Mark L. Van Name's Blog, page 136

On the road again: Portland, day 3

Though I logged a reasonable number of hours in the bed, I awoke quite tired.  I then proceeded to do an enormous amount of work, even by my working-all-the-time standards.

Ah, but in the evening I had the pleasure of seeing Totem, a new (to me) Cirque du Soleil show that's playing here in Portland, and that's enough to make any day magical.  The show was tremendous fun, beautiful and invigorating and magical, as Cirque shows tend to be.  I oohed and aahed, gasped, laughed, and over and over found myself uncharacteristically and unexpectedly smiling for no apparent reason.  I obviously recommend this show highly, and I feel quite fortunate to have gotten to see it. 

I had to work late into the night to make up for having taken a few hours away from work, but the show was worth the cost. 

On the road again: Portland, day 2

After eight wonderful hours in bed, I got to work feeling refreshed and ready to go.  That was a good thing, because aside from dinner work consumed the rest of the day until late in the evening Pacific time.

The dinner was a delightful combination of light and delicious salad and sushi from Bamboo Sushi and then heavy and sweet ice cream from Salt & Straw.  These two businesses sit side-by-side and provide a great combined dining experience.  I recommend both if you're in this area.

I'm out.

On the road again: Portland, day 1

165.  That's a lot of cookies, a huge number of donuts, way too many ounces of steak, a hefty price for a dinner bill, and in many contexts, rather a lot.

It is not, however, many minutes to spend in bed before a travel day.  Trust me:  That was my last night.  I tried thinking of that time as 165 minutes, because seeing it as less than three hours in the dark was even more depressing.

Regardless of how I chose to view this time, after I turned off the light, it passed, the alarm sounded, I took a quick shower, and the travel day commenced.  Many hours later, I emerged here in Portland, where the weather is stunning and the skies surprisingly clear. 

Work filled almost all of the time, but today's treat was dinner at Ava Genes, an excellent Italian place I've visited only once before.  Everything I tasted was delicious, with most dishes featuring a wonderful blend of gentle and strong flavors.  I recommend it highly.

Now, though, I am recommending myself to bed. 

One more tidbit about that possible new spoken-word show

Though it's not definite yet, as I mentioned in
If I do, the title of the show will be
Mr. Poor Choices II:  I Don't Understand
More about this later, assuming it happens.

What would your entrance music be?

Watching the UFC PPV tonight, I was struck, as always, by the odd choices of entrance music of many of the fighters.  I wondered why they chose the songs they did, whether they had to pay for this use of those songs (I assume so), what that cost, and so on.  What I most wondered, though, was what it would be like if we could all have entrance music announcing our arrival at our jobs, and what my song would be.

For big office buildings, entrance songs clearly wouldn't work, because loud music would be playing constantly during typical morning arrival times.  Worse, songs would have to play on top of one another.  In smaller companies, though, it just might be possible, though obviously disruptive. 

Screw the reality of it.  Let's get to the important question:  What song would each of us choose?

I like to think we could mix it up, choosing one tune one day and a different one the next, but even with that flexibility, most of us would settle into routines.  Maybe it would be "Bad To the Bone" on days you're feeling angry, or "Born To Run" when your life needed a little Bruce juice.  Some days, "Help" might be all we wished for.  "This Is Why We Fight" might perfectly sum up the mood on other days. 

I couldn't settle on a single song for myself, though all of the above obviously came to mind.

What would your entrance song be?

Friday night indulgence

Not too long ago, our most excellent local ice cream shop, The Parlour, started doing ice cream flights on occasional Friday nights.  This week, Vanessa, the ice cream genius who creates their wonderful treats, announced that this week's flight would feature strawberries:

Shortcake: cream biscuits, vanilla bean ice cream, macerated strawberries, cream.
Terrine: lemon curd ice cream layered with yellow cake and strawberry coulis.
Strawberry fool: strawberry compote, rosewater cream, ladyfingers.

We obviously had to go, so earlier tonight a group of us ordered and shared a bunch of these amazing trios.

Click an image to see a larger version.
We began this appetizer sharing with another appetizer, a bowl of Dulce du Leche Cheesecake ice cream.  Though too sweet for a few, most of us loved it.

After all these starter courses, we clearly had no choice but to seek a main meal.  With Bull City Burger and Brewery only a few blocks away, meat was in order.  We headed over and feasted on various types of burgers and hot dogs.  I ate some but not all of two amazing dogs.


Yes, one has pimento cheese and bacon, while the other has chili and slaw.

Not the healthiest Friday night, but an amazingly tasty one.

A bit of highway magic

As I was driving home from work in the fading sunlight, I noticed a man and a car on the side of an on-ramp I was about to pass.  The car sat empty.  The man sat beside the car.  In front of him was a drum kit.  He was playing the drums.

Magic. 

I wish I had been able to take a picture.

As luck would have it, others have indeed photographed this guy.  As you can read in this short article, this man has done this before, apparently multiple times.  He sits there for a simple and practical reason:  To avoid noise complaints from his neighbors while he practices his drums. 

I don't mind that his motivation is practical.  I still love what he's doing, and I consider it magic.  It made my day.

It's been that kind of day

Well, at least parts of today have been that kind of day; much of it has also been lovely.

When I hit those parts, though, I sometimes think of this Ramones song.



Two and a half minutes of three-chord rock that takes care of business.

No, of course, I don't really want to be sedated.  I'm not the kind of guy who deals with his issues with drugs--though if we count food as a drug, and I can make a case for doing that, then I do have this weakness. 

The song still hits home in my current mood.

It'll pass.  I'll work, and I'll listen to rock and roll, and this will pass.

When I find myself in another city

should I post an invitation here to blog readers for an informal get-together?  I've considered it, but I don't know if anyone reading this would be interested in such a thing. 

In upcoming weeks, I'll be in Portland, OR (next week) and Austin, TX (mid May).  Should I give this a try at one or both of those cities?

Comment or email me if you're interested.  If crickets respond, that'll be my answer.

On interviewing for a job: Contacting a company in email

I wrote in
For starters, make sure all your text is clear, to the point, grammatically correct, and free of spelling errors.  Note I said "all your text".  That's because you're writing not just a message body but also possibly a cover-letter attachment, a resume, and a Subject line.  I have seen many an error on the Subject line, and those errors are sure to leave exactly the impression you don't want.

You can avoid many of these errors through a simple trick:  compose the entire message, including the Subject line, in Word, and turn on its grammar and spelling checkers.  Those tools are far from perfect, but they will at least stop a lot of the most obvious errors. 

You should make sure you customize the content of everything you send to the particular application you're making.  Yes, that is a lot of work, but the whole process takes effort, so get over it and do the work.  Nothing will make you look like someone who doesn't give a damn quite as much as a message that refers to a job from another company's ad--or even that other company; yes, I have received such messages. 

Instead, state clearly and in brief why you want this particular job at this particular company, and then why you think you'd be great at it.  If you're a hard worker committed to learning and improving, say so.  You might think everyone is and everyone would say so, but you'd be wrong on both counts. 

I'm not going to spend time going into resumes, because you can easily find plenty of information on how to compose them, except to make these two points:  list your experience in reverse chronological order, from most recent job to first, and keep it short.  I've been working full-time for decades, and I've had a lot of jobs, and my default resume fits on one page. 

If everything I've said sounds to you like a basic tidbit that everyone should know, I agree.  I'm always amazed, though, at how many first email messages fail to obey these most basic guidelines--and at how many job opportunities those errors cost people.