Manversation

During some recent web surfing I came across the site ikea hacker, in which creative individuals from around the web submit ways in which they have modified (hacked) various items from the discount furniture giant to suit their individual needs. This got me to thinking that, as with so many things in life, there is not a simple black-and-white dichotomy here between those who make things and those who do not make things. There is instead what I would call a “creativity continuum” of progressively more creative endeavors starting with the consumer of manufactured goods at one end and culminating in the artisan who makes these goods almost entirely from raw materials at the other.

This article is about my initial observations about those two end points of the creativity continuum and some points in between. I’m looking forward to researching this further and learning more about the myriad forms of creative expression that make up the human experience.

By categorizing things, I’m not trying to put anyone down or say “this kind of artist is better than that kind.” Any form of creative expression is potentially a rewarding experience and we all have to start somewhere

However, it’s been my experience that the further someone goes on this theoretical creativity continuum, the more control and creativity he or she gets to exert on the finished product. It’s the difference between building something like a guitar from a kit and building it from scratch. In both cases, you’re going to (hopefully) have a rewarding experience, learn something new, and have a creative outlet, but in building one from scratch, you get to make a lot more choices – what kind of wood to use for the fingerboard? Rosewood? Ebony? Something less traditional like Hard Maple? All of these choices add up to a finished product that is more uniquely “you” than it would have been had you built from a kit. On the other hand, building a guitar is a pretty ambitious undertaking and maybe the first time around it is better to build one from a kit. We all have to start somewhere and someone who builds a guitar from a kit can use the skills learned by that experience when building the next one from scratch.

Now, without further ado, the creativity continuum:

The consumer: This represents the least creative point of the creativity continuum. In fact, this category really isn’t part of the continuum at all. If the consumer needs something his first response is to buy a product to fit that need. Of course we are all consumers in at least some areas of our lives as it is increasingly difficult in this modern world to be able to fix everything that needs fixing or make everything we need. However, I often find myself thinking, “Is there some way I could make this myself or make do with what I have?” That kind of thought doesn’t even cross the mind of the consumer. He simply wants it and wants it now and is willing to pay for it. I’m glad there are consumers as they are an important segment of the market and often drive innovation and creativity by their demand for improvements to existing products or for products that do not yet exist.

The crafter: To me this is the next level up from the consumer. The crafter embellishes existing products with her creative touches but does not fundamentally change the product. For example, the crafter might see an old desk she likes at a garage sale and spray paint it black to match her existing furniture. I also include in this point of the continuum those whose medium of creative expression primarily involves assembling things that were not made by themselves, such as beaders and scrap bookers.

The paint-by-numbers artist: I’m not really sure where to put this one in the continuum. Besides the obvious example of someone who well, paints by numbers, there are other examples of this within other handicrafts. For example, there are woodworkers who will only build things from someone else’s pre-drawn and measured plans, and seamstresses who only make dresses from patterns. When I’ve asked woodworkers I’ve known that work primarily in this fashion why they don’t want to design their own pieces, the response typically falls into one of two categories:

1. Fear of the design process – they might not have an artistic background and aren’t quite sure how to get started with design or they fear that their designs will “look wrong.”
2. Don’t want to get in the way of “doing” the craft. In other words, for them the joy is primarily in the actual execution of the physical tasks of the craft, in this case the sawing or chiseling of the wood, the fitting of precise joinery, or maintaining a set of chisels with razor sharp edges. Design is viewed a secondary consideration or a chore they would rather outsource to someone else.

The hacker / tinkerer: This is a fascinating point in the creativity continuum and as I mentioned above, this is what got me thinking of this whole idea of a “creativity continuum” in the first place. Hackers or tinkerers aren’t totally of the consumer mindset yet they don’t make things entirely from scratch / raw materials like an artisan either. Instead, they take existing products and modify (hack) them with creative touches to suit their needs. Don’t relegate these folks to the ranks of the crafter or paint-by-numbers crowd though, it some cases the hacks they make to an existing product are quite radical and display a considerable amount of ingenuity, such as this one or this one from ikea hacker’s top 10 of 2007. I’m looking forward to doing more research into this category and as I do, it looks like I will find several subgroups within this category. For example, there’s an interesting branch within this group that hacks things primarily by adding some sort of electronic or circuit board-driven device to the item being hacked such as this mood lamp with LED lights and a programmable circuit board.

In addition to ikea hacker another website that seems to embody this philosopy is makezine – check them out, there’s some neat stuff on there that will perhaps get your own creative juices flowing.

The artisan: To me this represents the peak of the creativity continuum. The artisan is a master of one (or more) raw materials such as wood, metal, fabric or clay. From these raw materials, he creates original designs and executes them with the precision and care of an old world craftsman. He sets himself apart from others who work in his medium by designing his own original works of art (i.e. no paint-by-numbers here) and striving to continuously refine his craft. Within this group, you will find custom furniture makers, knife makers, pottery artisans and others who transform raw materials such as raw steel or rough lumber into works of art from their own hearts and minds.

