A geek, gamer, professional MacGyver, social tech hand-holder, and occasional blogger.
You can contact me via email at tammy @ professionalmacgyver dot com.
At the encouragement of a coworker, I engaged in lunchtime tourism in downtown Cleveland again. This time, my victim subject is the kinetic sculpture, Triple L Excentric Gyratory III, by George Rickey outside of PNC Center. Sometimes, it looks like an enormous steel reindeer. Other times, it simply reminds me of giant Ls.
Working in downtown Cleveland is an adventure. I’ll turn a corner and see something amazing that begs for a photograph. On beautiful days like today, I want to haul out my camera during lunch and wander around like a tourist. As we walked by the Federal Reserve, I compromised and snapped a picture with my phone.
There are a lot of people looking for jobs. A lot of them are looking for advice and trying to find ways to get noticed. Some of them have been jobhunting for quite a while.
There are smart people sharing solid advice about job seeking. It isn’t one-size-fits-all. If it doesn’t fit, don’t force it. Take what you need, be thankful, and move on.
There are other people sharing advice about job hunting. Very little of their advice is good. Be cautious. Be smart. Be cynical. Ask questions. Use your best judgment.
There are people who don’t have your best interest at heart when offering advice and help. Look out for them. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Be wary.
There are people who will play on your insecurities, feelings of confusion, desperation, and hope. Don’t trust them.
There are people who want to reduce you to nothing more than a job seeker. It’s not about you; it’s about them. They need you to need them. You’re more than that. Don’t forget.
There are genuine, good-hearted, and trustworthy people who do want to help you. They stand out in the crowd because they truly want you to succeed. It’s about more than just hearing themselves talk; they listen. They want you to find a job you will love and a company that will love you for who you really are, not some persona developed solely for the hunt. They want to see you at your best.
Don’t get overwhelmed.
Be true to yourself. Be sure of yourself, your abilities, and what you have to offer. Listen to good advice. Ignore the bad and the irrelevant. Don’t lose yourself in the process.
After two weekends of conferences in a row, life is starting to settle down a bit. We didn’t actually get back until Monday morning. My suitcase is still partially packed and laundry needs done, but life is mostly restored to a relatively comfortable pace.
I had delicious chicken curry and kothe (essentially a very yummy fried dumpling) for dinner from Highland Cafe and Bakery (oddly enough, neither appear on their menu online). The suitcase and laundry will be handled. I will teach the cat how to do housework, never fear. He’ll eventually pull his weight. It’s just that right now he’s napping and cannot be disturbed.
Speaking of cats, lolcats specifically, Matt and I drove to Chicago last weekend for Social DevCamp Chicago. After my amazing She’s Geeky experience, both professionally and personally, I had extremely high hopes for the weekend.
In some ways, my expectations were met. The keynotes were amazing – Chris Messina (Google) on pop computing, being a webinist, and the ‘death’ of the web; Andrew Mason (Groupon) on product development and humility; and Ben Huh (Cheezburger Network) on success, agility, and Potato Head Development (interchangeable pieces such that if one things break, no one dies). Several of the other sessions were equally excellent and left me with plenty food for thought and useful takeaways.
What the conference lacked was exactly where She’s Geeky excelled. Social DevCamp was more of a traditional conference complete with the anonymity of being in a large group, 
minimal personal interaction, and a didactic style. It wasn’t about learning from each other; it was about learning from an “expert.”
The conference certainly didn’t lack in experts and many of the presenters were certainly more than worth the price of admission, but as I learned at She’s Geeky, there’s something special about learning from each other in a group where everyone is on equal footing. It builds confidence, knowledge, and camaraderie in a way that doesn’t happen in a speaker/audience session.
With that said, I am glad I went. The keynotes were intellectually stimulating and inspiring. Chris really made me think about how I learned about the internet and honestly, how I learned to build websites. We are not the only ones who got started with html using View Source. With so many layers, proprietary parts, and other complexities, you just can’t learn that way anymore. The web has been “dumbed down” to be simple and easily accessible, but in doing so, it’s no longer, well, accessible (e.g. view source in Chrome now appears under Developer Tools instead of under View). It’s a tricky balance. It used to be that not everyone even had access to the web, but now, nearly everyone can be on the web, but could they learn how to build their own site, understand how the web works, and really become part of the group building new, important content if their access is solely through couch computing – apps, iPads, Kindles, etc?
Chris is passionate about keeping the web open to everyone and, somewhat jokingly, calls himself as a ‘webinist’ – a web activist. I like it. I think he should start a movement.
Andrew was funny, humble, and smart. He talked about not sitting on your laurels and really building for and talking to your users, not just marketers or developers. Perhaps most poignantly, he talked about how small victories have a much greater impact on team happiness than one big win – lots of small releases vs. one really big one.
Ben was brilliant and absolutely hilarious. His lolcat and Fail-peppered talk was smart and funny. Rather than just grinning at funny kittys, graphs, and human stupidity, it made me look at their network of sites as a viable, profitable, smart business venture. The business model and execution are just plain impressive – less than $2,000 and 2 hours to put up an entirely new site. Eighty percent of the sites they put up are profitable.
All in all, the weekend was good and definitely an enjoyable learning experience. The drive to and from Chicago was long – particularly since the drive home extended itself by nearly 3 hours thanks to Chicago traffic. Would I do it again? Yes, but I’d also take off the following Monday.
And now, I’m going to go have a few bites of the delicious chocolate cake that made its way home with me. Either that or I’ll save it to eat with my tasty leftovers tomorrow for lunch. I haven’t decided yet.
p.s. If you’re interested, several of the slide decks from Social DevCamp Chicago are available here on SlideShare.
