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The Leaky Cauldron, a Harry Potter news site, has a annual fan conference called LeakyCon in different cities across the country. This year is the first year 2 conferences will take place: LeakyCon Portland and LeakyCon London. LeakyCon Portland has been going on since Thursday and today (Sunday) was the last day. Now, it’s not just a Harry Potter convention. They cover all kinds of fandom from Buffy to Doctor Who.

I LOVED the Harry Potter books. I started reading them after the 4th book was released and went through them quickly. I remember reading one book on Thanksgiving day in between helpings of turkey. Whenever a new book was released after that, I was always at the midnight Friday night release and I finished it before the weekend was over or on Monday. I enjoyed the movies as well for what they were. I saw all of them at the theater except the first one and sometimes I’ll watch a few minutes of them if I stumble across them on TV. That said, I know I’m not the biggest Harry Potter fan in the world. I’ve only read the books 1 time each. I don’t know a lot of minute details. I know that there’s a musical out there, but I’ve never seen it. When I found out LeakyCon was coming to Portland, I wanted to go. I wanted to go mostly because I listened to PotterCast, the official podcast of the Leaky Cauldron, and I figured it would be a lot of fun. I know someone who goes every year and she has a good time there. Also, I try to do as much as I can in Portland, especially the type of things that I wouldn’t be able to do if I were still in Mississippi.

Overall, I enjoyed LeakyCon. At times I felt like I was too old and too male to be there. Most of those in attendance were young girls and ladies. There were a few older adults there, but a lot of them were with their children. No one did anything to make me feel weird though. I’m sure it was all in my head.

Because of work, I ended up missing a lot of cool things I wanted to do during the day Thursday and Friday. I decided not to go Thursday to the official opening ceremony on Thursday night. Apparently, that was one of the highlights of the show. Anthony Rapp from Rent did a parody of “La Vie Boheme”. That part is online, so I don’t feel too bad about it. Friday night I sat in on a trivia competition. The first round was Doctor Who questions. They were so easy. I wish I had decided to compete. I ended up leaving after the first round. Saturday morning I got there early for a Doctor Who fan meetup. The room was full when I got there, but they did have an overflow meeting outside the room. I went to panels the rest of the time I was there that day. I got to see the girl that played young Lily Potter in the last Harry Potter movie, Tom Lenk from Buffy and Angel, and Anthony Rapp. On Sunday I went to a Buffy sing-a-long followed by a Doctor Horrible sing-a-long. After that I went to the last ever PotterCast, which was the closing event of the conference.

I started listening to PotterCast a few years ago. I think it was around the time they interviewed J.K. Rowling. After the last book and movie were released, they slowed down on releasing episodes. It’s been almost a year since they released an episode. I’m glad they were able to end the show this way instead of just fading away. I know I’m going to miss it, because I was already missing it. Hopefully, there will be more Potter books and they can bring this show back. Maybe they’ll do a new show together.

I’m glad I went to LeakyCon. I had fun there. Like one speaker said, even though the Internet can make us distant, cons prove that it’s important to come together in person from time to time. My biggest regret is not seeing Devon Murray, who played Seamus Finnigan, one of my favorite characters from the books and the movies. What I loved the most was something that I love about all cons: the feeling of inclusiveness. Despite the age difference, it was great being around fellow nerds/geeks, and feeling like I belong, and not being judged. I’ll at least consider going back if LeakyCon is in this area again.

Update, 7/1/2013
I added a link to the “La Vie Boheme” parody from LeakyCon.

I started my new job last week. It wasn’t the best start I’ve had, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I had first week difficulties.

I had to go to one of the client’s campuses on Monday to pick up my badge and then I had to report to work at another campus in a different part of town. It turns out the address I was given to both places took me to the wrong buildings on those campuses. I reported to work almost 30 minutes late. When I got to the front door, my badge didn’t work. By the time security got there and I found the desk of my manager, I was 45 minutes late. He was in a meeting though. Someone on my team told me they would let him know when he got there. When I finally got to meet him, he didn’t care that I was late and showed me a place where I could get settled in. Since I am a contingent worker for the client, I had an appointment set up to get a laptop to use. My appointment wasn’t until Wednesday morning, so my manager told me to come back then. Basically, I had another 2 days off.

On Wednesday, I got my laptop. I went to my desk and tried to log in, but my password wouldn’t work. I called in to have it reset, but they had to send it to my manager since I haven’t logged in yet. My manager was nowhere to be found. After lunch I found out that he was in meetings all day. I decided to go home and read since I wasn’t sure I would get to speak to him that day.

