Undersold

Had the chat with the HR chica. We did a little dance through my resume, but I knew from the beginning of the call that she was out to try to figure out what I wantes to get paid. Ad it was also clear that as she looked at my resume, it was more substantive than what she'd expected, given the role they were about to offer me.

She was talking to me about a role title wise which was way too junior for me, and not the role I thought 'd been interviewing for. She tried to get me to name my range. I didn't, and asked what they were thinking of for that role. When she relented, the number she quoted was a little over half my current salary.

So I let her know that it was well below what I was making currently, and that maybe I'd failed to represent accurately who I was and what I was capable of doing for the firm. In other words, "It's all my fault that you have no idea how awesome I am and how insulting that offer was".

She backed off with the usual "Oh, no, we were all really impressed" BS. Maybe, but clearly not so impressed that you'd still consider coming at me with something I'd certainly reject.

It's good. I've learned that I need to sell myself better. Probably need to fix the resume, and re-think my positioning in conversations. And it's good. If they had made me a compelling offer, I'd have not felt ready to say yes to it because I'm just starting to look. So it's all for the best.

PR, bitches!

I went 36:50.7 for 10k tonight at the boat house. It's the fastest I've ever done 10k since college. I missed my college PR by 2 seconds.

Scary thing: I could have gone even faster. I'll go at it again next week.

If I'm this fast at the beginning of winter training, I'll be damn scary when it's all over.

Dumped by the HR chica?

I've heard no word from the HR chica who left me the perky message. Part of me wants to call and check in, just in case she still thinks the ball is in my court, and part of me wants to wait in a state of demonstrated indifference. I don't want to seem too desperate before potential salary negotiation begins.

My brothers begin arriving at my place tonight. Two found themselves situated to be with me at the same time, and the third opted to come out, too. We'll have the weekend together.

K has met the younger two, but not my next youngest brother. She's been extra sweet and helpful in preparing for their arrival.

Pulling and pontificating

My 20 min test went well. I shaved a few tenths of a second off my split from my previous best this season, which had been my goal. 1:47.6 average, which is okay, but still far from where I'd like to be. Still, it's a good thing. I paced it well, nearly perfect negative splits, and my heart rate was right where I'd hope for it to be.

I think I'm taking on the 10K next. I think I can break 37 minutes soon, if not right now. That wouldn't be a record for me, but it would be my best this season.

On the news: It's become clear to me how impossible the Iraq situation is. In the same article, we had Iraqis both blaming the US for not providing enough protection, and then also being irked that the US is there at all. We can't both do more and do less. I'm just fearful that things will continue to suck, and that the new Democratic congress will get hit with the blame. It's brilliant strategy from Bush: Make like you'll do what congress asks, then, when things continue to be a disaster, blame congress. It's just stupid that the borderline ethnic civil war that's unfolding hadn't been anticipated. I've been against this invasion from the outset.

Yet pulling out is the wrong thing to do. I think we need to do more before we do less. So I disagree with the Democrats' plans for a "change in direction" which translates to "leaving ASAP".

On the NYC shooting: 50 shots sure does seem excessive, especially if one of the officers did, as news accounts suggest, reload to keep firing. Yet I'm disturbed by the tone that folks like Sharpton are taking. It's hard to say the shooting was racially motivated when 2 of the 5 cops were black, and 1 was Hispanic. It's also hard to say the guys who got shot were totally blameless. Those who hang out at a strip club being investigated for drugs and prostitution at 4am and get into it with other folks may just get their asses shot. That exact same night could have ended with them getting shot by someone other than the cops, but then it would be an entirely different story about senseless inner city violence, not how cops hate black people. So yeah, the cops were probably out of line. But the guys who got shot weren't blameless.

Working it

I did 3 x 20 minutes tonight at the boat house with a few teammates. I knew I had done that workout at a 1:54/ 500m pace a few days before my best 20 minute test this season. I have another 20 min test on Tuesday, and I'd like to improve on my previous best this season. So I went after the 1:54 mark to see how I was doing.

I made the 1:54 mark, at a low stroke rating and with heart rates that were under control. So I may have to go for it on Tuesday. I'll eat well on Monday, and get some rest. I haven't done enough sprint work, and I know from my log that the difference between good pieces and great ones for me has been being able to shift gears and sprint at the end of a piece.

