Here’s the new video for Bleed from Meshuggah’s Obzen disc.

Here’s a little slide show of Maxine discovering, sniffing then smooching her photo which was set as the desktop on the traveling laptop.

End obligatory post about my dog, maxine. we now return to irregularly scheduled postings on other stupid shit.

The short story: Celtic Frost were an avant garde metal band from Switzerland that evolved from the ashes of its much rawer prototype, Hellhammer. After releasing a series of brilliant albums, culminating with To Mega Therion(check out the tympani, horns and opera singers) and certified classic Into The Pandemonium (which includes an off-the-wall cover of Wall of Voodoo’s Mexican Radio), Celtic Frost took a weird, comical turn into hair metal. Needless to say, their hardcore fans deserted them post haste, myself included After limping along for another album, they disbanded.

Fast forward 15 years, Celtic Frost began to rise from a grave of their own design and released one of the greatest albums not only of their career, but in all of metal, the haunting grindfest Monotheist. Fans far and wide rejoiced at the new Celtic Frost recordings and the band seemed to be on the cusp of launching into a new phase of undeniable artistic brilliance.

A Dying God Coming Into Human Flesh - Monotheist, Celtic Frost:

This week, Tom G. Warrior (Fischer), guitarist, grunter and main man, announced that he has quit Celtic Frost. Forever.

You dick!

Ok, not really. Having first hand experienced the joy that is the music business for 10 or so years, I know full well how much being an artist trapped in the record business sucks balls. Watching this interview with Tom Warrior (taped in May 2007) awakens nerve endings in my body that I honestly hoped would never be disturbed.

Bitter. Justifiably so. However it is truly a shame that Tom’s vision of the future was impaired by the sour taste of decade old grapes. Few, if any, musicians get a second chance. Of those few, a similarly small percentage have any degree of luck putting their careers back on track, especially ones who released an embarrassingly horrid mistake such as Cold Lake. Not only did Celtic Frost return from the grave, but they took over the entire cemetery. To toss such a rare accomplishment into the trash is beyond standard human comprehension, and further illustrates the fatalistic tendencies that fueled and killed Celtic Frost. Twice.

While some may be sad that Celtic Frost has come to an end (maybe), we should all feel some degree of thankfulness that those three volatile fuckwads got their shit together long enough to give us the amazing Monotheist and a slew of supporting tourdates. Yeah, Tom, you’re a bit of a hyper-sensitive over emotional drama overlord, which artistically is f-ing awesome, but socially is your heel of achilles.

Rest in Peices, Celtic Frost

Well, today I finally had enough of them and added a captcha thingy to the contact form. For those who are unaware, a captcha is one of those images with warped text in it that you have to type into another box in order to submit a form.

If you’re like me, you probably hate these things with a passion. The war against spam bots unfortunately has victims, which in this case is your ease of contacting us. Bastards.

Allow me to preface this whole story by saying that i totally despise cellular phones. I’ve had about 12 different cellphones, 3 smart phones and two beepers before that (remember them?). Generally, the phone languishes somewhere in my man-bag or on a table somewhere only to be remembered when the Mrs. complains that “I’ve been calling you. You didn’t answer your phone!” My former employer sprung to give me a Blackberry, which was a bit more interesting, but I could never get the hang of typing on the mini-keyboard using shift keys and spell guesser. Plus, it wouldn’t sync with my computers (all macs). Eventually I stopped carrying the thing around and let it tumble around in the bottom of the man-bag. I returned the Blackberry when I quit the job to do VT full time.

In the hope that upping the ante of gadgetry might engage my interest in a device, I got one of those Palm Treo 680’s in December 2006. I loved the fact that i could check email on the go and take quick photos, send them to Flickr, do a little ‘rudimentary’ websurfing while standing in lines or on the can somewhere. But the Treo itself was unbelievably lacking - stylus : blech, interface : blech, cant sync music from mac unless I buy an application : bleeech. The Treo was surely a step in the right direction - i was engaged - but with the higher degree of power the lousy interface became more apparent.

Then the iPhone was announced. Of course I wanted one, but having foregone a quite handsome paycheck bossing around programmers at a huge dot com to jump head first into virtual poverty in the name of independence I certainly couldn’t afford one. As fate would have it, the screen on my Treo mysteriously cracked, four months after purchasing it. I called Palm, who said, essentially, “tough titties.” *sigh*

After hemming and hawing for a week or two I decided to get it repaired - $200 for a replacement screen (on a $500 device that was four months old) was still less expensive than an iPhone, plus I felt like I had barely gotten to know the Palm properly. It took the repair shop about three tries to get the screen to work properly, but eventually it did and I went on my merry way… to Macau of all places.

