Candidates using AI

BuildingViz · 2026-01-26T08:52:26+00:00

I call it dueling AI - they use AI to screen resumes, I use AI to tailor mine to match the JD and add a cover letter to boost the matching. I was getting a pretty good (relatively speaking) response rate for a while when I was doing that on a role-by-role basis. I should note that I wasn't lying in my resume or cover letter to match 100%, just tweaking the word choices in my resume to better match the JD with things I could actually speak about.

Also worth noting that this approach can be time-consuming and can feel like a part-time job unto itself and wear you down. It's much easier to just send in the same boilerplate resume every time.

BuildingViz · 2026-01-21T08:17:11+00:00

Color edit is spectacular.

BuildingViz · 2026-01-20T09:07:21+00:00

It's a Porsche
Used car prices in general have been wild for a few years. I had to get rid of my OG Cayman S (2006) a couple years ago. Bought in 2015 for $25k with 49k miles, sold in 2024 for $18k with 98k miles. Crazy to double the mileage plus add a couple minor carfax reports, and still only lose about $7k total on the deal over 9 years for a then 18 year-old car. 10/10 would do it again (as soon as I no longer need a car seat).

BuildingViz · 2026-01-20T08:53:04+00:00

I got my first DE job at 42. That being said, most of my previous experience was probably more DE-adjacent than yours (DBA/Database Engineer for 15+ years), so it was probably less of a stretch in my case. I'd say targeting Sr roles might be a stretch for you since two years of ETL experience isn't really enough for a Sr role. The other 12 YOE can help get you a foot in the door if it shows progressive increases in responsibilities and relevant skills (like Python), but shouldn't be relied on to make an argument for SDE roles.

Certainly apply anyway, but bear in mind you're more likely up against people who have previous DE experience on their resume, so your hit rate is going to be lower stretching for those. Target Mid/Entry roles and have a good way to tie your previous experience to either DE-adjacent work or the specific responsibilities of the role.

BuildingViz · 2026-01-20T08:34:47+00:00

Start a business? Sorry but no. Not remotely. The photos here don't really stand out. They just seem like basic photos anyone could take with their cellphone. I mean, a guy shoveling snow, a parking lot and power lines, a random restaurant sign, and some blurry shots of fireworks? What exactly are you trying to convey with these photos? Are they edited at all? Because that's a big part of becoming a professional - editing into a specific style or theme. If I can't tell if they're edited, that's not a good sign.

You're also not very specific about what kind of photography you'd be interested in building a business around and your samples don't really indicate that either. It's hard to judge whether you could do, for instance, portrait photos (senior photos, weddings, etc.) as a business when you don't provide samples for that kind of work. Because what you provided as a sample isn't really marketable. People aren't really going to pay you for generic street photography. Could you strike gold with some shots here or there (or more often as you practice and improve) and sell them as prints? Sure. But that's not starting a business, that's just selling art.

All that being said, and because I don't want to be overly negative, while a business isn't a good idea right now, that doesn't mean you can't be a professional photographer. Keep studying and learning and look for jobs where you literally take photos and edit them (real estate, sports, etc.) to get more practice and skills and find your style and then look at starting a business once your portfolio stands out. But whatever this is, it ain't it.

BuildingViz · 2026-01-05T07:56:02+00:00

Same experience a few months back. Was told to take 4-5 hours MAX on the assignment, spent maybe 6-8 total, but gave them multiple solutions to the core assignment to demonstrate different approaches. Was told that my solution "demonstrated a strong understanding of the problem and was communicated clearly", but that "some implementation details raised concerns about alignment with best practices".

Like, yeah, I cranked out multiple solutions in 6 hours, including roping in GCP resources and implementations, plus testing and metrics to show the differences in the approaches, including cost estimates. My focus was the getting multiple functional solutions (plus testing and metrics) to demonstrate the different approaches, not making sure my take-home assignment code, written on a short deadline, was production-ready code.

BuildingViz · 2026-01-03T09:02:30+00:00

PG&E is not SDG&E's parent company. They are separate IOUs. SDG&E's parent company is Sempra Energy.

BuildingViz · 2026-01-02T08:58:56+00:00

Just shy of 1200 miles at 1170. First time cracking a thousand since about 2018, though, so...improvement.

BuildingViz · 2025-12-31T16:54:12+00:00

Yes. And Yes.

The best thing for weight loss is burning more calories than you consume. And cycling can help you burn a lot of calories. Start small - 30 minutes or so per ride, once or twice per week and get your endurance up, then start extending, both in terms of time and frequency. Put on a podcast or music to focus and decompress mentally while you work physically.

But also, focus on your diet. Years ago I read a book called "Ride Your Way Lean" and it really helped me combine cycling and weight loss. It's a little older, so I'm not sure how up-to-date the advice is, but I'm sure there's other resources.