I've had a delightful time with K this weekend. After a good chat with a friend who reminded me that I'm lucky to have someone with whom I've got such compatibility, I've relaxed a bit. She is pretty amazing, and I love the way we relate to each other. So I'm going to go see her tonight. I miss her.

And she'll soon be meeting most of my friends from business school. Some holiday parties loom, and we're going. And there's a piece of me that has kept my life compartmentalized and my classmates ignorant of my love life because I wanted to be seen as still "available" or at least didn't want to have to explain my love life to folks. But I'm ready to let that go, and let my friends meet K. I think my friends get to know me better by meeting her and knowing the kind of person I like, and she gets to know me better by meeting all these folks that I care for and enjoy so much. I'll continue to decompartmentalize my life.

Withdrawal

Thanksgiving with K and her mom and aunt/cousin was fine. The food was great. Our post dinner "nap," during which we slept very little, was also great.

I got up this morning before 6 to return to Marin to row. The row was okay, but not super. I put in 30 minutes on the erg afterwards to rack up some meters. Every year, Concept2 posts the holiday challenge for 100,000 or 200,000 meters on the erg between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And every year I shoot for 200K. And every year I get to about 160K. Mostly because I don't erg every day; I opt to row. But our on-water practices don't make me faster. So this year I will erg.

It was below 40 this morning, frost on the dock. Nippy. My apartment, where I'd left the heat off, was a meat locker when I finally got home.

I've been here all day ever since, staring down tax stuff I don't want to do, getting that antsyness I get when I'm procrastinating. I itch to do deeply exciting things instead of the deeply boring thing I'm working on. It's been hard not to give in to the impulses today.

K invited me to spend more time with her and her mom. They were in Marin, and are going out for Indian food tonight. Her mom's nice and fun and all. I'm just afraid of getting close to family. I still have a lot of "Whoa, when did this get serious? How the hell did I get here? What happened to dating around and having fun?" moments. Plus I'm an introvert, and extended time with strangers drains me. I need to retreat and re-charge.

So I'm home.

I hate my job

But I got a call back from the interview I went on last week.

Just a cryptic and perky message from a woman clearly in HR. We played phone tag. She's it.

It's hard to tell how to read the perkiness: Is this good news? Or will it be a semi-mall-speak rendition of: "Hi! Omigod it's so great to talk to you! We just think that you're so awesome! And we'd really love to hire you! But we're not going to! But we'll call you some time!"

Walking back to work after picking up my lunch, I grumbled to myself, worrying I might just take the job, even if I wasn't excited about it, just to stick it to my current employer. Teach them to undervalue me. I can't afford another career culdesac move. So that would be bad. I am curious to know what they'll offer me. I felt the over-sweet voice mail from HR chica could have been to butter me up to divulge digits in the salary discussion. I don't plan to spill any beans.

But it could turn out to be a great move for me, and I could find myself in a dream scenario of being able to quit job A and take time off before starting job B.

Or they could be calling to give me a cheerful dumping. We'll see.

Fateful choices

As of 8:05 this morning, I had put in more than 36,000 meters on the erg in the prior 14 hours. I did 90 minutes last night at heart rate 135-140, and then an hour on the erg with a teammate after on the water practice this morning.

I feel great, but I think part of the fatigue set me up to find myself in circumstances I knew could happen, and had sought to prevent: After showering at the boat house this morning, I rummaged through my backpack of clothes to realize that I had remembered to pack everything I needed, as usual, except one critical item: Underwear.

In the past, I had designated a pair to be permanently located in my backpack, as the emergency back-up undies. In case of forgetfulness or bad packing, wear these. But I'd taken them out.

Had I only been on the water that morning, it wouldn't have been that big a deal. We didn't get splashed or rained on, and I hadn't sweat too hard. I'd recycle.

But I had just done 60 minutes on the erg, and on a scale from "dry" to "soaked", everything I had been wearing was "inundated". The erg makes you sweat. A lot.

I stood alone in the locker room, naked. I looked at the undies. I looked at my jeans.

I tried on the jeans.

Not too scratchy. Careful not to catch anything in a zipper. Seemed to work. I went with it.