While packing the night before I left for Macau, I mulled over all of my electronics and decided that there was no reason for me to bring the phone. Between skype and other video/audio/text chatting plus the Macau blog, I would have little problem being in contact. If an emergency should arise, then I’d just have to figure something out. I put my Treo in a pile of stuff that I decided not to take with me, packed up everything else then went to Macau.

When I got back, the Treo was nowhere to be found. The Mrs. didn’t see nor touch it, and it wasn’t with the stuff that I had left it with. For the next two months we tore the house apart flipping over furniture and looking in every nook and cranny for it, unsuccessfully. Phones generally don’t get up and walk away, at least as far as I know. After retracing the events of the disappearance, the Mrs. mentioned that only one friend of ours had visited during the 10 days I was gone. I can’t say for sure if this person swiped the Palm, but apparently they’re an admitted kleptomaniac. Anyways, the Palm is gone. POOF. I guess the thought had not crossed my mind that i would lose my phone from 5,000 miles away. I can only guess that that Palm was cursed from the start… between the cracked screen, iPhone envy and the Treo’s ultimate theft.

My lovely wife, who coupled her disgust at not being able to call me (again) with her desire to make my birthday (38!) a happy one bought me an iPhone. For all the gushing and praise it’s gotten in the press and blogs and coffee shops everywhere, the iPhone is everything I could’ve wanted and more. It works with my macs, it plays my songs, its fast, it uses a normal web browser (safari) and it’s got a pipeline of developers clamoring to make applications for it. My iphone seldom has a dead battery - only when I’m purposefully charging it down - and it never rattles around at the bottom of my man-bag unused and untouched. The damn thing has become my third arm, second brain and a pocket laptop.

Chances are, you’ve never heard of Meshuggah before, or at least not the band. Meshuggah is a yiddish word that roughly translates to ‘crazy’ which is an unbelievably appropriate moniker for these nutbags.

Listening to Meshuggah is about as close as one can get to writing out calculus equations on the side of a cow with a chainsaw. It’s brutal, bloody, but undeniably intelligent, in craft, technique and intelligence.

If you’re looking for something completely different and are familiar with the basics of metal (Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer) do yourself a favor take Meshuggah’s new obZen for a test drive.

Listen to some samples on

So why is it back? Well, two reasons.

First, VT reader and friend Cheerioh has been harassing me to get resurrect the story about playing footsie with Google and Yahtzee with Yahoo back online. He’s taken quite a shine to my telling of the tale of the Google interview process and the Yahoo disaster.

Second, I’ve come to realize that having a ’site blog’ is probably a good idea. I could talk about new stuff thats coming, stuff thats going away, solicit suggestions from the peanut gallery and talk about a whole bunch of other stuff that doesn’t fit into the Vegas/gambling box, but might be of interest to folks anyway. Particularly, technology, politics, life, love, sex, rock n roll, and the best techniques I’ve ever seen to fluff up a ball of hash. No, I don’t toke anymore, but as anyone who has enjoyed the turkish mud knows, hash fluffing is an art unto itself.

With these two things in mind, including yet another nudge from Cherrioh, I’ve de-mothballed the previous version of Eye In The Sky, reloaded the data, made a coupla tweaks and fixes to the layout (Wordpress CSS, while ‘valid’ sucks Wayne Fucking Newton’s balls) and voila… were back on the road again.

The Eye In The Sky is back!

This is my dog, George.

Hi George!

She’s a great dog… loving, playful, affectionate and she knows how to deal Hold ‘Em.

Rrrrrring.

“Hello?”

“Hello Charles, this is Rajeev. I’m sorry I was delayed in calling because they moved my office and my computer is acting strange,”

Rajeev is the head of something-or-another department and works in the Sunnyvale office. He explained to me the corporate structure - he reports to Lloyd Braun (who i think has since gotten the axe) overseeing 12 sections of Yahoo - Entertainment, TV, Movies, Kids, ‘Premium Video, Food and more. Rajeev gave me the rundown on the ‘premium video’ gig Amir mentioned. He asked me if I was interested… I lied and said “Definitely!.”

Together we pounded through my resume line by line. When he noticed a gap between the completion of college and the beginning of ‘professional experience’ he inquired what I was doing during that time. I told him straight out - I was traveling around playing avant-garde rock music to acid-eating hippies. He inquired how I got from playing rock and roll into the internet bizness. The long and short of it is, I was playing in said band and had to remove a group of people from the band, one of the disgruntled former band members coordinated a hacking attempt on the website. Someone had to fix it, and I stepped up to the plate. The rest, as they say, is history and about a coupla million lines of code and flowery discourse.

Rajeev chuckled a little at my story and continued talking about Yahoo and fielded my questions. I asked him if Yahoo was planning on having a mass layoff and restructuring - it was reported in the Tech rumor circles a few days earlier. He said that wasn’t going to happen (it happened a few months later.) He also told me that Yahoo was planning on releasing a new advertising platform code named “Panama” - whether or not David Lee Roth wrote the code is still up for debate. He flat out told me it was going to be released in early December - it didn’t, it came out in February. We chit chatted a bit more then Rajeev said sayonara and hung up. He seems like a great guy. Neato.