At one of the highest levels, they typically have branched off from their original medium and learned at least the basics of a second or third raw material as well. Examples of this would be the knife maker who learns something about woodworking so he can make his own knife handles or the woodworker who learns about metal in order to incorporate gold leaf designs or patinated metal finishes into her woodworking.

At another one of the highest levels, they have traced their raw material as far as possible back to its source and thus exert even more control over the creative design process by obtaining raw materials that suit their craft exactly. An example of this pinnacle would be chair maker Brian Boggs, who is also an expert in the way trees grow and the processing of raw lumber. Mitch of the blog furnitude described some of his Mr. Boggs’s comments from a presentation at the recent Woodworking in America Conference:

Boggs harvests his chair parts from specific parts of a log. He described it as being similar to the way you cut up a chicken. You don’t take a whole chicken, cut it into slabs and cook it. If you did that, you’d get white meat, dark meat, bones and cartilage, organs and all the rest in each piece and it would be a mess. Instead, you cut off the wings, you cut off the legs, you cut out the breast and so on. It’s similar with a tree. He gets the back legs, which he steam-bends into the shape that is the signature of a Boggs chair, from the lower part of the tree. He gets slat material from higher up in the log. He gets front legs from quartersawn sections of lumber.

Indeed, with this knowledge of what part of the log will yield the best lumber, Mr. Boggs displays a considerable mastery of his craft and an intimate knowledge of part of the natural world around him. It’s a level that I hope to reach with my own work someday.

In the meanwhile, I derive considerable joy from the pursuit of many creative endeavors and I can’t imagine life without a creative outlet. How about you? What role does the creative process play in your life? Where do you think you fall on the “creativity continuum?”

Staircase photo by blakeimeson

I live in one-half of a duplex (a “paired home” or “single family attached home” according to the latest marketing terminology) in an HOA-controlled subdivision. I’m not really sure how I wound up in an HOA community and I guarantee you that my next house will not be in one. I just really don’t care what colors my neighbors paint their houses, or whether or not their lawn is green. I also believe that most truly obnoxious situations such as 3 ft high weeds or cars up on blocks in the front yard are usually addressed by city or county ordinance. (I could be wrong about this, I haven’t really researched it, but I do remember getting a weed notice once from the city in a previous home I rented). Therefore, adding another layer of government and bureaucracy in the form of an HOA board is both an unnecessary additional expense in the form of HOA dues and a potential nuisance as you will see below.

The notice to paint and my neighbor

Early this year, I got a notice from the HOA board that my house needed painting. That was fair enough, I suppose, it had been nearly eight years since the house was built and the paint was definitely looking a little sorry. Not chipping or cracking or anything major like that, but it was fading and had some water stains in certain areas.

As is my typical style, I procrastinated until nearly the last possible minute then got in touch with the owner of the other half of the duplex, ‘Ronald’, to see what he wanted to do about the painting. The whole situation was complicated by the fact that Ronald doesn’t live in the other half anymore and is renting it out. I asked him if he wanted me to get some estimates or if he wanted to work with me and we could do it ourselves and save a lot of money.

Ronald’s family had been having some tough times lately, and he was all for saving some money. In fact, his first idea, which would have saved him a lot of money was that he would buy all the paint and in return, I would paint the entire duplex. I basically told him (nicely) to go piss up a rope with that idea, I mean come on, the paint is the cheap part while the labor would account for the lion’s share of the cost if we were to hire this out.

In later conversations, I felt a little sorry for him and I decided that if he would buy the rest of the paint (at this point I had already bought five gallons), I would paint the FRONT ONLY of his half of the duplex. Keep this part in mind for later, it’s important for the punch line, such as it is, of this little tale.

Getting the color approved

With my neighbor on board (or so I thought) for doing this DIY-style and saving some money, I started picking out a color (both Ronald and his renters said they didn’t really care what color I picked). I went with a blue with tan trim scheme and submitted (via snail mail) my choices to the HOA design review panel. After nearly a month of waiting for a response, they rejected the body color, and in hindsight, they acted appropriately in doing so. The first color I picked was a little wild, it was almost a turquoise shade of blue.

So, I toned it down quite a bit (or so I thought) and here’s where the fun really begins. What follows is a transcription of my actual emails with the manager of the HOA, ‘Val’. To her credit, she was very friendly and easy to work with throughout the whole process but, as you will see, the bureaucracy of the HOA started to run amok at certain points throughout the process. The emails that follow are my actual correspondence with the HOA but details such as names etc. have been changed to protect the innocent!:

From: Chris
Sent: Monday, July 14, 2008 10:17 AM
To: Val
Subject: paint color samples

Hi Val

I went to Home Depot last night and found a blue I like that is quite a bit more subdued than the other one that wasn’t approved. Can you take a look at this and let me know if  this new color, ‘Blue Slate’, would be acceptable for the body color of the house? The trim would still be ‘Sandy Tan’. I scanned the unapproved color in too, just for comparison.
<<Image756.jpg>> <<paint chips.pdf>>

Thanks!
Chris

From: Val
Sent: Monday, July 14th, 2008 2:17 PM
To: Chris
Subject: RE: paint color samples

Chris,
The Board looked at the new paint colors, they would still like to see another option for the body color.

