Anyone ever heard of Cognizant?

Sometime last week, I got a call out of nowhere for a position in Omaha, NE, with a company called Cognizant Technologies. I schedule an interview, and end up having a brief (15 minute) technical interview. I think it goes OK; I don't know the difference between Windows 2000 DNS and Windows 2003 DNS, but I remember all the roles within Active Directory for once.

Fast forward to Tuesday. I get another call out of nowhere, this time from a project manager with the same company, telling me that I've been "accepted" for the position. Accepted?!? I'm stunned, because this is NOT the way I pictured receiving a job offer. There's no specifics about salary or anything, but he wants to send me the background screening form and a drug test. Um, okay.

Later the same day, I get another call, this time from their HR person. He at least gives me a salary range, and goes over some of the benefits. They're willing to fully pay for relocation, which is nice, and the rest of the benefits match up pretty well with where I work now. However, at this point I still have no clue what they're expecting me to do. I've not met the staff, not spoken to my soon-to-be-manager. Way too much up in the air. So I start asking for specifics on the job itself, and he can't tell me anything other than, "You know, it's Windows systems administration."

This morning, I get another call, this time from someone local, but still not the manager at the site. He's at least able to tell me how many machines, whether or not there's an on-call rotation, some of the upcoming projects, and such. It's just maintaining hardware and OS, which I do now and have really been looking to expand. Still no details about the data center and such, so I finally break down and ask for a flight for my wife and I to Omaha, so my wife can check out houses and schools and I can visit the data center and meet my teammates. He says he'll get back to me.

So, is it just me, or is there a lot of "cart before horse" happening here? Am I right to feel kinda queasy about the job?

BTW, I got an e-mail yesterday from the manager for the job in St. Louis, and they have a couple of last-minute candidates, but I'm their top candidate so far. Then again, they wouldn't pay for my on-site interview, which seems kinda chintzy. re they going to be willing to pony up the cash come job offer time, or am I going to have to fight for every little dime?

Ugh, job hunting SUX!

Thank you Microsoft!

Thank you for strutting around with your big impressive software, thinking you're all big bad stuff, so hackers the world around want to find new and exciting ways to take over your OS's. Way to put a target on your backs, boys!

Thank you for opening two new security holes for every one you plug. Seriously, you guys need better stress testers.

Thank you for creating mass hysteria with your lousy out-of-cycle patch for the Server service, which of course is on EVERY Windows machine in our enterprise!

And finally, THANK YOU for releasing your critical patch on the day before our big Man Vs. Wild campout, so I get to make my two oldest boys sad by telling them that I can't take them to the campout because I have to apply patches ALL STINKIN' WEEKEND!!!

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/ms08-067.mspx

Get To Know Me!

01) Are you currently in a serious relationship? - Seventeen years serious enough for ya?

02) What was your dream growing up? - Surf all day, party all night. Um, that didn't so much work out, did it? ;)

03) What talent do you wish you had? – Songwriting. People who write music that touches the soul amaze me.

04) If I bought you a drink what would it be? – Fruit punch, please! ;)

05) Favorite vegetable? – Yellow onions, sauteed in olive oil. Y. U. M!

06) What was the last book you read? – The Book of Mormon, I read a chapter a day with the kiddies. BTW, have I mentioned that I'm LDS? :D

07) What zodiac sign are you? - Cancer/Leo cusp.

08) Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? - Not a one. Used to wear clip-on earrings when I was feeling wild until a girl ripped it off my ear. OW!

09) Worst Habit? – Overeating and under-exercising; it's still an uphill battle.

10) If you saw me walking down the street would you offer me a ride? – Sure, you seem nice enough.

11) What is your favorite sport? – Football, preferably college football. Long live Saturday!

12) Do you have a Pessimistic or Optimistic attitude? - Pessimistic. Sorry, it's true.

13) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me? – Stare at my shoes unless you initiated conversation.

14) Worst thing to ever happen to you? - Tie: 1) lost sister when she was 8, 2) lost father when I was 21, freshly returned from a mission and all.

15) Tell me one weird fact about you. – I have a brain filled with trivia and a pathologival need to share that trivia whenever possible.

16) Do you have any pets? – Nut the dog, and Jeffrey the betta fish.

17) What if I showed up at your house unexpectedly? – I'd be fine, because I love surprises. Melissa, OTOH, would have a conniption fit.

18) What was your first impression of me? – Dude, you listen to some weird wild music! (Sorry Sam.)

19) Do you think clowns are cute or scary? – Scary!!!

20) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be? – Learn how to smile in pictures without looking like a complete tool. Ugh.