And thus, today, due to my own negligence, profound sweating, and a desire not to wear sopping undies all day, I'm going commando.

I'm going to text K to inform her of my lack-o-underwear situation. She'll at least get a laugh. She may demand a nooner.

Frustration & exhaustion

I rowed my last races of the season today.

In my rowing career up until last weekend, I'd only rowed one head race on any given day. 3 miles all out is enough for one day. The last two weekends I've gone twice.

The first race is fine and fun and hard and challenging. But it's the second that leaves me well aware that the biceps, every muscle in my back, and my quads and glutes did a lot of work. Which, I'm realizing, is a welcome sensation, because it makes me so happy just to take a shower, or to eat, or to get in bed and snuggle in. Exhaustion makes one appreciate the little things in life.

My races were both frustrating. My men's 8+ race was with a great crew. 4 of the 8 of us were in my boat that won in San Diego. One of my favorite teammates, who I describe to others as sort of the Shao-Lin monk of rowing, opted to jump in. He's intense, of few words, and, like Yoda in Episode II, capable of shifting from quiet and serene into precisely controlled violence when he's got an oar in his hand. Man can move boats.

Our start was awesome, 32, settling to a 30, hitting splits on the stroke coach in the 1:20's for a few brief moments before settling down to cruise at 1:35 splits.

The thing I like about head races is that strategy and tactics matter. Good coxswains can win you a race by steering a great course. And this was about as Formula 1 as head race courses come. Many sharp turns. And 8's are meant to go very fast in a straight line.

The problem was that our coxswain steered a rather mediocre course. He had us off the course, over the buoy line at one point without any reason. Then when we caught my team's older 8+ in front of us, who steered wide on a bad turn, we ended up steering even wider, and going from 3 seats of overlap to a length and a half down. And taking three buoys. We eventually clawed our way back to even, and then ahead by the end. But the damage was done.

Which is too bad, because my crew was very good. Very stable boat, very powerful and together, very conscientious of being sharp and delicate. And a racing crew. No one held back.

In my mixed race, we again started brilliantly. Last week we took second, and missed first by seven seconds when the same coxswain, again, had put us on the outside of this enormous turn for about 2000 meters. The crew that won last week was behind us today, and younger than my boat. We held them off for the first half of the race, rowing a 30 and holding 1:39 splits. Damn fast. But then, on a tight turn, our cox lost the inside, and the crew behind us came through.

And then someone in my boat stopped pulling. The splits came up to 1:49, and even 1:50's. I had to shift the rate down to a 28 just to get us on a 1:47 pace.

I was pissed. Yes, the women in my boat had just finished their prior race, so I know it was going to be hard on them with near zero recovery time. But you just don't give up. There are 8 other people in the boat. You owe it to them to push as hard as you can. I sure hurt, and I went for it. My heart rate was over 180 for almost the entire race. I can usually only handle being that high for 7-8 minutes. Not 17. But I did it.

After the race, the woman in 5 seat admitted she hit the wall at the half way mark. Grrr. At least she admitted it. Just sucked for the rest of us to drag her ass across the finish line.

My team didn't do well. I want us to be the dominating club on the West, and we placed well, but didn't win many of the races I wanted us to win. So tomorrow I'm going to the boat house in the morning, and beginning my erg training for next spring. Time to do the work to be fast.

We fear change

That's me.

It's why folks take me for conservative. I steer a rather straight course in life. I dress like the MBA that I am. And as much as I crave adventure, I'm afraid of new stuff. Particularly if it's something new and social. I imagine it going horribly, horribly wrong. And even if the odds of the worst case coming true are slim, just the mere possibility of it is enough to turn me off.

(0.00000002%) x (infinity) = infinity. A slight chance of big emotional pain and I run.

And any time K, who's much more adventurous than I, wants to go do something adventurous with me, I 1) agree, 2) get excited, then, as the date approaches, 3) freak out. I'm afraid things will be terrible and irreperable harm will be done. I cause tumult. Then I feel better, and 4) do it and have a great time. Hippie camp. Burning man.

I wish I could be more adventurous and carefree. The fact is, I'm always going to be the one who sees everything that could go wrong. It became clear to me in my entrepreneurship class: I'm never going to be the one who starts the company, because I'll be aware of the low odds of success, and all the things that can get in the way of making it. And then there's all that losing all your money stuff. I'd make an great employee number 5: "Given where we're at, how do we keep going without blowing up?" I can help with that. Just give me some reliable income.