From: Chris
Sent: Monday July 14th, 2008 3:00 PM
To: Val
Subject: RE: paint color samples

Hi Val - Wow, that kind of surprises me. I think it’s pretty similar to a lot of other blues I’ve seen around. Looking at my first choice, I’ll admit that one was maybe a little too wild, but this one seemed like it should have worked. Do you have any suggestions for me? Are they looking for something lighter, darker, more grey etc? A little more feedback would be really helpful and appreciated - I really would like to start painting by this weekend and I need to coordinate buying the paint with the owner of the other half.

Thanks
Chris

From: Val
Sent: Monday July 14th 3:47 PM
To: Chris
Subject: RE: paint color samples

Let me see if I can get some answers for you and I’ll get right back to you.
Val

Val never wrote back and at this point I was getting a little frustrated, so I thought I would just go to the Home Depot, grab a chip for EVERY shade of blue they made, and show up at the HOA board meeting to let them help me pick a color!

From: Chris
Sent: Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 1:52 PM
To: Val
Subject: RE: paint color samples

Hi Val – did you hear anything yet? If you haven’t heard anything yet, I was thinking of just coming to the board meeting tonight and bringing paint samples of all the varieties of blue Home Depot carries and seeing if we can all just sit down and pick one we all agree on. Do you think that would work?

Thanks
Chris

Val didn’t reply to this one – probably didn’t want to encourage me to come to the meeting, but I did indeed carry out my plan. At first, I had visions of bringing in the whole 2” thick wad of paint chips,  dropping it on the desk in front of the HOA and saying, “OK, suckers, lemme know which one of these will work!” In the end I was a little nicer than that, went through all the colors and circled about 15 that I liked and brought only those chips to the meeting. They approved my first choice of the 15 colors at the meeting, so in this case, the third time really was a charm. Here is my follow-up email:

From: Val
Sent: Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 8:01 PM
To: Chris
Subject: RE: paint color samples

Hey Chris,
Thanks for coming to the meeting tonight, glad we got you taken care of.
Val

From: Chris
Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2008 7:24 AM
To: Val
Subject: RE: paint color samples

Hi Val – Thank you for being so helpful throughout this process. I realize I procrastinated on getting the colors approved and you would have been within your rights to say “Hey, the form says we can take up to 30 days to approve this,” so I really appreciate that you were willing to be more accommodating so I could work on this on my week off next week. It was nice to meet you and interesting to hear what else the board was up to.

Wonder if the HOA would have approved this color scheme?

At this point, I proceeded to paint my half of the duplex and the front of my neighbor’s half. Ronald came over towards the beginning of the process to buy the paint as per our agreement and wondered why I was using brushes and rollers and insisted that if I just waited for him to come on down with his sprayer next weekend, we could work together and get the whole thing done in one weekend. Good thing I didn’t wait for him. Next weekend became the weekend after that, then the next weekend, and so on and so forth. At one point he asked for Val at the HOA’s number and I later heard through his renters that he had worked out a deal with her to let him have until next April to finish off his half. Here’s where it gets really funny or sad depending on how you look at it:

From: Val
Sent: Monday November 24, 2008 11:01 AM
To: Chris
Subject: RE: paint color samples

Hi Chris,
I know you have painted most of your unit, but with the weather changing are you going to be able to get the rest completed by the end of the year?  Just let me know.
Thanks
Val

From: Chris
Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 11:14 AM
To: Val
Subject: RE: paint color samples

Hi Val –
I think my half of the duplex is all painted. My next door neighbor, Ronald, hasn’t painted the side and back of his yet but I was talking to my neighbors, his renters and they were saying that he had worked something out with you where you were going to let him have until April of next year to work on it. (I had worked out a deal with him where he bought most of the paint and I agreed to paint the front only of his half).

Oh shoot come to think of it, there is just one small section of siding above the roof on their unit on the east side that would technically be part of mine. Is that what you are talking about? I forgot all about that since I always drive up from the west! Can I finish that when Ronald finishes the rest of his unit? I just checked the forecast and we don’t have any 60+ degree days coming up soon. (I think 60 degrees is required for good adhesion).
Thanks
Chris

From: Val
Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 11:30 AM
To: Chris
Subject: RE: paint color samples

Chris,
No I was talking about the other unit.  I see that I did talk to him and grant him an extension, but I didn’t realize at the time it was your other half.  I guess I’ll have to tell the Board we have to live with it until May.  Thanks for clearing it up for me.
Val

From: Chris
Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 12:04 PM
To: Val
Subject: RE: paint color samples

Thanks Val, when I heard he’d worked something out with you for an extension it never occurred to me that you didn’t realize he was the other half of my duplex.
Chris

From: Val
sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 12:30 pm
To: Chris
Subject: RE: paint color samples

Yea, I’m not that smart!!  Didn’t even occur to me.  Too many addresses to keep track of out there..

