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Posts Tagged ‘Personal’

A moment of pure victory

Posted in Bruce Byfield, cross-country, high school, Personal, running, Uncategorized, victory, tagged , , , , , on March 16, 2008| Leave a Comment »

In high school, I ran long distance track with some success. But it was the four meet cross-country season that I loved best. Long distances around a track require a tolerance for repetition that even the most disciplined teenager lacks, while cross-country requires endurance over changing terrain, making it better suited to the strengths of a boy with overly short legs. Over five years, I received two first place season total and two second place ones – and would have had a strong chance of another first place finish, if a crippling ‘flu hadn’t caused me to miss a couple of races. But, of all my victories, the one that was most satisfying was the first race of my Grade 9 year – not least because it was a group victory as well.

I had been a strong but largely untrained runner in elementary school, finishing fifth in the provincial championships in Grade 7. I managed a consistent second place finish in my Grade 8 cross-country season, and was well-satisfied with it; I’ve never been one to believe that “silver is the first loser’s metal,” and was pleased to be a contender.

However, at the same time, I was determined that, next year, I would beat the runner who had always finished first to my second. That was the year that I began to train seriously, running every day over the summer and fall, and boosting my daily mileage, first to fifty miles a week, and then to sixty and seventy, and encouraging some of the other lead runners on the team to do the same. Come the March cross country season next year, I was fitter than I had ever been in my life.

Nervous but focused, I arrived with my school team at the first meet of the season. As I warmed up, I kept looking for my nemesis of the previous year, but couldn’t see him. However, with a couple of hundred runners in each of eight categories, that wasn’t surprising.

At the gun, I was running hard to take an early lead, certain I’d see my nemesis near the front with me. I didn’t, but I kept going strongly. Taking an early lead is a tactic that can sap your strength if you aren’t well-trained, but can be psychologically devastating to others, especially when they face you repeatedly; I believe that I won one of the races in the year of the ‘flu simply because people expected to see me out front, despite the fact that I was still feeling weak.

Besides, my nervous tension left me little choice except to explode into action at the start.

Before half a mile, I had enough of a lead that I couldn’t hear any footsteps behind me. However, as a Vancouver runner, I had been raised on the story of the 1954 Miracle Mile, in which Arthur Landry lost to Roger Bannister because he looked back at the last moment, and I was determined not to do the same. For the first mile, I ran all out, and kept my eyes front, resisting the temptation to look back.

At the halfway point, when the course turned into a path through the woods, I could wait no longer. I twisted back, and suddenly I had one of the moments of pure joy in my life.

Ten yards behind me was another runner from my school. Twenty yards behind him were another two from my team, with the next runners a good thirty years back.

I was elated, but also alarmed to see the next runner closer than I had imagined. As the cedar chips began to fly up from under my shoes, I accelerated down the trail as fast as I could. By the time I reached the finish line, I had at least a thirty yard lead. Then, bending over to catch my breath, I watched with fierce exaltation as our team took the first four positions.

Considerable wordless shouting and thumping of backs ensued, you might say. Even our coach, whose normal mode of expression was sarcasm, couldn’t help grinning happily at us.

The only disappointment was that my rival from the previous year was no longer running. But I did beat his course record by almost thirty-five seconds, so I felt that, in one sense, I had defeated him regardless. I kept hoping for the rest of the season that he would show up, but he never did, not until a couple of years later, when smoking and lack of training made him finish well back in the pack.

We couldn’t keep up our perfect score all season – not quite. But we did win the team score that season, as well as three of the top four individual positions, including my perfect first place score. Yet none of the other wins could quite compare with the feeling of pure victory of that first one, or the sense of being part of an apparently unbeatable team.

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The spine of the story

Posted in Bruce Byfield, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , on March 13, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Probably the best piece of advice I’ve heard for writers is from screen writer William Goldman the writer of The Princess Bride (You know, the book and the movie with the immortal line: “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”). When writing a script, Goldman says in Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I Tell?, you need to discover what he calls the spine of the story – that is, the impression you want to leave with the audience, or what the story is about besides the bare events. If you’re an English major, you could say he is talking about the main theme. But, whatever you call it, the advice holds true for both fiction and non-fiction.

