Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Pictures!

Becky is amazing. I seriously lucked out when she said yes.

As Jack is entering his senior year, it's time for senior photos! So we're pricing out having them done and thinking, "Screw that!" As laid back about the whole thing as Jack is, it somehow still seems like we ought to do senior pictures, but seriously? They're expensive. Especially for cheapskates like us.

So Becky checked out several books from the library, some photo magazines and went out to play with our camera. She has decided two things. First, she can do this. Second, we should get a new camera. We looked at some, she felt real guilty about wanting one that cost what it did, but I'm thinking, "Hey, it still costs a lot less than senior pictures."

She said one of the pieces of advice she read was "take lots of pictures." So she has. A ton. The boys have sometimes cooperated. Tabby mostly loves it. Of course some of them are awesome. So I'm gonna' post a few.

Mood




Action




Rain






Flirting with the neighbor boys


Thursday, June 23, 2011

Job Hunt

About two weeks ago I sent a resume to Coventry Health Care in Downers Grove, IL for an associate actuarial analyst position. A few days later one of their actuarial directors contacted me by e-mail to set up a phone interview. I had the interview this morning. It seemed to go very well.

Until now, when I've talked to anyone about specific positions it has kind of seemed like the type of position Acuity advertised at the end of school semesters. You know, no specific project to hire for, but there are a slew of candidates coming available, so let's check out the pool and see if anyone strikes us as amazing. If we find any really impressive candidates, hire them just because it'll be a good general investment for projects we have coming down the road.

This interview seemed a bit different in that there is a specific project the actuarial director has and she contacted me because the skill set on my resume matches what the project needs pretty well. Kind of like, "Ooo, this looks like a good fit. Let's call him, make sure he doesn't sound like a total loser on the phone." I must not have. I was invited down for an on site interview next Monday.

It's not a job offer yet, but I'm pretty excited.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Quilt

Becky made a new quilt for Tabby. It's double sided. The fairy side was unofficially the "back", but Tabby had decided it's her favorite, so it's not really the back anymore.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Job Search Methodology

(Expanding on a linkedin discussion board topic)

"How to get hired" books will tell you there are two approaches to job searching: front door and side door. Front door means the traditional methods of sending in resumes to apply for open positions. Side door means directly contacting the people in charge of hiring, or who can influence hiring. The books say side door methods are far more likely to actually result in getting a job. Which is not to say that calling the head actuary at some company will get you hired there. You may just be politely told he or she is busy and may or may not get back to you. In fact, more often than not that's what happens. However, most of the resumes we send through the front door get an equally dead-end response, but we do that anyway, right? The important thing is to use both methods. If the books are correct, odds are one of the side door attempts are what will get us a job. But people also get hired through traditional channels, so also keep blasting out those resumes.

One of the side door methods I've used are talking to people I know who know people in the insurance industry, e.g. my insurance agent or a coworker whose dad works in IT for a local company. That hasn't gotten me anywhere, but it could have and it was easy. Another was suggested to me by a recruiter. Use the soa.org actuarial directory advance search feature to find the names of actuaries at organizations in which you are interested. Click their names to get contact information - usually numbers at the companies they work for. The search is pretty good, alowing for partial words to narrow it down. For example, I typed "WI" in the state and "G" in the city to get actuaries in Green Bay, WI. "M" in the city got me both Madison and Milwaukee . . . and Mequon and Marshfield and Menomenee Falls. The point is, just searching by state was too broad, but it's possible to narrow it down. That let me pick several local companies and contact their head actuaries. Just called them up and let them know I'd like to work for their companies and wanted some advice on the skills they look for that I should emphasize or acquire on my resume. Of the five or so I've called, I only actually got to talk with two of them, but they were good conversations. And a step ahead of not talking to anyone.

I've got to admit, though, what seems to have been the most successful is simply sending out resumes to positions I've found through internet job board searches, i.e good old front door methods. I've mostly used http://www.actuary.com/ and http://www.americasjobexchange.com/. Some of the positions I applied for put me in contact with a couple recruiters. One of them set up a phone interview. Another phone interview is with a company responding directly to a resume I sent.