Val

I’m living in a half-painted duplex!

And that, my friends, is why I’m living in a duplex that is currently half one color and half another. At least the whole front is the same color, thought like I said before, it wouldn’t really bother me at all if it weren’t. Paint is merely colored adhesive to help hold together the shoddy construction used in our houses these days. Anyway, I guess I learned a few things from the process:

1.    My next house won’t be in an HOA-controlled community
2.    My next house won’t be a duplex
3.    My next house won’t be an all-wood monstrosity. I didn’t mention this above, but my home is all wood, not a bit of brick, stone or other surface on her. That means the whole thing had to be painted.

Do you have a funny or sad story to share about dealing with an HOA or an opinion of HOA boards in general? Join in on the MANversation and post a comment below!

The Men of Manversation and our friend Ruben worked in my garage for about 6 hours yesterday, and in that short time, in utter defiance of the get ‘er done formula I wrote about earlier this week, we actually got everything done that I had hoped for it the amount of time I had planned on. I’ll post some more pictures of the results sometime in the next week or two after I’ve had a chance to clean up and get my lathe stand built, but in the meanwhile, you can have a little sneak peek of the new lumber rack in the photo above. Even with a lot of stuff that still needs to be organized piled high on both workbenches, it already feels a lot better out there now that all the lumber is collected in a somewhat orderly fashion on the lumber rack.

The guys and I worked together very well. In fact, they did such a good job that a lot of the time I didn’t really have much to do and my main challenge was cleaning up the areas we were going to be working on next and trying to keep everyone busy. Bol really helped me out in this area and his skills as a project manager became evident.

The lumber rack and a shortage of drills

The day began with general garage cleanup and clearing a lot of the stuff out of the garage and on to the driveway. Next, we proceeded to build my lumber rack, and with five of us working on it assembly-line style, it came together pretty quickly. Bol and I cut lumber at the miter saw and Nate, Brian and Ruben assembled the uprights of the lumber rack using a spacer block to ensure that the shelves were spaced evenly on each of the four uprights. That way, when we screwed the uprights into the studs of the garage wall, all of the shelves would line up with each other once one level of shelves was level.

We almost hit a snag when the second battery in my cordless drill lost its charge before the first had a chance to fully charge. Bol had brought his cordless drill too, but it was having battery power issues as well and we were almost left without a drill at a key point in the project. Luckily, the first battery, though not completely charged, had been on the charger for about 20 minutes or so at that point and had regained enough of a charge to finish the job. If you’re planning a home improvement project that will involve drilling or driving screws, I suggest asking everyone who’s coming to help you to bring their own drill as well if they have one – you can never have too many!

French cleat

Bol and Brian were intrigued by the French cleat system I had used to hang some of the cabinets in the garage. A French cleat is a great way to hang something like a cabinet, mantle, or picture to a wall. It makes it easier for one person to install something heavy like a cabinet while still getting it level and offers the additional advantage that you don’t have to drive screws or nails through the front of the item you are hanging, which can be important if doing so would detract from the appearance of the item. I found a great video about it from Tim Carter at Askthebuilder.com. If you like this video, be sure to check out his website, it looks like it’s chock full of other useful videos like this one:

Thanks again!

Once again I’d like to express my sincere appreciation and gratitude for all the help that Ruben and the other Men of Manversation gave me on this project. It turned out great and I couldn’t have done it without you guys! Next up on the “Man Project” menu: Hardwood floors at Brian’s house!

Today, the Men of Manversation, Nate’s wife Erica, and our good buddy Ruben are coming by the house to help with with a litte garage project. Over the last couple years, I’ve been in the process of building a woodworking shop in my garage. I spent a couple semesters at school building a heavy duty Scandanavian-style workbench, I’ve acquired a few machines, and last year about this time, my Dad and I wired the garage for the 220v electricity some of the bigger machines require.

Along the way, my placement of new machinery has not been optimal and my organizational skills in general have been lacking. I really reached a tipping point when I ordered a new lathe (I’m taking a woodturning class this semester) and found I really didn’t have anywhere to put it that made sense. You can see a picture of the overall mess above, and a picture of the lathe’s current home is below:

In addition, there are several random piles of lumber strewn about. So today, I hope to build a lumber rack to organize all of that and move a few of the bigger pieces of machinery and my two workbenches around to a more optimal layout so I can actually start getting some work done.

With any luck I’ll have an update for you next week and some pictures of a much improved workspace!

The “Get ‘er Done” Formula

I once heard from a friend that when attempting some sort of a project that involves physical labor such as painting a house, remodeling a kitchen, tiling a bathroom etc., you should take the amount of time you think it’s going to take you, go to the next unit of time measurement up from there, double it, and you will have a reasonable estimate of how much time the project will actually take you to complete.

For example, you’re getting ready to tile your bathroom. You think it will probably take, oh about a day. Wrong! According to this formula, go to the next time interval up (1 week) and double it to get your more realistic estimate of two weeks.