The point is easiest to understand if you think in terms of fiction. Imagine that you are writing one of those time-honored stories in which a young man rises from obscurity to become rich and influential. It is not enough simply to narrate the events in his life; if that is all you do, then the result will be like one of those endless cell phone conversations teenagers seem to have at the top of their voices when you’re trapped with with them on a bus (“Then he says, and I say, then he goes . . .”), until you want to scream with boredom.

Instead, you need to understand how you want the audience to view the events. Will the story be about how the young man is unable to shed conventions until he finds himself trapped by his own success? Or will it be about personal courage and having the strength to realize your dreams? Either of these perspectives could be a legitimate spine, and each could apply to the same sequence of events. But without discovering the spine, you won’t know what to emphasize, or even the metaphors you need to tell the story.

This need explains why telling a real person’s story is notoriously difficult to do well. Very few people’s lives have a spine – even a well-known person’s life contains a lot of living for the moment and random incidents. You need to find a perspective from which to tell a person’s life, and usually it’s easier to find meaning in a small portion of a life rather than the whole thing.

Goldman is talking about fiction, of course – specifically, writing movie scripts, although his comment applies equally well to short stories or novels. I’ve found it useful when writing the handful of stories I’ve published professionally. However, as I’ve slowly struggled to learn journalism over the last few years, I’ve realized that his advice applies equally well to features and news items.

It’s not surprising, really, because articles are narratives, too. Take, for example, a simple news release. A company issues a news release because it has a story it wants told – it has a new product, it has hired a new executive, or maybe it has a comment on industry news. The publicist’s job is find the perspective that the company wants on the news, while a journalist’s is to find the perspective that makes the story worth the attention of the audience. The publicist who has found the spine of the story is working hard to make sure that journalists believe the perspective offered, while journalists – if they have any integrity – are trying to discover the spine for themselves.

At least, that’s the way it should be. In reality, many publicists and journalists never discover what the spine of a particular story should be, either because they are in a rush or lazy or just plain ignorant of their roles. A publicist without a spine sends out a boring release that no one wants to read, technically fulfilling the needs of their client or employer, but in truth doing them no favor at all. Similarly, a journalist who doesn’t bother to find the spine either tells a disconnected story, or worst, shows a lack of integrity by simply accepting the one that the publicist offers. You can find hundreds of such releases or stories on any given day, but, unless the news is so major that it tells itself, none of them are of any value to the audience.

In both fiction and non-fiction, finding the spine takes time. Yet the effort is always worth making. Not only is the search a matter of integrity, but writing without the spine is infinitely harder, and is far more likely to produce rambling or mediocre results – and to be excruciatingly boring and painful to produce.

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Overcoming writer’s block

Posted in Bruce Byfield, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writer's block, writing, tagged , , , , , on March 12, 2008| 1 Comment »

Does writer’s block really exist? For all the dramatic agony it causes among would-be writers, I’m not sure it does. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, being at a loss for words is the result of sloppy writing habits, and can be overcome if you make the right effort.

The easiest way to avoid writer’s block is to write every day. What you write doesn’t matter, so much as the fact that you keep in practice. You wouldn’t expect to play the violin well or run efficiently if you didn’t practice every day, and writing is no different. Keep a journal where you write loosely and without any pressure (not a blog: you might start worrying about how readers will react), and after a couple of weeks you’ll be warmed up as soon as you pick up a pen or sit down in front of the keyboard. Instead of being an unusual act for you, it will become something you do as naturally and unthinkingly as you touch-type (assuming, of course, that you do).

