April 23, 2001
11:04A
LYNN JOHNSON

For the past few days since my last entry, I have been Lynn Johnson and all that that implies. As this is such a clean and well-lit place with no room for sin (other than the sin of my site's not totally accessible), or shame (other than isn't it a shame this page isn't XHTML), or the untidyness of real life (other than I don't have a job and my career is evaporating), vagueness is required. Later I will purge on some deeply buried disconnected unlit webpage and be made whole again. Well, as whole as I'm gonna get.

I've acquired a deep appreciation for a pencil and a piece of paper. Never in my life have I been without my diary in moments of crisis. My writing has always seen me through absolutely anything. The past few days I have been without my diary. So desolate, so unnerving, I thought I would lose my mind unless I focused very very hard.

All I can say is that the next time that sense of foreboding strikes, I will set my butt down and not move an inch from that spot until it passes.

So LMichelle gets back in the web saddle today with her sharpened Dixon Ticonderoga and a clean clean sheet of paper by the keyboard, extremely humbled, hugely thankful, and fragilely hopeful while taking it one day at a time.

April 17, 2001
3:32P
MEDIUM HOPE

I've spent the day pounding the keyboards for a job. Floated a few more resumes, networked some, updated my resume some, all while trying to keep that positive outlook intact. But I can't stop this sense of foreboding inside. I hope I'm just over-reacting. But, hell, even the traffic is lighter and the media wonders if it's because of the layoffs.

Not helping is Dan's entry for today:

"I'm beginning to wonder, contrary to my musings yesterday, whether Silicon Valley is facing something considerably worse than expected. Three major factors are at work, and none of them is positive.

"First, the national economy seems to be heading for a recession... Second, the psychology has turned south in a profound way... Third, the energy situation is not getting any better... "

Guess I better get out the spurs and whip as the sex industry seems to be the only one making money.

I can't handle any more negativity today. Thank god I found a new shining light, Julie O'Neill and added her to fem•mass. I found this little charm while wandering around Joe's ageless pages. Ordinarily I don't add personal web sites that are mainly a blog or journal, but Julie shines. See her about page for more of Julie.

Pyra's Blogger teams up with Trellix.

A small slice of Well history.

April 16, 2001
2:17P
THE LINE

A nice agent asked if I would be willing to remove mention of my web site from my resume. It seems some potential employers take exception to the 'content' on my site. Since I have disconnected the past not-a-pretty-picture sections of my site and now have a fairly 'clean and well-lighted' content, I can only believe that the questionable content has to be my Stupid Penis Tricks.

I've always used my little guys as a litmus test when interviewing. If potential employers had a problem with such juvenile fluff, then I knew it was either too corporate for me or it wasn't the kind of place I'd want to work for anyway.

But now with job/contract/freelance opportunities few and far between at the moment, I feel my back against the wall. Web Ho or no?

I ended up saying no. She just thought she'd ask. And so I go on.

I'm in the process of putting the final HTML touches on the Anne and Cathy site redesign which will go live tomorrow. It will promote their new book, The Mother's Guide to Sex which is an excellent resource. But then they always write good stuff: The Woman's Guide to Sex on the Web, The New Good Vibrations Guide to Sex, and Sex Toy Tales. WooHoo! If only all clients could have as much class and professionalism and charm as these two ladies.

Of course, part of the QA process is to check ALL of the links:

Just to show you porn stars have a sense of humor.

Are you a top, a bottom, or just in the middle?

Marge Piercy (Woman on the Edge of Time; He, She, It; Gone to Soldiers) has a story in Susie Bright's Best American Erotica 2001.

From Clean Sheets, read Susannah's review of Still Doing It: Women & Men Over 60 Write About Their Sexuality. What??? You think only 20 or 30 somethings are the only ones having sex? Mu-haha!

From Hip Mama: Mama's New Tattoo. Women get tattoos for all kinds of reasons. When I felt that life had left enough of it's own marks on me (read c-section scar), I decided to leave one of my own.

Wyyrd-Boy has his own cyberCENSOR, "constantly protecting you from, well, everything".

Alright! Mary Anne's diary, on-going since December 1995.

The commoditization of sexuality and kink, Todd using his mouth organ.

Johan, of Johan's Guide to Aphrodisiacs, tells you how to curse in Swedish. Of course, the first place I head to are the sexual curses where Johan has thoughtfully provided .wav files so you can hear how to pronounce Kukjävel!.

(Well, all this gawking is really slowing down the QA process, but a couple of non-sexual notes...)

Speaking of Kukjävel:

Tech workers who bought in are left holding the tax bag. Same with incentive stock options (see also here). Here's a possible solution from Zoe Lofgren.

April 9, 2001
8:38A
KNEE-DEEP

With the lack of work available, I have been knee-deep in a site redesign for Anne and Cathy. Although I've been email pals with Anne for a couple of years now, I will finally be meeting both of these ladies for the first time for lunch in San Francisco today. Should be fun and nice break.

Have also been busy with Karen in Emeryville, a new acquaintance, working on a website proposal for a local chamber of commerce. This networking thing is nice. You get to meet people you wouldn't ordinarily meet; you get to learn things you might not have had the opportunity to learn otherwise.

re: Job Fairs. I went to BrassRing's 'career event' last week. Definitely not for the faint of heart. I had my 100 single sheet contact resumes, my newly designed business cards, my interview outfit, and went loaded for bear. What I got was a stifling wall-to-wall slam of people. I, who have claustrophobia like crazy, had to breathe in, breathe out, breathe in...I did manage to hang in there for about an hour and a half. I saw one Web Designer position at the Handspring booth, but the guy was too busy looking at the woman's tits next to me to really pay me any mind. The universal response I got when I asked each booth if they had any Web Designer positions was, "Go to our web site and see the list." Dang, I could've just stayed home and done that.