Unfortunately, this formula proved itself true with one of my most recent projects which was painting my house. I had taken a week off work to do it, and the project wound up stretching over several weekends beyond that week until it had actually taken me close to two months start to finish.

Although this formula is probably especially apt for amateur DIY types, especially when trying something new for the first time, the friend who first told me about it has worked for the last several years as the foreman of a house framing crew and now owns his own home remoldeling business and he assured me with several amusing anecdotes that being a professional didn’t necessarily exempt him from the effects of this formula all the time.

The Home Depot Hypothesis

It also seems like for any home improvement project, one trip to Home Depot is never enough. Just when you think you have all the materials you need, you realize you forgot some small (but crucial) part and it’s off to the store again!

In the spirit of the good fun of the “Get ‘er Done” formula, I have devised my own Home Depot Hypothesis. First, in order to scale the formula to people of different incomes or spending levels, you will need to find the amount of money you are typically comfortable spending on food, gas, and discretionary items in a week. For people who get spending money out of the ATM every week, that would be your weekly figure. Maybe you put everything on a credit card. Well, go find that last statement and look at how much you charge on food, gas and discretionary items like going out to eat, going to movies etc. It doesn’t matter how you arrive at this figure, just get close to a rough estimate of how much you spend in a typical week.

Next, estimate the cost of your project and divide it by your weekly “comfortable spending” figure. This will yield the approximate number of trips to Home Depot or a similar store it will take to get all of your materials throughout the course of the project… Of course, this implies that you can accurately estimate the amount you are going to spend on the project and that is a whole other problem, so this really turns into kind of a ‘chicken and egg’ exercise.

I sincerely wish you better luck than these two formulas would suggest on your next home improvement project!

Risky looking home improvement project photo by eelke dekker

Lifestyle inflation in a nutshell

One of my major goals this year has been paying down the principal balance on my home loan and building up my long-term savings. Along the way, I’ve discovered the personal finance blogosphere and I’ve been reading great blogs like Get Rich Slowly, Early Retirement Extreme, and I Will Teach You to Be Rich for tips and encouragement as I dig my way out of debt.

One of the concepts often discussed on PF blogs is that of “lifestyle inflation,” which is really just another example of how nature abhors a vacuum. In a nutshell, the concept of lifestyle inflation states that expenses will increase proportional to increases in income. It’s the reason you might feel like you still can’t make ends meet even though you might be earning $10,000 or $20,000 dollars a year more than you made five years ago. Sure, currency inflation plays a part too, but if you examine your expenses, most people will find themselves paying much more for things now than they did just five years ago as a result of upgrading. Don’t believe me? Quick, how much were you paying for rent 10 years ago?

If you’re in your early thirties like me, chances are that you were sharing a house or apartment with one or more roommates and paying $300 or $400 a month or less for rent. Fast forward to the present day, and as a typical thirty something, I bet you have a nice fat mortgage payment of at least $1200 per month. And I think that we all can agree that this $800 or so a month difference is primarily due to lifestyle inflation, and not currency inflation. (In other words, yes your rent payment would have increased somewhat if you were still renting with roommates, but it sure wouldn’t be anywhere close to an $800 per month increase).

And this is just one example. The way that lifestyle inflation really gets you is that it sneaks up on you as you gradually make upgrades in lots of different areas. Think cell phones, cable TV package upgrades, bigger car payments, etc. etc.

“Model inflation” or a tale of two vacuums

Just as lifestyle inflation can eat away at your hard-earned financial gains if not kept in check, I’ve discovered another insidious concept I am going to call “model inflation.”

I’ve been working on some projects in my garage and my old shop vac died an untimely death Sunday afternoon. I determined that the cause of death was the infiltration of the motor by massive amounts of sawdust allowed in by the absolutely silly “paper and band” style filter in the vacuum. (I guess I should have realized something was amiss when it started spewing wood chips out the exhaust).

So, I went off to “The Borg” (*) in search of a new vacuum. I had determined that my budget for a new vacuum would be about $70 or $80. I wanted one that took a cartridge-type filter and that could also be fitted with a paper bag inside, which I thought would serve the dual purpose of prolonging the filter life and making cleanup a little neater.

(*) Big Orange Retail Giant

When I got there, I found a model that looked like it would work – the Ridgid WD1250. It had a 12 gallon capacity, 5 horsepower, and cost $79, right around what I was looking to spend. I looked around to see if there were bags for it. I found some bags that said they would fit the next few models up – the WD1450, WD1650 and WD1850, but nothing for the WD1250. After enough running around and frustration with the utterly incompetent staff at “The Borg” to fill an entire additional post, it was determined that no, there were no bags for the WD1250. It had a different intake nozzle assembly than the others and no one made bags to fit it.

To make a long story short, I wound up getting the next model up, the WD1450, in order to get a shop vac that could take a bag. I spent more than I had wanted to - $115 - and part of me wonders if the sneaky SOBs didn’t plan the product line with just that sort of thing in mind. It’s a concept that I am dubbing “model inflation,” the deliberate planning of product lines to influence consumers to buy the next model or two up the line from where their starting price range was, and the more I think about it, the more I see examples of it in a lot of consumer product lines (TVs come to mind - “well the 42 is only a little more than the 36 inch and it has extra features X and Y”).