Another important tactic is to divide the writing and editing processes as you write. Writing is an intuitive process, uncritical process and editing a rational and analytical one, so the two don’t go well together. If you constantly finding yourself writing a few words, only to scratch them out or change them, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Most of the time, you make slower and slower progress that way, until you stop with a scowl on your face and writer’s block firmly lodged in your brain. But if you can force yourself not to be too critical in your first draft and to start correcting it only after it’s complete, then the words should come more easily – and probably more quickly as well. When I used to teach first year composition at university, realizing the need to divide these functions was often all that students needed to start becoming fluent writers.

However, if writer’s block occurs despite these first two tactics, the best thing you do is persevere. Words that come slowly are usually no better or worse on average than words that come easily, and you’re in no position to judge them while you write them. They only seem worse than usual because of the effort you’re making.

However, if you are still having trouble, try to get a different perspective on what you are writing. Skip to another paragraph or chapter – after all, nothing says you have to write in order. Read whatever you have out loud. Try writing the passage in which you’re bogged down without looking at the original. Play a game, such as imagining what the passage would sound like if a famous writer was composing it. Anything to get a new perspective, If all these ploys fail, try writing something else, so you still make some progress in the day.

Only after you have tried all the tactics of this sort that you can imagine should you take the last step of taking a break. A writer, don’t forget, is one who writes; if you nap instead, you’re a napper, not a writer. Often, cleaning or another form of creativity such as cooking will help. Heavy exercise is even better, either because of all the chemical stimulants with which it floods your brain or because when you’re straining your legs and arms, your unconscious can set to work on what’s bothering you. Try any of these tricks and the chances are high that you will start to write again.

However, the best cure for writer’s block is a deadline. If you have to submit a piece by a certain time or day, you don’t have time to worry about writer’s block. You simply have to produce. In fact, it’s exactly the motivating factor of deadlines that makes me doubt that writer’s block. Instead, I believe that writer’s block is mostly ineffective work habits or a love of the drama of being a tormented writer. If you don’t have time to work inefficiently or to dramatize yourself, then you’ll likely do neither. Most of the time, overcoming writer’s block is as simple as that.

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Going home

Posted in Bruce Byfield, childhood, nostalgia, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 8, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Since I live less than thirty kilometers from where I grew up, I revisit the area every month or two. It’s always an unsettling feeling.

For one thing, I can hardly walk a pace without some memory returning to me from my childhood or teen years. There is the elementary school I attended, and the grass slope going down to the playing fields where the boys and girls with whom I hung out used to gather on their bicycles when we were in high school. To one side is the small woods, carefully denuded of any undergrowth, where I played endless games of tag at lunch and recess, learning in the process that, if I wasn’t the fastest runner in the crowd, I was the one with the greatest endurance.

Above that is the house of one of my elementary school crushes; I used to deliver the local paper there, and I was always nervous that my crush might answer the door. A few doors over is the house of a high school crush. Sometimes, on a visit, I walk or jog by the two houses, and wonder what their former inhabitants are doing. I did meet both at my high school reunion a couple of years ago, but one cut off contact in circumstances that I am only now starting to understand, and the other looked prematurely aged by her life experiences, so I am probably better off not knowing how they are faring.

But if I walk a couple of blocks south, I come to the corner where I kissed one of them. Then, going east towards my old high school, I can name more former inhabitants: The brash bully, the quiet, artistic girl, the wimp, the bad boy, and another crush. At the school, I can stand, if I like on the track, and remember old victories from when it was paved with only cinders, or recall the end of year award ceremony when I saw in the bleachers and watches the measles slowly break out on my arm. Then I can pass the auto shop where I received my first and only detention (well, how was I to know that the teacher had returned while I was under the desk on a retaliatory raid on the shoelaces of two friends sitting across from me?), and cross the ramp – formerly covered – that I used to do wind sprints up on rainy days, past the smoke-hole.

And that’s just one direction. I can go in any of the others and recite a similar litany of memories. No doubt all of them are stronger for being among my first. Not being given much to nostalgia, I’m always surprised by them.

