29-I-2003.
Slight drizzle started. Winter in Atlanta is a joke.
(I did shoot the nine shots for this before entering the building, and stitched them somehow within a couple of weeks. However, this is a fresh stitch, as of march 2022, because the software I now have is better than what I had then, or also in 2010. I could have straightened the crop, but then the buildings would slant. Better this way.)
Got there on time. The building is overlooking the beltway, has huge parking on the roof of the lower part (with more parking below). The interview went fine. By this time, I was already assured that I'm among the top 200 fox programmers in the world (assuming about 10% post on the forums), so I was rather relaxed, seeing by their questions that they know far less than I do.
The interesting moment was a question to name three bad things about fox. Easy: 1) it's m$'s unwanted child, 2) works only under windowses, 3) not Unicode. Seems they liked that.
At some point it seemed like they wanted to try to get a solution for some specific problem they had. Well I know the game, there were known cases when the companies pretended to hire only to milk the candidates for a solution, pretending it was a test question, and then hire nobody and have their problem solved. So I did tell them what to do, but in terms they could have heard somewhere but couldn't quite follow. „Extensive explanation follows if you hire me“ is the correct answer.
Then the boss took me for a tour of the app, explaining in length what they do. They are health insurance evaders. The business model goes like this: they go to employers and say "you pay your health bills through us; we are not an insurance, but we will work with the doctors and offer them customers if they sign up with us; they will give us discount for the trouble they won't have - which is dealing with insurances - and our fee is 20% of that discount".
Which seems to work quite fine - they are renting a whole floor of a large building, have their own elevator. The guys seem the usual friendly Foxen. Heard a story about a guy who puts caffeine pills into decaf coffee, calls it "recaf".
The outfit is a true corporation, with some stiff, seemingly flexible, scheme to motivate people to work better and earn more, but it has the nasty "group bonus" part, which probably doesn't help relationships on the job, and doesn't promise to arrive too frequently.
The trip back was even more boring than the yesterday's. Rain wasn't much, but it didn't stop until I left the highway, almost in Virginia. The pictoresque part was even more so, with the trees in headlights. Came home slightly light headed, but awake. Only rocked a little when I sat.
Of course, dad had questions, many. Specially about those letters of recommendation which they asked me to procure... and why was that after the talk, not before. Which wasn't clear to me either. Today, twenty years later, it seems that someone in there was against me, and someone else pulled countermoves, so this was supposed to tip the scale. From Zero I couldn't catch anyone, and among them, anyway, only Ford knew what I was working on, and with him I parted on not the nicest of terms, so I pulled Berix, George and Jerbie.
Through how many federal states did you pass to Atlanta, when you write you took a little nap entering Dzordzija*? We remember the south end of the USA mostly from movies and various writings about their civil war.
I went south - Lynchburg, Danville (on Dan's river, with Dan Daniels museum :), crossed to North Carolina there. In Greensborough my local road (the 29, same one that goes through our neighborhood) connects to I-81. I passed Charlotte (guess the capital), then the north end of South Carolina to Georgia, no bigger places along the way. But there were two places with insane names: Lawless Creek and Fair Play. There were more, just can't remember.
The nighting in a hotel probably costs more than the gas you consumed in both directions. It seems the hotel was made for rich tourists or businessmen, who stay in them for more than one night.
Yes of course - the problem is how to keep it occupied. In Houston I also nighted in one such - they fill a lot, sized as for as chool, with buildings with two or three floors, which is as high as they can go while doing everything of wood and with not pouring too much concrete around, and they get a bunch of such apartments - no ordinary rooms. I wouldn't be surprised if this didn't cost much; if the they guessed right a date when the throughput is lower, they probably may get to buy some space for a while at some ridiculous price, just so that these guys don't have too many vacancies, they cost the most.
Gas - totaled at around 45 dollars eyeballingly, three full tanks there and back. The room should cost between 140 and 220 dollars, but if sa similar apartment (with one room less) had cost 80 dollars in Houston, I wouldn't be shocked if the price for this came down to anywhere between 55 and 120 dollars. Just so that it doesn't stay empty and that nobody else knows of the bargain. The physical cost of my stay was to wash two towels, one ashtray and one bedspread, and I had one breakfast, which totals pretty much a nothing, so the hotel is in the black even if my room cost less than the gasoline. Not to mention that two minutes of phone call home cost me eight dollars. Later, on the way back, I cost three minutes for a dollar, which is still much. When I call from home, eight minutes cost a dollar.
Interesting how they ask for recommendations even after the talk. If you already knew about it, we find it strange that Berix didn't send it beforehand, she should know the customs. Who is that Jerbie who sent a recommendation for you. Is that some cadre handler from Zero. For what we can remember, in all of our correspondence so far you never mentioned him.
Jerbie is one of the great guys in our trade - I even have a couple of books he wrote. He's the chief of the project in Syracuse now, actually since september; beforehand he was just a contractor like we were.
The recommendation from him was already sent, and I got one from George from Canada, who is actually the guy who invented this whole eHosp project (ie. Syracuse), otherwise a genius, though very sharp tongued, also well known among the foxers. During the day one should also come from Berix - she said she'll grab some time to write the few sentences and send to Atlanta. What matters are these two guys, who are known wide and far, I think that'll mean a lot. Jerbie said more or less „The quality of Sredljević's work was always top notch. He could always be relied on to get the job done on time and within available budget. I wouldn't hesitate hiring him if we only had an opening here“. And George said „This message is to ascertain that I worked with Gradivoj Sredljević for several months while we were working on eHosp. Although I never met Sredljević in person, I can vouch for his abilities as a fox programmer, his software design intuition, and his abilities to produce excellent result under pressure, with minimum instruction and supervision. In brief, Sredljević is a keeper“. This last word may mean, as it happens often in english, many things - a steward, a janitor, a person in charge of a building, hunting ground or any kind of such manager. Also may mean something that one keeps, doesn't throw away.
----
* Should be Džordžija, and this time it wasn't any diacritical filtering, he typed proper ž elsewhere.
Mentions: Allan Robin (Ford), Cecilia Roxbury (Berix), eHosp, fox, George Whiteley, Gradivoj Sredljević, Jerry/Jenny Beale (Jerbie), Majkrosoft (m$), Zero Distance (Zero), in serbian
20-XII-2011 - 22-V-2026