What do you think? Have I been reading too much of a conspiracy theory into this or do agree with me? Join the manversation and post a comment about your shopping experiences below.

Preparing for the interview

I recently had an opportunity to interview for a supervisory position in a different department at my job. While I thought I was fairly well prepared for my interview because of the fact that I’ve been on the other side of the table several times as an interviewer for new candidates in my department, there were nonetheless some questions that surprised me and left me stammering as I tried to come up with a reasonable answer.

I didn’t know if there was much I could do to prepare for the interview, but I did find myself reviewing some of my files on the computer at work the day before. Also, the evening of the interview, I brought home my entire hanging file’s worth of past year performance reviews.

I spent the day and the evening preparing to talk in the interview about some of the innovative extra projects I’d taken on such as the rewrite of the written assessment my department uses to further screen candidates who pass the interview part of the process. Whereas before it had consisted of mostly simple word problems and a page full of arthimetic to be done by hand, I expanded it with a scenario in which the candidate had to respond to an angry letter from a customer who had ordered some products from a mock catalog and had things go seriously wrong. It was complete with a phony catalog page, and a mock call log of calls to the ficticious company’s call center. I thought sure I would have a chance during the interview to work in a nice discussion of this project and some other neat ones I’ve been involved in recently.

They didn’t ask the questions I wanted them to

As it turns out, not only did I not have a chance to, I was asked several questions that left me at a loss for words. Now, I consider myself as good an extemporaneous speaker as any when the situation requires it, but some of these questions were just outside of my experience, or concepts that I merely hadn’t considered.

For instance, one of the questions was “Describe a time a coworker give you some negative feedback. How did you react to it?” This is the one that was just outside of my recent experience. On my current team, we’re all way too busy to give each other any grief. If anything, if someone were dissatisfied, he would probably complain to the boss and she would probably talk to us about it.

Another stumper for me was, “Do you usually make decisions quickly and instinctively or slowly and methodically? Give an example of when your preferred methods failed and what did you do to fix it?” I think this one was difficult for me because there are things for which I use both methods, and in reality, I think a lot of my decisions are a mixture of both.

How I could have prepared myself better?

In reflecting on my experience it occurred to me that there were several things I could have done to prepare myself better for the interview. Maybe this list will help you on your next interview too:

• Know your strengths and weaknesses. One question that seems to almost always come up in one form or another is something along the lines of “Describe your three greatest strengths / qualities and how you feel they would be an asset in this position. I was actually ready for this one and I think I aced it. My strengths were extreme reliability, innovation, and willingness to take on extra work/ go above and beyond. Some of the questions I didn’t do as well on had to do with describing my weaknesses or situations I’d found challenging. To help out on future interviews, I’m going to:

• Set up a system for cataloging your accomplishments and failures (and what you learned from them / how you fixed them). I’m going to start taking some time every month to write down a little bit about some of the accomplishments and challenges of that month. One topic that consistently came up in the interview was how I’d dealt with past challenges and I stumbled on some of these. I think that by taking some time to catalog these things on an ongoing basis, I’ll be better prepared to talk about this in the future.

• Once you have identified some weaknesses, take steps to improve them. One of my weaknesses is a lack of personal organization. My desk is often cluttered and I write important memos on easy-to-lose sticky notes. However, I have taken steps to improve. Last year, I went to a Frankin-Covey class about time management and organization. I decided the Franklin-Covey system was a little too rigid for my personal style, so since then I’ve read Getting Things Done, and I’ve had a lot of success with the Hipster PDA as described on Merlin Mann’s excellent website, 43 folders. I can therefore talk about concrete steps I’ve taken to address one of my weaknesses when that topic comes up in an interview.

Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought

It turns out that I made it past that first interview and into the second round of interviews for the position. After much reflection, I decided to withdraw myself from the selection process after the second round of interviews (I’ll write more about that later), but it was a very valuable learning experience overall.

What have your recent job interviews been like? I’m especially interested to hear about how the interview process works outside of the M-F office job world. For example, one of my friend’s wives is a nurse and she says the interview process at the hospital is completely different. Join the manversation and post a comment below!

handshake photo by  A. www.viajar24h.com

Well, I’ve done this a little out of order, it would seem. I’ve already posted on a few other topics before writing my intro post. There were a couple reasons for this:

1).    I thought it might be kind of monotonous to have four days straight of intro posts about us.
2).    I wrote the content for my other posts first.

Anyway, as you’ve no doubt surmised from my previous posts, I like travel, cooking, working with my hands and doing creative things in general. I think of myself as a Renaissance man or jack-of-all-trades kind of person. I was very heavily into art as a child and drew and painted pretty much whenever I got a chance up through about high school. Since discovering music in my junior year of high school, I’ve sang in choirs and played classical guitar and other musical instruments on and off for about 12 years including a 2 year stint as a music major where I played upright bass in the university orchestra and jazz bands. I’m fluent in Spanish and that’s what my undergraduate degree is in.