The next interview I would be having would be with Steve, the programmer at YMG who had been my final phone screen before coming in. Steve came in and we talked about all sorts of stuff, some technical, some fluff. He mentioned that some other programmers would be joining in as we progressed. Little by little about 5 members of the programming team floated in and out of the room, each one pummeling me with some kind of question. The topics included Semantic markup, CSS, various Javascript libraries, css floats / table-less layout, more javascript, a little PHP, object oriented programming and even more brainbusters.

One, Two, Three strikes… YER OUT! I totally whiffed on a bunch of their questions, but I was pretty forthright about not knowing. The only thing worse than not knowing is bullshitting incorrectly. Being incorrect is better than bullshitting. They fired a ton of questions at me and after about 75 minutes of this I began to get a little tired, decaffeinated and my blood sugar was getting low. I did the best I could given that this was a complete firing squad of excellent programmers pounding a guy whose not really a programmer. I could tell a few of the guys in there liked me and were pulling for me, I could tell that some of them were ‘hot shot’ know it all types who get off on proving how much more than you they know. Interesting mix of personalities, but they all seemed like good guys and were friendly as fuck.

The firing squad round wrapped up and Steve walked me to the elevator, thanking me for coming and joking a little. I had mixed feelings about how the whole thing went as I read his body language in the elevator. He got off on his floor and buzzed me down to the lobby. Sayonara Steve. As I got out at the lobby I walked past this Yahoo schwag store… cups, hats, pens, t-shirts all sortsa Yahoo branded gear - it’s kinda like the ‘campus store.’ Very dorky. I walked past, down some stairs to the valet, got my car and headed home.

Driving down Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills. More and more I get the feeling that this whole thing was a waste of time. I really feel that whiffed the interview completely, at least the firing squad portion. This is certainly not unexpected. I’m not a ‘programmer’ in the scientific sense, i’m an interface engineer. The more I thought about it the more I realized - I really don’t give a shit if Yahoo calls me back or not. The only scenario I can think of isn’t a scenario at all, it’s my current reality - stuck at the same job. Yah, it kinda blows chunks, but it could be a helluva lot worse. I hopped on the work provided blackberry and called Miss Monkay to give her a rundown on what happened, including my epiphany. No matter what, I’m going to play this one out as a pro and see what happens. If Yahoo decides to call me back then, shit, you can teach an ape to juggle cookies without eating them.

I get home and emailed Amir to thank him for inviting me to Yahoo and meeting the crew. I’m being cordial. He emails me back the next day:

Saturday September 30, 2006

From Amir:
Hi Charles,

It was great meeting you in person today. All that talked to you were
very impressed.

One thing I forgot to ask you today is:

If we arrived at the point of an accepted offer, how long would it be from that point until you would be able to make the move to LA and start working?

Hope you are enjoying your time in LA.

Amir

Interesting… (drums fingers on chin.) All that talked to me were very impressed? Seriously? Ok… I guess thats kinda cool. One thing that perplexes me is the ‘how long till I move to LA and enjoying my time in LA thing.’ I frakking live here! When I read this originally glossed over it and focused on the ‘very impressed’ part. Looking back at it now I probably shouldn’tve hit the snooze alarm on that one.

I responded to Amir’s email:

To: Amir

Fabulous.

Rajeev asked me that when we spoke… I would guess 3-4 weeks (possibly less). Usually I would say 2 weeks notice would be sufficient, but since I am a manager at XXXXXXXXXXX, I feel its my duty to transition knowledge and responsibility to my successor. XXXXXXXXXXXX
has treated me well and I would like to make my departure as uneventful for them as possible.

-c

Sunday October 1, 2006

The next day Amir replied to me thusly:

That sounds very reasonable. It would be a mistake for you to leave on bad terms, so you should take as much time as needed to ensure a smooth transition.

We will be drafting an offer letter to you and sending to you shortly.

Hope you had a great weekend-

Amir

YAHTZEE!

I must say I was pretty excited, and somewhat perplexed, at what was going on here. I really felt like I whiffed, but apparently not. I began to overplay my hand a little, got excited about getting outta the current job, started doing some preliminary looking for a new car (I sold mine 10 months) and told the inner circle of friends - including former day job posse who now work at Yahoo! - that I was making a change. After the Google debacle I tried to keep everything in some degree of perspective - just in case.

Thursday October 5, 2006

Still no word from Yahoo HR. No offer letter, no package, no phone call - nuthin. I decided to email Amir just to touch base.

Amir,

Just an FYI… still haven’t heard anything from HR or received a package.