I wish I could be more experimental and free and fearless. But I'm cautious and conservative. I'm a sensitive boy, my feelings get hurt easily. Yes, if I never take chances, nothing bad or good will ever happen to me. But my internal calculus weights avoiding bad much higher than gaining good. And if I can avoid or minimize bad feelings, I do it. Any means necessary, I'll escape from big bad feelings. Including causing small bad feelings.

I wish I wasn't this way, but I am.

And sometimes it means my life is boring and I don't have much fun. But I hurt less.

What I say, what I mean

This week my coach has been humoring some of the older oarsmen on my team and trying an experiment: Taking the oldest guys and putting them in a boat together, to see if, after the age adjustment, they are, in fact, our fastest boat. They've been grumbling that they don't make the top 8.

I am far from one of the old ones. Which means I've been in the boat of our youngest, strongest, best boat movers. Fine with me.

At practice we do long 8-10 minute pieces at 28 strokes per minute. A fair test for relative boat speed.

Coach sends the older 8+, makes us wait the age adjustment difference, then sends us after them. If we catch them, we've made up the age handicap.

Yesterday we were faster than they were, but short of our potential.

Today, one of the oarsmen on the team who is younger, and in my mind, more full of himself than he should be, was missing. And my boat flew. We made up the 30 second margin we needed on the older boat, and then moved out by another 30 seconds by the end of the piece.

And my teammates felt the difference. I moved from stroke yesterday to 4 seat today, taking the place of my mouthy teammate. And every guy in the boat rowing behind me told me after practice they felt I made a huge difference.

I say the polite thing. That he's just a few years out of college and hasn't made the transition to club rowing which requires a greater flexibility in style. Which is true. But what I mean is that he rows wrong, thinks he's right, won't change, and as a result, slows boats down.

He's the only guy on my team who gets on my nerves. Guys with 8 times the bragging rights he has also have 8 times the humility. I want to seat race him, let him see how much I kick his ass, see how I'm not mouthy about it, and hope he gets the hint: Shut up, pull, adapt, learn.

Coach did note that our 8+ this morning was one of the fastest lineups he's seen all year. He thought about it and realized we were very much like my 8+ that won in San Diego. Only three of us were in that boat, but, yeah, we were screaming fast today.

More Burning Man Art

This is what it was




And this was what I saw in it.

Infidelity

I had a job interview this morning. I told my current job I had a "dentist appointment".

The interview went ok, and I'm not sure I'll take the job if offered or not.

I took some smug satisfaction in running around behind my employer's back. Felt like I was in the process of teaching them a lesson, teaching them not to ignore my requests for change. To value me more. It felt like the interview itself was an end, not a means, for me. That I just wanted to express my discontent and prove to myself that other people would want me.

I'll be curious to see if I get an offer, and to see what I'm offered. I'd like to sense my market worth.

I'm not sure I'd like some of the work. Helping a client figure out how to better direct market home equity loans is not very exciting. There's a difference between what I could do and what I want to do, work-wise. I want to find something I want to do. Not all of their work is dull, but I'd very much want to be sure I'll be on projects I like.

Morning tumult

Yesterday morning upon disembarking from the ferry I noticed sirens, police cars, and fire engines heading onto the ferry piers. A small crowd was peering over the railing into the water.

My first thought was "a corpse". I'd heard tales of the Columbia University crew having standing orders to tow all bodies found in the East river to shore for proper investigation by the authorities.

I choose to check it out



Turns out it was an Asian woman, in full tourist gear down in the water. And some dude had tied a garden hose to the railing to get down there with her. My guess is that she somehow fell in, and couldn't figure out how to get out. Which is understandable: It's all pilings, not a beach.

The odd thing to me was all the official turnout. 3-4 police cars, an EMT unit, two fire engines, a coast guard boat. All because someone fell in the bay.

My insidious dark side filed this away under "how to overthrow the government through terrorist activity". Phase one: create a diversion that gets half of the SF civil service force busy. For example, jump in the bay. Or put a kitten in a tree. Perhaps fall, and declare one's self unable to get up.

