TechnoMonk’s Travels

This last week involved two out-of-state interview trips: activity that is extremely exhausting! There’s just so little left of me that my blog-life is suffering tremendously. I apologize.

I appreciate it immensely that you keep checking back to see if there’s another new posting here. Yes, eventually, there always is.

The trip to Kentfield, California, last Friday seemed to unfold quite positively. I have a good feeling about the College of Marin and the possibilities of taking on a position there. Of course, with any job-search activity, the word to the wise is: expect the unexpected. Rarely does the process go entirely smoothly. I anxiously await news from the south.

I must mention: there was a glitch in the travel on Friday. My plan was to fly to San Francisco, take a shuttle up to Kentfield (north of the city, across the Golden Gate Bridge), then do the reverse process following the afternoon of interviewing. It all seemed so easy. (Well, it was to be a long day of travel and stress, but other than that…) The fly in the ointment turned out to be the shuttle service: an outfit called Marin Door to Door. They have a good, and confidence-inspiring, website and telephone-message system. When I called to book the reservation, the person on the phone seemed quite competent, knowledgeable, and accommodating. They called me the night before to confirm my ride from campus to the airport in the evening. (I had been instructed to call them upon my arrival at the airport for pickup.)

Ah, but when I did arrive at SFO, things started to totally unravel. They had typed in the wrong flight number for my flight, and although they had recorded the correct arrival time, they chose to believe their erroneous information regarding flight number and insisted that they weren’t expecting me until two hours later. When I patiently explained that the error was on their part, that I had indeed arrived exactly when I said I would, the gentleman (HA!) became quite agitated. This started a series of several contentious phone calls that lasted until I was finally picked up, almost exactly two hours later than I had requested. The process involved us shouting at each other over the phone at one point, including the flat-out admonition to me that I should be more careful about giving them the correct information when making a reservation!

The experience also involved a driver from the airport to campus that spoke no English. None. Consequently, I had very little confidence that I was going to end up in the right city, much less the specific campus I had requested. He was able to punch the college’s address into his GPS device (I think), but quickly got lost. Somehow, within minutes of us heading north on the freeway, we were off onto surface streets, turned around, and headed south toward San Jose. I know the way to San Jose, and it’s not in the direction of Kentfield! But could I communicate this to my driver? No way. All he could say was, “sorry, no Englais.”

Somehow, we made it. However, the entire scenario was repeated coming home as well, and involved, at this juncture, another company representative hanging up on me as I was calling to inquire about the status of my ride during my evening commute.

Next time: I’ll rent a car.

Twists & Turns

Round and round I go…where I’ll stop, nobody knows.

Because: it’s not over yet. The job hunt continues.

There has been a lot of activity on the job-search scene in recent days, but I’m still looking. I heard from the Oregon community college I’d been waiting on, receiving the rejection call last Thursday. It’s not anything to feel particularly upset over, though, since the comments I received during the call indicated that it simply was not a good match. Of course, where I am a good match is anybody’s guess!

The good news is that I keep getting the invitations to interview. So, in the near future I’ll be traveling to Vancouver, Washington; Kentfield, California; and Burlington, Vermont.

The emotional and physical toll this process takes is pretty amazing. I would certainly like to find someplace to land, but there’s no way to tell when that will happen.

I keep telling myself to trust the process. What else can I do?

Lack of Focus

Where is my head at these days? All over the place, it seems. I’ve been finding it difficult to find a focus, what with multiple areas of life all demanding my attention. I’ve been so scattered that even to sit down and compose a little blog entry has been an over-the-top challenge.

I guess I have to admit that my primary mission in life lately (given that I’ve returned to, and am maintaining, an acceptable level of health) is conducting my job search. It goes on and on and on…

For example, I interviewed at another Oregon community college just over two weeks ago. This happens to be a position and a place that, at least on the surface, feels like the perfect fit for me. I thought the interview day went quite well and had hoped to hear something (e.g., a job offer!) by now. No such luck. I received an email from the college’s VP a couple of days ago informing me that the search committee was “gathering more information” and that she hoped there would be a decision sometime in the next three weeks.

Holy Ambivalence, Batman! Three WEEKS more!

It sure has me wondering what’s up, up there!

For now, all I can do is continue with the process and, to the best of my ability, trust it. I had a phone interview with a college in the Northeast U.S. this morning, and have another one with a campus in the Southwest next week. I feel like a politician repeating his stump speech over and over and over again. I need to keep reminding myself no matter how familiar my stories are to me, that this next interview group has never heard them before.

Another thing constantly on my mind, that is when I’m not obsessing over the fact that I don’t know where I’m going to be working in the near future, is my photography. As you have learned, I have an entirely new primary camera body and lens these days and new software to go along with it. I’m trying to be patient and teach myself Nikon Capture NX, which actually seems to be going well. However, my patience with the other Nikon product, PictureProject, totally ran out some time back. I think that, basically, it’s pretty worthless. Fortunately, I found a replacement that I’m entirely delighted with, namely Photo Mechanic. This is an incredible piece of software that is going to make managing my ever-growing collection of digital photos much easier.

And, then there’s getting out of the house to actually take photographs. I’m continuing to make time for that, and though I’m tightly scheduled, it feels really good to be back “out there.”

Of course, I haven’t even mentioned that I still am required to show up at a real job every day and expected to make a difference. To the best of my ability, I’m attempting to do that. Just today we finished the first week of spring term, my last full academic term in this location…and it was intense. There were lots and lots of fires to put out, so I ran from one to the other as best I could. Whew, am I glad this week is over with!

Spring Break

This student was busily working away two whole days before the beginning of spring term. What is it they say about the early bird?

And, yes, today was the first day after Spring Break. Not that I really had one. A break that is. I’m still conserving my precious vacation time for much-anticipated interview trips.

However, I’m continuing to find opportunities to test out the new camera gear I’ve invested in. A trip to Eugene over the weekend yielded some colorful springtime shots, such as the one above, of the University of Oregon campus.

Photo Mania

You might recall that, just last month, I ’fessed up to my tendency to lust over some silly pieces of camera equipment. I subsequently admitted that I’d surrendered to temptation and acquired the Nikon D80 camera body.

Well, the disease (syndrome? affliction? addiction?) did not end there. Remember that I had expressed an interest in a new and very popular lens as well: the 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom-Nikkor? I had been on a waiting list at B & H Photovideo (in New York ) for about three months, and was pretty convinced that this particular lens was, indeed, a rare beast and I would not be seeing one anytime soon.

Well, except…of course…I took that trip to San Francisco recently.

Ah, yes. Within an hour of checking into my hotel on March 17, I was walking along Fisherman’s Wharf and visiting that (seemingly endless) line of gaudy electronics stores on Jefferson Street. The second shop I entered had one of these lenses in stock! Unheard of!

Yup. It’s now mine. In addition to this shot, see some more taken with this lens at my flickr site.