At the same time, for all the familiarity, I am also walking through a strange land. The woods where I once played at Robin Hood have been had their undergrowth clearcut – presumably to deny cover to the child-molesters and evil homeless with whom the popular imagination peoples them. The stump of the tree blown over in the big hurricane, whose top was a reading seat for me for years, has been cut away to a fraction of its former glory. The building where I attended junior high has been replaced by portables, all except the gym and the unheated west wing. At the senior building, the wing where I took creative writing and English with my favorite teacher has been torn down. In fact, the entire building has been heavily made over, and I suspect that, were I to enter it, I would quickly become disoriented.

As things are, I soon realize that I am not really looking at the places I remember. I’m looking at their successors, or what they have evolved into. The people that go with my memories aren’t there, and they wouldn’t be those I remember if they were (any more than I am). If I want the places I remember, I have to wait for them to appear in my nightly dreams. The truth is, those places don’t exist any more, and I am always a bit relieved after walking through their remnants for an hour, to leave them behind for my present life.

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The terror of the treadmill

Posted in Bruce Byfield, exercise, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 5, 2008| 6 Comments »

Whatever time of day I stagger into the exercise room, at least two of the three treadmills are in use. They’re by far the most popular of the cardio-vascular machines – and I can’t figure out why. But perhaps my view is prejudiced from the sneak attack from one that I faced a few years ago and a long way from home.

What I can’t understand is why anyone would choose to walk or jog on a treadmill in Vancouver. I could understand that enduring ice and snow underfoot would get old fast in some place like Calgary or Winnipeg, but here we get about ten days of snow a year. So why would anyone endure the tedium of a treadmill when the sidewalk is waiting outside? I would much rather see the parade of people, birds and animals than endure stationary exercise. Our suburban streets are only mildly dangerous, too, so long as you’re not hanging around ill-lit bus stops at midnight.

True, the same question could be raised about the bike that I use. But I plead the insanity of trying to pit eight-five kilos of body and bike against twenty times their weight of metal and gas. By contrast, walkers and joggers have safe sidewalks to use.

I also confess that I endure by doing flat out intervals – much to the disgust of most gym-goers, who seem to think that exercise is fine so long as you don’t break out in a sweat while doing it (or maybe it’s my silent snarl as I go all out). When I see how most people plod along at a continuous pace, I’m not surprised when two-thirds of them stop exercising regularly after a few weeks. They’re setting themselves up for failure.

I also have to stop myself from delivering warnings of doom to those who use the treadmills. From my own experience, they are treacherous machines, that would just as soon humiliate you as drop the pounds from you.

My revelation came when I was on a business trip to Indianapolis just after the turn of the millennium. I had put in long hours the day before, and the different time zone had my circadian rhythms mildly befuddled, but decades of guilt drove me down to the hotel’s exercise room at 7AM, determined to get at least some exercise. I would have jogged outside, but it was mid-winter, and Indianapolis is flat, and that trip at least, an arctic wind was blowing so hard that once or twice two days before it had almost knocked me off my feet.

The day before, I had used the treadmill for a long slow walk. However, having a meeting in less than an hour, that day I decided to replace quantity with quality. After studying the controls (someday someone will standardize them, but probably not in my life time), I set the machine to a six minute mile pace.

Then I made the mistake of glancing up at the news cast on the TV mounted on the ceiling. And while I gazed with bleary eyes and pondered the wickedness of politicians, the treadmill attacked, sending my chin against the handlebars and throwing me to my knees.

As the treadmill careened below me, I tried desperately to get to my feet. Twice, I was almost up when it swept my feet from under me again. Now thoroughly humiliated, I crawled on my hands and knees to the edge, sprawling forward on to the floor and looking desperately around to see if anyone had seen my humiliation.

Fortunately, I was alone.

Determined to conquer, I leaped back on the machine. But one foot landed long enough before the other that I was swept off my feet again, this time on to my back. Frantically, I clawed my way off again.

This time, I could see the evil gleam in its LEDs. Muttering nonchalantly, I pretended I was walking away. When I was out of the machine’s line of sight, I pounced and managed to turn it off before it could attack again.

Suddenly, the exercise bike seemed a safer alternative, not least because another hotel guest had now entered the room.

I spend the rest of the day walking stiffly, feeling each bruise on my legs and knowing it part of an unprovoked assault on my dignity.

Looking back, I won’t swear that I had nightmares that night. Nor, so far as I could remember, did I hear a repetitive sound outside my door that night and peer through the peephole to see the treadmill waiting for me in the hallway. But that might only be because the machine couldn’t climb stairs. The next day, I keep a close watch as I came down in the elevator and took my exercise while braving the arctic winds – a preference that I keep to this day.

You see, you can use a treadmill, and get to know it, but you can never really trust it. Relax for just a moment, and it will turn on you. Believe me, I know.

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Messiness is better

Posted in Bruce Byfield, linux, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on March 3, 2008| 5 Comments »

Every few months or so, someone blogs that free software would be more popular if it had fewer applications in each category. If a distribution would only include, say, Firefox, rather than Konqueror and Epiphany as well, or only OpenOffice.org without KOffice or Abiword, then users would have less anxiety option and locate the software they need more easily. Recently, though, I was very glad to have the choice.

For the past while, Trish’s GNOME desktop has been freezing after a dozen or so windows are opened or closed. The problem is an obscure one, and elusive when I try to track it down. I know it is peculiar to her account, since I don’t suffer from it, but more concrete information is slow to come by. Changing every configuration option that might even remotely connected doesn’t help. Ditto running her key files in another account. Removing the GNOME configuration files so that new default ones are created does nothing. Nor does upgrading GNOME or any of the software I suspect of being involved with the problem. I suspect that either Firefox or Thunderbird are complicit, and my investigations continue, but, meanwhile, Trish is left with a major annoyance every time she logs into her account.

If we were running Windows or OS X, she would have no choice except to endure while I troubleshoot. However, because we’re on GNU/Linux, I switched her over to KDE instead. After about ten minutes of customization, her new desktop looks about 90% the same as her old one, so the transition was minimal, so she can carry on with reading her email and browsing the web while I track down the problem.

Had KDE not removed the problem, I could have set up Xfce. Had Xfce not solved the problem, I could turned to IceWM, Blackbox, Fluxbox, Afterstep or any of a couple of dozen other desktops or window manager..

By contrast, had we been running Windows, she would have had to endure the problem, because only one desktop would be available for her (or perhaps I would have had to re-install). But, under GNU/Linux, I had an immediate choice of workarounds – and all because free software isn’t so rigidly organized that it has only one of everything. The redundancy that people love to decry makes an emergency far less urgent, so I, for one, hope that no distribution every tries to do much tidying. 

Diversity may be messy, but, sometimes, messiness is better.

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Beginning writers and style

Posted in Bruce Byfield, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , on March 1, 2008| Leave a Comment »

A comment on my blog entry “What Editors Want” suggested that I forgot to mention that writers are also required to write to a certain style. Actually, I didn’t forget so much as think it irrelevant, at least in the sense that most beginners usually think about style.

True, editors usually have a style guide full of arcana such as what terms you should capitalize, and whether you should write “email” or “e-mail.” Sometimes, too, they contain phrases and words that either you shouldn’t use, or should only with a particular meaning. And, in the case of major newspapers or wire services, these style guides can run to hundreds of pages.

However, writers – especially beginners or freelancers – are rarely expected to submit work that conforms to a style guide in every aspect. Even regular contributors or full-timers are generally asked only to conform to the most common aspects of a style guide. The practices outlined in a style guide are usually trivial to fix, especially with a search and replace function, so making your manuscript conform to a style guide is usually relatively trivial.

Nor are these technical aspects what beginners usually mean by style. Usually, what they mean is a distinctive voice, either for themselves or for a publication.

Beginners often worry considerably about style – probably because the concept is so difficult to define or analyze, partly because we lack the vocabulary. But, in my experience, style or a lack of it rarely determines whether a piece is accepted.

Sometimes, a publication will favor a particular style. For instance, Maximum Linux, a companion to Maximum PC in 1999-2000, favored an edgier style with more slang than most publications. However, regardless of a publication’s preferred style, most editors are so glad to receive literate and interesting copy to fill their schedule that they aren’t going to insist that it conform to a house style. That’s a nice luxury, but not an essential. If necessary, a few edits can usually bring an otherwise publishable piece of work into line with the house styles.

So far as style is an issue at all, what matters to editors is clarity, a decent sense of structure, and knowledge of your audience. Unlike the obscure concept of style that floats around in most beginner’s heads, these concerns are intensely practical – and, unlike beginner’s concepts of style, can be easily codified.

The rules for clarity listed at the end of George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language” have never been bettered in the sixty years since he wrote them. As for structure, you can learn the basics by reading Aristotle on rhetoric. Where to position your most important points, how to deal with opposing views – in the last 2500 years, Aristotle’s suggestions have been often repeated, often expanded upon, but only very occasionally added to.

Unfortunately, no equally well-regarded guide to knowing your audience exists, but that is mostly common sense. For instance, if you are writing for an audience with no background in your subject, you may have to explain terms that you could assume an expert audience would know. Similarly, writing for academics, you can use more compound and complex sentences that in writing for the general public. If you ask a few questions or take a look at a few articles in a publication, usually you can quickly pick up such details very quickly.

Instead of focusing on style, I always urge beginners to concentrate on these concrete considerations. If they do, they usually find that they don’t have to think too much about style, and that it has taken care of itself instead.

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The great abs obsession

Posted in Bruce Byfield, exercise, humor, Personal, Uncategorized, weight room, workouts, tagged , , , , , , on February 28, 2008| Leave a Comment »

If there’s one set of muscles that people obsess over at the exercise room that I frequent, it’s their abdominal muscles. At least that’s the one that they always talk about, regardless of gender or age. If everyone were to stop talking at once (which would never happen), I swear that the room would still echo for the next thirty seconds with “Abs, abs, abs . . .” in a dying fall.

The common attitude is summed up neatly in a cartoon over the water fountain captioned “Yoga Then and Now.” The first panel shows an expressionless Indian fakir in a loincloth with his thoughts focused squarely on the lotus. The second panel shows a woman who is probably wearing Lululemon workout gear with a vacant smile on her face and her limbs in a desperate tangle. She’s thinking, “This is so good for my abs!”

You have to frequent an exercise room to full appreciate the cartoon. However, take it from me: most of the people who use the gym would happily leave their cardio-vascular system in ruins and their legs and arms flapping with flab, if only they could have a washboard stomach – or at least a flatter one.

Given this widespread obsession, the reaction to the new abs machine is predictable. At one point or the other, almost everyone has tried it in the last couple of months. But they don’t simply read the instructions and try it out. Instead, they circle it for a week or two, like a parrot faced with something new and possibly dangerous. When someone else sits down to use it, they watch out of the corner of their eyes, as though they expect him or her to be consumed by the machine.

And, on the unconscious level, you can see the reason for their worry: with the pads for your arms and the metal frame behind you that you pull forward, the machine does look like something that might be used to interrogate prisoners at Abu Ghraib or Guantanmo Bay.

After witnessing a few people using the machine and emerging unscathed, eventually everyone braves the machine for themselves. Sitting in the saddle, they adjust it gingerly to their height. They shuffle, trying to find a comfortable position on an innately uncomfortable seat. They adjust the weight load. They shuffle again.

Then they have a moment of Nietzschean self-contemplation. No doubt they are muttering something about how that which does not kill them makes them stronger, or some other phrase they picked up while watching a Conan movie. Then they lean forward, pulling the metal frame with them, their heads up so that they can watch themselves in the mirror.

Five, ten repetitions, and most of them are done, rising to join the crowd around the wall-mounted television, or the one arguing about the latest hockey game.

So far, only a handful have returned, or started using the ab machine regularly. Having tried it myself, I’m not surprised . Put any sort of weight on the machine, and you can feel the reps straining muscles you never knew you had.