Take care,

-c

He emailed me back relatively quickly:

Hi Charles,

Josie didn’t talk to you today? She was planning to….

In any case, we finished the approval process for the offer, and you
WILL be receiving an official offer (tomorrow or early next week). We are very
excited about the possibility of having you join the team. We think it
will be a great fit both ways.

Feel free to give me a call if you want to talk. 619-XXX-XXXX

Amir

I’m beginning to think now that this might really be a done deal, just some HR bureaucracy is going down. I decided to wait a coupla days and see what happens.

Thursday October 12, 2006

Still no word from Yahoo HR, Josie, phone call, package, nuthin. I emailed Amir.

Amir,

Hope things are well for you. Just wanted to touch
base to tell you that I’ve yet to receive phone call
or package from HR.

Let me know if anything has changed.

Take care,

-c

I’m beginning to worry a little bit, this seems a bit fishy. Later that day Amir replied:

Hi Charles-

Sorry for not getting back to you earlier today- I was on travel.
Nothing has changed. I’ll check with HR tomorrow to find out what the
status is.

Just to make sure I’m ask them the right question- were you told to
expect a package from them last week? What was the latest conversation you
had with someone (I’m guessing that was probably with Josie)?

Best,

Amir

My instant response:

I haven’t heard anything from anyone but you. This
email thread is all the Yahoo! contact i’ve had -
other than interview day and the original ping a few
months ago.

-c

He quickly responded:

Call me tomorrow at your convenience- 619-XXX-XXXX. Let’s figure this
out. BTW_ I was in Santa Monica today, and we picked out your seating
location. You will be right next to Steve K on the 3rd floor. Steve also said
that he’ll introduce you to some people that are renting near by to work.

Amir

When you’re a boss, you can pick your employees, you can pick your seat, but can you pick your employees’ seat? Nyuk nyuk. Again I’m curious why he’s mentioning “renting” and “moving” - I already live here and i’m only 20 minutes away from the joint (approximately 2 hours during LA rush hour). Something is definitely weird with this situation and I’m not exactly sure what it is. I jot down Amir’s phone number and stick it to my cellphone.

Friday The Thirteenth of October 2006

Friday the 13th, the day of horror and bloodbath at Camp Crystal Lake. Will such a massacre be repeated here in sunny southern California? Let’s get Amir on the phone and find out. I stepped outside of the day job and called Amir. “Hello, this Amir.” “Hi Amir, it’s Charles, calling to follow up on whats going on with HR.” “Hi Charles. I spoke with HR and figured the whole thing out. Apparently there were two candidates named Charles who applied for the position and we only have one opening.” (silence) “Somehow I got your email addresses mixed up. We’ve decided to offer the position to the other candidate.” After a real long pause of silence, I said to Amir “Ok, thanks man” and hung up. I don’t think he said anything in response. What exactly could one say in that situation?

I sat there on the bench for a good 10 minutes watching cars go streaming up and down Sunset Boulevard. I’ve been in this business since 1999, the semi-early days of the internet. I’ve seen a lot of strange shit, but this, hands down, takes the mother fucking cake.

I was so absolutely shocked, not about not getting the gig - I didn’t think I had a chance from the time I left the firing squad - but how supremely incompetent this “manager” Amir could be. Absolutely speechless. When I finally gathered up my jaw from the curb, I headed back inside and instant messaged my lovely wife Miss Monkay and told her what the outcome was. We were both aghast and shocked.

The weekend was mostly one of confusion and a little bit of anger and a heaping dose of embarrassment. I felt like an idiot, couldn’t sleep, questioned my goals in life, the whole ’self analysis while licking your wounds emotional parade.’ Grrr.

Monday October 16 2006

I headed back to work. Put my chin up and tried to forget the whole thing and move on with my life. Sometime in the mid-morning, I get a meeting request from my boss that says something like “Team Projects” or something. I accept and head over to his office at the scheduled time that afternoon. I walk into his office and he says “sit down, close the door” which I do. (uh oh) “The word on the street is that you’re leaving for Yahoo!” “No, I’m not.” “Well, Yahoo HR called our HR to check on your employment status.” “I talked to them, they didn’t have what I was looking for. End of story.” I wouldn’t say that is a lie, i’d say its a somewhat evasive answer, but still accurate. They didn’t have what I was looking for, a job. He proceeded to grill me for an hour about this and essentially wrote my name on his shit list in big red letters followed by a big red exclamation point. Five months later at my annual review he still brought the whole Yahoo! thing up and probably still holds a grudge against me for this (he does this to everybody who quits from his command).

So I got screwed out of a new job by incompetent hiring manager. PLUS I’m in jeopardy at my current job because of incompetent HR at Yahoo! Seriously, someone has got to pay for this.

Coming soon I Played Yahtzee with Yahoo (Part 4 - Attack of the Chuckmonster)