Then, in phase two, blow up a u-Haul full of fertilizer-derived explosives on the Bay Bridge.

I wonder if I'll get my phone tapped for writing that...

Greetings, CIA spook!

Knee progress

I have been off the erg now for a month. I hadn't realized how long it had been until last Sunday when I sat down to do another 20 min test. I had no idea how much speed I'd have lost, so was happy to crank out a 1:49 ave split and call it a day. Which is a full second slower on the split than my previous record this fall. Ah, well. 2 weeks on the erg and I'll be fast again.

Today I was a bit late for practice and ended up on the erg. Did 3 x 20 min at 1:55/ 500m pace. It went well, I could feel burn in both my legs, and my knee didn't feel nearly as worn down afterwards as it used to after erging. Total calories burnt: 1010.

I'd like to resume my erg training, but probably not every day. Maybe 3x/ week max. I think the knee is improving. I need to do more erg work, but I want to give the knee time to rest and heal.

This is adorable

Sound is required. Rated G. If you don't laugh at this, you're ready to launch your quest for totalitarian global domination. Your lightsaber is red, and you can probably shoot lightning bolts from your hands.

Le fog

This morning was another peculiar micro-climate morning. Foggy and 56 in SF where I woke up. Condensation covered the car and kept re-forming on the windows as I drove. The key: heat up the windows, and the fog won't condense.

Crossing the Golden Gate, there was fog at the SF side toll plaza, and then none just 20 feet beyond it on the bridge. Perfectly clear.

Fog in the valleys as I approached the boat house. My coach called to tell me he was under the weather and couldn't make practice, so I set up boats and we went out.

There was no fog over the creek. Yet as we pulled into the ferry channel, right next to the creek, over the miles of salt marsh, hovered an ethereal and wispy patch of fog. But only there. Not on the highway. Not over the water. Just over the marsh.

These days, first light hits about 15 minutes into practice.

As we rowed east toward Oakland, I noticed that the new, jet black carbon fiber oars, when wet, reflected the daybreak behind us. As the oar moved to bow, the angle of reflection changed, giving a panning view of the colors pushing over the horizon, then, just before the blades dropped into the water, a sideways silhouette portrait of the crew. I wished for my camera.

Ex's and Oh's

M moved to Marin back in August. Kind of spooky when your ex moves within a half mile of where you live, but I understood it was largely not about me, and mostly about living in sunny beautiful and affordable Marin as opposed to dreary expensive SF.

The part that was potentially disturbing was that our mutual friend L had said that when M broke up with a prior guy, she considered moving to San Diego, which was where he was. And L thought maybe M was doing the same with me.

M and I have drastically reduced our contact with each other, since it was pretty clear that continued interaction was making it tough for her to move on.

The problem was never a lack of attraction, just a lack of compatibility in what we were looking for.

She's been dating some dude for a while now, and describes the relationship as "drama free" and "nice" which I interpret as "passion-less" and "boring", but I'm clearly not impartial.

She IM'd me yesterday morning to see if I'd stop by and see her new place. I agreed, and chose to bike down.

I don't know if it was calculated, or not, but she looked good. Shorts and a t-shirt that had a plunging v-neck which showed off cleavage more impressive than I had remembered. Girl was hot in a casual, girl-next-door-on-a-Sunday-morning way. Made it hard for me to pay attention to anything but not paying attention to her body. Focus on the eyes. Or the floor.

Maybe I'm delusional, but my inner sense says she's still interested in me. I think she was dressed to make sure I knew what I was missing. Which is fine. Flattering. And I'm clearly attracted to her. But I don't want an exclusive girlfriend relationship with her. And she wasn't nearly as empathetic or understanding as K. It just makes it clear why it's hard to remain friendly with ex's: There's always some lingering feeling of some kind. Could be jealousy, could be attraction. Whatever it is, it'll just get you into trouble.

So now I know where she lives. I'm glad she's settled and happy. I don't think I'll be stopping by to see her again any time soon.

Learning to permit inertia

I've spent most of today just loafing.

I got up and rowed, and it looks like I'm in the top 8+ for next weekend, rowing 2 seat (my favorite).