21) Would you be my crime partner or my conscience? – Conscience, as the CoaMono crew can attest. :)

22) What color eyes do you have? – Blue

23) Ever been arrested? – Yup, for driving on a suspended license. Yeah, they dragged me into the pokey for that. Crazy, huh?

24) Bottle or can soda? – Bottle

25) If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it? – Buy a car, something that gets really good gas mileage. Then buy a good bike and let the car sit. :)

26) Favorite band to listen to when you're mad? – Ministry. YOU'VE RUN OUT OF LIES!!!

27) What's your favorite place to hang out at? – Erin's house. :D

28) Do you believe in ghosts? – Yes, I do.

29) Favorite thing to do in your spare time? – Spare time? What's that?!?

30) Do you swear a lot? – Amber thinks I do. ;P

31) Biggest pet peeve? – Knee-jerk people that fail to do research and fail to engage brain before engaging mouth.

32) In one word, how would you describe yourself? - Encumbered.

33) Do you believe/appreciate romance? – I believe in it, but sometimes wouldn't recognize it if it bit me in the tush. Ask Melissa.

34) Favourite and least favourite food? –Favorite: warm French bread; omigosh, I could eat a whole loaf without thinking about it. Least favorite: sauerkraut; BLEECH, even the look of it gives me the willies.

35) Do you believe in God? – Our Father in Heaven, Elohim, the one who created us, then created this planet upon which we try ourselves, and has prepared an eternal reward greater than anything we can imagine? THAT God? Why yes, yes I do. :D

36) Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you? – Looks like I just did, knock yerself out. :)

So why are you changing jobs?

Subtitle: Globalization Hits Home

You've probably heard of this poem before; if not, its history can be found here.

"When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out."

For years, IT companies have been sending jobs overseas. In the case of my current employer, they go to India. Now, management has been careful to tell us that they'd never send away our precious jobs, because they could never replace our precious skill set. I've never really bought it, but didn't really complain because it wasn't hitting home.

Well, BAM! It hit home this week. In our team meeting this past Thursday, we were all informed that our biggest customer is moving their equipment out of our data center, and into a data center where they can be supported by systems administrators from India. The team will be onsite next month to cross-train. Now, once again, I have been assured that MY job is safe, but there are others in my own team that will not be safe. One of our most outspoken UNIX admins even went so far as to blurt out, "So, do you want me to quit NOW?!?" Amen sister.

You know, in a way it's funny. I've been job-hunting for about three months now, and I've struggled to answer the question every potential employer asks when they look at my resume: "You've been at your current employer for a long time (16 years), why are you leaving now?" Now, I've got a really good answer.

Severe disappointment alert

Those of you that know me, or have read this before, know that I've been job hunting for a while now. Recently, I had been working for some time for a position in San Diego. I grew up in Orange County, so San Diego was a VERY enticing destination, even without e-family there. ;)

I had had an initial interview that went fairly well, but then had not heard anything for two weeks. Yesterday, out of the blue, I got a call from the HR person asking to set up a technical interview for this morning. He even went so far as to confess that he had offered the position to another person who had turned them down. Weird, but their loss was my gain, so yay!

Apologies to those non-techies reading this, but I think you'll get the gist without knowing all the gritty details. It's just extra flavor to those that are technical.

First, the technical contact calls two hours late, so I'm already on edge. Then he fires some questions at me related to command-line tools that I don't use, and was therefore unfamiliar. He asked me some Active Directory questions, which I think I was able to answer sufficiently. He asked me if I do some scripting, and then asked me a couple of questions that I couldn't answer, because I haven't managed to remember every possible WMI service provider.

When I write a VBscript, I spend a lot of time on MSDN looking up specific service providers so I get the verbiage right. I don't memorize all that. That would be like asking Amber to figure out possible interactions with two prescriptions without using any reference material.

Anyway, after 20 minutes, he was done, I was gutted, and I just knew that I wasn't getting the job. A call back to the recruiter 30 minutes later confirmed as much.

From now on though, I'm keeping my trap shut about the whats and wheres of my job serch henceforth, until the new job is located. It's too hard dealing with this garbage with just my family, without dragging the e-fam into this as well. :(

And since I had teased Todd about it, the job was supporting the game servers running Windows for Sony Online Entertainment. Argh! How much geek love would that have been?!?

And since I did some quick Google'ing after the interview:

You change an IP address from the command prompt by typing 'netsh interface ip set address [network name] [IP address] [subnet mask] [default gateway] [metric]'.
You stop a service on a remote system by typing 'sc \\[computer] stop [service]'.
The process ID would be found by returning the ProcessId value from WMI provider Win32_Process and searching on the Name value.
And you replace text using Replace([text file],[old text],[new text])
DUH!

:((