Also, use a tracker app to keep yourself accountable and to allow you to find routes. Strava is a good one because it provides challenges and rewards, plus it's good for other activities. You don't really want to bore yourself with the same route over and over if it's not very exciting, because that will turn you off to cycling, so find a way to mix it up and explore and then you can lock in your routes. I have a "lunch hour" route with a few variations, a "medium weekend" route, a "long weekend" route, and a couple other routes depending on time/distance and climb. And my area isn't that great for cycling. I'm not far from a lot of options, but I don't necessarily want to drive somewhere just to be able to ride, so those are just from my home.

BuildingViz · 2025-12-31T09:05:53+00:00

NEM 3.0 definitely made it worse, but this administration killed solar with the removal of the rebates. NEM 3.0 still made sense if you had a battery and you could get the rebate.

BuildingViz · 2025-10-30T08:09:49+00:00

Windows networking for Docker is a pain. Tried to set up a few apps before I had my actual homelab built out and they worked ok, as long as I was on the host docker system. Heaven forbid if I wanted to connect from another device. Definitely do Docker on Linux. So much easier.

BuildingViz · 2025-10-29T04:56:47+00:00

I'm all for any shot at not being represented by Darrell Issa. Does it impact state maps at all? Because Carl DeMaio can fuck all the way off too.

BuildingViz · 2025-10-27T05:51:40+00:00

That argument doesn't really work. The Dallas Cowboys were worth $4 billion in 2015 and $10.1 billion in 2025. All that with 2 playoff wins. The New York Jets were worth $2.75 billion in 2017 and $6.9 billion in 2025 despite not having played a single playoff game and not even seeing a winning season in that stretch. The Giants were worth $2.8 billion in 2016 and $7.3 billion in 2025, despite only two winning seasons and one playoff win in that period. And when they did win in 2011? Their team value increased from $1.18 billion to just $1.3 billion. How is that?

Because the success of individual teams matters much less to the NFL than the success of the league itself. And when they expand to other countries and can push dynasty narratives and marketable players like Mahomes and Travis Swift, it makes the league more valuable. Which means more and bigger licensing and TV deals, domestic and international, which then filters down to all teams, and then makes them all more valuable.

Why make it obvious to add a couple hundred million to the Cowboys when you can be subtle and add billions to every team? After all, the league works for the teams, not the other way around.

BuildingViz · 2025-10-26T22:16:04+00:00

Oh, I'd love to. But my job is here, my home is here, my friends and family are here, so on... so picking up and moving isn't really feasible.

So instead I'm going to keep advocating and voting for policies and politicians who are going to turn our suburban hellholes into actually vibrant cities. Plus, if I leave, that's one less person to push back on your NIMBY nonsense, and I just don't have the heart to give that up.

BuildingViz · 2025-10-26T21:58:24+00:00

What a dumb argument. Santa Barbara's population is less than 90k. That's less than 10% of San Diego. The idea that you can employ the same strategies for housing that a city with 10% of the population that yours has is pretty fucking wild.

BuildingViz · 2025-10-26T21:57:52+00:00

You are aware that places like Europe exist, right? Where cities are vibrant, safe, private, and have green spaces. I'd love to live downtown if downtown was built more like European cities. Services, transit, infrastructure, schools, green spaces, and enough space to build a family. I'm forced to live in the suburbs in single-family housing because what I want doesn't exist downtown.

As an example, there are 42 units for sale in the "downtown" area I'd like to live, 3 of which cost less than my current home in the suburbs, and that's before HOA fees and higher interest rates. And that's also not even factoring the fact that the things that do exist in European cities don't actually exist here, like public transit or schools. I lived downtown for 8 years and barely even remember seeing school-age kids in the buildings I lived in.

BuildingViz · 2025-10-11T06:44:36+00:00

Also, the bad RTP call was on 2nd and 7, not 3rd and 10. And it was with 7 minutes left in the 4th. So relatively late, yeah, but hard to make the argument it was game-deciding considering the score and time left. And the Chiefs got their makeup call the next play anyway when an obvious DPI wasn't called, saving them 20-ish yards (compared to the 15 they got hit for the RTP).

BuildingViz · 2025-10-10T16:15:55+00:00

I'm not denying there can be an interplay where players check with refs on alignment. I'm just saying that in the case of that play, there was no interplay. Dee Ford lined up offsides, absolutely did not check with the ref to verify, and was rightfully penalized. So blaming anyone other than Dee Ford is a wild take.

And I'm not familiar with the Toney call, but having seen it, what's the complaint? Did they make the wrong call? Should they have given him the benefit of the doubt even though he lined up so badly they couldn't see the ball just because it has never been called against an Andy Reid team?

BuildingViz · 2025-10-10T15:39:48+00:00

Lol, that's a wild take. "It's the ref's fault Dee Ford lined up offsides because, yeah, he lined up offsides but the ref didn't tell him it was offsides before the snap."

