill will unfortunately have a chilling effect on how much studio work I can get done on the new HZ album for the next month or so. That kinda blows. Oh well, it will give us a chance to get the final few tunes rehearsed.