Wish Me Luck!

pete

pete

Brassica Oleracea
Staff member
Administrator
I've been updating a page I created about Claude Laurent flutes. Doing the updates, I found that the Library of Congress website has been significantly updated. So, I was tooling along on the LoC website and found that they have job openings ....

I've applied for the job of Information Technology Specialist (Operating Systems). I'm about 95% qualified/overqualified for the job -- I don't know Solaris, specifically, but I do know Unix/Linux and Solaris is just Sun's version of Unix -- and I think I'd be the perfect fit. Hey, one of the qualifications they want is someone who knows how to run a webserver -- specifically one that uses MySQL and PHP. You're looking at one!

It's also a considerable raise in pay, but I'd have to move back to the Washington, DC area. My wife is guardedly optimistic, too. I actually asked her first if I could apply.

It'd be really kewl to go on a lunch break and ask if I could just use one of their saxophones for a bit. Y'know, take some pics and measurements.
 
That sounds like a great opportunity Pete. Good luck on getting the job.
 
Wow! Good luck Pete. You'd be OK giving up the heat of the desert for DC? Really? No more oppressive heat, lizards, cacti, and mirages on your commute to work? What's the fun in that? :D
 
Thanks, folks.

> You'd be OK giving up the heat of the desert for DC?
I actually lived in both Culpeper then Manassas, Virginia about 16 years ago. Culpeper is about 70 miles away from DC and Manassas is about 30 (that's about 2.4 trillion kilometers to you Canadians), so I know pretty much exactly what it's like out there. (Also, it shames me that I lived out there for over a year and never went to any DC museum or monument.)

It's hot and humid in the summer and cold and snowy/icy in the winter. Pretty, tho. I might have to trade in my Sentra for a Subaru (all wheel drive).

> How exciting and talk about hiring someone who loves working their skill set, passion, and interests.
Yup. From the job description, this sounds absolutely perfect. Well, as much as possible, unless someone's going to start paying me to run my websites. Speaking of that, there's a YouTube channel called The Brain Scoop (I subscribe; if you check it out, note that they do dissections). The hostess of the shows was initially working as a volunteer at a museum and started doing her YouTube stuff. A few years later, another museum hired her with one of their express desires being to have her continue doing her YouTube stuff as an "outreach" of the museum. That'd be extra kewl.


 
pete said:
Oh. They also have Verizon Fiber ....
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Just what Broccoli needs - more fiber!!

So, if you get the gig, how long til you can give tours of the cool stuff? My sister is down in Richmond and if there was a side perk, I might take the whole family out that way. (Thats 27 weeks one way by dog sled for our friends from Canuckistan!)
 
Dunno about tours. Yet :D.

The job is in the "Legislative Branch" of the LoC. That may mean "law library" -- I've worked in law libraries before. In any case, one would think that if you're a LoC employee and you can demonstrate that you're doing something educational, you can get access. They offer that to the public, after all. You just have to fill out a form.

========

I did some quick checks on housing prices out there. They used to be comparable to the Phoenix market. They're now very high. I looked at one house that was $140K in 2009 and it's now selling at $215K ... and, according to Zillow, it should sell for $228K. Ouch.

Oh. I didn't type some words regarding the fiber. "Manassas, VA now has Verizon fiber." Generally that means blazing fast internet. However, I don't have fiber now and my speed is 150Mbps down. Verizon is ... 75Mbps down. That's not optimal. I'll have to look for a different provider if I do move out there :).
 
pete said:
I did some quick checks on housing prices out there. They used to be comparable to the Phoenix market. They're now very high. I looked at one house that was $140K in 2009 and it's now selling at $215K ... and, according to Zillow, it should sell for $228K. Ouch.
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Those kinds of prices will won't get you a crack house around here... The metro Vancouver market is really f'ed up. Seriously. It is.
 
No news on the above job. However, I was browsing my application status for the above job and saw that the LoC had another one open, with slightly less pay and responsibilities. I applied for that one, too.

The LoC website has a series of essay questions for each job. I tend to think that these are in place to keep the really casual from applying. Sample question, that I modified a bit:

Do you have experience with the SDLC methodology? Provide a brief description of your specific experience, education, knowledge, and/or training. Do not paste your resume here or state SEE RESUME. Failure to provide a brief narrative for any KSA statement will result in disqualification of your application from further consideration.
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The "brief description" is a max of 8,000 characters and there were six of these kinds of questions in this last application. This, plus the standard personal info, made the application 28 pages long.
 
Good Luck Pete!


pete said:
I might have to trade in my Sentra for a Subaru (all wheel drive).

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Two words: "Winter Tires" I have 4 Michelin X Ice tires on my Prius a/k/a "the tank"
 
Pete's True Stories from Virginia

When I lived in Culpeper VA, I owned a 1984 or so AMC Eagle 4x4. One day, after a night of ice rain, I headed down my 1/4 acre driveway onto the freeway ... and immediately spun out. I slammed into a wall of ice that was piled up by the side of the road by the snowplows and almost went through it. It badly damaged the car (kinda destroyed the transmission) and I had to hold the steering wheel at about 180 degrees from normal so I could drive into work. On my way in, the fan belt started slipping big time and it started snowing hard. I pulled off to a combo auto dealer/repair service and told the guy, "If you can get this fixed so I can get into work, I'll come back after work and buy a car." They fixed it and I bought a much newer used car after work.

I could also tell you the story about how I didn't have central heat in the house I rented and had to rely on space heaters, but I'm trying to black that out of my brain.
 
Clever solution. When I'm about to close on a car deal I always say something like, "Gee, if you could add 'x' we'd have a deal." So far they have never said no. I can't imagine living north of the Mason-Dixon line and not having heat in your house. But I heard there was a lot of that in places like Detroit after the crash there.
 
Even though the last three cars that we have purchased were fixed price vehicles, I too practiced the "How about a set of floor mats?" trick. My lovely wife is trained to throw in a show of impatience at strategic times, following which I will proffer the "Well, it's pretty much like I want, but I was hoping for window tint", or something along that line. Since the parts department is a separate budget item in the dealership's financial mix, very often they will throw in quite a bit out of their line item in order to close a deal.
 
Today's update:

Applicant met cutoff score for referral. Application referred to Selecting Official to evaluate experience.
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This is for the higher paying job. Haven't heard anything on the lower paying one.
 
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