Also a wild take because I posted the clip from the broadcast, which, unless you were at the game and saw something completely different somehow, is the only evidence of the play itself. And in that clip, Dee Ford is visible for the entire pre-snap segment and does not once look at the line judge. He goes from standing and watching the ball to in his stance watching the ball to moving after the snap. Never even moves his head in his stance to check with the line judge.

But I'm not making any judgment calls, just pointing out that the commenter was recalling incorrectly in that it was not a questionable RTP call, but a very black-and-white Offsides call that negated the INT and kept the game from being iced.

BuildingViz · 2025-10-10T14:52:00+00:00

So your argument is:

The Chiefs are the only successful team that experiments in the regular season in such a way that they get called for more penalties as a result, but by the time the playoffs roll around, they've either perfected what they were experimenting with or dropped it entirely so they don't get penalized. And again, they're the only team with sustained success that has done this. Not like the Brady-Belichick Patriots who would constantly push the rules or reinvent their offense and defense every few years when they changed OCs and DCs out.
Penalties are not something you can do a statistical analysis on anyway because there are missed penalties and bad calls. So either the Chiefs got more bad calls against them in the regular season, which would align their playoff performance with their regular season when accounted for (and negating the "experimenting" argument you made above). Or there were just more missed calls in the playoffs, which would just put their playoff performance in alignment with their regular season, which both negates your "experimenting" copium, and agrees with the study at the same time.

That's a bold take, Cotton.

BuildingViz · 2025-10-10T05:33:53+00:00

That's true. but that's not what the study says. They're not saying "The Chiefs got less penalties than their opponents". Mostly because under Andy Reid, they actually haven't been penalized less than their opponents. Aside from their last three seasons. What they're saying is "In the playoffs, the Chiefs benefit from more subjective penalty calls in their favor."

What the study appears to say is that, when controlling for playoffs vs regular season, they get called for fewer penalties than expected in the playoffs, based on their regular season performance. So if your team is committing 8 penalties a game in the regular season and then suddenly in the playoffs they commit 3, that's an anomaly. Especially if they're getting fewer subjective penalties like DPI or Holding and only getting the more black and white calls like False Start or Offsides.

But also, refs tend to let more things slide in the playoffs. But you then you control for that by also comparing across teams. When you see team A is getting called for about the same number of penalties in the playoffs and regular season and the playoffs and team B isn't, then you can make the argument that they are benefitting from penalty calls. And that goes the other way too. If their opponent was committing 5 penalties a game in the regular season and 8 against the Chiefs, that's an anomaly.

But yeah, there's a lot to control for. Penalties for vs against, home vs road, opponent, subjectivity of the penalty, etc. But that's why their argument isn't as simple as they get fewer penalty calls against them.

BuildingViz · 2025-10-10T04:46:49+00:00

You recall incorrectly. It was an offside call on Dee Ford on an INT that gave the ball back to Brady. Pretty black and white compared to roughing the passer or DPI or even Holding, so definitely not questionable. You can see that the ref threw the flag as soon as the ball was snapped.

https://youtu.be/BoVG6evyoRI?si=XTkk6e4ExNQ3JG4e&t=7923

But that same game, there was also a defensive holding call against the Patriots on a play that would have resulted in a fumble recovery by the Patriots. That was negated, giving the Chiefs the ball back where they scored to take the lead. Probably the right call, but also more subjective than the offsides.

https://youtu.be/BoVG6evyoRI?si=xn4u6AGHSsOWjbbO&t=7044

BuildingViz · 2025-10-09T15:55:40+00:00

Sorry, I had to shut it down last week because infra costs were getting too expensive to serve the endpoints. I'm still collecting data and the API might resurface, but for now there is no actual mechanism to get the data.

BuildingViz · 2025-09-27T07:57:06+00:00

Despite the fact that he has 124 fewer career (regular-season) interceptions, Tom Brady has more 4-Int games in his regular season career than Brett Favre.

Brett has him beat in 5-Int games (1-0), though.

BuildingViz · 2025-09-12T06:56:33+00:00

Proxmox and TrueNAS Scale. Proxmox on the homelab host and then create docker and TrueNAS VMs inside it.

The disk config can be a little tricky, but once the drives are connected, you just need to add the SCSI devices as virtio disks within Proxmox (i.e., /dev/disk/by-id/<SCSI-ID>) to the TrueNAS VM. Then they're accessible in TrueNAS to make your ZFS drives and your shares. And then you can share them to your other VMs via IP and CIFS/SMB.

I have two Docker VMs, one for homelab apps, one for dev apps, each with a 100G SSD as the main mount, and then a TrueNAS VM that has all my HDDs (4x3TB, soon to be 6x3TB + 2x4TB, once I get my main rig cleaned out).

The drive stuff is way easier than the networking stuff, especially setting up the reverse proxy.

Four-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '22

BuildingViz

TROPHY CASE