I haven't gotten beyond a phone interview yet, but I keep plugging away. I keep applying for open positions for which I'm qualified and continue preparing for exam FM to be more attractive in those positions and maybe qualify for more. Yeah, the field is tight, but someone gets hired, right? Who knows what goes through interviewers' minds when they're making their decisions? I figure if I just do the best I can, eventually I'll make a good impression on someone. And as competetive as it may seem when there are 100 applicants for a position . . . when I was looking for a mainframe developer job it was 300 applicants. So hey, it's not as bad as it could be.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Inception

Becky and I celebrated our 19th anniversary the other night with dinner at Chile's, a walk at the Green Bay Botanical Gardens and watching Inception. Even though this entry is going to focus on Inception, I have to admit the movie was not the best part of the evening. I really enjoyed the long, liesurely walk. The weather was perfect for it. The gardens were beautiful. I'm not really sure what else to say about it though except that if you ever get up to Green Bay, you should visit the botanical gardens.

So, anyway, the movie was good. Not as exciting as I thought it would be after seeing the trailers. I mean, plenty of action, but a lot of it seemed to be there merely for the sake of having action in the movie. It really wasn't an action flick. It's a psychological thriller about a man named Cobb who leads a team of individuals into peoples' dreams to steal their ideas using a process called extraction. Of course, that kind of activity is illegal. The whole "entering dreams" thing is really the only sci-fi/futuristic element of the story, though. It could otherwise take place today in this real world.

Cobb's team gets hired to do something radical. Instead of stealing an idea, they are to insert an idea - inception. Most people believe it's not even possible, but Cobb does. Or at least, he's willing to try for the chance at a clean record and a normal life with his kids. But there are complications that go beyond merely the technical difficulties of inception. I'm not sure how to say more than that without ruining the thriller aspect of the movie.

It was put together well. The characters are acted out well enough that I wanted to see them succeed. The action was fun to watch, even if it seemed gratuitous at times. The extraction and inception concepts are illustrated well enough to not lose us in either the boring tedium of someone elses fantasy or the complexity of something totally foreign. What really made the movie good, though, was how the characters' projections, their subconsious ideas, enter the film, interact with each other and affect both dreams and reality. The movie blatantly sets up a "was this all real or a dream?" conundrum in the end. Personally, I don't think it matters and it seems somewhat of a trivial debate considering that it's a work of fiction. The important thing is that it's a well imagined work that was fun to participate in.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Rango

Tabby: Dad, you haven't played pony yet today.

Me: You're right, I haven't. I'm going to eat lunch right now, though.

Tabby: Okay, I'll wait while you eat lunch. Then we can play pony.

Me: I was thinking about going to a movie.

Tabby: /gasp! Can I come?

Me: Do you want to see a movie?

Tabby: Yes! And we can eat popcorn and drink soda!

Me: Okay, let's go to a movie.

So we went to the nearby budget theater. While the boys went to see Limitless (which they thought was an awesome show), I took Tabby to see Rango.

Rango was a fun movie. Weird, artsy, but lots of fun. Good storyline, well developed theme, great characters. I've got to admit that after watching the movie, I kind of worried about it scaring Tabby. The bad guys are frightening. Heck, a lot of the good guys are frightening! It's violent for a kids' film, kind of dark at times and coarse in an out west, cowboy way. More foul language than you find in, say, a Barbie movie. Tabby seems to have done fine with it though.

Monday, June 6, 2011

(This Movie About) Vampires Suck(s)

Becky and I tried to watch Vampire's Suck on Friday. The trailer made it look like it had potential. Which is what trailers do, I guess. We went into it knowing it could either be hilarious or a 10 minute sketch drawn thin by the length of the film. We hoped for the former, but were willing to laugh at the latter.

Turns out giving it credit for 10 minutes of laugh worthy material would be generous. Unless it somehow got funny after the first 1/2 hour. That's about as long as we gave it. 20 minutes in I was like, oh come on . . . let's just actually watch Twilight. And you know, other than the baseball scene, I really disliked Twilight.

But we continued watching Vampires Suck for another 10 minutes anyway before giving up on the jokes being anything other crass sophomoric garbage. The acting was bad, the production value poor. I'm sure some of that was intentional camp, but it wasn't pulled off well.

This is already way more words than movie deserves. If you want my advice, just skip it.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Best Friends at the Zoo


Becky took Tabby to the local zoo yesterday along with Tabby's best friends Ella and Brindley.

Tabby says she especially liked the llama. It licked her.