I have a hard time letting myself just goof off and do nothing and feel good about it. Family ethic. Grandpa grew up on the farm, and on the farm you don't play till the work's done, and on the farm, the work's never done. So playing is bad. Or rather, when one plays, one feels one should be doing other things. All play is a form of goofing off.

But whatever. I needed a day of screwing around.

On the Kerry thing

It's obvious to me that it was a bad joke poorly delivered. It was intended to mock President "nucular" getting stuck in Iraq ("Mission Accomplished" anyone?). It was delivered in such a way that it didn't sound like he was talking about the president. Kerry's a douche bag, for sure.

What pisses me off is all the folks piling on because it's such an easy target, if you do all the high and mighty flag waving jingoistic blind patriotism crap about the military. Sure, most of them are decent. But there's the Abu Ghraib, and the guys on trial for gang raping a girl and killing her family, or for shooting an old man in the face. And the flag wavers will dismiss these as anomalies. But these things happen any time you take a bunch of guys trained to be violent, dehumanize the opposition, and let the guys get good and angry at the dehumanized out group after suffering losses and violence the hands of the dehumanized outsiders. My Lai.

But no one's going to criticize. When you're not the one going off to get shot at, it's best to tell the folks who you and the social order have duped into going off to be shot at that they're really really awesome. Women will do this with unsuspecting men all the time.

Smart woman: Oooo, you're so big and strong, will you carry this for me?

Dumb man: Duuuuh, okay (does grunt work)

Not too different from:

Socially privileged: Ooooo, you're so brave and patriotic and self sacrificing. Will you go shoot those brown people for me?

Socially underprivileged: Duuuuh, okay (does grunt work)

So yeah, Kerry's a bone head with the personality of a sea cucumber and the comedic timing of a back hoe. But let's not think that the military is beyond scrutiny or criticism. The fact of the matter is that those who join the military do come from less affluent backgrounds. Conservative folk who would lead you to believe that this is "factually false" might cite some work from conservative think tanks like the Heritage foundation.

Those like me who read the fine print and know a thing or two about quantitative consumer, demographic, economic and sociological research can tell you that the methodology and conclusions are reprehensibly flimsy. I'd never make business decisions on such research:

For example, the most gaping flaw is that they don't actually measure the demographic characteristics of the recruits themselves. They don't measure the actual income, ethnicity and education characteristics of the folks joining the military and compare them to the actual income ethnicity and education characteristics of those who don't join. Because that would be a) the right way to do this analysis and b) not support their point.

Instead, this study assigns the average characteristics of the people in their zip code to all recruits from that zip code. And then asks the question about whether poorer, less well educated, higher minority zip codes are more likely to send folks to the military than more affluent, better educated, lower minority zip codes. Which sets aside entirely the question of whether it's the poorer, less well educated, minority folk within a zip code that end up in the military due to fewer economic options within their communities.

They go on to do a bunch of analyses, but all based on this zip code generalized data.

Now I don't know about you, but there's a pretty wide income band in my zip code. Some folks in mine own multi-7 figure homes and drive Porches. I have an apartment and drive a Toyota. Same zip code.

So when people say it's factually false that the poor and uneducated are more likely to end up in the military, ask where they get that idea. Probably from a conservative think tank using a craptastic methodology.

And when the Department of defense actually says that

"Both active and reserve recruits are primarily from families in the middle and lower middle socioeconomic strata"

one should probably believe it.

And all of this just means that Kerry, in his lame delivery, accidentally uttered a statistical truth that we'd rather not believe, in a time in which we're busy telling ourselves stories that the people over there are just like us, only more brave and patriotic, so we feel okay that it's them and not us. Fact is, we tend to send our less priviliged folk off to kill and die on our behalf. And it's good that we'd rather not believe it. In this case, shame is good. It says that, as a society, we have a decent sense of justice and social burden. But it's the truth.

Bullets

Weekend was disasterous.

My car was broken into, laptop bag stolen, with work laptop, iPod, flash drive, $160 worth of ferry passes, and papers from my divorce in it. Lost filesw from business school, personal life, consulting life, work.

Missed my race as a result.

Had challenging conversations with K: She is up against the fertility dilemma. I think we both sense that this is the beginning of the end.

It brought up a lot of grief for me over my marriage's demise.

Got window repaired on Monday, along with new laptop from work.

Now I'm in NYC for work.

Bleh.