Somewhere in there, I dabbled a little bit with computers, I think around junior high. I wrote some role playing game type programs in basic on the old Apple IIe but unfortunately didn’t stick with it so my bio isn’t going to read like so many others on the web that state something like: “…then went on to learn Linux, C++, html, JavaScript, built a circuit board in my garage, started a web-hosting service, and am now making boatloads of money writing this blog.” Nope, sadly, that’s not me; I lost interest after tinkering with good old basic on the Apple IIe for about six months and I rely on Nate for the heavy lifting when it comes to the design and programming on this blog.

Like many (most?) other people with a non-professional degree, I work in a field totally unrelated to my major. I think my job is really about as good as it’s going to get for an office job – my bosses are quite reasonable, my coworkers are generally pretty good people and the pay and benes aren’t bad at all - I get five weeks paid vacation per year and in less than two more years that will go up to six. However, like a lot of other people who are “knowledge workers,” or office drones, I don’t feel like this career is my calling and I can’t see myself staying here until it’s time to retire.

However, after dabbling in many different things as listed above, I have found what I believe to be my true calling in life. About three years ago I bought a house (big mistake, more on that later- perhaps much more and many posts), and was looking around for furniture and getting pretty annoyed with the flimsy crap that was available in my price range. I remembered having read or heard about some woodworking classes at my local community college and decided to go learn how to make my own coffee table. Now, three years later, what began as a one-semester plan to make a table has turned into six semesters (and counting) of studying woodworking and furniture design. I’m in the process of building a workshop in my garage and my goals for 2009 include opening an online store to sell some of my smaller projects such as boxes and turned items like peppermills, and getting into an art show to exhibit some of my larger work like coffee tables.

I’ve been perpetually single with the occasional random fling for the last few years. During that time the longest relationship I had lasted a little over two months. I think both my threshold for putting up with female craziness and my inherent drive to get sex are lower than that of the average man. You know the guy who lives for nothing but to chase the ladies and spends every spare moment (and dollar, probably) thinking about his next hook up, trying to get numbers, buying girls drinks etc? Well, that sort of thing has always seemed like a waste of money and energy to me and I’m pretty much at the other end of the spectrum. I like having a girlfriend but I think I’m just too lazy to go through some of the customary and necessary gyrations to get one.

I guess I do need to make more of an effort in that department, though it has grown increasingly difficult to generate quality leads as more and more of my friends get married. This has the twofold effect of; 1). Reducing my pool of available wingmen for heading out to the bars and clubs, and; 2). Reducing the amount of single girls in my social circles that I could easily meet or that people could set me up with (married couples don’t tend to hang out with very many single women). Though as I write this, I’m still feeling pretty good about the girl I met last weekend, and if that doesn’t pan out, there’s always online dating again. So, I’m sure that with my long list of other interesting topics I’d like to cover, you will be hearing about some of my observations about wading through the modern dating scene.

My travels in Europe

I’ve been to Europe four times – Once on a backpacking and Eurail trip with some friends, once as a foreign exchange student in Madrid, Spain, and twice more back to Spain for vacation since then. One thing that has been true on all of these trips is that my most cherished memories have come not from visiting the obligatory museums and monuments, but from getting off the beaten path and seeing what things are really like in the places I’m visiting.

How do you get off the beaten path? Well, one of the simplest ways is to just start walking. I know that sounds totally obvious but I have come across many tourists in my travels in Europe that were so busy rushing from place to place that they didn’t see the really interesting things right in front of them. Most European cities are extremely amenable to just talking a stroll and taking in the sights and sounds (and sometimes the smells) of a new place. I’m told by other world travelers that this is also true in many other international destinations. It seems that the rest of the world isn’t quite as dependent on driving everywhere as we are. Here are some other ideas for getting off the beaten path:

Local festivals

While staying in Barcelona, I went to a traditional festival in one of the nearby small towns in the hills of Catalonia. There was great food, and traditional performances by Castellers, groups who form human pyramids five levels high. A couple other Americans I’d met in a hostel and myself were the only tourists there and we had quite an adventure getting back as we missed the last bus back to Barcelona and then tried calling a taxi that never came. To make a long story short, one of the locals was very generous and gave us a ride back to Barcelona! (It was about an hour out of his way to do so).

Strike up a conversation or ask the locals for a recommendation

Most people in Europe were quite friendly and willing to supply a recommendation of a favorite local restaurant or thing to do. On a train ride from Madrid to Bilbao, a city in the Basque region in the North of Spain, I was seated in a compartment with a Spanish guy who shared a six pack of Mahou (Spain’s equivalent to Budweiser) with me and gave me two recommendations for unique things to do – 1. Try Bacalao a la Vizcaina – the local specialty – salt cod in a special sauce, and 2. Watch a match of Pelota vasca or Jai-alai.