On Thursday, I saw my manager early, but he had lost my password. I had my password reset again and was finally able to get on the network. My manager told me a few subjects that I needed to get ramped up on. I spent time getting my development environment set up and did some studying. Apparently, there were a lot of meetings that week. I hardly saw my teammates. On Friday I did more studying. I went to lunch at 11:45 and missed a message from someone who wanted to speak to me about what I would be working on. He was away from his desk the rest of the day. Things are looking up though. I still don’t have access to everything, which a normal first day/week problem I expect. At least I have an idea of where I’m going.

I’m glad to be back at work even though I didn’t get to do much. At least I wasn’t forced to sit around when I couldn’t do anything. Hopefully, next week will be smoother and I can get some real work done.

I have a new job! I’ll be working for Allion USA Engineering Services. They are a validation and software development company. The software development part is a lot like what I came from at Tactel, so I was very interested in working for them.

I first went in to speak to them in their office a month or so ago. They were interested, but had to find a place to put me with a client. While I was there I told them about my friend and former co-worker Alston, a QA engineer who was laid off from Tactel at the same time as me. They hired him a couple of weeks later.

For the past couple of weeks, I had a feeling they would find something for me soon. I felt good about some of the client interviews and was waiting to hear back. I felt a little nervous about going on my trip to Reno, but I figured I could handle any requests from there. On Wednesday, I got an email asking if I could interview a few hours later. I did the interview late that afternoon while I was a hotel room in Reno waiting for John to get back. I was pretty sure I nailed it because the interviewer seemed very pleased with everything I was saying. On late Friday afternoon, I received an offer from Allion.

Although technically today was my start date, all I did was fill out paperwork and watch a training video. I won’t start for real until Monday. I’m very excited to be getting back to work. Now I just have to get back into a normal sleep schedule.

At the end of the week before last, my friend John texted me to say that he was going to be in Reno, NV for 2 weeks and it would be cool if I could come down for a few days. I went to Expedia and saw that it would cost only $196 for round trip tickets. I usually don’t go on trips on such short notice (4 days), but I didn’t have a job and it wasn’t expensive, so I figured I would go. My former co-worker and Alston and I had said that we wanted take a quick trip just to take a break from job hunting, but we never got around to planning anything. He was hired by a company that I referred him to and I had a feeling that something would be happening for me any day, so there didn’t seem like a need for a trip anymore. I figured that if I had any requests for phone interviews while I was gone, I could do them in the hotel room.

John was busy during the day, even on Saturday, so we could only hang out at nights. That gave me a chance to shop and explore.

Tuesday – I arrived in Reno around midnight via San Francisco. I went straight to bed.

Wednesday – I did some shopping during the say. I think all I bought was a card game and some books. I got a request for a phone interview on very short notice. I nailed it. I decided that instead of leaving Friday as originally planned, I would leave Sunday so that John and I could drive to San Francisco Saturday. That night we went to a casino and ate dinner there. Afterward, we gambled some we went home.

Thursday – I think I did more driving around and shopping during the day. I bought a hoodie because I left my jacket in Portland and I knew we would be outside that night. That night we drove to Lake Tahoe, ate dinner, and took in some of the scenery. John wanted to get some pictures of the sunset.

Friday – I went out, bought another book, and bought an auxiliary cable for the rental car we’d been using (actually, it was a minivan because they didn’t have anything else when I arrived Tuesday night). A little after 4 I got word that I had gotten the job that I interviewed for on Wednesday. I was hoping I would find out something before 5, so I wouldn’t spend all weekend wondering about it. We celebrated with drinks that night.

Saturday – I bought some presents for other people this time. John and I drove to San Francisco. We got there so late we didn’t have time to do much. We hung out in the Castro all night. We got pretty drunk.

Sunday – John wanted to see trees so we drove to Muir Woods. We got to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge on the way there. The woods were fun. We go a lot of exercise walking along the trail. After that we drove back to Reno because I had to catch a flight back. I made it back to Portland via Seattle a little before midnight.

I had a great time. I think that was the longest I’ve been away from Portland since I moved here. It was great to get away for a little while and it’s always fun to hang out with John. I think I’ll be seeing him again in November.

Someone on my timeline retweeted a series of tweets that @sarahkendzior made on what she called the internship scam. I believe she was responding to an article on unpaid internships.  I’m putting all the tweets together here.

