Monday, June 04, 2007

Oh my - a Google Phone Interview

I have a phone interview scheduled with Google in two days time. I'm a *tad* stressed out. As in I don't think I'll sleep very well until it's over. I've Google'd (heh) for information on how Google conducts interviews and so far it sounds like it'll be tough. I have a bad feeling the interview will focus on:
  1. CS concepts and algorithms that I studied in school but never had to apply in real life;
  2. Brain teasers (I'm not very good at those);
  3. Um, other hard stuff :)
Scary.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Any questions?

I recently received an email from a colleague:
"The server is on my desk. I believe I mentioned the to [name removed] yesterday over I'm.

I will regarding rack it once we identify rhe 1850 the shoild have been unracked.

Ups 5 is at 100 percent. We can not regarding rack this server until the other 1850 is powered off and pulled.

Any questions should be directed to me."
I have a question: um - what?

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Rising cost of health care: up 25 - 33% in one year?!?

I'm a self-employed IT contractor with a non-group health care insurance plan, so I make a monthly payment to the insurance company to cover my entire family (there are five of us). My current deductible is over $3,000, meaning the insurance company doesn't chip in on doctors visits until I've paid more than $3K, and that's YTD dollars. So my deductible payment balance starts over at $0 on 1 January. So far my monthly payment has been a little over $400/mo. which is manageable, and we didn't have to make too many deductible payments last year.

And then I got a letter from the insurance company. It seems the "rising cost of health care" is going to cost me an extra $200 per month, or I can increase my deductible to over $4,000 . So it looks like the cost of health care in the USA has increased by something like 25 - 33% in the last year.

WTF? Wouldn't an increase like this be news? Or is this unique to my insurance company? Am I being screwed? If so, I didn't even get dinner and drinks...