I wound up doing both things and had a great time. It was much more fun talking to people around town and asking for pointers on where to get the best Bacalao a la Vizcaina or about when the next Jai-alai match would be than it would have been bouncing from museum to museum all day long. (Though I did make the obligatory visit to the Guggenheim Musuem while I was there too). Plus, I think the locals really open up a lot more than they might for the average tourist once they realize that you’re asking questions about things that are off the beaten path and are thereby demonstrating a real interest in their city or culture.

It turned out that there weren’t any Jai-alai matches going on while I was in Bilbao, but I found out through asking around that it was possible to go by the frontón (Jai-alai court) and watch some of the players in a practice session. When I got there, I started videotaping some of it and one of the locals noticed me doing so and starting talking to me. It turns out this gentleman was a serious aficionado of the game and since I was very curious about the game, he and I wound up talking for about an hour. He went over some of the different variants of the game with me and explained what was going on during certain points of the practice match I was watching. He also knew some of the players and he asked them to sign one of the special paddles they used in the game – made of a nearly 2” thick piece of red beech - and presented it to me as a gift afterwards. I still smile every time I see it and remember my time in Bilbao – it’s the kind of souvenir money can’t buy.

Here’s a neat mini-documentary about Jai-alai:

The video is interesting, but it only talks about one version of the game, that played with the long basket-like glove called the cesta punta. In the practice match I was watching, they were playing another version in which stout paddles made of 2″ thick beech were used to hit the pelota.

Sign up for a class

If you’re traveling to an English speaking country or if you have some proficiency in the local language, signing up for a class in almost any topic is a great way to see another side of that country. The year that I lived in Spain, I went to a cooking class and learned how to make traditional Spanish dishes such as paella and tortilla española. The class was initially just a one-time deal that was set up for some of the American students but I was so enthusiastic about the topic that the teacher told me I should start coming to her regular weekly classes for Spanish people.

I went to her class almost every week for the rest of the year and came back with some wonderful memories and a recipe book that I made by taking the handouts and notes from class to a copy shop and having them bound.

If all else fails, don’t be afraid to “point and pray”

This strategy mostly refers to choosing items off of a menu in a language you don’t understand, but I think it can be expanded to mean choosing your next destination or activity as well. Your itinerary should never be so heavily scheduled that you can’t afford a day or two to take an interesting detour off the beaten path.

What are some of your most cherished travel memories that involved getting off the beaten path? We’d love to hear about it, post a comment below!

Photo of Amsterdam by MorBCN

Last night I met a girl at a friend from work’s party. We exchanged a glance or two across the room (or at least I thought we did, maybe I was just in her line of sight for the TV, ha!), I checked her finger for rings (no rings! Yea!) and later our mutual friend introduced us and we hit it off right away. Conversation flowed easily the rest of the night and appropriate humor occurred to me at the right moments like it never has in a long while- when she said she worked for the federal government, for example, I put on my best ‘wow’ face and said “are you an agent?,” even though I wasn’t really getting the law enforcement vibe from her at all and she thought it was funny.

Towards the end of the night we were talking about skiing and I said, “Well, I’ve really enjoyed talking to you tonight, would you like to go skiing with me or perhaps to dinner sometime? Can I get your number?” Well, she got that look, you all know the one, the one that speaks of some sort of inner conflict and seems to say well, I’d love to give you my number but I can’t.

Turns out someone had broken up with her that very day and she was still reeling from that blow. I understood this was a delicate situation but I persisted. 9 times out of 10 I wouldn’t have, but my inner voice was telling me to press on a little more than I usually would in her case. In the end I got her to agree to take my business card & I wrote my personal email and phone number on the back. We left the party at almost the same time and she gave me a big hug.

I’m pretty hopeful about this one actually. We don’t seem compatible on surface things – she’s East Coast, I’m native Colorado, and her manner of more formal dress and behavior was evident (though I’ve always been attracted to a well-dressed lady). We’re on opposite sides of the political spectrum, at least for this election, though I’m registered unaffiliated, so I reserve the right to change my mind! Also, she’s a smoker and I’ve always been really apprehensive about dating a smoker.

But I don’t know what it was, surface incompatibilities like those above just felt like trifles compared to the way I just instantly felt at ease around her (It didn’t hurt that she was tall, very cute and had great legs) and by the end of the night it seemed like our body language was almost like that of a couple. We were standing quite close as we talked and I could tell that part of her definitely wanted to give me her number. I can’t remember feeling this sure about wanting to see a girl again for a long time. Usually by the second or third hour of a conversation, my mind is already whirring, calculating the pros and cons of a relationship and coming up with reasons to disqualify the lady in question. With her it was just the opposite, I felt nothing but a calm inner voice telling me to proceed.

I’ve got a good feeling about this one  and even thought the timing is not optimal it’s better than it would have been one night earlier- she still would have still been dating some other dude! A month or two later, and a beauty like her might have already started dating again. No doubt it’s a tricky situation and I will have to proceed with caution but I just get this feeling it was meant to be.