I’ve spent the past few hours unpacking wedding presents, including putting together and filling a new spice rack. It has the usual culprits: cinnamon, garlic salt, oregano, parsley, mustard seed… I have used mustard seed exactly zero times in my life, but, for some reason, it always shows up. I blame the Bible.
So, in honor of the new spice rack, I started thinking (inspired further, of course, by GraphJam):
If my life depended on identifying spices I own by taste, I’d die. I can identify some by smell (maybe). I couldn’t describe them to you or actually tell you what they do or rather, are supposed to do to food, “Salt good. Too much pepper bad. Garlic good. Too much salt bad.”
Some spices I started using because I stumbled on them in a recipe who knows when for who knows what. Other spices, I use out of habit, such as always putting oregano, parsley, basil, and garlic in spaghetti sauce. I learned it that way and it works. I’ve never questioned it.
Some spices in my cupboard are a mystery. Turmeric. What’s it do? It turns things yellow. What’s it taste like? It turns things yellow. It goes in curries. Curries are often yellow.
Yes, I’m acknowledging my ignorance. The sad thing is I really do like to cook and I like to imagine that I know what I’m doing sometimes. I think I’ll spend some time with my cookbooks and hold off on the trips to Penzey’s for six different kinds of pepper until I get my bearings.
Over the few days, staff at the Red Lion (our wedding venue) have been a bit overwhelmed. Given the sudden absence of the primary (and only legal) entrance to their property, it isn’t terribly surprising. However, plenty of individuals have taken the opportunity to help out and provide unexpected generosity and kindness.
As I’ve posted elsewhere, the brides for this weekend have had to relocate and the Red Lion stands to lost $30,000 in business from lost weddings alone. Of course, bridezilla comes to mind when sudden last minute changes in wedding plans occur, not to mention changes as sweeping as having to suddenly relocate your wedding. 9News.com and Colorado Daily have covered some of the gracious (and profoundly unlucky) couples impacted by the washed away bridge. What the Colorado Daily article doesn’t mention is the graciousness and generosity that both the Red Lion and the couples are experiencing. Wedding planners, venues, and customers pulling together to relocate weddings, help pay for the bridge, and get the bridge rebuilt.
When I spoke to Tina the day after the bridge went kablooey, she was stressed and overwhelmed, but she had a plan to make the weekend weddings happen. While ultimately she was not permitted to use the back road to shuttle people in for the weddings, she was committing to making sure those couples still had the weddings of their dreams (despite Mother Nature’s contribution). Like other brides, I called to check in and ask to be kept in the loop on developments. I also offered up the idea of a temporary bridge and told her I would happily pay my part. From Tina’s comments in the article, I have a feeling that other brides also offered up support and optimism.
A washed out bridge is an act of God. Finding ways to express kindness, support, graciousness, and generosity in the aftermath is the essence of humanity. It’s life-affirming to see how people have truly risen to the occasion, just like the swollen waters of Boulder Creek that caused it all to happen in the first place.
Now that I’m not laughing hysterically and have had a night of sleep, let’s talk about the current wedding venue situation. Red Lion Restaurant sits right beside Boulder Creek. As I mentioned in my previous post, the bridge connecting the property to the highway was washed out. The unseasonably warm temperatures and subsequent rapid snow melt caused the creek to swell. When the bridge collapsed, the rubble blocked the creek to the point that a Flash Flood warning went out. The bridge remnants are now cleared from the creek, but the giant hole in the bridge remains.
There is evidently a rather treacherous back road to the property, but Boulder Open Space & Mountain Parks has limited the unpaved (and steep) back road to residents, contractors, and emergency vehicles. So, as it stands right now, unless my wedding dress was made by Speedo or transforms into a pontoon, we may have a problem.
My immediate plan is to call the onsite wedding coordinator. I’m sure she’s overwhelmed by panicky brides at the moment. I’m not planning on panicking about the situation. There are plenty of eventualities one can accommodate, but a collapsed bridge really is not one of them. I’ve been fretting a bit that I had forgotten something, but a bridge isn’t on anyone’s wedding prep list.
Now, I’m going to go to work, wait until Colorado business hours begin, and call a very overwhelmed wedding coordinator.
I’m going to need some wings since THERE’S NO LONGER A BRIDGE TO OUR WEDDING VENUE. *headdesk*
There is not supposed to be a giant hole in the bridge. Bridge does not equal donut.
Somehow, I don’t think the problem will be solved in less than 11 days.
We’ve gotten nearly everything wrapped up for the wedding and hopefully, we’re done bleeding money for awhile. Oof.
Card Box – Similar to the guest book, I just wasn’t sold with the easily available options and had postponed getting anything until I stumbled on a Wedding Card Birdhouse on etsy. It’s personalized and comes with one roof for the wedding (with a hole for cards) and another lid for the birds! Extremely cute and clever. I’m excited about it.Now we need to pack for a week for pre-wedding, the wedding, and a week of honeymoon, as well as making sure the apartment is in a reasonable state. Somewhere in there, we need to spend quality time with the cat. Regardless of how much quality time we get in, he’s still going to make us pay when we return. I have no doubt in my mind.
Really, that’s the bulk of it. We need to finish our pre-cruise registration bits and print off or boarding passes and luggage tags, but hopefully, that’s by far the most complicated thing we have left to do. I’m really, really looking forward to the honeymoon, if for no reason other than we can both get some much needed rest.
*Just as an aside, prior to our setting up our registry, I’d never shopped at Bloomingdale’s but their customer service throughout our wedding planning have definitely won my business. They are one of the few registries that has a built in Thank You manager, as well as excellent service in person, including useful (and very few) phone calls (as opposed to annoyances).
For purpose of keeping myself organized, might as well put this out there:
