Things are finally shaping up over here. We have a London flat, internet, a jam session set up with a new bass player, a working copy of protools, and JOBS.
London Flat
the new digs
We moved in to our new place last week. It's better than our last place: more old fashioned, more room, and still has a swell view. Achieving this in London is no small feat. I'm still learning the history, but the oral version I got from our landlord was that a canal used to run through here, and in 1810 a famous London architect name Nash decided to design a fancy housing development based on some European lakefront villa theme (I can't remember the name of the country he was using for his inspiration). The result was an series of white, two story Georgian houses (mansions, I think) lining the canal. Years later, when railroads became big, the canals fell into disuse, and some were filled in, including this one. This left a pretty cool set of big back yards for the houses, and the neighbors planed trees and gardens, and built low brick walls between yards. Then, later still, a German incendiary bomb blew up houses 18 and 20, and the wrecked sites were left undeveloped for a number of years. Finally, in the late 1950s, a small apartment complex was built on the site of the old houses, and was named "Nash House". About 60 years later, we moved in. :) The upshot is that we have a stunning view of all these old mansions through a screen of trees planted in our big communal garden, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF LONDON. This level of private green space is apparently pretty much unheard of in London, and we were really lucky to get in on it. Of course, it's horribly expensive, especially when you think of the US dollar conversion.
front door
entry way
pretty pretty
ean's office
1950's bathroom...
no dishwasher :(
Internet
I've written about this before, but it's so nice to be able to do email, blogging, the radio show, research, look up train times, find shows and restaurants, check out new bands, etc. etc. with a reasonable connection. I moved from BT to Virgin Media Broadband cable, and paid extra for the 20mbps connection. To be honest, I've never even seen it close to 20mbps, and it's been down several times already, but it's MILES better than BT, and I don't have to have an onshore bank account to pay the bill, like I did with BT. So, I can close that account I opened JUST so I could pay BT for their shitty service. Ok ok, and the ability to play World of Warcraft whenever I want is pretty cool too. :)
Jam Session
I placed an ad for a bass player on a local classified ads site called gumtree.com. A guy name James contacted us, and invited us to see his current band play a show. So, Kent and I went to see them, and they were pretty cool but are also breaking up. Thus, their bass player is looking for a new gig. We're going to check into an hourly rental practice space this week, and give it a whirl. I've even sent him some new songs ideas I put down using protools, which I've finally got limping along again. We'll see how it goes, but with any luck, Tales From The Birdbath will ride again soon and get some local shows. So, don't be surprised if I send you an email asking you to come to some crappy Wednesday night show in East London soon!
Protools Is Working
I hate Protools. For the uninitiated, this is computer based mixing software that allows me to record songs in my own home, using a fairly simple device called an Mbox. I can program drums, get different guitar amp sounds, run all sorts of effects, and do multi-track recording, all on my laptop. So now if want to demo a song, I don't need to hire a studio and an engineer, or even show the drummer how the song goes. Sounds pretty good, eh? Well, that's where the good part ends and the crappy part starts. For all sorts of lame reasons, Protools is very finicky about the setup of the computer that it runs on, and is an endless pain in the ass, especially if you use the PC version instead of th Mac version, like I do. For example, before I finished school, I wrote a song for the Birdbath called "Fear and Loathing in the OX1" which was all about going to MBA school at Oxford. I was able to record it, programming the drums, playing guitar and bass and singing, and then have Gabe come in to do some guitar parts. It actually song pretty OK as well. Unfortunately, Protools need more "system resources" to run... this is a bit nebulous, but could be that I didn't have enough RAM, a fast enough CPU, or had too many other things running. Being rushed, I didn't try to upgrade my computer, and decided to use a program called msconfig to turn off services and start up programs that may have been using resources that Protools wanted. I basically had to turn everything (even networking!) off to finish the session. After I completed the session, I turned all the services, etc. back on so I could use my computer normally. BAD MOVE. The ensuing software collisions totally destroyed my laptop, and I spent a painful 24 hours moving all of my files from the laptop and onto my backup drive, and then rebuilding the whole thing from scratch. This sucked. I decided that before I would use Protools again, I would find a better way to do it, maybe by getting a computer purely for using Protools. Reba pointed out that we had an old desktop back home in storage, and since I had to go to Seattle shortly anyway, I figured I'd give it a go. BAD MOVE. After digging the computer out of our totally overpacked Seattle storage space and shipping it back home, I finally got around to trying to get it to work this week. Protools wouldn't even run a single song with that machine, it was so slow. So, I decided to upgrade it, and bought 3 gigabytes of RAM from my local Maplin store (these guys rule) to upgrade it. This was after lots of research on the internet about RAM types, the particulars of this machine, etc. I put the 3 gigabytes into the machine, and the damn thing ran even slower! I then noticed that the CPU was pegged at 92% when protools wasn't even doing anything. After finding a support line for Abit, the manufacturers of my computer's motherboard, I called to see what kind of an upgrade I could do for the board. Bzzt, no dice: my board is too old (2004) and already has the fastest chip it can handle. So, back to the Maplin store to return the RAM, and begin plan B: upgrade the RAM in my laptop. I bought another Gigabyte of RAM for the laptop, and now I have the maximum of 2 Gb. I got the system home, and HOLY CRAP it works! Protools is still picky, and I don't seem to be able to do very complicated session with it, but for just getting down song ideas, it's working at present. I'm glad I dug out that old computer, flew it around the world, spent hours upgrading it's software to 2008 standards, spend more hours and £££ upgrading it's RAM, all to find that a £60 memory upgrade to my laptop was all I needed. If anybody's still reading at this point, thanks.
Jobs
My in-laws are really going to be most interested in this one, so I saved it for last.
Reba got a job. She is going to work as a Research Technician in the Endocrinology lab at Imperial College. This is some wacky science stuff that has to do with bone growth, and as usual, I don't understand what the hell it is.
I got a job. Everyone else, including me, thought that this was starting to look grim. I answered hundreds of online ads, had my CV (resume) posted on 10 separate job boards, worked with at least 30 recruiters, interviewed on the phone and in person to about 10 firms, and in the end got two offers that I would seriously consider.
The first offer was from the consulting firm Accenture, and was the result of some digging that an SBS pal of mine at Accenture did to find UK Accenture recruiters' addresses, which I then spammed with my little letter of introduction and CV. I then interviewed for an "architect" job that was pretty clearly not a good fit for me. But, on what seemed like a general appreciation for my character, the phone interviewer forwarded my CV on to some folks in Accenture's project delivery wing. This was really much more my speed, and after waiting 2.5 months, I had another phone interview, this time with the project delivery department. That went well, and then I got an actual face to face interview at their downtown London office a month later (February 11th). That was weird, and I didn't feel like I did too well... they dropped a "case interview" on me with no warning. In MBA-land, case interviews are often a major component of the interview process, and a well handled case can certainly make or break you in the interviewer's eyes. There are entire books written about the process of succeeding at these, and I had briefly begun reading up on these before Christmas for a PWC 2nd round interview that was canceled at the last minute (not too cool, PWC). People seriously freak out about these, and spend huge amounts of time preparing for them. Of course, I ended up getting a surprise one dropped on me in the Accenture interview, but I gave it my best shot. I had what I thought were lots of good ideas for the case, but had read in my prior preparations that you're supposed to ask questions about the case, so I got a list of 20 juicy ones, and started asking them when the interviewer told me that in this case, he had no more information about the case than I did, so he couldn't answer any questions. After panicking a bit, I finished the case, and apparently did well enough that they offered me a job a few days later. It would have been in the Content Management team in their project delivery group, and I would have managed a team of 20-30 consultants delivering big Sharepoint (and other) implementations at large institutions. The work would have been pretty cool, to be honest. The reasons I'm not taking the offer are simply: when compared to the competing offer, Accenture offered less money and more travel. Of course, they also offered more training and more variety, but the first two items are apparently more important to me. The money one should be obvious: I spent a lot of money to get here, and London costs a lot to live in, so this is a real issue. I just can't allow myself to come home from the UK in however many years with LESS money than when I left. Regarding the travel issue, I don't mind traveling for work, and in fact I enjoy it, especially if there's somewhere interesting to travel to, like Europe! But, firms like Accenture require that you travel every week, meaning it's highly likely that you will live in a hotel and only see your family on the weekends. I guess I'm too much of a big softie, I just can't stand being away from Reba for that much time. :) So, while I was really flattered to receive an offer from a famous company like Accenture, I decided to turn them down.
The second offer was from Barclay's bank, who have their big office down in Canary Wharf. I found this lead pretty easily: a lot of people from Washington Mutual (my old company) went to Barclay's a few year back when Deanna Oppenheimer moved from Wamu to Barclay's. I had been talking to a guy I used to work for at Wamu since early last summer, and had done something like 8.5 hours of interviews (Barclay's are legendary for lots of interviews) since June, continuing right up to late last month. Finally, the offer came last Wednesday, and after considering it for 2 days, I ended up accepting when I happened to get a call back from the HR department while waiting for my RAM return to be processed at Maplin. So, now I just have to wait on some background checks and the final Visa documents to show up at our house before I can go to work. In terms of decision criteria, this offer was simply better than Accenture's in terms of pay and in terms of less travel.
In the end, the only job search strategy that paid off was networking. In the Accenture case, it was networking with an SBS pal who helped me find the right names to spam at Accenture. I don't think however, the path I used to get the Accenture offer is reliable or recommendable... this involved a lot of chance and goodwill from people I didn't even know. In the Barclay's case, it was networking with people who already knew and trusted me, as well as had recommendations from mutual contacts (thanks Pete). Obviously, this is how most people get jobs, and since I'm in a new country it's very lucky that I had those good contacts at Barclay's. While job boards and recruiters generated a few interviews and even a few close calls, they simply did not deliver on job offers, and ate up HUGE amounts of my time. MBA mill programs did absolutely jack, and I can't say I would recommend them to anyone.
That's all for now!
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