Of course, enduring the unusual strain for several months is how you get that six pack (and I do mean you; I never look like I’m fit no matter what exercises I do, not without taking off my clothes, and, while you can do that in public when you’re two, bystanders are considerably less tolerant of such behavior when you’re an adult).

But such a regime doesn’t fit in well with our cultural cult of instant gratification, or the widespread genteel belief that getting and staying fit is a social occasion that sweat shouldn’t enter into. Not detecting any significant increase in their sex appeal after their ordeal, most people are content to leave it alone. They don’t quite circle around it, but something in their walk suggests that they would like to.

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Two bad interviewees

Posted in Bruce Byfield, careers, corporatelife, employment, hiring, humor, Personal, Uncategorized, work, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 25, 2008| Leave a Comment »

As a sometime-consultant and a sometime-manager, I’ve sat on both sides of the interviewing table many times. Which side I prefer is impossible to say: Given a choice between the tension of trying to sell myself to a person who’s largely unknown to me and the discomfort of judging strangers, I will gladly choose none of the above (no doubt that explains why I’m in business for myself). However, being the interviewer does have the advantage of giving me a wider view of human types than being an interviewee. Over my career, two interviews in particular stand out as examples of some of the things you should never do when you go for a job.

Both occurred when I was a manager at a startup specializing in GNU/Linux. I was new to both startups and free software, but I was learning quickly – in fact, I was the only manager, up to and including the CEO and COO, who had any sense of the software life cycle or of free software (and even my knowledge, I admit now, was new and shallow in a lot of places). However, I had hired before, so I ended up on the hiring committee, along with an HR veteran from the startup’s parent company who was there for guidance.

The first interview looked good on paper. He had years of Unix experience, and claimed to know something about GNU/Linux as well. However, one look was enough to show that we’d made a mistake in calling in this interviewee. Looking like he had come straight from makeup to play an English academic, circa 1936, he wore a thick brown suit of tweed with patches on the elbow that looked decades old. His glasses were even thicker, and didn’t match his suit. On his feet were mud-splattered running shoes. His hair was not only uncombed, but looked as though he might have lost combs in its tangles.

His posture – well, a bonobo would have called it shambling and stooped, and died of shame to be seen holding himself that way.

Shaking his hand, I also realized that he was a heavy smoker. A miasma of tobacco swirled around him, nearly visible and making me gag.

This interviewee sat down at the boardroom table, and immediately put his feet up on a chair. Then he leaned back and cradled the back of his head in his hands.

Questioning him, we soon learned that he had applied for the job because “he needed the money.” He had no idea what the company did, and had no questions about it when provided an interval to ask some. Although it was a startup and therefore demanding of everyone’s time, he told us that his idea of an ideal job was one where he could work maybe ten or fifteen hours a week.

I was sinking lower in my chair, embarrassed for him, when the HR veteran interrupted the interviewee.

“No, no, no –” he said. “This isn’t working.” He then gave the interviewee a five minute lecture on the basics of dressing and deportment for a job interview, while I sat watching them, even more embarrassed.

From the way the interviewee slouched away, I don’t think he absorbed much of the lecture – especially since he asked for his resume back, saying it was his only copy.

The second bad example was an applicant for the same company. Its horrors were different, but no less intense.

This second interviewee had worked on a free software project related to the company’s core business. Several programmers knew his work in the community, although they had never met him, so we brought him in.

Once again, first impressions said everything. This applicant was appropriately dressed for a corporate interview, but, from the first, everything about him showed that he considered the interview was only a formality. He was a round man of average height, and everything from his gestures to the slight sneer that was the natural position of his face at rest suggested that he thought himself condescending to apply for the job at all.

This time, we finished the interview. Looking back, though, I really have to wonder how. The interviewee was so patronizing that I had a faint urge the urge to either make deflating comments or to punch him out – and normally I am neither rude nor confrontational.