Here is how the internship scam works. It’s not about a “skills” gap. It’s about a morality gap.
1) Make higher education worthless by redefining “skill” as a specific corporate contribution. Tell young people they have no skills.
2) With “skill” irrelevant, require experience. Make internship sole path to experience. Make internships unpaid, locking out all but rich.
3) End on the job training for entry level jobs. Educated told skills are irrelevant. Uneducated told they have no way to obtain skills.
4) As wealthy progress on professional career path, middle and lower class youth take service jobs to pay off massive educational debt.
5) Make these part-time jobs not “count” on resume. Hire on prestige, not skill or education. Punish those who need to work to survive.
6) Punish young people who never found any kind of work the hardest. Make them untouchables — unhireable.
7) Tell wealthy young people they are “privileged” to be working 40 hrs/week for free. Don’t tell them what kind of “privileged” it is.
8) Make status quo commentary written by unpaid interns or people hiring unpaid interns. They will tell you it’s your fault.
9) Young people, it is not your fault. Speak out. Fight back. Bankrupt the prestige economy.

I’m not sure I agree with everything. Some of her points hit on what I was faced with in my last job search a few years ago and a little bit on this one.

A lot of companies don’t care about work you did in your classes or part-time work you did while you were in school. I think I gained some valuable knowledge in school. Over the past few weeks, I’ve spoken to several people who didn’t understand that I worked for Mississippi State University for 5.5 years after I graduated. They think that work was part of my studies, so it doesn’t count. I don’t know how to make it clearer on my resume. I wonder how many have seen my resume and not called back because they thought I only had 1.5 years of full-time experience instead of 7+ years.

I’m not applying for entry level jobs, but a few years ago, I would’’ve been happy to take one. Why do so many entry level jobs ask for a couple of years of experience? What ever happened to finding a bright person and training them on how to do their job?

It’s good that some can afford to take a paid internship, but I don’t think I could have done that. Yes, being out of work does hurt you.

Software engineering is such a broad field, it’s hard to know everything. You can have many years of experience, but if you’re missing one specific skill you can be overlooked. So what if your past experience makes it easy to pick up on new technologies.

Anyway, my job search continues. I’ve had some good interviews and some not so good ones where I didn’t really connect with the interviewer. I’ve been told that I needed more experience in one skill and I’ve been told that I’m overqualified. I’ve also been told that I’m a good fit for the company, but they don’t have anywhere to put me yet. Hopefully, something will turn up soon.

About a week and a half ago, I went to see a podiatrist to have a piece of glass removed from my foot. I stepped on a piece of glass from a broken mirror about 5 weeks earlier. Since my foot never completely healed and my regular doctor didn’t find anything, I figured I needed to get it checked out by a specialist. Also, my medical insurance that I had from working at Tactel was about a week away from expiring.

One thing I’ve noticed since I moved here is that I never have to pay anything before I leave a doctor’s or dentist’s office, even if there’s a sign stating that payment must be made at the time services are rendered. When I was in Starkville, I always had to pay something before leaving the office. There were times when I was close to broke (still in school or barely out of school) and asked if they could file it with my insurance and send me a bill later. Nope. They always wanted me to pay something before I left the office. Now that I’m in Portland and more well off, I never have to pay anything before I leave. I always stop by the checkout desk before I leave, and they look at me like they’re confused and say, “Do you need to schedule a follow-up appointment?” When I say that I don’t they tell me that they’ll bill me what my insurance doesn’t pay.

I wonder why there’s a difference. Is it because I lived in a small town then and I live in a major metropolitan area now? Is it because of the insurance plan I’m on? Maybe I’ve just been lucky with my choices of medical providers since I moved here. Who knows? It just makes me happy when doctors are more concerned about helping patients than getting money from them.

They did find some glass in my foot. I hope they got it all out. It still hurts a little, but hopefully I won’t have to go back.

Up until a few weeks ago, I wasn’t overly impressed with many of the movies I had seen this year. Other than Warm Bodies, I hadn’t seen anything that I would consider great. Yes, I haven’t gone to the theater as much as I did last year. Word of mouth and laziness has made me skip a few movies I had planned to see.

The first few months of 2012 brought us some movies that I really enjoyed: Chronicle, The Cabin in the Woods, Haywire, and The Hunger Games. Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

This year hadn’t been as enjoyable. But then Iron Man 3 came along and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It has some flaws, but overall it was a great ride.

And then a couple of weeks later we got Star Trek Into Darkness. I loved this movie to the hundredth power! I’ve been a Star Trek since I was a little boy, so the chances are that I was going to like it at least a little. This movie exceeded my expectations. It had everything I wanted! It’s the most fun I’ve had in the theater since The Avengers about a year ago. I’m already planning to go see it again, and I don’t see many movies in the theater more than once. I think The Avengers and the first Iron Man were the last two I did. Hopefully, the rest of the year can produce movies that are close to as entertaining. Go see it in IMAX 3D if you can.