Here is my little list of links for today:

A guy with a thing about invisible women. I've never heard of this before.

The Last Page of the Internet - in case you wanted to know where it is.

Interview with Susie Bright on Beauty.

From Kat, the Female Authority: links. ;)

Sheep Cull. Don't worry. It's only Flash.

April 2, 2001
10:41A
GOOD-BYE TERRY

My friend, Terry, who had been in ICU for the past two months, passed away yesterday. Sad day. Terry joined our Dungeons & Dragons group in 1984 and was the instigator of some of the party's more audacious adventuring mishaps. Gonna miss you, bud. Will take good care of Leogan and Harley Noble Steed Davidson. Promise.

More bad news for the Bay Area...

Fuck this shit. It's bad enough, I, shy grrl that I am, have to go battle my way through BrassRing's cast of thousands cattle call today, I refuse to wallow the whole day in this fucked dotconomy...

Rugby finger-fiend banned for 12 weeks

Sys Admins have a sense of humor

Dillinger's johnson not 23 inches long. What about Jimi? This plaster caster would know.

Just discovered this blog, Librarian.net. Someone else who loves books. Yea!

March 28, 2001
3:15P
A DAY

After seeing Cameron's A Day in My Life, I was inspired to do my own A Day in the Life of An Unemployed Web Designer. A long page for a long day.

Yesterday, I asked the Silicon Valley Webgrrls if they thought job fairs like BrassRing's Career Event were they worth the effort (no rock unturned here). Overall the feedback was very positive.

Here are Andreas's excellent insiders tips for workin those job fairs. I can't wait to try them.

"Question: Should I go to the Job Fair next week? I've heard these events are like cattle calls. Some companies don't even have a hiring manager around if you should want to talk to them. Is it really worth going to these?

"I've worked a number of job fairs from the other side of the fence: I was one of the managers to whom you handed your resume.

"Here's how job fairs works.

"A company pays $15-20,000 per day to have a stand at the job fair. That's actually cheap, because if they can hire just two or three people at the job fair, they avoid paying recruiter fees, which are yet higher (often 20-30,000 per employee.) So companies have a VERY HIGH INCENTIVE to hire from the crowd at job fairs.

"However, the company cannot have all of the managers from all of the departments at the job fair. So the managers take three hour shifts (or so) and take turns to be at the company booth. Which means that if you're looking for an engineering job, the person at the booth may be in marketing, web services, etc. It's unlikely that the manager at the booth will be the appropriate one. You might get lucky and she'll be there, but don't count on it.

"But that doesn't matter. Neither you nor she is going to do a real job interview in a booth, crowded by thousands of people.

"The point for you is to identify potential employers, give them your resume, and contact them again.

"So... your strategy:

1. Bring 100 copies of your resume. More is better than not enough. If you have a multi-page resume, staple the sheets together and put your contact information at the top of every page. A better idea is to create an abbreviated, one-page version of your resume, list your tools and a short list of companies where you've worked, and conclude it with "For a full resume, send me an email at..." in large at the bottom.
2. Be sure that your contact info is on the resume, esp. your email. This includes your name, a telephone that has an answering machine, and your email address. We often saw resumes from people that had a name, but nothing more.
3. Get a haircut, wear a nice outfit (don't overdress) that is appropriate to your job category. Here's a secret: after you walk away from the booth, many managers give your resume a grade (A, B, C, and so on.) An A means "The person appears competent. Contact this one first." At the other end of the scale are the few nuts who always show up at public events. "Warning, Will Robinson!" So dress presentable and look competent.
4. After the job fair is over, HR will stack up the 500 or so resumes and sort them by category. They make copies, and give the appropriate resumes to the appropriate manager in each department. And of course, they rank them by grade. The manager starts at the top. So be by your phone. The first bird that gets the call will also get the worm.
5. To make it easier for HR to put you in the right category, put your category at the top of the resume. Under your name and contact, write a one line description of yourself: "C++ and Java engineer, 10 years experience" (or similar.)
6. Hand the resume to a person at the booth. Make sure they see it and they drop it into the box with all of the resumes.
7. Get a card from the company. Move on. Do not waste time with conversations at the booth. You want to cover as many appropriate booths as possible.
8. HR will be sorting resumes after the job fair, so wait three work days after the job fair and then contact the company. Find the manager for your job (ask the receptionist) and offer to send a resume. HR may have lost it, etc., so send him or her a new resume.
9. Meanwhile, go over the material you collected at the job fair. Check out their websites. Sort the companies by distance, size, and so on, and target the best ones first. Use any stock market website to check out the company's financial situation. Use PriceWaterhouseCooper's Moneytree website to check out the company's funding situation. Learn as much as you can about the company so when you call, you'll be knowledgeable about the company, their products, and their market.
10. The company really is looking for people. That's why they are paying $60,000 for three days and going through the hard work of getting the managers to go and stand for hours at a booth. So if you have a good resume and look competent, you'll have a very good chance of getting an interview.

"Conclusion

"Go. I strongly recommend it. We hired many people at job fairs. It's probably one of the best ways to get a job, asides from personal connections."

BTW here's the next Pink Slip Party. Thanks, Cathy!