The problem was not what he said, but the way he said it. Of course we would want to hire him, his tone seemed to imply (although he was no clearer than the first interviewee about exactly what the company did, and no more interested). Of course we would pay him what he asked. Of course the knowledge test we gave all programmers would be the merest formality. And we would let him work on whatever interested him, wouldn’t we?

All these implications came with little sniffs and flicks of the head, as if condescending to be interviewed was almost more than he could bear. I half-expected him to take out a pomander and sniff it, the better to endure the tawdry atmosphere of commerce around him.

Then we introduced him to the lead programmer and team leaders – and the way he shook their hands, you might have mistaken him for visiting royalty.

I don’t remember how we ended the interview process – probably with some version of “Thanks, we’ll call you when we’ve made a decision” – but I do recall that I was exasperated beyond belief.

Needless to say, he was as much out of the running as the first candidate, even though he had survived longer in the interview.

Both these candidates had their own brands of obnoxiousness, but they shared some common faults. Neither gave any thoughts to first impression. Both were so egocentric that they never thought to curb their natural tendencies in the hopes of getting employed, or to find out anything about the company they were applying at. You name a basic mistake in interviewing, and one or both of them made it.

In fact, the behavior of each of them was so extreme that, looking back, I wonder if either had any genuine interest in employment. Perhaps they were only being interviewed so that they could continue to collect unemployment insurance. But I think that their real roles in life were to provide bad examples and good stories. And certainly, they have played both roles many times since.

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Spring arrives in Vancouver

Posted in British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Personal, running, spring, Uncategorized, Vancouver, tagged , , , , , , on February 22, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Looking at temperatures across Canada, I see a depressing number of minus signs. The sole exception is the southwest corner of British Columbia, where we are already enjoying temperature of 15 degrees Celsius. Several weeks ago, we had our last snowfall, but now we’re starting to see the first signs of spring. Does anyone wonder why those of us in Vancouver have a tendency to phone friends and family in places like Calgary and Winnipeg to have a nice, warm gloat?

Many city people probably pay minimal attention to the seasons. Except for short dashes to their cars, they spent most of their time in heated buildings. However, for those of us whose daily exercise takes them out into the elements, the coming of spring has a certain urgency – although far less, granted, than it does for a farmer.

For one thing, running or cycling on snow is either difficult or impossible. For a runner like me, it’s like running on sand, with every kilometer feeling like two or more. And, like sand, it’s hard on the ankles. Add unplowed sidewalks and the need to contest the streets with cars, many of which lack all-season tires, let alone snow tires (Vancouverites are almost in as deep denial about receiving snow as they are about rain), and getting any sort of exercise becomes an ordeal. The fact that sweat pants bind my legs is just a winter torture unique to me.

Then, for morning exercisers like me, there’s the dark. Cars full of sleep-deprived, caffeine-motivated drivers are dangerous at the best of times, but trying to dodge them before sunrise adds a new dimension of horror, especially when you suddenly find yourself tiptoeing across a patch of black ice, waving your arms wildly and trying not to scream in panic as you try to keep upright.

But, somewhere in the last ten days, spring has definitely gained a hold. It was like trench warfare for a while – a tiny advance here, followed by an immediate setback, then the cycle repeating somewhere else – but at some indeterminate point, winter lost its grip.

Now, the only remains of snow are the mounds heaped up by snowplows – and they are diminishing everyday. The sun rose today just after 7am, meaning enough light to see by (and be seen) exists by 6:30, and the roads and sidewalks were mercifully ice-free. Crocuses and daffodils are thrusting up shoots of desperate green on the grass. In Dunbar, the first buds are showing, which means that, around our townhouse, they will appear within a week.

I’m not a victim of Seasonal Affective Disorder, and of course Vancouver winters are laughable by the standards of the rest of Canada. All the same, in December and January, I had the sense of keeping my head buried in my work, hunkering down in our living room as though it was a bunker in a war zone and waiting for better days.

Now those days have come, I feel a sense of relief, and a renewed need to be up and doing. With all these first signs of spring, the first cherry blossoms should be less than a month away – and then I’ll know that winter is gone beyond any recall.

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