I Just Realized I Never Mentioned...

[robkelk]

ETA:  I am suddenly tempted to write Steve an email starting with "I HAZ MAD SKILZ AND I LUV GAMS && LERNS FAST CAN I HAZ JOB PLZ" and then seriously asking if he has something that be done long-distance... but on second thought, he'll probably have more than enough local candidates that he would have no need of a telecommuter, regardless of personal history

Well, if you really think you can afford to not follow up a possible job lead... But you've got a couple of leads closer to home right now, so follow up on those first.

(Although I suspect he might answer "Some people are asking for a GURPS I.S.T. update; interested in writing it?")
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[ordnance11]

ETA:  I am suddenly tempted to write Steve an email starting with "I HAZ MAD SKILZ AND I LUV GAMS && LERNS FAST CAN I HAZ JOB PLZ" and then seriously asking if he has something that be done long-distance... but on second thought, he'll probably have more than enough local candidates that he would have no need of a telecommuter, regardless of personal history

Well, if you really think you can afford to not follow up a possible job lead... But you've got a couple of leads closer to home right now, so follow up on those first.
(Although I suspect he might answer "Some people are asking for a GURPS I.S.T. update; interested in writing it?")

Well, no harm in asking..what's the worse he can do?..say no?
  
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Bob Schroeck]

Steve and I already have an agreement on IST2.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Bob Schroeck]

...on the part of advertisers, apparently.
Seen so far this morning have been openings for a ".Net Appliation Developer" and a ".NET Web Develepor".
At least the last one wasn't for a "develeper"; I'd hate to go to an interview and see someone suffering from develeprosy.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[jpub]

I find it interesting that I was so focused on the wrongness of Develepor I completely missed the Appliation in the first one.

[Bob Schroeck]

The local company got back to me. I have my second interview at 3 PM on Friday afternoon. It will, at least in part, consist of a little programming challenge, the basics of which the fellow doing the hiring outlined in the email I got about it. It's practically a take-home/open book exam -- he said during the first interview that he saw no reason to not let people consult references, since he doesn't think it's realistic to expect everyone to know everything by heart, and every programmer has a shelf of references he consults anyway. So, under the assumption he's not going to double-bluff me by complicating or changing the test at the last minute, I'm going to be spending the next two days or so refreshing on the stuff I learned but never used, and learning the stuff I never needed before and thus never studied. Wish me luck. I really want this job.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

Seen so far this morning have been openings for a ".Net Appliation Developer"

That's obviously a misspelling of ".Net Appellation Developer". How much are they willing to pay someone to come up with names?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[jpub]

Y'know with all these tests they make you do, it makes me glad I'm a Storage/Backup (and hardware purchasing) Administrator and not a developer.

[ordnance11]

I was having lunch at the VA cafeteria when I heard two VA employees from the contracting office talking. The same office I just applied to. A couple of mutual introductions and I learned that interviews will begin as soon as in 2 weeks. Reason..the head of contracting is moving away and there's a shake up in the department. But I'll have to see who is in charge of hiring over there. At least I'll know one way or the other quick enough.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[ordnance11]

Good news: I applied to a veteran intern position which is being administered by the county, but the funding is supplied by the feeral government. The good news is that I qualified.
Bad news: I just talked to some who is also qualified and he's been waiting since '09 for a slot.
Good news: finally finished those dratted KSA's. Got it proof-read by one of the HR people. It'll fly. Send that sucker tomorrow. I'm beat.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Bob Schroeck]

Good luck!
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[ordnance11]

I just look at the guys at Vocational Rehabilitation Training...now these guys have it worse than me. You got guys who are trying to shake off their dependencies, guys never used a computer, guys who are frankly..."touched" in the head. I'm just treading water..these guys are trying to climb out of the pit.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[ordnance11]

Look at the "How to Apply" tab and see if I'll need an extra day or two to finish the application. Some of these applications are tricky!
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Bob Schroeck]

I just got back from my second-round interview with the local company, which was almost entirely the coding test. I aced it, to my complete and utter surprise. And I'm suffering such an adrenaline crash right now that it's giving me a pounding headache. More later.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[The Wanderer]

Congratulations, and good luck!

[ordnance11]

Good show, Bob!
On my front, I'm at the 100 federal resume level. Pretty much suspect April and May will get busy..especially if I get lucky on the jobs were they said they need the bodies in place by June 1.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Bob Schroeck]

Thanks.