I was laid off today along with 2 other co-workers that I know of. I believe my bosses when they say it was a business decision. They didn’t have anywhere to use me. The last 2 projects I was supposed to work on ending up getting postponed by the client. Lately, I’ve been working on an internal project, which doesn’t make the company any money. Unfortunately, I’m one of the least experienced people in the office (I have over 7 years under my belt), so I guess it’s easier to get rid of me. The guys that I know were laid off are all pretty young.

It all came as a total shock. I assumed that they would find another project for me to work on. There was a mention of this happening soon less than a week ago. So it was a big surprise when I was told that I was being let go and that my network access would be turned off today.

I was about a week away from closing on a new home. Right before I got the bad news, I was on the phone speaking with my real estate agent about the signing and a few minutes before that I was getting the last piece of info the lender needed. Unless, I can find a new job by Monday (today is Thursday), I’m probably going to lose the house.

I am very disappointed. It was the best, most fun job I’ve ever had. I had so much flexibility and I related to my co-workers well. I felt like I was able to express myself without worrying about people thinking I was weird. My next job is going to be compared to this one and I’m not sure it’ll stack up well. They said they might be able to bring me back sometime down the road, but I can’t really wait on that. I’m sure everything will work out fine and I’ll bounce back. I’m grateful for the opportunity and the valuable experience.

Time for another adventure. Thanks to referrals from friends, I have a few calls lined up tomorrow. Tonight, one of the 2 others guys who were laid off is coming over and there will be much alcohol consumed.

I bought a Fitbit One about a month and a half ago. It’s one of the many wearable fitness devices that are growing in popularity. It keeps track of steps, calories burned, stairs climbed, etc. You can also use it to track your sleep. I had already pre-ordered the new Fitbit device that’s supposed to be coming out soon, but I got tired of waiting. At one point, I thought about getting a Nike Fuelband, but I didn’t want to wear anything on my wrist. I don’t even wear watches anymore. I can put the Fitbit in my pocket and forget about it.

Fitbit has an app that I use a lot now. I was already using it to track my weight, but now I use it for more. I’m constantly checking my stats throughout the day on the app and on the Fitbit website to make sure I’m making progress toward my daily goals. You can set goals in several categories, but the most important one to me is number of steps. My current goal is 6,000 per day. On days that I work out, I usually take about 11,000-12,000 steps. On Saturday, it’s about 12,000-14,000 because I run errands that day. On other days of the week, I usually struggle to make it to 6,000. There’ve been times at night where I find myself reading and pacing back and forth just to reach my goal.

I once thought that I would never track calories because it’s too time consuming and I didn’t want to become obsessed with it. When I bought the Fitbit, I said I would do it for a few weeks. Well, over a month has passed and I’m still doing it. It’s helped me to see why I couldn’t seem to shake the weight I’ve gained back since I moved to Portland. The king-sized Reese’s that I’ve gotten in the habit of eating again can easily put me over my recommended calorie count for the day. A lunch from Subway or Quiznos can get up to 500-600 calories while the lunches I eat at home are 300 calories at the most. I’m getting back on the wagon and coming in very close to my recommended amount each day. That amount is adjusted based on your activity level during the day. If Fitbit’s estimates are correct, I can go at a medium pace and be back at my pre-Portland weight in August.

I’ve also been using the Fitbit’s sleep monitoring capabilities. You place the device in a wrist strap and sleep with it on your wrist. Supposedly, wrist movement is an accurate way to detect whether you’re awake or asleep. What I’ve learned is that when I fall asleep, I’m out like a light.

Soon after I bought a Fitbit One, I bought a Fitbit Aria, which is a wireless scale. It measures your weight and body fat and uploads it to your online profile. You can go here to check out my online profile. Cheer me on. Mock me. Whatever. A know a lot it is visible only to friends on the site, but you should still be able to get an idea of how I’m doing.

Today I canceled my Netflix DVD account and I’ll be streaming only from now on. It’s something I’ve been thinking about doing for a couple of years now at least. I hardly use the DVD service anymore. Most movies that I’m interested in I’ll see in the theater and either never want to see again or like enough to buy when it’s on video. Most Netflix rentals sit around here for weeks or months and I send some back without watching them. I told myself that once I got my DVD queue down to 0, I would go streaming only. Technically, there are 2 movies left in my queue, but I’m sure I can watch them before my membership expires in 22 days.

I figured I can use one of the various streaming services or Redbox to watch new releases that I don’t want to own. I’ve already been doing that a little. Lately, Netflix has mostly been for older movies that aren’t streaming.

I’m going to miss getting those red envelopes in the mail. According to my account history, I first joined in March 2004. My first rental was Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season 1: Vol. 1. The last movie in my queue is The Abyss (the classic version).