I have to quickly explain something about the coding test. As I noted earlier, I got a bare-bones description of what it would be: part one would be writing a stored SQL procedure that would take several parameters and use them to retrieve a selection of records. The second part would be to write a webpage that would accept values for those parameters, run the stored query, and return the results.

So to teach myself the parts I didn't know, I dummied up a table of "customer records" -- name, customer number, date of first order, date of most recent order, like that. Just to make things interesting, I wrote the stored procedure to take a start date and an end date and to filter the customer based on date of first order, sorted by customer number. And the webpage of course let you enter dates.

As the "brain picking" thread elsewhere shows, I had a little trouble getting it to work, but it wasn't because of coding, per se, but because I did something funky while installing SQL Server. But I worked it out and had it going perfectly.

Anyway... I get to the interview this afternoon, and when the fellow hands me the specifications for the coding test, I had to suppress outright laughter. It was almost the same thing I had used to teach myself, with a little extra. At its core, accept a date range and filter records on a main table based on it. A third param chose which of four other tables you had to do an inner join on to get a few extra fields, but that was the only difference between his test and my arbitrarily-chosen training setup. Except for some trouble finding the right way to branch on that third param -- and I'm sure that there has to be a more elegant way to do it than the IF-ELSE-IF-ELSE cascade I ended up using -- I could have done it in my sleep. And he told me I did it all in a reasonable time, and my code and webpage were as good as anything else he'd seen so far. I also gleaned from his comments that I have at least three competitors for the position, one of whom has yet to take the test, and another of whom is no threat at all (very bad performance on it).

I'm hoping this is a good omen. Well, that, and the tour of the facilities afterward, with the concomitant half-hour of informal chat about the company culture and policies and whatnot.

They'll be taking a week to make their decision, which means I'll be going into New York for the other second-round interview on Wednesday.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[ordnance11]

I'll be rooting for you Bob!
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Bob Schroeck]

Thanks!
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Sofaspud]

If it makes you feel any better Bob, the IF-ELSE cascade you mention is more than likely the 'right' way to do it.
SQL Server (specifically; I can't speak for MySQL or others) doesn't allow you to join against a table specified by a variable.  You -can- join against a table variable, but that's a slightly different beast.  You cannot join against a string variable containing the name of a table, however.
So, generally, you either write the join in a cascade of IF-THEN-ELSE bits, or you pre-fetch the data you need into a table variable and join against that.  Which, when you can do it, is a nice way of being 'elegant'.  But you can't always do that.
(Alternatively, if you want to call down the wrath of your fellow programmers and security experts, you can sneak around the rules by writing dynamic SQL -- self-generating code, basically -- but That Way Lies Madness, and most shops outright ban it these days.)
Anyway, sounds like you did good.  Best of luck!

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

[Bob Schroeck]

Thanks, Spud. Yes, I feel a lot better about it after reading that. I did briefly investigate table variables via the help; but they're something well beyond any SQL I'd ever done before, and given that I was under a time constraint I didn't feel I could afford to experiment.  And I looked at the CASE statement, but it seems to be used only for multiple-choice operations inside a SELECT.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Sofaspud]

Yep, you've got the right idea, Bob.
The way I keep it straight is this: IF is control-of-flow, ie, conditional branching.  CASE is evaluation of data.
Or, IF is meta-SQL -- it's a statement that affects how SQL Server parses your code.  CASE is just plain SQL, and affects how SQL Server parses your data.
If I want to choose one table or another based on a parameter, that's IF.  If you want to examine a column as you're retrieving it and modify your output based on its contents, that's CASE.
(And to get even more complex, IF is a procedural statement, whereas CASE is a set-based statement.  SQL is non-procedural when evaluating data.  And... I'm drifting, sorry.  One of my hats is SQL instructor here at work.  I'll stop now.

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

[Bob Schroeck]

No prob at all, Spud. Again, thanks.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[The Wanderer]

And hey, I appreciate the "here's how to think about it"; I never got a clear understanding of what the use was of having both IF and CASE back when I was studying Oracle's SQL, and this explains it fairly neatly.

[Bob Schroeck]

Today's Job Listing Weirdnesses...

At least two employers requiring more .NET experience than it is possible to have, including one demanding 10+ years.

And one who includes the following under the list of qualifications:

* Ping pong skills seriously admired

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.